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?