You Decide…..
I have disinterred around a hundred pages of my poems going back centuries…I have always been shy about my poetry. Occasionally to test it out, I have sent various poems to poetry websites and some have appeared in printed collections. I was even awarded first prize in a Forward Poetry competition (I can’t remember which poem snaffled this strange accolade). But now I find I have well over a hundred pages of the damn things. What to do? Some are truly dreadful – embarrassing even. I hate predictable rhymes. There are too many cliches to avoid them all..
But there are poems I think deserve to be read. Capsules of emotion, or truth, or pictures.
But which is which? YOU decide! I am going to post various extracts from my Collected Works every week, say 8 – 10 at a time – and all I want YOU to do is please feed back? E-mail preferred or comment here. Which trash? Which treasure?
1988 – 2000 – A Few Non -selected Poems
A & E Saturday 4.45pm
There are no emergencies here,
Simply
Anxieties
Expressionless sobriety.
A calm of blond children
Exchanging banalities
Parents patiently
Exuding fatality
An ache-exchange.
America
on the day they refused to set targets for emissions Nov 00
Just
How much air do you NEED?
You greed-infested
Speeeeeeeeeeeeed freaks?
Just
How much Bloooood
Do you want us to Bleeeed?
You earth-devouring feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeders?
REPEAT IN DIFFERENT WORDS
Once again my old old friend
Anger, my clutch, my grab,
My sting of fist and grasp of heart
My tearing my own dear stomach apart,
Each breath dark blue, caught
At the top of the twisted diaphragm
Of words which go:
‘Why do others –
Too many others –
Stab their fingers in my pie?’
Lifetime Bicycle Warrior Part 3
I’m just goin’ on my fragile way
From Point A
To Point B –
Today’s a sunny day
Shines on me –
Just goin’ my fragile way
From A
To B
I’m just stopping here to say
A word, and
Then I’m free….
From here to day-to-day
And then, eternity….
Trippin’ my fragile way
From A……
To victory
Bristol Poly refectory, May 1989
I decided to become a teacher after years in Business when my first novel was published. At the age of 40, joining in student life!
Summer shadows in this room
This body-bag of bustle
Bubble Babble Muscle
Bared to thighs unused, unhumble
Thrust-out youth, preparing
For trimming, shaping, filling,
Sullying,
Child-rearing,
Making, settling, scurrying
And then, busily dying
MARCH 15 1994
(First episode of Atrial Fibrillation. Ambulance to hospital from the Doctor’s surgery, accompanied by cuz. Who is a doctor, was staying with me on holiday from New York. My symptoms seemed minor to him. But when we went to see the GP, panic and ambulance. In the hospital they shocked me 3 times. The first, the heart stopped. The second, nothing. The third, it started again. C’est la vie.)
At the age of 45 I began to fall apart
When a small wild bird got trapped in my heart
And fighting to break free
Was killed by three
Shocks.
O sweet bird of youth!
BZZ BZZ
I yam a little buzzing fly
With lotsa germs I wanna die
And buzz buzz in your cosy ear
And lay my little germies there
Before you take a hate to me
And so-what me into history!
Brompton Cemetery
The cruel dead
Who, resting on our laurels
Have no complaint
Who
Left us ignorant
Blessed us with lies
What a legacy
The thoughtless dead
Who, wanting to leave their scratch in the sand
Left
A cough in the night
And lie in the land here,
All about me.
‘Always a place in our hearts’
Poor boy
Another John Smith forgotten
In acres of forget-me-nots
This last summer day
Surrounded by the rotten,
Lies carved in marble
A magpie
Two Spaniards
A dog
A cyclist
And the lying dead
THERE IS SOME SORT OF CONFLICT GOING ON
The farcical forces of fat-arsed Fred
Vs the forcical farces of the happy thigh-led
Riders of rosebuds, the banged-in-the-head
Heroes of pleasure who’ll rave ’till they’re dead –
(O witness the silly
And soulful and sad
Stride straight up Piccadilly
To the Dance of the Mad)
CUL DE SAC
I’m getting thoroughly sick of this
One-way love affair
When I run my verbiage through your hair
And tickle your fancies with my smudgy pen –
Say, when will you give me
Some love back,
…Eh?
When?
LIAR!
Q: How does it feel to love a liar?
What wastes of mind does it inspire?
Wastes of words
Wastes of feelings
Assaults on my vanity?
These compilations of uncertainties
Exhausting banalities
The tapping fingers
The sliding eyes
And the shifting-sand morality?
The was it wasn’t it
The where was it if it was
And where not if not?
Not
Just that, how about WHY?
Look me in the eye
I don’t WANT to spy on you
My BRAIN fries!
A: Take it or leave it.
It’s the price….
LONELY AGAIN
Illegitimate thoughts
(Disallowed by exigencies
Disowned by necessities
Buoyed by illusions
Ignored by hopes
Independent friends)
(Some of them right and true)
Bear me up
Keep me from you
All.
(Body-language showing fear.
Inappropriate responses
Whichever,
I am alone
Here
THE MALE CHORUS
Please explain now, if you can –
Why life is shorter for a man
Is it because he will stick this
Right up the nearest orifice!?
(Though some do miss…)
And why his thigh-led useless slaughter
Aint handed down unto his daughter?
Could this be the explanation
That all man kind is but one nation?
That uses women for procreation?
With plenty excuses.
And all that males do here espy
Is fuck, die, fuck, die, fuck, die?