Drops

Out of droughts
some things emerge,
and I recognised
an all consuming voice
of a giant sandworm
read within a book;
an individual paragraph
which burned like spice
and changed everything
in its wake.

It followed me all day
bookmarked,
until dried out completely,
a page folded back,
lest not to forget
where the desert began,
and how precious is water,
when the ability to cry
evaporates, crossing
one too many dunes.

Leaf on the windshield

Rain and a caught leaf,
a passive resistance to the wind
and it’ll be gone
as so many.

Its beauty is its moment
of what it was once held onto,
not even drift can conceal that
in skeletal thread structure.

Spring can accommodate winter
much better than winter believes,
it’s a forgiving season,
and shines through disconnected days
so cast offs are not chilled
even when they lose their colour,
their former colour.

Therein lies my hope of being noticed
through a windshield.

Candice cat

Candice cat is a cat of means,
which often means
being extremely mean to mice,
and believe me the rodents
have learnt to steer well away,
even a tasty Irish cheddar
won’t tempt them, except in winter
when they draw straws
behind grandfather’s clock.

The ‘losers’ tossed nimbly into air
before reaching backdoor stair,
cries shushed with a brushing tail,
a fine whisker away from cheesed grail,
letting them think they’ve escaped,
but alas they never do;
Candice is just too accomplished.

She watches their eyes bulge
as paws slice heads deliberately
in 4/4 time of a conductor, leaving the ears
which are spat out black tobacco later,
a little sadistic streak her fur has,
it’s in the dark hair roots.

Candice prizes tinned sardines
with stiffened mice tails
instead of regular pull-rings,
and other ingenious feline things,
she listens to Mozart on the garden wall
when the neighbour plays piano,
with eyes half closed, all a purr,
claws practising timing.

Her lair is clothed with fragile bones,
wizened frogs’ legs, undigested kidneys
and other very strange business,
with an upturned plastic bowl
that presents, in pastel letters
“Candice, my sweet kitty.”

Poems written in 2008

1  Under the table.
2  An intake of hot air.
3  The heavens return one day.
4  It was this big, honest.
5  Shorter days.
6  I’ll wear it once in the dark, if it snows.
7  On a limb.
8  Jiggerty jog.
9  The quirk at work.
10  Bekki.
11  Say it how it is.
12  A typewriter full of fishes.
13  Dark horse comic.
14 The Gods are too distant.
15  Leaf on the windshield.
16  You said you were a painter.
17  Why walk the old ways?
18  Tribute to a song.
19 -.- (Moth)
20  Death can be Ruff.
21  The tortoise who saved the world.
22  Monkey business.
23  A hard day’s night.
24  Walking on ice.
25  Only needs a stamp.
26  Tutankhamen’s remains.
27  The postman only knocks twice.
28  The price of politics.
29  Origins of a song.
30  Obsession over a model.
31  Talking coffee machine nearing retirement.
32  T-birds.
33  Some days leave spring reminders.
34  Poetree.
35  Poetic microwave.
36  Murder in the night.
37  Never seen, but in retropect.
38  It’s what you pick up.
39  In spite of the tracks.
40  Under three boughs.
41  Black railings.
42  Doing the rounds.
43  Best fin forward.
44  Sketching from memory.
45  A speck under the night.
46  Dawn is in denial.
47  Bird brain.
48  It’s an apparition, my dear Watson.
49  At the court hearing of the Old Bailey.
50  Fox fluff.
51  Changes.
52  Coloured thoughts.
53  As beautiful as ever.
54  A road is a path you remember.
55  Cod thoughts.
56  Just add water, friend.
57  By torchlight.
58  Just about adds up.
59  Candice cat.
60  Drops.
61  Of lost Celtic tunes.
62  This painting.
63  The first gig is never easy.
64  The worst collab.
65  32nd caller.
66  Transitory.
67  Some Beeches.
68  Submerging truths.
69  I shouldn’t let it throw me.
70  Some lanterns.

Nb. – Just wondering where the year’s gone.

Just about adds up

They held a seance after I was
suddenly run over.

I couldn’t speak at the time
as I’d lost all my teeth
in the accident, some shit
just follows you even into
the afterlife ironically.

I could sense a great deal of coins
on a table, individual change
was the thought.

“Is there anything you wish to tell
us?”

Mmm..mhh..hrrrr m

“I don’t think the spirit is with us”,
said the psychic.

Deciding to send a message through
the coins, on each one
the embossed writing altered
to say something dearly personal,
even made them glow spookily.

The psychic gathered up the coins,
tutted quietly at the amount,
then put the whole lot all in her purse,
not noticing a freaking thing!

Later she bought a lottery ticket,
paid cash, which really pissed me off.

Monkey business

When the tiny monkey
walked up your arm,
paused,
you smiled, wondering
what it was intently after,
the foreign sun setting high
curiosity behind its eyes.

Engraved rings,
elegant gold watches
are but of little use to it,
I thought.
Pearled bracelets really
only worth tapping on,
then discarding; quite quite
unshellable white peanuts.

Our Timex time is not theirs,
theirs is looseband, ours is tight;
hands clutched at holdalls
of late tourist reservations.

Containing currency,
non of which be useful
to a monkey-minded-notion
of climbing upon one head,
to spring onto another.

Hopefully, one that gifted
the curved fruit of a smile.

It’s what you pick up

Sea, you calmed the day, that day,
it’s not always your forte, but it was then,
waves took away more than footprints,
each one a sand pool swallowed,
untraceable the way we like it.

Clouds moved off to the north,
took away the debris we carried,
to leave behind, drfit woulds or would not,
it’s only what’s in the grain that shows
in this time, place.

A bleached stick to point to escape
we cast far into the ocean,
it returned with the tide’s breeze
a new found colour.
Ever a fresh wake up call,
blew hair memories across our faces,
and the mind into other countries;
would that it’d island drift and be reborn
a full sail to swim over to.

Mirrored against each breaking wave
was a walk onto a sand backdrop
of conversation told as shells, some bright
some fresh, old favourites, others well,
where you could almost hear the sound
of the city if you listened hard enough.

We discarded those latter shells,
they haven’t enough voice along this shore.

STEVE HACKETT Acoustic Trio – Firth of Fifth

Steve Hackett (guitar), John Hackett (flute) and Roger King (keyboards) performing acoustic at the Grand Theatre de Verviers, Belgium on Mars 13, 2005.

Live in Budapest 2004

Steve Hackett – Guitar
Roger King – Keyboards
Rob Townsend – Sax, Flute
Terry Gregory – Bass
Gary O’Toole – Drums

Under three boughs

Chestnuts or conkers,
oh, those cocoa hazelnuts
refound in pockets!

Love, companionship
in a nutshell,

or just a bar of chocolate

is all we need to open up,
and be a little nutty
around the roots!

In spite of the tracks

 

There’s a black shape
on the snowed tracks,
right there on the curve
where the trains corner
and all the lines concave,
it catches your eye
as it doesn’t move.

Belief is that it’s some bird
who’s brethren prefer bleak
and deadened branches,
for there be roosts without care
of human fatality.

Perhaps, it feels the vibes
over the rails,
the premonitions of danger
long before any is within reach,
and that is why it is
thought to be a good omen
for the times it’s seen.

Despite the tracks leading
head on, some ills are avoidable.
Better to heed the warning
when it instinctively flies.

Belief is that it’s a dark bird,
but no longer of its kind.