Always the Bridesmaid…..

Why do they always do this to me?


You set out with your passion all flying,

Running with the fluid balanced in your stride,

You take me out to the furthest sound,

Lash me to a beach head,

And make me watch the patterns and the lines,

And always promise that the passion will have its flower;

That misty tear from a muck raked land,

Confused and romanced for so long,

You lead on and touch my gaze into a trance.


I think you are lost on your own myth;

That you believe in the being that has been created

From the carefully placed grains of sand,

You need to roll around and gag on some of the dirt you ignore;

Take back some of the time that you stored away and tidied up.


You waltz me to a ledge of crumbling certainty,

With vertigo’s sirens pulling at my stride,

But the fascinating mess continues to draw on my hope;

Romancing myself as much as romanced with you,

You take my long landscaped eye and lead it out to the bay,

Show me the light across the sound;

Make me watch the still waters lap softly,

Then leave me weeping with a sob of regret,

When really what I should see is a ravaged land;

Spit drawn carcass with its bones stripped bare,

The rape and ponder of the all the glass and powder

That was blown together to catch light like a thief.


You lead and I follow, always wanting to believe

That this is the one dance; this firm grasp on muscled romance,

This will be the one that drops us back into history.

A view to the sea

All time is tidying and shrugging off

The cast weight of a cramping life,

Trying to pull light through the spine,

I walk the view down to the sea,

My sight edged by the Edwardian stone

Certainty of a Grandmother's gaze.



The muscle seizes and weaves the day,

Ululating in a glow from the mackerel sky,

The pulse slows about a half moon's edge,

The bones grow light above the stride,

Until sarsen where the wind meets the land,

His gull rides to the will in the air again.

The Late Boys

The scuttle bug clatters about the room,

Banging into coal carts and rag and bone men,

It scratches at summer cricket in back lanes,

And herds the late boys out of the long nights.

It runs the whole length of the pier;

Squeezed stone from the ocean's flow,

And kicks a block from the priory wall,

Until history called time for home.


The late boys raid the corner shop,

Drop the walls, refund the bottles back,

Spend the money on sickly tat,

Then down to the beach to throw rocks at crabs.

Along the shore you will find them all,

Hidden in the world war concrete,

The smelly rags of lonely men,

The tide takes out to rot down again.


This bug that scuttles about the skull,

Chases out his tidehood memories,

The trawler that broke from its weary tow,

Its settled hull was swarmed like pirates,

Life vests, maps and the most prized compass,

We stripped it down to its ship's bare bones,

Looting it like we had always known,

The untrained orphans of an island home.

Still Life

The light has come to wake once more

Against the day that moves outside,

The air is dried inside the room,

The books are where they always were.


The blood that shrugs to life again,

Pulls the tide to sob with regret,

The ancient strides that still don't last,

Fill with age when he steps away.


He sifts the ash of a late fire,

No dust floats from the iron grate,

Runs back to where it always was,

Fragile, laid in just the place.


The room is sealed the door set hard,

What is will be continued,

Those that wait will be obeyed,

The dust is set where it ought to stay.


Still life takes place when no one looks,

In this green room he has been placed,

To know and wait and take back time,

From those who took him to this place.

David and the tiger lady

Ambling around forty feet below

You only view each eye alone

Stared in the face his eyes deviate,

The left stares left, the right looks at you straight.


You too, have this look with your glasses off,

The little girl of this face slips off forty years,

Sits small crossed knees, grips her over sized specs,

Laughs and her unfocused grin,

Smiles him from a tomorrow of the man within.


Half of David's face looks along the study wall,

Toward the silk woman palm stroking a tiger's brow,

Furrowed eyes shut with the gates all closed,

She shares the unknown almond of your eyes,

Unfolds her hand in the dreams on his gritty crown

A Spanish calligrapher visits Pearson Park

The second hand glories of those rooms look out on a circular path about the park,
Dust motes, high ceilings, moulted carpet and cornice,
A mirrored dresser not made anymore,
All rented of course,

Casts of horsehair and brick in those walls soak in the pathways to this park,
Cliff top clay prints the sole of his shoe,
A stack of rock slouches to the East,
Soft land around reduced

A bay lined with shale which breaks, pencil nice, to write on the sandstone,
An elephant trampled leather coat hides a stone
Stolen from long Spanish rail tracks,
In that pocket alone

Thumbed years smooth, then a conker picked, fresh sleek oiled, dried then wrinkled,
Both now palmed in the crenel of his hand,
The coat wears the unshaped shoulders
Of nearby hills, a castle on the Aln

Other castillos speak, Lorre where thin sliced alabaster left striations in the light,
Monte Aragon, weathered down angles at rest,
Close to perfectly abandoned villages,
Where inhabitants untied their hopes and left

Their doors unlocked, mountain walkers now scuffle through papers in the desks,
Yellowed from being alone, the fine script
Looks as if history was expected,
Written in strict ink

The pressure, curve, and shape give devotion beyond words, watched then taken,
Exquisite discipline calling, the calligrapher's
Pages flock about the room,
The Callers unwary of the look to their figures

Cast in the ordinary they seldom destroy, the calligrapher watches from the walls,
Pages feather settle on the wood he walked,
When the callers took nothing,
His hand became stark

A forge to the future of sleeping walls, his memory licks from the mortar,
Into the Victorian room, slips between all my pages,
And loads them with light
From other places.

Going for a Fall

I sometimes cry when I see photos of my daughter,

Hair a tumble of golden locks at two,

The first time she ever stopped running

Staring down at her first pair of shoes.

Now what do you expect me to do?



Before that we would take her for our walks,

Packed up on my back she would pat my happy head

Until the sway of my stride would loosen her lock on awake;

Her body blissfully slooped in the trust

That there was nothing more natural than to be a two year old giant

Dreaming of the hills dividing before her huge steps



Knowing that no men can stand colossus for ever

I sometimes think she deserves better, she should always know

There is a man whose frame is iron, whose back is unbreakable;

Convinced his strength will hold her massive in the sky forever.

But as two turns to twelve the stride shortens a foot slower and the sky declines,

And dreams? The unconscious ecstasy of a trance like man.



But to watch her know is a garland not all fathers hold.

My own is immortal under the sun,

Flesh muscled, massive stature, though he died alone.