A Teacher’s Plan

In my office on the desk sits the plan
A game-board matrix of black lines
Empty boxes waiting to be filled up,
they must be delivered on time, all full.

Top left to lower right, ideas flow.
Beautifully connected gems, jewels.
Seamlessly they should be linking as one.
Like streams forming rivers to become whole.

Now the rail tracks for a steaming engine.
Smoking on down to a higher learning.
Five ladders reaching up to the heavens
Each rung a step toward a shared target.

The Lobby of the Afterlife

During the infinitesimal moment that precedes death,
you watch in confusion
as you are released from the confines and limitations of the vehicle that a only a few moments earlier was your body.
Just as a metallic red helium balloon,
complete with trailing white string
is liberated into the atmosphere
by a sobbing infant,
you depart also.

Your expected tunnel of blackness
and the minute pin-prick of shimmering light growing nearer, larger
is nowhere to be seen.

Under your feet is a humid landscape of damp grey concrete
under a blinding white sky.
Rusted iron girders, interspersed by weathered stone pillars
rise up in all directions.
They run in ranks and files
from the wet footprints of your well worn shoes
to meet the horizon line.
And although you stand perfectly still,
there is an unmistakable and certain sensation of travelling onward.

And now the hazy silhouette of a small crowd can be seen in the distance.
The faces of those you have known
and others who swam in your gene pool at another time,
wait to greet you,
in the tastefully furnished lobby of the afterlife.

Driving Home

Driving home in the late afternoon
the distant horizon is wounded
by a silhouette of trees,
stripped naked of their foliage by winter.
Now witches brooms, scarring the skyline.

They hold up the grey fog bank
which is descending menacingly
from the rose pink clouds above.
A slowly dying azure blue
tops off this vast skyscape.

But what really has me
is the early evening moon
away to my right.

A geomatrist’s perfect circle of platinum
punched with a precision I will never know
into the atmosphere.
A shimmering key-whole, through which to gaze
at some otherness.

I pull over the car.
(Which is wise when attempting such things)
And reaching up, I hook a fingertip
around the lower curve of this break in the ether
and haul myself up.

After hanging there a moment, suspended
tasting the crystal air,
I close my right eye and press my left cheek
flush to the sky
and peer through.

Matthew Coombe

The Cat

The cat that I assume trashed my bin last night is back
I can see him from the kitchen window
as I stand at the sink washing dishes
scouring pad in hand
Of course he has seen me also
from the protection of my green painted fence
just the other side of the no-man’s land of my lawn.

He is sitting arrogantly upright
as if at the wheel of some customised 1992 hatch back.
with his trainered hind legs dangling down my side
The knuckles of his left paw are tattooed L.O.V.E.
On his left - predictably – H.A.T.E.
His Union Jack shorts look ridiculously garish
The raised middle finger printed on his sleeveless T-shirt
gives me an insight into his politics today.

Tucked securely under his arm is today’s red-top newspaper
and his paw blatantly clutches a roll of super-soft-double-quilted tissue.
I can even make out the neatly planted yellow daises
on each individual perforation
waving at me.

He stretches, flexes his claws
and after gliding casually to the ground
picks his way through my plethora of feline deterrents.
He checks himself in the supposedly terrifying row of reflective CD’s
breaching the surface like the humps of some mythical lake beast
He laughs at my landmines of half bottles of water
that litter the area
Diverting his attention back to business and the sports pages
my tortoise shelled trespasser settles.

I know my shouts, my bangs on the glass, Shoos! and Gidardovits! are futile
His acute senses stack the odds in his favour every time
And so I fold my hand
I helplessly watch as he departs the way he came
tipping over my bin for good measure as he goes.

Tinkering

The showroom air seems uncomfortably cold.
Maybe it’s to drive us would be buyers
into the snugness and warmth of the cars on sale here.

The staff appear trustworthy
and sensibly equipped for any eventuality
in their matching high-performance
company issued winter coats.

Flawlessly polished vehicles,
unspoiled and untouched by human hands
become pedigree dogs in a show.

Poised and identically aligned for judging.
Or frozen and straining on the end of at some invisible leash,
eager to find some mystical far off field
beyond the gaping exit doors.

They sit upandbeg their absent owners,
to find just a few pounds a month more,
just for a couple of extra years.

Irony comes next.
Dragging her tools behind her.
she takes pole position with the vacuum,
surveys the shimmering bodywork,
the glistening metallic hues of our faithful friends.
Turning from the whole sterile scene
she busies herself as best she can
emptying the bins.

Finally, a receptionist skilfully feigns bubbliness
to announce to Mr. Jenkins, (as a mid-wife to a new father),
that his £300 ignition barrel is on it’s way!
A further £40 is owed.
should he also wish to purchase an ignition key
to render it of any use at all!
Congratulations Mr. J!
You must be very proud.

Matthew Coombe

Birth Day

I remember nothing of my own birth.
I am not like the reincarnationist
who claims it was more painful than his last death.
Or you who recall the odour of your pram lining
at two months old.
Nor am I the infant, who one day stuns his mother
with a tale of a blinding section of white,
being grabbed by hands.
Why would a six year old make such a comment
as he playfully struggles free from his sweater?

Matthew Coombe

Coffee

Coffee

Dry grains circumnavigate the surface.
Now the bulging veins of immense biceps,
the snarling canines of some junkyardog
Quick’ning the pulse, trigg’ring adrenaline
and releasing it's hit into my brain.

Matthew Coombe