Wednesday, 29 January 2014

On poetry















Making our marks on paper or snow
we travel, gambling with eternity.
We make a contract with the enemy
in the moving illusion of now.

We leave our tracks, our footstep trail.
We will die trying. It seems a pity
in our statement, our poetry
that, ultimately, we always fail.

We move on, we travel hopefully
towards a vanishing infinity.
We record our visions with rhyme
in black on white, a sacred polarity.
We conduct an argument with mortality.
We try again. The enemy is time


I really like Glyn Maxwell s book, which I’m reading, which inspired this poem. I particularly like his take on the relationship between opposites and what he says about poetry and time. The book tackles the subject obliquely, poetically in fact. It's not at all what you would expect. From Amazon: On Poetry is a collection of short essays and reflections on poetry from the poet Glyn Maxwell. These essays illustrates Maxwell's poetic philosophy, that thegreatest verse arises from a harmony of mind and body, and that poetic formsoriginate in human necessities breath, heartbeat, footstep, posture. He speaksof his inspirations, his models, and takes us inside the strange world of theCreative Writing Class.’

Saturday, 25 January 2014

Vanishing point

Each day I walk past a cemetery
a neat white sign over a log cabin
R. Gray and Son Monumental Mason –
stacked stones waiting for judgment day. 
While I sit in the shelter at the bus stop
my feet are washed by cemetery run-off
and, as if this wasn’t bad enough
they have eviscerated the chip shop.
They have spilled its guts across the pavement –
old brown carpets and chewed-up clay
in a lonely spot at the edge of town
without ritual or sacrament.
I had to stand there today
slowly, the elements are breaking down.

Tuesday, 14 January 2014

Braveheart

Let’s be honest; you don’t like us
We imposed on you our useless royalty
And we’ve done nothing to earn your trust
Frankly, we do not deserve your loyalty
We drank your whisky; we shot your grouse
We gave you our Victorian Christmas
You gave us Balmoral: the big house
But, let’s be honest, you made fun of us
Each year, we watched your cheesy Hogmanay
We paid for you; you cost us zillions
You gave us Baxter and Connolly
You died for us, in your millions
You don’t like us and we feel guilty
We won’t be sad if you go away

Friday, 10 January 2014

Of irony and cool English pop


Past the new coffee place, a chilled refectory
close to the station and the chip shop
a cool black hulk, it invites you to stop
with its flyers for music and poetry.
In transit, from doorway to doorway
I observe them - the wraiths
the cold air silvers their breath –
the coming up and the going away.
It looms through the mist, like a ghost ship.
They are talking of music and Jean Genet
of irony and cool English pop.
Close to the station and the chip shop
in this Bohemia, this cabaret
thin young men are doing stand-up.

Thursday, 2 January 2014

A memory

A new year. Enjoying the miracle of light
I take out your remains carefully
from the house where I slept last night:
I feel reassured by its solidity.
Like a model crammed into last year’s shoes
you presided over our festivities.
We lit you. You looked over our rituals
around you we laughed and sang, argued.
We had taken you from a hillside
plucked you from some lonely world
to remind us of life outside.
The light came back. It seemed to have died.
Your skeleton is a memory of Christmas.
Perhaps you will live, perhaps you died for us.