Shock and Awe

Gunshots echo from the ridge, repetitions so fast

it could be the automatic fire of multiple killings;

at the same time, jets reverberate in the sky to

attack other hushed places of a Sunday morning.

Where I sit is safe, listening to this as intangibles

of what seems the gist from farmers and friends

slaughtering rabbits beyond the rim of East Hill.

When the roar of aircraft fades and guns lull too

there is time to adjust to quieting clues:

one plane joins other vapour streaks across the sky,

a distant sound of tourists heading home - or off

on holidays abroad where foreigners are tolerable.

But when silent on the Hill there’s little surprise

by what I hear in the taunting from further beyond.

Primal Instinct

She was expecting to receive a copy of her new book

about affection and relationships, but instead was sent

another from her publisher - Primates Communicate –

so she assumed someone was monkeying around or

aping a sociobiological extrapolation on the behaviour

she had tried to unravel in her tome: how as humans we

fall and stay together tumbling, striving to survive as

paramours in the jungle we call Romantic Love. But

would anyone be so mischievous, shove the red

nucleus in her face like this when all she ever wanted

was her language and ideas bound together for the touch

and understanding of human hands? Answering that is

missing the link between those who joke and those who hunt,

like not seeing the difference in words and a copulatory grunt.

Be Alive

Woken by it, I tried explaining to her that sometimes in order
to make a noise downstairs that late you had to be alive –

you had to be breathing to open a bottle of rioja to let it

breathe too, and a corkscrew caught on the edge of this

porcelain pot will make a momentary din at around midnight.

What I didn’t mention were the many silent disasters over

the years. Whilst she slept through all of these, there was

that time I managed to divert the bear - who had intruded

as far as the living room - back out to the garden without

a smash or a growl, though it then mauled dead our dog, and
the following day I ended up announcing him missing, joining

in the despair and tears. I almost felt now like confessing

but who would believe someone starting to drink at that time

of night - using a corkscrew on a metal cap, almost quietly?

Pay with a Poem – 21st March, 2015 [World Poetry Day]

I’d like my coffee for this verse, it being Pay with a Poem

day – allegedly – though I don’t think the major chains

chime along with the international notion of  an expresso

or cappuccino or Americano for a rhyme. I don’t need

fourteen shots, Italian or Shakespearean, and I don’t need

ten soft/hard beats in the froth as I just want my drink

with cold milk. A good cup of coffee like a good poem

can be an easy thing to make and you simply have to

listen for what is asked - and good ingredients in an honest

machine. Don’t rely on the chrome and steam and how to

paint a chocolate flower in the lather: count the seconds

silently in your head, or measure with your eye like sizing

a lunging ring. Make it strong but not a test of my resistance

to pain, and on this day of ground poetic beans, make it free.

Hiatus Haiku

You have that moment:

no storm, no dark, no pain – when

boom, it’s here again.

18th March, 2015

When the robin sang to me this morning from the tree with white buds I

knew for certain I would soon be voting for him to be our national bird.

We placed the shrubs and flowers bought today onto our new raised beds,

but did not dig them in, and she rearranged them all, making notes, so when

planted I know they will grow to look and smell in a vibrant expectation.

Mowing the grass – the second time on one of the three bits of my lawn –

it was warm enough to wear shorts and therefore also dry for the first skim

on the other two and only three loads to carry to the compost because it wasn’t

damp whilst the height of the cut gave no more than a neat but aesthetic trim.

Speaking of the nation and digging-in and cuts, when the Chancellor spoke this

afternoon of the state we are at, it was as if we had all shared the experience,

heard the same sweet song, had the time to wait and watch for our outlooks to

grow, and carried the load no matter how empty or full to those dark corners

where some of us have had to, but where others - like his eyes - chose to hide.

Payback

It is a do unto others and eye for an eye as wildpinklers

feel the ricochet of piss, the people of St Pauli having

moved on from Lennon peeing freely from his home-

away-from-home balcony in the early hours of morning.

People power and paint technology, citizens have daubed

their desperate revenge on walls and wait for the backlash.

A reveller, stoked on booze, disembarks from a club,

cock almost already in grip and sizing up his territory -

a dog too animal and sozzled to think of others when

relief is at hand. It is the shower upon shower that even

then won’t soak through, a reality in the heat of this

moment he cannot comprehend, and payback is never

more emptied than this, or the slow return on the loss of

self, life as a loan, rising damp on walls no longer home.

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Writing Gate

If the field gate is saturated and the garden soil too dry to

dig, my world is screwed. Having managed yesterday
to lay that pen for the second raised bed just before it poured,

such a reversal of physical law would destroy the triumph in

this job - especially as I had skimmed the turf like sheets of

lasagne because of the frost. If I cannot go out and measure

for a new one or dig the earth, I will stay here writing about it.

Anything can be buried whatever the conditions if you don’t

need it to grow, and a gate still hanging will always close.

Putting all of this to a bigger test, I set the house alight and

watched it glow, flames spreading along the lawn to take out

those oak pens, scorching border camellias and heathers until

dead, and then creeping ever closer to what it licks best, a

battle with the doused marinade of a bored gardener’s gest.

Snow Stopping Before

Waking, she thought it was snowing outside, but it was her

dead skin cells floating around in the bedroom. When I later

looked out the window, snow was falling in flurries and it

seemed to me that I should run out there and collect all I could

before her complete dissolution, just in case she had made a

mistake and confused things. I cannot explain my prevarication

as, watching still, it did come and go, at times falling straight

down in large heavy flakes, yet just as quickly lost in the grey

of the sky behind and into running water along the ground.

I continued to watch, unsure. By the time I reconsidered, it was

definitely raining. If I was a surgeon, or a soldier, or even the

driver of a bus on a dangerous curve, I would need to be more

decisive. The fact we all think we can predict the weather does

not make me feel any better about my lack of professionalism.

Brighter Thinking

brighter thinking from the start

brighter thinking like a moon

brighter thinking in blue

brighter thinking within a doubt

brighter thinking before the fall

brighter thinking than you could

brighter thinking to spare a thought

brighter thinking too late

brighter thinking plays its blues

brighter thinking inside a darkness

brighter thinking asking that question

brighter thinking beyond

brighter thinking sipped from a cup

brighter thinking instead of light

brighter thinking without looking

brighter thinking managing itself

brighter thinking for as long as it takes

brighter thinking unread

brighter thinking about Ray

brighter thinking surprised by itself

brighter thinking wiping its smile

brighter thinking undressed

brighter thinking at the touch

brighter thinking on/off

brighter thinking whenever the end