Water

 

The word flows

along the tongue

and over the tip:

river on a silt bed,

smooth as glass

over a weir.

Beer-brown,

lumbering

and opulent

the word 

elemental like air,

gorged on peatland spill;

warm

in the mouth

like spittle.

In Blue Jeans

 

Lightning on the asphalt

rain dousing Camden

in July

sunlit splashes 

running shopfront to shopfront

hair drenched

cables warm like arms

counting down my vertebrae

haloes bout my feet

and your excitement

frying up

music-filled doorways passing like ponies

green wood above

the water

hucksters hippies

and the feel of incensed air

a Doors tune

like smoke

voices flapping against upstairs windows

escapees

excitement or speed

we

in blue jeans

A Question Of Scale

 

A mite is travelling up the margin of my page;

a full stop going on a journey.

I assume it has purpose, but what can I know?

I’m reading that Stephen Hawking said

“the universe appears designed”, by which he meant

it’s strikingly well suited to existence of life.

Which makes me wonder about scale:

how small are we?

Are we blindly travelling up the margin of someone’s page?

It's worth mentioning that Hawking's views on what was haening in the universe changed radically subsequent to this comment.

Morning Extraordinary

 

Sea a white slab,

sky soft bag of sunlight,

the mountains opposite

suspended in mid-air; a dream place.

Cosily plump,

swaddled in greenery,

a pigeon sits zen-like

deeply contemplating;

as though daylight arrived before day,

and the world, caught in a spotlight,

blank and unsteady

has, as yet, its constituent parts unresolved.

The shock

as you peel away from the oblivion of sleep;

the implausibility of it;

the infinity of ends that all meet.

 

The noise of short wave,

then your voice comes through

as home might sound

in the midst of Armageddon.

Untitled

 

All of us in a boat.

Sitting there.

Our blood on the water.

Our reflections in the blood.

All of us looking.

The boat unmoving.

The water undisturbed.

No one talking.

Evening settling in.

A chill with the dimming.

This poem is inspired by Peter Doig's 'Figures in Red Boat'. It's a fantastic image which I purposely left out of the post to allow the poem achieve its own effect. However, if you’re not familiar with the painting, do a search and stay with it for a while; I think it is very thought-provoking.

Waves of Men Thrown at Guns

 

Waves of men thrown at the guns

like water thrown on a fire;

the geography of their births

costing them their lives.

Who should “ask what you can do

for your country”?

Rock and clay recognize no borders;

sacrificing lives for a line on a map

is no service to a nation

but  makes a bonfire of its people.

Remnant of an Empire

 

Pool of water

you pick beauty, like an apple,

from this panoply

and set it there,

a fragment from a canvas

lying in the gutter.

I look down 

on The Four Courts

austere and grand

like Ozymandias,

“sneer of cold command”

half sunk in the sand;

remnant of an empire

shivering

in an April breeze.

We all live in here

 

We all live in here;

teeming around each other,

drinking from the same tap,

turning in our beds in unison;

recycling our breaths.

Sooner or later, each of us

turns up at our neighbour’s

offering worn-out clay,

coming away with a mirror

and the wood from a kitchen table.

Going Home

 

Deep

like an ocean.

Moonlight dim

and silent.

Empty

like a dancehall

that was once ........

Not my heyday.

Forty years earlier,

cycling

in the early hours

through countryside

like a dream.

That memory

an exhibit

now;

collected,

preserved in a jar

with label’s print

barely legible.

Was carefree then,

pedalling

your way home;

happy countryside.

Happy life.

Unseen turn.

Exhilaration that.

Pumped up heart

huge with joy,

youthful expectation

unbattered.

Quiet suddenly.

In that countryside

a front wheel spinning.

The fish 

that is solitary

in the ocean

is essential to the stillness

that is around it.

Stillness

that is  a consiracy

waiting.

And the stone walls

suddenly 

stone-deaf to whistling.

On the Canal

 

In the dim light of a December evening

swans, bright as lit matches, are gliding

over the streaming oarweed of traffic lights

on their way to Harold’s Cross Bridge.

Ghostly on winter’s glass,

oblivious to the world’s commotion,

passing without trace, blind to their own beauty

and all the more beautiful for that.

Woods

 

                 Light falling

                 like snow through the leaves.

                                                   Walking among the anemones:

                                                   my giant’s feet

                                                   sinking into that sprawl of city lights.

The woods silent,

its million ears pricked.

A wet day

 

I stay inside,

inside myself.

Raindrops leave

perfect rings on the sand;

BB King sings

with his lips in a perfect o

but that’s not

what I want to say.

A child never spoke,

not in a year

except once

to say no.

I thought about that

and surmised

his parents

had left him short.

Rain magnifies

the grey of clouds.

The electric wires

sag;

yes, and on days like this

I remember.

What I remember most:

a gable end

when a window was

my world.

That boy never smiled,

not once that year.

Green, vibrant in rain,

but  chilly,

encages

but seems infinite.

The oyster catchers move along

but nothing changes;

I drop the magazine

pick up the laptop

and the rain

pressing harder against the window;

I will read the magazine;

he refuses to look up.

 

Sitting at your grave

brings nothing but absence.

Memory is you now,

I carry you in my head,

within me wherever I go.

A Series of Donegal Bay Haiku

I've seldom used the haiku format; however, not having a prolonged piece of poetry to mind but having some impressions on scenes I come across every day, haiku suddenly appeared to be a very useful choice. So, here then is my 'bash' at haiku.

Showers in the bay,

unfurled clouds their sails –

the Killybegs Regatta.

Oystercatchers hunched

searching for shell fish

are spattered ink on a page.

The white cloud is clinging

to the mountainside

as tight as unwashed hair.

The oystercatchers

that were flecks on the strand

take to flight chevron shaped.

A hail shower

extends upward into cumulus –

atomic bomb.