2016 / 018

The River's Depth

He showed her where the trout lie

fat and sleek in the calm spot

behind the river stones,

cold and slippery to the touch

and in the tall grass by the riverbank

showed her how to tickle them

until they jumped in her hand.

She could never catch them

and when he caught her using a landing net

slapped her leg so hard she fell.

But the broken ankle put her off

and forever afterward

he blamed himself for her vegetarianism

and her preference for the company

of ladies.

Hope Road

Hope Road Studios

Rain at Sixty MPH

The moment I elect to go out on the motorbike
the clouds roll in, it starts to rain, I tell it do not like
but a promise is a promise and to Sheffield I will go
with thunder notwithstanding, at least it didn't snow.

A piece of tape secures the satnav there and back again
(It's a piece of paper, really, with directions writ in pen)
I set off in the pouring rain and pootle through the town
hoping for the sun but rain precipitated down.

I rode through Sheffield centre and then out the other side
What is it with the road names that they seem to want to hide?
I made it to the road and parked, then panted up the slope
the Priory is a lovely place, no wonder it's in Hope.

The artwork was astounding, the etchings very fine;
the altered books were fascinating – dare I say divine?
She's just the sort of artist that I wanted to become--
just the sort that I am not, for I sit on my bum.

I wish I'd had the money to support the ladies there
who daub themselves with etching ink and cut off all their hair
It made me feel inadequate, the wonders they produced,
the utterly fantastic works creativity had loosed.

I rode home in the solace that although I never etch
I have at least the training to make a simple sketch
look like the lake I'm sitting by, or splashing paint around
can bring to life the demons whom my books have run to ground.

Top Image:
Left: Transit of Venus II by Catherine Harnett (etching)
Right: 'In My Shallow Grave' by Jan Hopkins (artist's book)

Cemetery Poplars

Equinoctial Meandering

Poplars reach toward the sky
with fingers gnarled and pale
while at their base laburnums
rattle seed pods in the gale.

As sunshine warms the grass beneath
a magpie strutting past
with folded wings like hands he looks
to break his nightly fast.

An iron fence to separate
the boneyard from the park
I walk along and listen to
the blackbird and the lark.

Another week or two until
the leaves are clothed in green
the scent of spring upon the air
where winter's chill had been

Samantha's Cracked Skin

in the long, cold days before her father installed central heating
(thanks to a grant offered by the local council)
Samantha would spend December to February in her bed
wrapped in blankets with an extra eiderdown and chenille throw
and wearing a woolley hat (knitted by her Aunt Agatha) and socks on her hands,
staring out through windows encrusted with ice on the inside
at a world passing her by with nary a glance behind.

she ventured out once a day for a flask of tea and another of soup
and once a week to visit the library to replenish her dwindling supply
of adventure novels and science fiction and tales of elves and goblins;
and once a month to visit the doctor
who would apply ointment and bandages to her cracked skin
and refuse to talk about the creatures that lived inside her
like fairies in a hollow earth
that only came out when she was alone.

A Miscalculation of the Moon

she picks slivers of silver from the river at midnight.
the full moon scatters them with such abandon
she cannot imagine they are needed anywhere and besides,
there will be more tomorrow.
As the lunar globe slips behind clouds, a hiss
announces the rain as it hits old leaves and suddenly choppy water.
She holds out her tongue and catches a few drops,
pressing them against the roof of her mouth
as if they were grapes peeled by courtesans. The rain
tastes of sulphur and cardamom pods and in her mind's eye
she sees a street in Birmingham, washing strung across a yard
too small for the three children playing in the dirt and the one girl
rocking in the corner by the fence, her face a mask of perpetual shame
as she nurses a belly heavy with her first child
and though she looks at her sister and two brothers' game
she is beset by silence.

Silence

she thrived on silence
and the rustle of the trees when the wind
brought news of the world outside
her sheltered valley

she asked for rain to swell the river
which turned the wheels of her mill
and scattered seeds of barley and flax
among the fairy bells

she basked in sunlight
that ripened crops and turned her toes brown
and she grew old and wise
but still picked blackberries
that turned her mouth purple
and laughed when she felt like it

Hagstone

his hands close around the stone
the ball of his thumb resting
against the hole
then turning, turning
deosil – never widdershins –
rubbing our a wish
from the fabric of the universe
until he feels her close –
her breath on his cheek,
he fingers tracing the line of his jaw
and he opens his eyes,
hoping to see his long-dead love
but she is gone –
gone into the wind and the rain
and the crashing of the surf.
He seeks another stone,
certain the right one
will bring her back.

The Inglorious Piper on the Cemetery Path

along the path I hear the music
pipes
and fiddles
and the steady rhythm
of a funeral drum
I press my ears to a tomb
and feel the music
course through my bones
and into my soul
and suddenly I can see the dead
a great crowd of them
laughing and cavorting
in the wintersmith's world
of snow and ice and sleet
and the are not the doleful spirits
novels and films have hinted at
but celebrous wonders
and they offer me morsels of food
scratched up from the dark places
to help carry my spirit
from the heavy lead of flesh

This is how we know them

This is how we know them

Kirsty has a grey bobble hat with a white bobble
that dances as she trots arm-in-arm with her lover.
Luisa sports a blur peaked cap made of corduroy,
with streamers of grey hair escaping into the frigid air
DK wears no hat but in deference to the cold
has three layers zipped to his chin
Mike's multicoloured woollen dreadlocks
bring a smile to those he passes
and one Amy sports a luminous peasant's hat,
the other a balaclava with a faux-mohecan.

and Rachel?
Rachel has flaming red hair bursting from a purple scarf
and carried her heart in a novel.

The Sad Tattle of the Man-Mer (a Rubaiyat)

"I stink of fish," the young man said
"a bath, I think, and thence to bed"
and with these words he went upstairs
where he preferred to lay his head.

I watched him go, though no one dares
to tell him of the people's stares
as he performs his daily chores
with not a hint of worldly cares.

A village such as this has bores
who poke and prod at shuttered doors
that should remain forever barred
against the gossip merchant wars.

The young man's life is extra-hard
thanks to the actions of a guard
who dallied long with herring red
and made his son a half-pilchard.
_________________

Paintings and Lies

Some fibonacci poems at the Muse Pie Press

An Act of Kindness

It was with some regret that Social Services
failed in the provision of guidance
for little Jimmy Trubshaw.
The paperwork was passed on, glossed over
and filed under H for 'Hopeless Case'
and little Jimmy was left behind the barred windows
of Laverstone Sanatorium where, to all accounts,
he was a model citizen and disinclined
to unsociable behaviour.
As a Christmas treat Nurse Susan Bowler
signed him out under her care and took him home
to her gaily decorated flat and her two cats
Flotsam and Harbinger.
The police ware called at 11 Pm on Christmas Eve
after Nurse Bowler had failed to put her two cats out
and both had burned to death
along with the stumps
of little Jimmy's dark wings.

Winterborn

brief but bitter flurries of snow sweep across
a street brought prematurely dark by clouds
thick with winter's fury
yellow vapour lamps become reflected glare
from snow compacted into shadowed ice
and gives a sickly glow
but the glimmer of the fading light
I see the shadow of a wingéd form
and the crying of a landlocked gull

Thursday

It's still dark when I wake – the dog has such soft fur in the morning
but she wants her belly rubbed and I'm need to get dressed.
The bathroom's cold, the water scalding, the shower head too low
raise, rinse, repeat. Why does the alarm go off when I have wet hands?
Darkness. Feed the dog, the cat; reboot the computer that's stalled
during the night. Tea. Poetry. Wake the child.
Ten to nine. Write a flash. Flirting? Flirting equals murder in my book.
The sun's out. Walk the dogs. Beautiful sun in the cemetery.
Twitter a haiku. Red milk at the shop. I can see into the spare bedroom
from the next street down. Home. Into town with DK.
He says it feels like Christmas, walking arm in arm with me in the hail.
Bacon butty. The chap next to us asks if he butters the bread.
No, the cook says, lathering the bacon in oil. That'd be fattening.
Shopping. Art shop. What fabulous watercolour paper. Too pricey!
Home. Writing. Painting – I adore Prussian Blue. DK off to college.
Don't die in the snow. Lu cooks us some dinner. It's snowing hard now,
I hope it doesn't stick. I have to take the dog to the vet tomorrow.

Dealing with Loss

The words spill from the page,
pooling on the hardwood floor
they'd paid for out of the proceeds
of plying the flesh trade in Highgate Cemetery.
(She'd been disgusted at first
but it was all right when you got used to the smell
and as Don had said: the dead have needs too.)

She gathers them up by scooping with both hands;
dumps them on the coffee table
where 'loss' becomes stuck between two boards
that split from the heat of the gas fire last winter
when it was so cold the dog peed in the kitchen
and it froze.

She casts about for something
to pry the errant word out
and picks up a letter opener
but the word shatters when it leaves its wooden embrace,
an S sliding under the skirting
never to be seen again.

No matter.

A pair of pliers turns its loss
into IS LOST

The Garden of Turkish Delights

The Garden of Turkish Delights

they tempted him with an idea --
a cedar-scented memory of Friday afternoons
in the room above the chapel
at St Andrew's School for Boys
and Bosch's triptych
projected onto the dry-wipe board.

The sadistic pleasures of Hell
where tortured souls writhed on pitchforks and
cavorted with the heads of birds and fish;
the austere calm of Heaven
where angels sang with sweet devotion
and the Garden of Earth Delights
where mortals were tempted by sins of the flesh;
The gluttony and the fornication
and the perversions of apples.

But when he got to the club
and paid his admittance (plus the one-off membership fee)
his visions of belly dancers and slave girls
were shattered by the reality
of rose-scented jellies
and women in hair nets like canteen staff
who offered to feed him from long-handled tongs.

At the hotel
he picks at the scabs of spoiled childhood
and remembers the guilty pleasure
of lying on his front with one hand down his trousers
and Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus'.

Poetry forms: The Etheree

Let's Call it a Courtship

I
wanted
to treat you;
to take you to
a new restaurant
where they served gourmet food
of the kind you ate as a child
when you sipped of the tormented,
drank wine made from the blood of the damned
and teased slivers of flesh from broken souls

After the Gloaming, After a Bath

Exhausted, he lies with his head
resting on the widow sill, eyes closing
because he wants to sleep
but there's a chance – just a chance
because the night has come and the curtains are closed –
that someone might stand up
stretch their arms until the joints pop
like Friday night's movie corn
and say:
"I think I'll take Bear for a walk"

As I walked through the Park, with the Dogs

Passing the playground, I saw a coat hung on the railings
where people could see and claim it if it was theirs
and I was led to wonder what child would forget their coat?

It was blue, and green and yellow, with a red hood
(though there were not wolves in Chesterfield, not of the lupine sort)
and two woollen mittens hanging from the sleeves
on a piece of string.

It would have fitted a pre-school child and I was left to wonder
what kind of mother takes a child home without their coat?

Seasoned Hitchhiker

He bent his head away as the juggernaut rolled past,
spraying a red sea of water from the gutter
and soaking his fleece jacket and chilling him to the bone.
Lifts were getting harder to come by these days
ever since the Eighties when the Yorkshire Ripper
prowled the M1 and people became afraid to stop
and let an old man have a ride.
There were still a few – students mostly, eager to test
the urban legend about axemen on the roads –
who'd still offer a lift and he was grateful for it.
The bravado of two men was entertaining still
and he could keep them alive and begging for hours.