Sonnets




The Paper Moon

 Sonnets from the life of William A. Hatchett esq. of Forest Hill, London

 MMXIV

The first part: being some rhymed observations upon poetry • holidays • my family • the seasons and weather • suburban houses • the elements • rivers • music and musicians. And in the second part: London places and public houses • cemeteries • sport • politics • philosophy and emotions • the moon • art and decor • personalities • observations


 1 The word mines

Each day I carry it: a sack of ideas
my back is bent. Been doing it for years.
Past the theatre that won’t let me in
past pubs, those gilded palaces of sin.
Each day, I place imagery in my bag
no-one acknowledges my grind
to recover poetry from mere slag
for my hardship is of the wrong kind.
No-one notices me. I don’t care
as I struggle to unearth simile.
It’s dark and dangerous down there
sifting through mere spoil for poetry.
No-one sees me and no light shines.
It’s dangerous and dark in the word mines.


2 My Muse

I'm not scarred by a righteous fight
don’t have a piercing, or tattoos
I’m not certain that I am right
about my haircut or my shoes.
There’s nothing peculiar in my speech
I don’t have artist’s hands or feet
but for sublimity I reach.
I live in a suburban  street
I haven’t wowed a trendy club
my lights are off at half-past nine.
I haven’t but I know I could
perhaps I could, with one more wine
capture from my sacred Muse
the holy spirit of the Blues.


3 I touched a tiger

I remind you of when you were wrong
I’m not sure if can forgive you.
It’s your indifference that made me strong.
You don’t want to like me – but you do.
I touched a tiger when I was young
that’s what sets me apart
chaos is written on my tongue
I go round with a damaged heart.
The way I was treated was risible –
don’t make an impression, sit at the back
my scars are almost visible
I have the soulfulness that you lack.
My struggles are all authentic
how real I am is just sick.



4 What is it?

When we are happy, when we cry
when we are sitting in the dark
when we are walking in the park
when we sing a lullaby
whether banal or sublime
it is a source of human pleasure –
like a curve or buried treasure.
It is used to record goodness and crime
in slang expressions and in formality
it connect the words we utter
it is the marriage of beauty and time
it dulls hardships, reflects our reality
it softens and smoothes, like butter.
We could not live without it: rhyme.


5 Orpheus

I’ve just beaten up my sacred muse
I wouldn’t feel bad if I didn’t care
she’s wearing a headscarf over her bruise.
I worship her. I think she knows that, yeh.
She took away her love, went cold on me
she said she didn’t like my rap.
I’m not proud. I took her to A and E.
It wasn’t a punch, it was more of a slap.
They’re hard work them posh birds.
She cussed me, but it’s no excuse
she taught me some of her words
but she don’t like my rap, my blues.
Look at it this way, there’s no history
my muse she is an Orphic mystery.


6 What's wrong with British poetry

And now – insert sincere voice here
something to keep the hordes from the door
something gloomy, you’ve heard it before
something for Sunday night on Radio 4 –
a walk through a Victorian museum.
First, selected by Eileen and Eric
from our echoing mausoleum
comes this blood-stained relic:
How we murdered the Zulu nation.
Words are needed to mark the crime.
It’s a hymn of praise to exploitation
colonial delusion served by rhyme.
We had the Gatling gun, they had spears.
The same today, it’s been going on for years


7 Bulbophillum Nocturnum

How they oppress the prisons of the hills.
They are so easy to overrate.
We have opened up the satanic mills.
In all honesty, I have come to hate
William Wordsworth’s f...ing daffodils.
There is no poetry in my poetry
and there is nothing romantic. My skills
are in describing the ordinary.
In our corrupted universe
they are deluded who turn to the light
merely in their predictable verse.
Let us praise flowers that bloom at night
and celebrate strangeness not beauty.
There is no poetry in my poetry.


8 Infinity

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 marks, 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.


9 Take a line

Take a line as it coaxes you
into an argument of structured time.
Watch the line and follow
its careful patterns of rhyme and half-ryhme.
Observe its precarious virtuosity.
You can harness it like Aristotle
there is a pleasing symmetry
in Shakespeare’s old trick – thesis, antithesis –
but Petrarch’s dance of sextet and quatrain
is the holy marriage of three and four –
the poetry of two times seven.
Watch the line plunge and come back again
as it turns to magic a prime number
winding precipitously to heaven. 


10 Santorini 1997       To S

Where long-haired fishermen play air guitar
in the place where old rock songs go to die
we unhooked our brains with beer, in a bar
under clouds of grey stone, the black sky.
Like dervishes shingle guided our feet.
Floating in a yellow glow, you pictured me
carried on an albatross's slow wing beat
being reborn, in the warm cave of the sea.
Cats prowled their white and blue homes
with talk and paint we filled the long hours.
Scarlet geraniums, the sapphire domes
of churches and constellations of flowers
crowded colourfully into our world
and filled the silences between our words.


11 Christmas 2009

Kindness is spreading like a virus.
It passes quickly through the winter town
as if the world’s riches were running out.
In this season, me has become us.
There is chaos in the sales hall
in the perfume shop, a near riot.
In strange dances, we jostle and thrum
drawn like insects to the gaudy mall
through the cells of the multi-coloured hive
we slide, hum and collide, busily
clutching our packages, our love.
Are we asleep or more keenly alive?
It is a play in which we know our part.
A ritual of the altruistic heart


12 Deia    

Under the cliffs that walled your domain
is a house inhabited by ghosts
shaped terraces of lavender and thyme
your totems, your carefully-folded shirts.
There is much of England in Deia.
Down the narrow lane where you took
your daily walk, are giant sycamores
and frothing hawthorns; a tumbling brook.
There is a different poetry here.
You knew that the goddess must live
in the stepped mountains that climb to the sky
and the tumbling orchards of olive and fig.
On the crescent beach of your silver bay
your lemon is in our wine today.


13 Frank and Tom

Frank Hatchett  b. Lichfield, Staffs, 1891, died Ypres, 20 Sept, 1917
Tom Hatchett  b. Lichfield, Staffs, 1892,  died Ypres, 10 Oct, 1917

Because an Archduke was killed
they were called on to serve their country.
Frank joined first – the infantry
then brother Tom, an engineer.
They watched their comrades pass by
blown to atoms, drowned in mud
in a colossal sacrifice of blood
to stuttering machine gun and artillery.
Artisans, they were not born to fight –
the Lichfield sons were ordinary.
The lies of crowds took their history.
Hague’s plan for the salient blew them out.
Frank died first, then sapper Tom
from wounds sustained at Ypres and Pilckem.


14 Snowdrops

Close to Bosworth field, I finally arrive –
woodlands, a muddy farm track, a gate.
At the village of Croxall a lowering sky
broods over the manorial estate.
The church beckons me. Am I going home?
Faded and creased like an old diagram
England is written in its soft grey stone.
Perhaps it will tell me who I am.
I seek meaning trying to disinter the dead
from the old graves, where the past is frozen.
Nothing. Sometimes the past cannot be read.
Snowdrops smother them – a white explosion.
I seek consolation from their beauty.
The ancient village is lost, so am I.


15 Sicilia    To my grandfather, Luigi Puglisi

He traced his life through fields of chipped stone
glanced up at the white-tipped volcano.
The sun glinted from its hollowed-out cone.
The blinding light furrowed his brow
like a harrow and pricked his skin
among fields of lemon and pistachio.
The scented dark was a balm for his sin
the pitiless heat and the cracked soil –
my grandfather. If I could I would go
back to his life scooped out from toil.
I would find refuge in scent and shadow
I would tend olives and press them for oil
I would tread the harsh fields of fire and snow.
If I could, I would go back there now.


16 Father

In a photographer's studio you pose.
They must have taken you to the sea –
a small boy in cut-down fireman's clothes.
Your stillness echoes their formality –
The mayor and his wife on holiday
walks on the esplanade, the golden mile
in Weston-super-Mare or Torquay.
Something is absent from your face – a smile.
You were never a child. They were Victorian.
You played with lead soldiers and painted wood 
but you were never a fireman or Red Indian.
You stole your innocence where you could.
Did you love them? There was no childhood then.
The little sailors were miniature men.


17 Sad star

Now I see that you were no ogre
perhaps you were cursed by a sprite.
You were born under a sad star
the clock struck thirteen that night.
A spell made the milk sour
it turned your wine to vinegar
the wind changed, it darkened your humour
a blue moon made you what you are.
Something was wrong; you could not be happy
that is, you could not allow yourself to be.
It was not you but your star that dismissed me
demeaned my efforts, drove me away.
Now, at last, I can forgive you.
The spell is broken. I am free.


18 The Romantic Imagination

In a pouring out of melancholy
Beethoven's frown filled the small room
Like rain. His pastoral story
a repetition of antique gloom.
Go for a walk, please, mother said
and so, having finished the Sunday roast
we would trudge through snow or mud.
My father loved drab places the most.
I would have said no, if I could
to his bleak weekly panorama
– a winter walk through a dark wood
or to Tchaikovsky's sickly melodrama
but I was a kid, I had nowhere to go.
His manic depression cast a long shadow.


19 View from a train window  15 March  2012

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 unwilling, 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 try
than merely sit and watch the world go by?


20 My Tower of Babel  (to my mother)

It’s a shame you can’t come with me
on my journey; that you are not able
to ride on the number sixty-three.
The bus stop is my Tower of Babel.
With your keen eyes and curiosity
you taught me to sit at the top
when I was young. You showed me how to see
the world unfolding, from bus-stop to bus-stop.
Pale green leaves unfurling on a tree
like umbrellas, a fine head of hair
two women arguing over a buggy.
Yes, there would be so much to share.
I view the world as if you were there
With similes I climb into the air.


21 Elevenses

A feigned illness was all that it took
on most mornings to get me off school
with a vague tummy ache, I watched you cook
and licked the sweet mixture from the bowl.
Carefully, you rolled-out each hour.
The world had contracted to just us.
Your practised hands melded butter and flour
to fulfillment – perfect happiness.
It is surely an act of faith to bake –
a lesson in travelling hopefully.
The mixture tastes better than the cake
you would observe, ironically.
For our elevenses, we were two
wrapped in a circle of light, me and you.


22 Island

It is because of you that I walk past
the humming glass and the tower cranes
through this island, this sanctuary
this garden, shadowed by London planes.
The small brick church is industrial.
It speaks of utility not beauty.
You would have liked the flowers –
you would have named them for me.
I seek the humility of repetition
in this world of beeswax and prayer
time out, memory, reflection.
Wax and pollen decorate the air.
A tiny candle flickers your memory.
It is because of you that I am here.


23 A gust of wind

A gust of wind came in from the sky
and threw your face from the windowsill
the face that bore me through life, until
This moment. Must I now say goodbye?
One day, when I was looking elsewhere
a gust of wind blew away your picture.
You left me again, or did I leave you?
The pills help to take away my fear
they have deadened the pain of your leaving.
My eyes are open – a new clarity
comes from my unaccustomed sobriety.
Tonight, I have left behind my grieving
for the face that is still smiling at me
from a broken frame. Must you go, really?


24 Nostalgia

With love to dad, a present from the Rhine.
From the last trip that you were allowed on
found in the attic, a cracked old stein
a relic of your youthful rebellion.
It is the prerogative of youth to rage.
How we laugh at our parents’ tacky crap
I did. I was a hippy at that age –
there were musicals before there was rap.
We offend our children, they will theirs.
We call upon the young to show decorum.
They call us nerds, or straights, or squares.
Do not go out like that, we implore them.
We leave our past, but then, it comes back.
Nostalgia is in. Grey is the new black.


25 Perfect days      To AJ

Through a cold grey murk that is almost dark
I will watch your scooter pass through the gate
fighting with melancholy. In the park
I'll observe the hopeful swings oscillate.
We will walk there, we will not take the car.
Feeling your fingers' touch, your skipping heart
slowly, I will become happy. You are.
To acquire happiness is an art.
Afterwards, sitting outside the cafe
although we are clutched by an oozing mist
our lives will seem like a holiday.
I will learn from you to be an optimist
there will be no rain on our parade.
Of such small moments perfect days are made.


26  Mornings with AJ 

The radio tells us of sun and showers.
It talks of the Yazidi genocide –
a kaleidoscope of global powers –
and a famous comedian’s suicide.
Reflecting upon ‘British values’
I cross the giant’s kingdom of Sainsbury’s
to buy your Snickers and vinegar fries.
It’s a dilemma. What on earth are they?
When should we act and when turn aside?
You are far more interested in toys
than the slaughter on a mountainside
or the tortured comedian’s woes.
To the bipolar blink of light and dark
we wake and sleep. We walk across the car park.


27 The age of barbarity

You did not ask for this daily display
of unenlightenment and error 
this war that is not really a war.
We have replaced the old terror 
with a new state of anxiety 
we have been infantilised
our words have lost their currency
our conscience has been privatized.
Drawn by love, I follow you carefully
as you whizz to the shops on you scooter.
You stop at the kerb. You look back at me.
Here, we are remote from the horror.
You did not ask for these self-serving lies.
I am in tow, attached to your dark eyes.


28 Paying the price

Christmas? There was a heat wave this year.
We ate our roast turkey by the pool. Yawn.
The figgy pudding melted, I fear
although the thick damask curtains were drawn.
In January, the sun made us frown –
blazing, day after day. Please make it cool.
Snowdrops wilted. The bluebells were scythed down.
We stayed in. It was too hot for school.
Like poker players, we gambled on rain.
We enjoyed constant baths and showers.
Imagining we could live without pain
we squandered our precious liquid for hours
as if the water wasn't running out.
And now we are paying the price – a drought


29 Cold war

The resolute grey of an English Sunday.
There's very little to warble about
nature is shrivelled, the sky grey
like subdued pensioners, the plants don't shout.
Frozen buds, a half-hearted forsythia
merely announce their intention to bloom.
There's a cataract across the sky
we look out, hopefully, from dark rooms.
The sun is an unreliable fiance
dead leaves lie still on the ragged lawn.
Like a failed suitor, it seeks our pardon.
And the poor chiff-chaff, why did it come this way
to deliver its happy, liquid song?
It chirps forlornly in an English garden


30 A winter morning, Peckham Rye Common

How can we be sure it's no longer night?
The world will be indeterminate today
seen through a gauze, in shades of grey
pitched somewhere between black and white.
There are stumps of men on the white field
of the stretched common, like a frozen sea.
Ice-rimed willows bend intimately.
Although we know that, soon, the snow will yield
we are fascinated by our ice skin.
Casually, we talk of ‘nightmare’ and ‘chaos’
as if the winter could kill us
but we know that it will never win.
We will go to the library on the bus
and go to sleep; the light will wake us.


31 Nothing is pointless

The sky is like an inverted bowl
a cup of darkness pushing us down
a grey blanket that presses our soul
we stumble along, frail and alone.
Being human we look up, hopefully
we count the stars and measure the rain
carefully, we construct an ontology
we wait for the light to come back again.
Nothing is pointless you said.
We can find meaning in philosophy
we owe it to the living and the dead.
Our vegetable soul seeks harmony
we love others; people love us
we look up. The sky is numinous.


32 Prozac Britain

The iced winter air, so invigorating.
porridge and cold meat, finely sliced.
Their textures set my pulses racing –
British food, so delicately spiced.
We watch a flower open, a slowed-down bug
in a state of opiated innocence.
Now we are safe, pleasure is our drug
and sensuous, value-free experience.
The cloying touch of freezing mud
cold slate, sharp thistles, grey cloud
we say ‘it's good; it's all good’.
We own nothing; frowning is not allowed.
Once stoics, we endured them, they were bad
now they are gone, we love them and are glad


33 A memory

A new year. Enjoying the miracle of light 
I take out the 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.


34 Must try harder

It peered warily through the fence
like a stranger at the fair.
As pale as a slum child
it was too weak to climb the stairs.
It displayed itself reluctantly
when it turned up at all.
It needed prompting constantly
and there was no curtain call.
Like an argument that lacked rigour
it was tentative. It drew back.
In short, there was a want of vigour
there was no strength in its attack.
We need to put the food in the larder.
Next year, the sun must try harder.


35 Unseasonable weather

What on earth has happened to the spring?
She was observed last year.
Didn’t you see her gambolling?
Her public identity was clear.
Nature should be saying ‘look at me!’
Daffodils should be revealing
their saffron treasure gloriously.
Even the squirrels are shivering.
We should be warm, but instead
newspapers are blowing nervily.
Frozen, the blasted buds are dead.
Snow is billowing horizontally.
Winter is establishing a bridgehead
Of icy crystals across the coal-shed.


36 Narcissus

Oh, so you’ve finally turned up have you.
Where the hell were you last week?
It’s pathetic, the way you attention seek.
You have to be the star of the show
in all of your puffed-up brilliance.
We were shivering in the snow
We were waiting for you, you know.
And now you appear – well no chance!
The party’s over, you’ve lost your place.
You’re a relic from another age.
You thought that you were too big for us.
You’re so last season, even your face.
Bright colours are no longer the rage.
There’s no place for you, Narcissus.


37 Sun on Daffodils

Once we were content to sit in the dark.
We would pray for its return (or at least try).
Ages passed. Who was the first bright spark
To snare the sun. To pull it down from the sky?
When we had tamed it, placed it in a wire
we were Prometheus and Hyperion
our night times were pin-pricked by fires
our cities blazed like millions of suns.
If we were not afraid, if we were autonomous
when it came back, we would not feel gratitude.
But we do. A memory of darkness lives in us.
Light compels us; it masters our moods.
And so – we drive up into the hills.
Sun on snow. Shadow. Sun on daffodils.


38 Just Go With It

Sometimes there, sometimes not, it plays with us.
The sun's capricious at this latitude.
Casually, we hide our gratitude.
From a giant poster seen from the bus –
exotic creatures in a heated tank –
Jen and Adam gaze at us, languidly.
They're looking from a place we'd like to be –
clear skies, swimming pools, money in the bank –
America. They bring us something bright.
It's a respite – a glimpse of liberty.
They don't have to worry, argue, or shout
be thankful for blue water and sunlight
or struggle to work, on the sixty-three.
Just Go With It, their latest film, is out.


39 Flowers

They are the gift that keeps on giving
through sleet, snow, drizzle and showers.
They provide an exemplar for living
Ah, where would we be without flowers?
Humans are fickle; they give a reason
to lift our tired bodies each day.
Reliably, they announce each season
paint pictures on a palette of grey.
The village fete was spoiled by rain.
Why, oh why did we pin our hopes on him?
The game went to penalties again.
Lost the match. Lost Wimbledon. Come on Tim!
Sopping wet, we traipse around like fools.
Why? To look at flowers, in our cagoules.


40 The Rose

On days like these, when the sun shines
the crimson rose is winter’s shroud.
We go to work in obedient lines
As she unfurls her perfume cloud.
Down the melting road we flow slowly.
A cyclist mops his brow on the hill
as a black cat folds into the shadow.
The trick of summer is working still.
We are always deceived by her ruse
into believing in the eternal
but life selected us, we did not choose.
The light wakes us; we are diurnal.
Invisible forces move through us.
We merely turn to the sun, like the rose.


41 Doomed

Glowing in the brilliant autumn light
in an old argument learned by rote
defiantly, they fight the last fight.
Each is a blazing promissory note.
Without their death, there could be no life.
On fire, they pull back the canopy
to avoid the ruin of winter’s knife
spiral slowly to earth for you and me.
Watch them sever their ties, take the plunge
like doomed aviators spinning earthbound.
Heaped into mounds of pavement grunge
their veined bodies are littering the ground.
Each brave martyr was willing to leap out
Now, they are worm food, mulch, summer’s last shout.


42 Ziggurat

We glance upwards as we wander by
at its vertiginous engineering –
flimsy cranes pinning blocks to the sky
the great columns and slabs cloud-spearing.
We are bewitched by its clumsy lurch
into space because we are earthbound.
It dwarfs the handsome planes and the church.
Echoing the hollow vaults underground
Its shafts are like vast sarcophagi.
They are allusions to our vanity
crude attempts to defy gravity
like monuments to some cruel deity.
We glance upwards as we wander by
We cannot climb to heaven, but we try.


43 Thunder

Thunder frightens us; it works, dear deity.
It is like the crash of artillery
and the flash – an arc of petulance
is a whiplash across the bruised sky.
Our lives had been so orderly
now we dance to your howling tune
as furniture tumbles across the lawn.
A storm shows that you can still be angry.
You know how to put on a good show
you design its light and sound so artfully –
in your wrath is a great theatricality.
Perhaps it’s a covenant, like the rainbow
or a warning against complacency
each damaged town a test of ingenuity.


44 They were like us

In warm caves their homes were concealed.
From the east, they watched the light rise.
Around small mysteries their lives congealed.
They carefully marked anniversaries.
They gathered plenty when times were good.
Preoccupied by gossip and enmities
they went out, to hunt or to gather food
and listened for news of hostilities.
Amused by children and animals
they dressed their bodies in fur and skins.
They marked their calendar with festivals
prayed to the sky, did penance for their sins.
They were like us. Their sun was our sun.
Save for this. They watched television.


45 Feather and fur

You are a slippery customer
you know where to go, what to do.
You are the ultimate outsider –
the king of the pavement crew.
Swaggering like you’ve won the lottery
you have shadowed us for years
gnawing bones in the cemetery
when we left the wood, you followed us here –
our golden predator. You saunter
as bold as brass across the lawn
then melt, like a dream, into the air.
You are our spectral visitor at dawn.
We seek you at night, but you are not there.
You remind us of what we once were.


46 Footsteps and shadows

It was built where the Great North Wood
lapped up against London – rus in urbe
dairies, market gardens and clay pits
farms and then houses, a suburb.
The railway arrived – brick villas
clustered thickly around the station
goodbye to the telegraph and horse
Victoria dies – a coronation.
War came. Light fell across the wall.
Flight, nuclear technology, radar
footsteps and shadows. Voices in the hall.
Millions were born. Another war.
No-one noticed time pass. Soft words were spoken.
They will do until our light is broken.


47 The function of suburbia

They marked their boundaries
with privet and Leylandii 
they strimmed and mowed regularly –
nothing happened for centuries.
Decades passed them by
in the comparison of flower beds.
Jealously, they tamed the wild wood
with each trimmed lawn and neat rockery.
Careful not to be too friendly
they observed with furrowed brows
the ambition of neighbours’ sheds
the rows of imprisoned begonias.
The function of suburbia
to push back its silent terror. 


48 The old adversary (St Jude's storm, 28th October, 2013)

Life was easy. We had no enemies
and so he came, moving stealthily.
He moved at night, marking his territory.
He pushed against the window easily.
He invaded our private sanctuary
unsubtle in his vicious attack
created chaos in the shrubbery.
He withdrew; then he came back
pummelling with his fists of air
firing his bullets from the trees.
He bent back branches like iron bars.
He stripped the willows, boiling their leaves.
In a crude display of primitive might.
The old adversary. He came to fight.


49 Childhood

The large house was silent and cold.
I let myself in with a latchkey.
Rarely chastised, I did what I was told.
There was no lively clamour at tea.
Father made it clear that I
Would never meet his expectations.
He never praised or encouraged me.
We spoke ill of our relations –
we preferred it if they stayed away.
We played no part in our community.
We were a middle class family.
We conducted our lives stoically
on our glaciated isthmus
like ice statues, exchanged cards at Christmas.


50 The sweet spot

Just like you to find the sweet spot –
the warmest place is the windowsill.
You lie in the sun, stretch and kill.
You are never troubled by regret.
You are almost divine: there and not there.
You track my steps in a zig-zag ritual
and charm me for your next meal.
Like a spell, you melt into the air.
You live in the present. You do not fret
about what might happen tomorrow.
You follow me around like a shadow.
I should be happy but I am not.
You occupy a circle of now
as you flex and curl. I envy you.


51 Air news

The wind tickles the damselfly –
with one bright flick it is gone.
It paints the sky with imagery;
we are what we have done.
The wind rattles the ash trees.
It troubles water. It strips the leaves.
The wind erases your stories;
it takes them away, one by one.
Gently the wind touches your hair.
Now that your time is over
it is returning your life to air.
It’s a shame that we cannot recover
what we have thought, where we have been.
To restore memory, touch card to screen.


52 Vanishing point

I walk each day past a cemetery
a neat white sign over a log cabin
R. Gray and Son Monumental Mason
and 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 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.


53 Odysseus

You could tempt me to go too far
with your promise of adventure.
Your mood could change in heartbeat
you could harm me – you have done before.
There is always a journey
a line that grows on the horizon
the tug of the moon on the tide
an island to plant my flag on.
You are pulling me like a memory.
You could charm me, you always do
onto some miniature Odyssey
from Ithaca, in my canoe.
The lure of your Sirens’ song
a journey from which I may not return.


54 The River Wreake, Brooksby

What my life lacks is tranquility.
People writhe like maggots to the top
and sink, and seethe in obscurity
selling their CDs; it never stops.
A brief time away is all I ask
from this relentless self-expression –
London, where the poet’s lonely mask
Hides solipsism and depression.
Here, there are no angry commuters
only the river's rippling green thread –
mo violent rhymes, no computers.
It's a peaceful return; instead
my canoe drifts between the crack willows
the wind plucks at my sides and billows.


55 Building a canoe

You were a master of wood and glue.
I would watch you carefully as a kid
I think of you now, building my canoe.
Show me please, dad. You never did.
Your square tipped hands were made to till
to plane and smooth to a fine shine.
I was baffled by your patient skill –
each perfect right-angle and straight line.
For years I watched. You never understood
people, for they lacked symmetry.
They could not be measured and cut, like wood.
I was subdued by your quiet mastery.
I am seeding my boat's imperfection.
I know that it would fail your inspection.


56 The eternal present

Beneath the oak trees, now dark, now bright
their shapes shifting continually
a startling galaxy, the points of light
are ruffled soul mates of eternity.
As the gentle river mirrors the sky
water is moved by particles of air.
Its form is in flux, how can I
describe what is no longer there
in a perpetual dance of matter?
As it shears through time smoothly, my prow
splits future and past, air and water
shows where I have been, where yet to go.
The lapping water is a benediction
a hopeful promise, a valediction.


57 The River Pool, Lewisham      In memory of RG

By the gas works and the giant Sainsbury’s
blocking the winter sky like a shroud
the boxed hatchbacks swarm like larvae.
Though smothered, she is not dead.
She was merely exiled beneath the ground –
sleeping fields that have never seen a lark
acres of concrete spreading like a wound.
She springs from the earth near the car park.
For an age, she waited, like a rumour.
Glimpsed in the flash of a kingfisher
she is the queen of  hawthorn and alder –
The goddess. Here, you can almost touch her.
She threads through ash and willow weeping.
She was not dead. She was merely sleeping.


58 The lake is closed

For you, the lake is closed today.
In your fragile shell of painted wood
you would ignore our authority, if you could.
For that reason, we are turning you away.
There is danger in spontaneity.
It opposes our decorum and, that apart
order is the enemy of art.
What if everyone ‘just turned up’ this way?
We have placed spikes on the high wall.
There can be no weightless glide
to freedom, in defiance of bureaucracy.
The grim bastion cannot fall.
For you, the lake is closed today.


59 A sense of danger

We must warn you of the estuary
of its deep water and savage tides.
There are perils here, abundantly
we are the guardians of the outside.
In informing you that there might be
the violence of a sudden squall
we are only doing our duty.
You could slip. The sky might fall.
Imagine your anxiety
trapped alone, in the dark, on the mud.
We must warn you of the estuary –
there might be a flash flood
a freak storm could wash you away.
Danger is only one step from beauty.


60 The hell-raisers

Always up, watch them gurn and preen
looking smart in their neat slacks and blazers.
They lurch at us, drunkenly, through the screen
like dinosaurs. They are the hell-raisers.
They create havoc on late-night TV
they are our clowns, our holy fools –
they spin and weave for us, reliably
they drive their cars into swimming pools.
See how, in their narcissistic self-harm
they always go too far, try too hard.
They are sad clowns; all of their charm
seems touched, like Yorick's skull, by the graveyard.
To absolve us of our ordinariness
they are not like us, they are famous.


61 No net

They are the rule-breakers, almost foolhardy.
See them skip, recklessly, across the wire
throw shapes with their shadow puppetry
or pass their bare skin through the fire.
We admire the illusion. Is it trickery?
They juggle with light, burst out of the stave
their skill lies in their audacity –
fortune favours those who are brave.
They know, with mathematical certainty
when to push, when to gamble with their art.
See them dance around eternity.
We’re not like them. We could not scale their height.
They are the poets of the cold, thin air.
They need no net. They know that one is there.


62 For Jazzy John

In the shadows before caffeine and light
strange creatures assemble in black coats
on the wrong side of the city, at night.
Bending the darkness with their sweet notes
they astonish with their lines and chords
knowing when to blend, when to thrill
they lend us poetry without words
with each arpeggio and rapid fill.
Accurate notes, some softer, some faster
are a form of artistry best observed
in the skilful hands of a master
in deep cellars where candles are burned.
The void is filled by luminous sound.
In the dark, the brightest light is found.


63 Elvis is not dead

Playing endlessly, like a looped show
there is a netherworld 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.


64  Jazz club

Those who like a place that's mellow
will appreciate the gentle throb
of our ambient cocktail piano.
We’re opening a jazz club!
We won’t be a restaurant or a pub
Those who are in the know
will love our vibe, our free-form dub –
each hipster, musician and boho.
For local artists we'll be a hub.
They’ll appreciate our poetry.
They’ll pay top dollar for our grub
and mix with gangsters and royalty.
We’re gonna create a hubbub.
We're opening a jazz club!


65  The gypsy king

Once they watched him, not like now.
He searches for their gaze, recalling when
sweeter notes soared from his sweeping bow.
In those days, he was a king of men.
At festivals, his band were hot and loud.
In his bolero jacket, pencil thin
he could nail them, kill any crowd.
He could astonish with his violin –
then there was lustre in his gypsy gold.
The girls would scream and whoop with surprise
before the gigs dried up, the nights grew cold.
He played them with his fiddle and his eyes.
On this weekday night in this sad place
his dark eyes flash in his pale face.


66 Rockstar

On a weekday night, in this obscure place
they roar for you and queue for beer
beauty’s habitual tropes, your satyr face.
But, clearly, you do not want to be here.
You know how to dig gold with your pick.
To capture an audience. You do now.
With each soaring chorus and fast lick
the crowd indulges you recalling how
you straddled the world, from club to club –
your audacious bends, your famous sustain.
In each hall, stadium and, now, pub
you grimaced, as if in rapture or pain.
You sought beauty with your profanity
assuming you were great was your vanity.


67  Jimi Hendrix revisits the Troubador

People grow old, bits are dropping off.
See them clutter hospital and stage.
They sniff and splutter, croak and cough.
It's annoying. It sends me into a rage.
Beauty and youth are glorified.
Aren’t they embarrassed at their age?
Surely, silence would be more dignified.
But Jimi still looks good in his flares.
His gnarled fingers grope for the whammy bar.
He'd twisted his knee on the narrow stairs
of some club. I helped him out of his car.
I couldn’t stop him. He had to go on.
His Strat soared, the old magic wasn’t gone.


68 Rapture  23 July 2011  For AW

A whiff of weed, a spidery tattoo.
You veered all over with your band.
No, you were never safe or bland –
most of us stay in the middle, not you.
Some of those who with the Devil sup
reveal no sense of badness or wrong.
Through each false step and slurred song
fascinated and appalled, we pulled you up.
We observed your imperiled innocence.
Fire is dangerous, you touched a lot
but your image did not fade or cough.
You were a goddess of kohl and incense.
We did not know that your lungs were shot.
You teetered to the edge and fell off.


69 Gentle Giant

Your were too delicate. Denim was the rage.
Those crazed head-bangers with their long hair
Black Sabbath fans – they booed you off the stage
every night. I wish that I'd been there.
In a world of leather, men dressed as elves
weaving  your curious polyphonies
you were willing to make fools of yourselves
to push boundaries with your harmonies.
They did not warm to you, the metal tribe.
They were puzzled by your melancholy
your muscular jazz, your Medieval vibe
and, especially, your sense of irony –
the Shulman brothers, Green, Pugwash on sticks
Minnear on keys. You rocked out with your licks.


70 The worst cruelty

Your songs flowed like syrup from the stage.
Always, with your emollient vanity
you raised the stakes of  inanity –
a bad taste champion in a vulgar age.
There was a ready market, clearly
for you trite songs. You would always give them
your trademark, a clumping rhythm.
You possessed a redundant fertility.
There was a cruel hardness behind your eyes –
even your street-waif look did violence.
Apparently, you were vile to your band.
This, frankly, comes as no surprise
for it was merely a pose, your innocence.
The worst cruelty comes from the bland.


71 Sir Rick of Parfitt

Wealth was the measure of our success –
better amps, bigger shows, louder, faster.
The villas and pools I've had; the palace
where I played my Telecaster.
We were celebrated and loud, yes
but we were modest avatars.
Being ordinary served us best
lads in denim  driving big German cars.
Life was better when we played in bars.
There is no art in the gluttonous.
The powdery crunch of our guitars
was so simple, powerful, numinous.
I do not seek too much, as before.
To sustain my craft and art, less is more


72 Playing Butlins

In the Filmore howling to you muse
did you remember the rusty old van –
playing to the universities?
You crossed the world to stick it to the man.
Like a field of waving dandelions
how the heads dug you in the front row –
the electric goat. You blew their minds.
They went wild for your crazed vibrato.
Now, elderly, in a Bob Dylan cap
memories are fading, like your tattoos.
Grindcore, death metal, hip-hop and rap
are the sons and daughters of your blues.
Your band were cool. You glowed, stellar bright.
You’re playing Butlins in Skegness tonight.


73 The shredder

Your foot is resting on the monitor as you
like a leather-clad warrior preening
get through another blistering solo.
In some, virtuosity has meaning.
Not you. You practice a lesser art.
There is no truthfulness in what you make.
Your insincerity sets you apart.
You are hollow – a fake of a fake
As if in some laboratory tested
an absence of soul marks what you do.
Your riffs and moves seem pre-digested
as you throw out your shapes to the front row.
Casually shedding each littered note
in a piece of mime that you learned by rote.

74  Philip Larkin's first gig with the Sex Pistols

Larkin straps on his Gibson SG.
It's his chosen weapon of attack
for the blistering riff of Mr Bleaney.
He looks at Johnny Rotten – a flashback
to looking forward to their first LP
he wrote a letter; Johnny said join us
that day he left the university
and went down to London on the bus.
Steve Jones is toast, says the NME
Larkin brings to the band a new energy
punk’s gain is a loss to the library –
each slab of noise is a sonic elegy.
Rotten scowls, from Matlock a cheeky grin.
One, two, three, four … Larkin counts them in.

75 Philip Larkin on Top of the Pops
See him swaggering down the King's Road.
Smile like a fool, pull out the organ stops
he has finally killed off work, the toad
Philip Larkin is on Top of the Pops!
The night of his first gig, in a pub
he threw a punch at Generation X
next thing, he's playing the 100 Club
and buying his new trousers from Sex.
The grey mornings in Hull are forgottten
Marr had Morrissey, Eliot had Pound
Lennon had McCartney; he has Rotten.
There's a tender savagery to their sound
they'll go straight to number one – see how.
Phil's the business, he's ex libris now. 


76 Philip Larkin leaves the Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols had outraged the country.
Thanks to their vile anthem, God Save the Queen
and their foul-mouthed ranting on TV
they were more outrageous than Benzedrine.
Larkin, the gentle former librarian
with his thick-rimmed glasses and tortoise stare
had become, ipso facto, their guardian
he had pleaded with them not to swear
as a national sense of moral outrage –
a gift, surely, for those who write or sing –
had propelled them onto the front page.
To Philip it was most embarrassing.
He was sure now, he would play softer rock
he would set up a new band, with Glen Matlock.

77  Haynes Lane Market

Neatly from the alphabet they stare.
They're equal in rank, crooner and head
with their stacked heals and bouffant hair
Des O'Connor and the Grateful Dead.
Their sleeeves fading to obscurity
the too-sincere, dangerous and mad
with cracked old videos for 50p –
I watched them with mum and dad.
Stoned and square, hippy and straight
they are moving to oblivion –
Time does not discriminate.
they are shuffling to the bargain bin.
Perhaps it is better to end up here
than in a summer season on some pier.

Sonnets 78 - 154
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