a whole bunch of poems

Peak Poem # 1 : High Peak

He stands there
Face folded in and flattened
Rock face and rucksack
Wind washing away his words
Over Glossop’s jaundiced roofs

The path winds away
Freeform or furrowed
Trench-foot soldiers marching
Towards Pennine pre-history

It used to be all fields round here
No, it used to be forests
And deserts
It used to be seabed and sanctuary

She sits there
Legs folded over and furnished
Scrubland and salami
Rain rinsing away her sins
Under serpentine passes

The gate stands upright
Barrier or boundary
Landlocked anarchists meeting
Reclaiming lost history

It used be our land here
No, it used to be nobody’s
It still is
And no hand can sign ownership


Peak Poem # 2 : Map Re-birth

Its foetal position
Demarcates the borders
Curled around for protection
Against the forces of man
The world outside the womb
Cotton, steel and clay
Water, soil and blood
Boxed in by design
The contours describe the past
Glacial ghosts haunt these hills

Water
Soil
And blood
Water
Soil
And blood

Belief is no substitute
For this landscape
Carved from chemical re-alignment
Molecular moors, amniotic streams
Lifeblood
Brotherhood
As it should be

Kinder Scout
Bleaklow
Saddleworth Moor

Death has visited here before
Human stains
Yet life remains
Water
Soil
And blood

As it should be


The Fisher-Man

He is not a fisher
Of men
Not this fellar
He is a fisher of
Fish



Sand Tracks

These silver trees bear witness
To our vanities and self-delusions
Here in the old quarry where I carved my name
And where G.F. Ormsby carved his in 1903
Where a cross stands at the foot the cliff
Garlanded in the colours of the boy’s regiment

Wayne O, MUFC, 1995

This valley of aspic sand, excavated
To construct vainglorious totems
For desert Gods yet unborn
When these fossil rocks first fused
Before there were men or Gods
Before our fathers even left the sea
What marks of men are left once the snow falls
And the leaves drop as silent as ghosts?


Calligraphy For Beginners

He pretended to like calligraphy
Thought that was the kind of thing
That’d impress her, make him look
All cultivated, when in fact
He could barely write his own name
In symbols every pre-school kid knew
He painted a few Chinese and Arabic letters
On a scrap of phony papyrus
Meaningless to his eyes and hers
Yet in that act of duplicity
He discovered the real beauty of art
Of line and form expressing
Not truth, as much as abstraction
In this appreciation he took shape
And wrote himself into history


Hide n’ Seek

Go and place the flowers on the stone
Whisper those incantations here
I can read your lips, I can see your thoughts
Go and dress that grave for tea
Buy it cheap wine
Feed it best steak
There’s a few bob left in that old tin
He won’t miss it, he never does

The girl in the photograph died of TB
When she was fifteen
Right here in this room
In nineteen thirty three

The linen cupboard smelled of damp
The plaster was jaundiced and cracked
A draught blew in through the window pane
I caught a fever there myself when I was six
Saw the ceiling rose ensnare a fly
Thorny tendrils crept down the walls
And took hold of my feet
She looked at me lying there and said

‘Is it time for me? Is it time for me?’

Go and place the flowers on the grass
Sing your lullabies and lovesongs there
Dress your daughters in lace and frills
Feed their bellies and their minds
There’s a fiver in the old man’s coat
Hung up under the stairs
He won’t miss it, he never does


Who Are Ya?

Hard stone.
Cold water.
Harsh light.
Dull shadow.

He joins the crowd and feels alive.
He claps his hands and shouts and cheers.
He elevates himself, anoints himself.
God is in me, God flows through me.
Hear his voice and feel his power.
Hard boiled. Soft focus.
Vague outlines.
See the shape of the man against the multitude.
I am here. Here I am.
See me. Hear me.

‘Who are ya? Who are ya? Who are ya?’

He leaves the crowd and feels dead.
He puts his head down. He pulls his collar up.
Against the world. Against himself.
God has deserted him. Where is God tonight?
In this house. In this body.

Cold blood. Hard tissue.
Hard stone. Cold water.

I believed in you because there was nothing
Before you or after you.
Before me or after me.
Just a vague outline of a man
Lost in the loneliness of other men
‘Who are ya? Who are ya? Who are ya?’

Purification

When it comes my time to die
Play James and Bobby Purify
To wash away my sins forever
And dress my feet in finest leather
Tie the laces tight together
Fix my tie and clean my teeth
Pretend that I had true belief
Make me look all spic and span
Lash my body with fake tan
Light a candle, say a prayer
Place a pebble on my chair
And gather round but never sit
Pretend that you once gave a shit
Hold your nose and count to three
Deliver up my eulogy
Bite your tongue and hide your hate
Tell them all how I was great
And ask the priest to sanctify
With James and Bobby Purify

For My Nans

Sweet Annie Nolan
Sweet Annie Jones
Sweet treacle toffee
Sweet senile moans

The bungalow’s half empty
With everything she owns
Sat in the day room
She’s all skin and bones

There’s racing on the telly
And nobody phones
There’s cricket on the courtyard
Traffic in the cones

Ladders in her stockings
Sitting on the wall
Kettle in the microwave
Barely there at all

The milk is in the dryer
You hear her deathly moans
The ash is on her apron
She’s all skin and bones

Sweet Annie Nolan
Sweet Annie Jones
Sweet apple crumble
She’s all skin and bones


Ataraxia

The night comes, slowly
The clouds dissolve
The sun dips down towards the horizon
The light still shining on the waves
The day disappears as we turn
Turning but not feeling ourselves turn
And the breeze feels colder now
And the waves sound louder now
And I turn away from the sea
And I breathe heavily
Because there is something of death
In every sunset
Each sunset
Feels like a wake
A farewell to the future
A mourning for the day’s light


Meat

The hut where we waited
For our dad to shower
Smelled of sweet grease
Of sweat, soap and steam
We’d sit on the wooden bench
Adjacent to an entire wall
Plastered with pornography
A pink pussy mosaic
The dockers would smile at us
As they dressed, half-naked
Scrubbed clean of the chemicals
They’d unloaded to be taken
By trucks and trains
To ICI’s Castner Kelner
And Rocksavage plants
They’d crack jokes and tease us
But the wall of flesh fascinated me
Sat with my younger sister
Trying not to look at all those tits
But sneaking quick blimps
Before being taken to the pub
For a coke and a packet of crisps
Waiting for me mum to pick us up


The butchers where we waited
For me mum to be served
Smelled of sweet blood
Of sawdust, skin and sinew
We’d stand next to sides of beef
Hung on the white tiled walls
Exposing raw flesh and fat
A pink-yellow mass of food
The butcher would wink at us
As he wrapped without looking
Parcels of mince, chops and sausage
In crisp brown paper
To be taken home and cooked
On silver black rings
In thin steel pans
He’d wipe blooded hands on a striped apron
But the bubbles of fat intrigued me
Stood with my younger brothers
Trying not to stare at the carcass
But sneaking sly glances
Before we were taken to me nan’s
For plates of cold mince and runny spuds
Waiting for me dad to finish his beer


Sunblast

From the radio
Cuneiform inscriptions
Transcribing Gilgamesh
Outside the women’s college
Headscarf matriarchs
And young concubines
Forbidden no longer
Express their supplication
In elegant camouflage
If you count all the leaves
On all the trees
In this small car park
How many would there be?
And if every hieroglyph
And clay indentation
Told a story so familiar
To those we already know
Would we be less impressed
With the ancients?
Their mysteries and rituals
Just another way of hiding
Another form of deceit
Written out to transform
Thought into symbolic shapes
From the café
The drone of smalltalk
Drifts into dead air
And hangs over the street
The same streets as Nineveh
Cobbled together with myths
To make sense of the world
I can smell the blossom
I can feel the strength of the sun
On my skin, in my bones
I can hear the great rivers
The Tigris and the Mersey
Flowing through to the sea
And that is enough for me

Route Sign

The coast road took us along past Porlock
Up into the hills where we paid a toll
I was indignant at paying it
This surcharge on beauty
A tax on our limited freedoms
(Such as they are)
At the sea we threw pebbles
Took the lift up to the café
From Lynmouth to Lynton
Drove back in the rain
Took wrong turns in Exmoor
Unfamiliar terrain
What surcharge on beauty
What tax on happiness
Can spoil a day like this?

Tunnel Visions

Black stone
Green rock
Red brick
Silver rain
From one world to another
From one life to the next
The light blinds me
The dark scares me
Black reflected back on glass
I feel the need to reach out
And touch what I know isn’t there
Feel the cold, infinite space
Between myself and the world

Shadowlands

is this the sum total of your shadow-life?
your dull reflection of time wasted in shade
hidden there, head against the roof tiles
singing your song, the same song you've sang
since you were a child, since songs have been sung
the old ones fed you these words, these tales and lies
and you lapped them up, these mahogany myths
as you stared at the Christmas baubles and the Grenadier Guards
the smell of the gramophone and the pipe smoke
the county lines changing around them and the aliens up the road
harsh accents, harsh faces
shaped by different times, harder than theirs
you thought you had known safety and peace laying there
on Christmas Eve with the hot water bottle now stone cold under your feet
the transfer set moonscapes and desert lands scraped shadow men against shadow lands
the pencil pressed too hard here and there and the transparency
pulled too quickly, so that heads and limbs were missing
half men walking on a barren soil that felt as real
as the field outside where the tough boys playedyou looking on, not tough enough or brave enough to join in

'oh here i am sitting in my tin can, far far from home'

you sang the song sat in the old cherry tree and you liked it there
high enough to see the top of the shed roof and not be seen
alone, yet happy enough in solitude and the songs of loneliness
not so far far from home, not here, the shadow of the house
cooling the garden, deadening the roses and crab apple bushes
the wind cold against your face, hot treacle melting in the pan
solidifying in the tray black and brittle, now hammer shattered
you place a sharp triangular lump in your mouth and suck
black spit dripping down the side of your chin and in your head
it's 2030 or 1869 not 1973 and the map of the world is different
the old house isn't there and the cherry tree is gone
and the old songs and stories are yet to be sung or are long forgotten
and the Christmas bauble reflects back only the room of the record sleeve
the Grenadier Guards no longer ‘talk of Hector and Lysander’
there is a cold wind blowing through the forest
there is a ridge of ice where the river once ran
there is the sound of birds and the homes of men
but not the birds you know, not the men you recognise
the room is empty save for the old bed frame and the sideboard
old wood and he knows this is now his time, his myth-time too

Welcome to The Big I Am & other musings

As Sam Cooke once sang (I paraphrase)

'Don't know much about poetry'

It's true, I don't! This isn't simply hiding behind a phony facade of self-deprecation or wallowing in my own ignorance, it's just that I've never had the time or the patience to read poetry, never mind study it. At a stretch I could recite the odd passage from 'The Ancient Mariner' or 'Reading Gaol' but that's about it. I've attempted The Wasteland, skipped through The Prelude and some of it I get, some of it I don't. But then, what's 'to get?' If any art needs 'explaining' then it has no value.

And yet I like to write poetry or rather, my own intepretation of what I believe poetry to be, which isn't some exclusive, elitist artform that revels in it's own cerebral superiority but a condensed form of literature that concentrates on feeling, sincerity, emotion. I suppose my recurring themes are landscape, memory and mortality; the usual shite! I try not to shape or re-shape the pieces once they've appeared on the page (or screen) as I feel that interferes with the spontaneous process of unloading often subconscious thoughts and feelings. Therefore most of what follows is half-formed and gestating; but that's the way I like it. Cheap manifesto to follow....


THE BIG I AM

Quotationgoeshere (Plutarch’s Life Of Pericles, Paradise Lost or Prelude? Ask Pete)

Vanitystance Pt 1

He held himself in great esteem this architect
Of words
And sound
Comparsions to Eliot (Billy not Tommy)
Dancing toe to toe with
Minors (sic) and assorted
Suns (sick) of the soil
Building Gothic arches above
Their heads for shelter
For warmth
The heat of intellect
Burning through their thick, insolent
Skins

Vanitystance Pt3

Clever eh?
Cleaver eh?
Slice through this shite one more time
Chop away at all the pretence
Sever those metaphorical sinews
Holding poetic muscle together
Flesh on bone
Skeletal self-delusion
Find contentment in your mediocrity
Maaaan!
Look at you; the de-constructivist!
Knocking down walls, already
Ruins (ruined?) (self-attack being the best form of self-defence)

End bit (Pt2 ah-ha!)

Latinbitgoeshere

Or…perhaps….

Yeoldegaelic (dedicated to Irish Tom)

Impressed are we?
That says more about you than
It does about me
Mememe
The Big ‘I AM’