Friday 30 March 2012

Remembering the Stamford Arms SE1






















Welcome to the ‘Thirsty Bear’, your hosts
Of what used to be an alehouse or tavern
Exiled the former customers – their ghosts
Linger like the shades in Plato’s cavern.
On the new menu, sausage of wild boar
Replaces crisps and toasted cheese and ham.
The ice blue walls and iPads I am sure
Are contemporary, yet I am
Nostalgic for the former boozed up nights
The bloke from Loaded who used to hold court
The booming television and the fights
To get to the bar. England on Sky Sport
The gassy beer, the time that Bonehead played
The rowdy nights whose memories don't fade.

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Sicilia


















I traced my life through fields of chipped stone
Glanced up at the white-tipped volcano
The sun blazed from a hollowed out dome
The blinding light furrowed my brow
Like a harrow and pricked my skin
Tending fields of lemon and pistachio
The scented dark was a balm from my sin
The pitiless heat and the cracked soil
If I could, I would go back there again
Back to a life scooped out from toil
I would find refuge in scent and shadow
I would tend olives and press oil
I would tread the fields of fire and snow
If I could, I would go back there now 


Terza rima

My grandfather was from Bronte in the east of Sicily. He was a hairdresser but I guess that other ancestors toiled on the fertile slopes of Mount Etna, which broods over the island like a great black giant

Thursday 15 March 2012

View from a train window


En route to Kidderminster on a grey day

I hear my father talking to me still
Give up now. Your puny efforts will fail
Left over life is merely time to kill
The spirit is willing, the flesh frail.
The flat midlands fields and clumps of wool
Ask a question of my humanity
Everything in nature shouts ‘fool’
‘Why bother?’ they say, ‘all is vanity.’
It is the voice of Ecclesiastes
‘Your efforts are merely bluster and bluff’.
But in the fields are hidden mysteries
Simply to live and breathe are not enough
Surely it is better to rage and cry
Than just to watch the spinning world go by?


Going to a poetry gig, oddly. My dad was the world's biggest pessimist.




Elvis is not dead






















Playing endlessly, like a looped show
There is a another world in my head
A place of memory. I often go
In black and white, where Elvis is not dead
The theme from Z Cars is heard clearly
And the unctuous TV host, Hughie Green
Says ‘I mean that most sincerely’
Like a cracked ghost, oozing through the screen
Before the new Wembley stadium
Music didn’t used to be so loud
Tarby plays the London Palladium
A blurred white horse holds back the crowd
Shielded from daylight in a downtown bar
Jimi Hendrix straps on his guitar

Monday 5 March 2012

Bigger than Elvis



The papers follow where he goes
They like to write about his clothes
He rides the crest of every breaking wave
He's a god the critics rave
A shaman for the modern age
A poet and a story teller too

In his mind, he is a magus
He's bigger than Elvis in Las Vegas
A poet and a story teller too

He hung out with a stone age tribe
To learn their language and their vibe
They inked him with an elegant tattoo
He can play the jazz trombone
And juggle balls of blazing foam
When he was young he joined a circus crew

In his mind, he is a magus
He's bigger than Elvis in Las Vegas
When he was young, he joined a circus crew

He has a chick to clean his house
She's half his Muse and half a mouse
Her total admiration fills his day
She sits in silence by the stage
And watches as he struts and plays
They're very much in love most people say

In his mind, he is a magus
He's bigger than Elvis in Las Vegas
They're very much in love most people say