Old Man Quinney

I’d be sprawled on the back seat
Beltless and free
When small, perched on a child’s seat
A clear view of the wild
Speedometer reaching 50
And feet playing with pedals

In front, a parent
Winding down a dirty window
And old man Quinney
Leaning in
His unshaven chin
Wobbling with the effort 

“Fill her up. Four star”
Words I’d hear like a mantra
Watching the petrol ball bobble
And numbers roll round
Gallons and pounds, just like
The one-armed bandit at the golf club 

Only winners here
As the pleasant fumes invaded
The Zephyr Six:
Money handed over, a brown
Ten bob note, and change given
And cheerfulness 

Now the age of my father
I speak to no one
I can’t remember when I
Last talked to someone I paid
Exchange is a series of beeps
Before I belt home

No Heroes

Five men and a crane from dawn
Hoisted, laid, connected
A sewage pipe, its effluent carried
Daily, out to an incoming tide
No journalists, no cameras, no heroes

The mudflats at low tide
Like a magnet, drew the boys
To its edge. Tide one side.
Land the other. One found a
Mirror, flotsam, and turned

The world the wrong way round
The tide, without asking, seeped
In between the boys and the land
Darkness and dampness in the sea
Found its way to the sky

Surrounded by the inrush
Five boys inched their way
Drenched with storm and tears
Astride the unsung pipe
To landfall

Met by flashbulbs
And family
The famous five
Pictures in the paper
No heroes?

Wazzock On the First Tee

So small, helmeted and unstable
In the crook of the parabolic head
Of a bright orange tee
Sliding down its edge, unable to
Avoid the strike

A spoon selected and deselected
He heard the hyphenated word
Mashie-Niblick float down
For the first of four practice swings
Shuddering the air

Exploding in a shower of
Hurt and soil, Wazzock,
Now one with turf
Renamed as Divot
Landed on the fairway

Laughing as helmet and mud
Rolled from hillock to trough
A puncture in the 18 holes of
Wedged and puttered pain
Sliced to oblivion

Longing to be lost
Out of Bounds
To rest, recuperate
Bunkered back to
An above-par condition

A wazzock walked home

The Arithmetic of a Dead Tree

There’s a field north of Tiverton. In its centre is a dead tree. It’s either landed from another world and no one noticed, or it was abandoned by its fellow trees, removed by some inhuman force. Either way, it has lost the fight.

Pleasantly chilled this corpse
It was a stray thought
Not unlike the effervescence
Tumbling up from the morning’s antacid
Prior to the first incision

A hangover beat against her skull
Like lower-branch apples
Bouncing rhythmically
In the breeze, on hard ground,
Crushing to the cranium

Cause of death: unknown
She noted, adding abandonment
Internal contusion
Dictaphone didn’t argue

The timeline of death,
A matter of philosophical debate
Last moments preceded by
Irreversible decline
Autumn’s gorgeous browning

An annual preparation
For the final apple pluck
Its trunk and branches
Thrust up to heaven
In fist-like silent protest

Skeletal and off-white
Reflecting the sun that
Gave it life, reduced,
Unswaying, ready to rot
Subtracted to zero.

To the windward side
An apple, softened and bruised
Unloads its cargo
Nomadic cells multiplying
Secretly in the soil

In tiredness, she lay a palm
Flat on the upturned fist
Cause of life – touch

Mustard on Lamb?

The liturgy having passed through us
Once more, we scurried, smiling
Through the tended graveyard
With the organ raging in full retreat
To the silence of a Zephyr Six
And home to remove our polished shoes

Every third week
Sunday roast turned to beef
To remove the sickly nothing
Of communion wafers
And I, with a dollup of tap water,
Twiddled Colman’s Mustard powder
Into a perfect paste

If done, if repeated, if attempted
For pork or lamb the following week
My mother’d recoil in horror:
‘Mustard on lamb!’ Then,
‘You heard your mother, John
No mustard. Period!’

This house with its maze
Of mustard-like rules
A puzzle too perplexing
Too burdensome
Like an empire tottering,
Its final stumbling steps
Crumbling under a heavy load:
An indecipherable conformity

This house was my liturgy
My home, my rhythm of days
Of coal fires, ice on windows
The radio in the background,
Crosswords and pipe smoke
Dress patterns and pins
A piano barely played
The sweet smell of Airfix glue
And another Spitfire
To fly me far away.

Been to Church and I don’t know

It’s true to the wind
I don’t know where it blows
But it’s blown us here
A reverse-play building site
Living stones assembled
Drawn by unheard words

In file the called
Drenched in sweet oils
Instruments in His hand
Servants soaked
In the fragrance of heaven
Hear them as they sing

A river tumbling and still
Full of life and lights
Fountains pouring
From a throne unseen
It’s the Bridegroom
Calling to His beloved

Eyes only for Him
He plays one, then another
A word here, miracle there
Yes, I’ve been to church
And I don’t know
Where the wind will blow

Foul Drain

West Midlands Police ban fans of Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv from attending their Europa League fixture at Villa Park on November 6th

‘National disgrace’ – Kemi Badenoch
‘Wrong Decision’ – Kier Starmer

One step beyond the unsteady gate
The cast-iron drain cover
Forged to fit tight to its borders
Disallows even a whiff
Of regular human discharge
Sludge and stench
Slipping inexorably downhill
Not a foot below, out of sight

Until its long-felt antipathy
For light and public gaze,
Old shackles cast aside,
Erupts and,
Seeping from beneath
Floods the public square
With a miasma of words

Who will shovel the shit
Back to the bottomless pit?
Will pulpits lie dumb?
Will uninvited prophets
Uncover awkward memories
Of Clifford’s Tower
And King David’s hotel?

Clifford’s Tower: 1190 in York, the massacre of Jews, approx. 150 dead
King David’s hotel: 1946, the Jewish Irgun militia bombed the British HQ, 96 dead

I Was There

I was there
To witness the first shove
And the wild, confident
Aggression of the man, Jacob
Who crossed the Ford
At Jabbok, weighed down
With fear and promises,

And I was there each hour
Of the moon-lit night-fight
I saw the lion-man’s eyes
Flash with unearthly colours
And music leak from his lips
In the struggle
Until dawn

I was there listening
To mighty Jacob gripping
The lion-man, yet finally
Disinterested in victory
Reduced to the whisper
Of one request
Bless me

The Lion-man extended a finger
Made of light and word
And touched Jacob’s strength
His hip joint dislocated
As a new name descended
From heaven and a new man
Walked the Earth

Remembering the Future

It wasn’t dementia,
I’m sure of that
But a glance

Along my outstretched feathers
Above the clouds
Wings left and right

Making the sun dance
Iridescent and normal
Thermal swimming

Strong and unhindered,
I left all my memories untended
Slipping into the present

Far below the cloud banks
Through to a tight circle of
Proudly assembled eyrie

I hear someone unfamiliar
Calling, pulling me into a dive
To unclench my prey.

Talons relaxing
I drop my dormouse load
In front of a hair-filled

Inquisitive, pleading ball
As recollection fires
And I watch

Myself forming again

The Need for Ice

It’s 11am, or thereabouts
The kettle switch flicked and
The red-light beams,
Noises build from the kettle
Creating the time to assemble
The familiar cup, unwashed
Rinsed, maybe
Then a heaped spoonful
Instant coffee, plus a sugar lump
The spoon circling and clinking
The cube to oblivion

Then the tipping
Boiling water…
…mind drifting now…
I jump back, legs burning
Hollers suspended
In lingering curses

A longed-for cause
Occupying the moment
Where my mind ended
Anchored in a movie
A scent
A memory of light
Falling from the overflow
Of her hair

Disturbed, once more
By the very thing
Designed to bring me peace
Trapped again
By a fire sent to burn
Away all that I don’t need

I shake myself
Free of meandering
And return to hard-core life:
Of the need
For ice

Universal Haiku

Dark, old universe,
It cannot contain itself,
A laugh bursts all bounds

MA Creative Writing, Exeter University Creating a Poem…live…part one

This is an invitation to join me in a 4-stage writing process to give birth to a poem.

Nine of us were assembled in a small seminar room waiting for kick-off to get the Writing Poetry module underway.

Anticipation, a little conversation, but we don’t know each other, so it’s muted.

In walked a poet…and a teacher. I won’t name him; description is more important. Maybe early 50s, torn jeans, old jacket, various rings on a variety of fingers, earrings, an impressive head of hair, and peering eyes. Every inch a poet. And with a rich vocal delivery.

And the content of lecture 1 was formational, rather than a download of information; an introduction to his way of detecting the ‘sweet spot’ in a poem as a combination of imagery, musicality, and shape (form, direction, and energy).

So, this blog post is to invite you into the process of writing a poem.

Stage 1. Read and reflect on
Stage 2. Write a similar poem. A list. On an object close to hand. I chose the fountain pen I was holding to take notes as a starting point
Stage 3. Pinch one line from the poem and build from there
Stage 4. Submit the poem to the group and lecturer for critical appraisal….next week. Yikes.

Stage 1 George Szirtes poem, Some Sayings about a Snake

Loved this poem. It enters by the ear and exits through the navel. Come on! Whatever he had in mind that rocks my boat.

Stage 2. My ‘List poem’ on a fountain pen…written during the lecture, no time for edits

Some Sayings About A Fountain Pen

I don’t know, it’s a handful high
Spending time twitching to and fro
Weighing less with each hint of movement
A clock of sorts in indigo
Disturbing, that so much darkness
Lies at the core
A column of unformed words
It draughts Constitutions
Annoys restless Monarchs
The slender curve of the nib
Calms the writer
Fools the writer
Disappoints the writer if
It scratches or flows like glue
A pen should not be hard work
It lasts until it fades
The outer outlasting the inner
Unlike the writer

So…not quite a strict list. I found it impossible to constrict an image to a sentence. Maybe with time, I could have pared it down to essentials? But the task was to extract a line or a phrase, a key idea from the poem and re-work it. The last two lines, for me, were the message in the bottle.

Stage 3. Reworked poem (you may recognise this as Friday’s Irregular Poetry Corner Post)

Unlike the writer

Don’t be duped
Nothing escapes
The onward march to
I don’t know where

Swan Spring quills
Sleek-black biros
Grass-green rollerballs
SmartScreen scribblers, but

Who designed us
To chance upon
A charcoal brew of dyes
To daub, to draw, to draft?

Attached one end, and
Conceived in mystery
Words, hidden in ink,
Flood onto the page

And to mediate?
A handheld instrument,
Twitching to and fro
Emptying its gifts

Until the ink fades,
Nib-scratching the paper,
It’s outer outlasting the inner
Unlike the writer

Stage 4. Next week. Seatbelt on. I can see the editors’ sharp knives, glinting in the eyes of my fellow students and my every inch the poet, lecturer, AB.

Unlike the writer

Don’t be duped
Nothing escapes
The onward march to
I don’t know where

Swan Spring quills
Sleek-black biros
Grass-green rollerballs
SmartScreen scribblers, but

Who designed us
To chance upon
A charcoal brew of dyes
To daub, to draw, to draft?

Attached one end, and
Conceived in mystery
Words, hidden in ink,
Flood onto the page

And to mediate?
A handheld instrument,
Twitching to and fro
Emptying its gifts

Until the ink fades
Nib-scratching the paper,
It’s outer outlasting the inner
Unlike the writer

Sunrise amongst acorns

Lumpy and thick white
A surprising layer of ice
Clung to the windscreen
The clouds long since
Had slithered away
Accidentally like a
Duvet discarded
During the night

Ferreting, I find my
Woolly hat and gloves
Hidden away
While the acorns grew
And the horse chestnut
Spiky capsules
Fallen now, the summer sun
Has dried out the twigs

It is this blue-sky snap
That chills the bone and
Hunches the shoulders
A hope drilled in
Splitting the sheath
Rending the cage
Death running backwards
Life following on

Above the car park
Rises a hill and a trig point,
A freezing vantage point
Where water is arrested
And the wind howls
There are no trees here to witness
The broiling globe
Cast its first light

And fail to retrieve
The summer cauldron
And yet, zero degrees and less
Does its work, cracking
Open the seeds
The hidden hopes
And dared-for dreams…
…maybe this autumn?

He Took Me There

At my age, I’ll shed this skin
By Christmas
Honestly, when you look at me
Over the bread sauce
I’ll not be the man I used to be
A strange twist of newness
The replacement looking
Older by the day

Some parts are famously temporary
Wobbly teeth hanging by death threads
Nails, already not really us
Our breath, a sojourner at best
But the real you and me,
Living amalgams of all that has passed
Organic unions with our brokenness,
Our crimes, our guilt, our shame
Jealousies, pride, lust
Ambition, our hurt lockers
Can these death notes
Be peeled away like the teeth
To leave us new again?

Sunday by Sunday
The priests intone
O Lamb of God
Who takest away the sin of the world
Have mercy on us
Did the Lamb of God excise
Our sufferings and put them in
A divine supermarket trolley?
Removing our grief and sorrows
Far away, leaving us innocent?

Hauntingly we sing
Were you there
When they crucified my Lord?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble
No more so than now
When I can offer the only answer
Looking out at His mother
At Magdalene, at the soldiers
At those gathered, and beyond
Through His eyes
Yes, I was there
He took me there

Not just my sufferings
Separated from me, no,
The Suffering One,
He took me there

It is finished, I am finished
Now, at Christmas
When I look at you
I’ll be peering from inside
The resurrection and the life
Ah, don’t you worry about my aging skin
It’s the oldest trick in the book
Just you wait

Adam 2025

4099

Phone numbers from a different land

The feel of a finger pressing into the circle

Of metal, a dial shone

By decades of callers

And turned clockwise

‘Til the gently curved barrier

Puts a stop to all that

3752

It’s 7pm, maybe 8

My heart is pounding

I’ve glanced at the phone box

Red, passive aggressive,

Silent and terribly still

Daring me to risk all

I pull the heavy door

Inhaling a familiar odour

The dialling tone ceases

And I listen to her father’s inquisition

I’m out of depth

01392

Gone are the telephonists

The plug and socket exchanges

People replaced by machines

SDT the Acronym Age has begun

Metal holes replaced by plastic

Plastic holes by buttons

Romance and risk by automation

Reverse charges

A good trick if your pocket

Is devoid of a 10p

Occasional victories from a phone box

And one hollers and fist pumps

As if the Crown Jewels are yours

How sweet it is to outflank the system

Truth is, no one fist-pumped until

The new millennium

Mobliles, Cell Phones, Smart watches, Implants, Ear buds

Flat black screens

Sensitive to the touch of a finger

Have we arrived at where we began?

Eve. What did you feel, when you

Held the fruit, so appealing to the eyes?

Eyes, yes, of course

But how did it feel?

Soft, hard, hairy, smooth

Did it smell of a telephone box?

Or petrol, or the earth?

Text me

My number is…

07…

A distinctive odour…like old rain and decaying leather

Time was

Time ain’t so linear, Sir
See the east wind?
Outrunning the sun’s shadow
Time hopping to what was
Plunging us before time
Into what was tomorrow

Cram time into a box
I tell you
Doors and windows will pop open
Put a mind in that room
And watch it pull things up
Barnacled shipwrecks from the seabed
Or talk of things that are not
As if they are

No, Sir, time ain’t so linear
It doesn’t sit neatly on a ruler
Or a clockface
Between the tick and the tock
A sweet dream will carry you
Into a world full of soliloquies
And shadows selling a different hour

Know what I think, Sir?
No, not really
I am.
Ain’t so far out
That’s what I think

I’ll wear your crown

You don’t know me as I know me
I’ve lusted and lied
Died and risen, risen and died
Jon-ah, what’s the difference?
Been swallowed by a fish
I’ve learnt how to hide

Driven roundabouts
Right to left, not left to right
Got away with it
So I thought
But in here
In here, I’m parched, bereft
Thirsting for…mercy
To bask in the light
To swim in righteousness
Eye salve to my hindsight

I’ve lusted and lied
Died and risen; risen and died
Jon-ah, what’s the difference?
Been swallowed by a fish
I learnt how to hide

But through it all,
You waited for me to come
To cry out
‘Enough of dark mirrors’
Scared, with fears laid down
Under a morning shower
Cascading light
Too strong for shadows
No strength to fight

I yield, I’ll wear your crown

Looking Down

‘Like a ton of bricks’
Overstates that dull sense, the
Mild dent of disappointment

No sooner, it seems
I mourned the passing
Of July

Than it’s Friday
The twenty-second
Of August

And I’m walking
Alongside sunrises
And sunsets

The days shortening
The temperature dropping
Crisp leaves turning

Tomorrow has come
It crept in, craftily,
Like a morning mist

Falling golden leaves
Apples beaming red
Soil smelling sweet

There’s a lot
To be said for
Looking down

Rosa Pendulina and me, John

Sat inside now
Listening to a neighbour’s
Mower thrash through the straw
I wonder why?
This is not a summer for grass,
Green belongs to a bygone age

Came in when my flesh
Resembled melted lard
And when the supply
Of dark chocolate slabs
Had run low, the chapter
Abandoned, unfinished

And after I’d felt guilty for
Finger flicking an
Appealing shield bug
From my knee
And after the coffee-swimming
Wasp had stopped its writhing

Despite the mini summer drama
Of the previous fifteen minutes
I could not walk past Rosa
Her red cheeks and green dress
Catapulted me from the Iowa
Of the book to the here and now

The shield bug may not
Even have landed
When time escaped its boundary
And the needs of the day
Were found relegated.
Pendulina had swung me

From the temporal to the eternal
From the imaginary to the image
From my paltry love
To the all-consuming fire
The burning that is judgement
And mercy upon mercy

That found its mark
In a life laid down:
The ‘Nevertheless’ man
The ‘Woman, behold your son’ man
The ‘Son, behold your mother’ man
A man named John