A collection of poems and other writings...

Friday 27 February 2015

Chip Shop Allegro

You are working well tonight
you girls
at the Chip Shop Allegro
this Friday evening
and
men, dark bears, stand
clawpaws
in pockets
waiting for service
issuing instructions
more onions please
to you three scurrying squirrels
who
shovel chips into paper wraps
shear
spiced meat coils from
gas flamed skewers
into warm split pitta 
toss
sausages battered and plain
and golden sizzling haddock and cod
into the glass-fronted hot cabinet
only to
tong them out again
moments later and
rest them
on polystyrene trays
piled high with fries
next to blue plastic forks

and jealous eyes
of the back of the queue grizzlies 
watch
while the vittles diminish
there behind
the steamed greasy panes
and they
lick their lips
as they wait for chips
at the shakers of salt
and the
bottles of malt and
small packets of ketchup
in plastic baskets
next to the Marie Curie
collecting tin
and your long hair in a lank
hank
multi-banded ponytail
protrudes from your baseball cap
and flaps
at your back
as you push your hot damp bangs
out of your eyes
with the soft white side
of your arm

Tuesday 24 February 2015

House of Cards

I have found the
house of cards 
that you have
built.

It is here on the coffee table.

I can see that
you have taken trouble here –
(I will not say more trouble than it justifies.)

I can see how you have spent time
controlling your fingers,
staying their minute tremor.

When I stoop
hands behind my back
and cease breathing
I can see,
close to,
how you
have flexed each card
so that the slight curvature
might assist the delicate
pretence of strength.

You have been occupied in
buttressing suit upon suit
back against front
tip against tip
finding the balance
failing but
not being defeated
Found here http://sebtown294.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/a-card-house-life.html
edge to edge
one against another
faces to backs.

Your dedication to your task
is exemplary
and you have constructed a mighty piece
a temple
a castle of whimsical dreams
a fairy fortress

you have indeed
choreographed
this delicate dance of physics

and I applaud you

but can you clear it away now please.

Monday 23 February 2015

We ar gowin on hollyday

Curtains
are pulled closed
then open
then closed again
as the security debate
sways back and forth.

Lights on timed switches
are plotted
for random hours
during each evening
and after dawn.

An occupied air,
a lived-in look is
carefully cultivated,
saying 
- we are 
here and we will always be 
here so do no think of entering 
here for we are 
here -

and neighbours
are informed who reassure
with their promised vigilance.

And as the final bolt is slid
and window locked
the daughter on the pavement,
the one dancing in and out of the car
while waiting for the parental juggernaut,
feeling the release 
from the anticipation of
these past weeks,
in her exuberance
finds her bold chalk
and in newly learned letters
writes her message

all along the garden wall.

Tuesday 17 February 2015

Tankard

Brewer’s Gold
Left Hand Milk Stout
Modus Operandi
Dirty Stop Out
 
Down at The Two Brewers
on a hook above the barmaid
a tankard hangs
with his name engraved
upon it, ‘Ron’,
in a thin, unpractised hand.

A small plastic yellow clip
coils around the base of the handle
to distinguish it
from some other of a similar design.

It is a warm evening,
one that shepherds delight in, and
Ron trudges down to the Brewers
to take a nip.

Ron loves the ale.
Real ale.
Ale without hiss or fizz,
ale with honesty, brewed
with truth and taste
and sweet bitterness
that curls gently around his tongue
and dwells in him
for hours to come.

Black Betty
Smog Rocket
Neck Oil
Chiff Chaff

She sees him pass the small
window before he gets to the door.
She reaches the tankard down.
He walks in.

She knows his familiar time
and his familiar taste.

“Tanglefoot, Ron?”
she asks.

“Not tonight, Jan.
Bit too strong for
a school night.
I’ll have the Wadsworths.”

He knows them all -
specific gravity
hop mix
age.

Fursty Ferret
Black Sheep
Green Devil
Goats Leap

Three is his limit
on a social night
when Richard is there, or Tom,
but most nights
it’s just one that he’ll sip for an hour
stood up at the bar
waiting for someone to talk to him.

Nun’s Ruin
Warlock Stout
Bumblethwacker
Ghost Ship

So the week he died
and they brought him home
and we gathered
like elephants
gently moulding his bones
with disbelieving trunks
I could not bear to think of his tankard
hanging unused for months
before someone
there behind the bar noticed
how dusty it had become
and took it down and washed it with just
a short thought
for Ron and
rehung it in its place
for fear of dislodging some fixture
in time
and space.

And then to repeat the process
A few weeks later
and wonder again and
maybe ask
the landlord or the other staff
whether they had seen
him. Had Ron been in
recently?

I could not bear to consider
that outcome. And so,

one frosty afternoon,
a week after the funeral
I wandered down to the Brewers
and with my heart pulsing
in my throat and my eyes
burning with uncried
tears I asked
if I could have Ron’s tankard,
the one with the yellow plastic clip
as Ron would not be coming
anymore.

Jan was not there. The young
man who stood behind the bar said
“Oh, right.  I don’t know him.
Has he moved away?”
And all I could do was say

“Yes.”

And take the tankard
and flee back up the sobbing hill.

Dark Moor
Black Mule
Barnsley Bitter
Skullsplitter

And so
I’ve got it now
stood at the back of the cupboard.

The yellow clip has gone,
unnecessary,
there’s no mistaking whose it is,
the looped engraving
still names the man

‘Ron’

Fabarillo
Funky Pigeon
Fat Sprat
Nip



Wednesday 11 February 2015

Smile

There has been a wild thrashing,
a water’s edge panic
and now this man,
with whom you have smiled and sung
and slept and eaten and swum,
lies unconscious, half-drowned
from grappling with the sea.

His life teeters on the edge of a decision,
his fading mind wandering
towards a clouded cliff
and you crouch there at his senseless side
pawing at the clammy body
in a passionate desperation
to claw him back from
the watery sucking in his lungs
to drag him back to this
gritty scene where sand
grinds between your hands and his
greying flesh.

But this is a holiday beach
and the moment
catches the attention of the Bugle photographer
who all afternoon has been
combing the beach for local colour.
She is already constructing a caption,
an alliterative appliquƩ,
as she raises her SLR beneath her sun-visor
and snaps the taut moment,
crystallising the image
within the expert beat of her eye.

And despite your anxiety,
your crass flailing to revive,
to re-engage the man with his breath,
you are conscious of this
sudden unexpected distraction.
You look up
as the shutter clicks,
and flash your applewhite teeth in a

dutiful smile.

Monday 2 February 2015

You, in your skinny jeans

There’s a tautness
around the seams
that’s rather pleasing

a tensing of the fabric
as you move

the definition of your buttocks
is quite teasing

and of the creasing
across your thighs
we do approve.

We take pleasure
in the way
the cloth enfolds you:

there’s a harmony –
the touch, the look, the sound.

There’s a sense
that a voice inside your head
still scolds you

for wearing skin-tight jeans
around the town.

But please pay no
attention to its chiding

never change
don’t toe a puritan line

for there are some
the other side of living

who think
that you
in those
look rather fine.