Hibernaculum

I do not remember where I came across it.
The word just tripped me like a discarded slipper,
lying on a bedroom carpet in the darkness of 3am.

And now it will not go away.
Like the dog that follows me home each evening,
always just a few paces behind and then lies down on my lawn.

Hibernaculum, hibernaculum, hibernaculum.
I even say it in different accents; I change its tones and rhythms.
(it seems to sit well in American for some reason.)

I know what it means,
but I would prefer to think it was Roman.
A military outpost maybe, 50 miles north of Hadrian’s Wall.

Now a crumbling ruin on a hillside
that shelters a few grey sheep from the snowy gales.
In the middle of these long winter days,

I could easily be an animal
curled up in a dry hole somewhere
with my tail over my eyes.

How nice it would be to put on a few pounds for warmth,
climb in, and sleep out the cold until spring
as the tendrils of pale roots creep nearer.

But from there I would have missed you tonight.
I would not have been struck by the way the air around you shimmered.
How it sparkled every time you smiled.

Early Bird

I love that small silver thimble full of time
before the start of the day.
A little quiet time to get the job done
before all the work starts getting in the way.

It is just me, backed by a little music
played on a vacuum cleaner - full drone –
by another someone, somewhere
as the snakes hiss in the boiler by the door.

The empty halls hang on to last night’s forgotten things.
A letter home rests on the bookcase,
a list of spellings lie unlearned on the carpet
and the chewed stub of a pencil clings desperately
to a cold window sill.

And in this classroom stands a steaming cup of dark coffee,
it’s scent climbing into an air
that is as silent and still as an abandoned drum,
and loaded with the tension of a starting pistol.

A Bad Workman

This evening, surrounded by the darkness of the empty house,
the black nib of my pen points expectantly
at an empty space on the page.
A menacing spearhead of ink and insistency.
Just a phrase or even a well modified noun
and I’ll back off, it seems to say.
But it rests there as still as the judge’s gavel.
It brings to mind an image of a gundog
on dewy heath, standing straight and motionless,
pointing towards it’s far off quarry.

You may have realised that, these are not the lines
that I hoped to write for you tonight.
Right now I am a shelf without a book,
a harbour without lights,
four connected walls that refuse to make a room.
Yet here they are,
pinned between each tick of the clock.
Wedged inside the flaming chorus
of these endlessly whistling candles.

Bat

The air was cooler tonight.
A sign of autumn approaching.
It felt like she was a girl on a bus,
just a few stops from here,
gathering up her things.

A bag of long shadows,
a purse bursting with her relucant sunrise.

I was filling a glass with water in the kitchen
when it flickered across the window
like a frantically blinking eyelid.

Then on the other side of that glass,
I stood on the grass
as it circled again and again.

A neat bow tie
turning knots of it’s own
in the air above my head.

It could even have been a single bow
from the tail of a shadowy kite.
Or even the kite itself,
flown by an ant – standing at my feet
on the path – tethered to it’s tiny grip
by a silvery strand of spider’s silk.

The Copado Cactus

This morning I walked a winding trail
from this cabin through the woods.
The air was warm,
thick from last night’s rain.

Fallen pine needles softened
on the wet roof tops.
It was so still
not even the crowns of the trees swayed.

The only sounds, the drops of damp
falling through the highest parts
of the spiny canopy.
Though none of them ever seemed

to reach the ground.
It brought to mind
one of those rainmaker musical instruments.
How all those tiny pieces

tumble down through the many levels
one at a time.
And how they also never finish their fall.
There was a surprising absence of life.

No grouse to peck it’s way through the third stanza.
No rabbit to chase an adverb
through the final phrase.

I felt like Noah.
Making his final checks
before casting off,
making sure all were accounted for.

Then turning off all the lights,
locking all the doors,
damping down every fire.

Skidby Windmill

The burning warmth of bourbon
and a paper and pencil
can fill even the emptiest evening.

Tonight I am thinking of the windmill
that I drive by twice each day,
how we have become like neighbours .

The ones who greet each other
with a passing nod
but who’s talk is always brief, polite
and is nearly always about the weather.

It stands on a hilltop.
An imposing giant chess piece
that - on seeing the ensuing conflict
- refused to fight anymore.

Those steel grey shoulders narrow
into a smooth waist that flare out into curving hips.
The ivory white top could be a great garlic bulb,
or spoon full of thick cream whipped high into single peak.

Some time ago it held it’s breath for me
as I revved through the pressing floodwater.
So many times I pressed it’s four rotating shadows
onto the dusty road on brightly lit mornings.

But as the sun rose today you had turned from me.
I saw you only in profile
as you stared into the spaces above the freshly cut fields.

And later, on my way home, I felt blanked.
Your back was turned,
your attention on something clearly far greater than us.

I will not forget those days when the winds were high.
Too high even to turn the opposing grind-stones in your belly.
And the way you just opened the slat-boards of your white sails,
allowed it all to pass through,
the song you sang as it moved into the distance.

So then shall I.
The next time the hounds of uncertainty
are straining at the harness
and baying wildly in the fog of the night,

I will throw open all of the many doors
in the hallways of my resistance
and allow them to pass through my spaces.

Just as the air passes so easily through yours.

Bullet Proof Suit

Mark today in your diaries.
Ring it on your calendars.
Gather together on a blustery cliff
and mount a plaque
or a erect monument of some kind
if you prefer.

It sounds like something
you would find in a dark corner
of Ian Flemming’s attic.
But today, it was created.

Spare a thought for the tailor,
standing on the cobbled workshop floor,
in the dim light of the fire’s dying embers -
so many years, a single spider,
spinning a web all alone -
His life’s work complete,
save one final task.

He pulls on a grey jacket,
rubs away the chalk lines,
fastens the top button.

After lifting a Smith and Wesson ‘48
from the coffin of the drawer,
he carefully selects a single bullet
and rolls it between his finger and thumb
like a small golden grape.

An empty chamber now full,
he turns the barrel selfwards.
Arms outstretched, palms together
as if in prayer, his thumbs press
the cold trigger.

The shot deafens the street outside.
Rooftop pigeons fly their ledges,
children grasp the mother’s legs.

Inside the clock’s pulse beats,
the kettle cools
and their air is cordite stung.

On the cold, bare floor
the tailor raises the drawbridge of his eyelids,
bringing into focus
the flaking plaster of the ceiling,
the burning pain spreading through his chest.

The Ears

You know the picture.
A pair of friends.
A group shot maybe.

Usually by a famous landmark,
an immense landscape
or on the steps of museum eating lunch.

But when the shutter froze the moment,
like an insect in ice,
the boy smiling - centre frame –
became a stooge, the punch-line of the joke.

The two flexed fingers raised behind his head
present an ass, a jack-rabbit – a jack-ass.

A photograph of friendship
intended to be cherished, now tinted
with the yellow haze of mockery.

And in the back of the scene, in a tree shaded café
rests an empty coffee cup, a stained steel spoon.

Space

Imagine a sunlit Sunday evening,
after a long day of heavy rainstorms.
See all the coloured laundry pegs scattered
on the wet grass beneath the washing line.

I must show you the empty wine bottle,
dangerously peering over the edge.
A climber planning his final descent
from the mantle high above the fireplace.

Look outside my window into the street.
Feel the cool shadows sliding down the walls
of the houses across the road right now.
Watch all those well tended hanging baskets

swaying their colours in the drifting breeze.
In the distance a car door closes shut.
Hosts say their goodbyes to well fed lunch guests,
who express their thanks for food and company.

Then there is the thing that only we share.
The thing only we can see, sense and feel.
The straight blue lines of purest energy,
forking out and bridging the great chasm.

You and I, now strangers no more.

Clovis

Recent archaeological finds suggest Stone Age men from
Europe somehow crossed the Atlantic and discovered
America in 14000BC.


I imagine him standing on loose rocks
on a damp shore at dawn in a grey mist.
Caribou pelt shielding him from the cold,

the dark fur of his hood hiding his eyes.
An open canoe rising and falling.
Seal hides straining, stretched tight like a drum-skin

over a framework of bone and birch bark.
No doubt his friends that had gathered that day
huddled together out of the spray

and raised their arms to salute those first strokes
that took him out further beyond the surf.
Or maybe it was a small flotilla

with flint clovis spears and arrowheads stowed –
simple tools that carved them into time for evermore
with the corpses of giant bear and sloth.

But I would like to think that the ice fields
spread further south than ever that season.
And whilst hunting on the passing ‘bergs

he decided to continue onwards
striding freely from one to the other
to see just quite how far he could take things.

Then, some months later, weak and close to death
he fell ashore, sick of ice and seal flesh.
After wringing out his salt sodden boots

he sat silent, alone by a small fire
staring up at the moon’s silvery beams.
And beyond that, stars.

Poetry Reading By Bernard O'Donoghue

Last weekend I went to my first poetry reading. It was part of the Beverley Literature Festival. Bernard discussed his experiences of reading and growing up with books in Ireland. He came across as a lovely man, very knowledgeable (as you would expect I suppose).
I was amazed by the questions the audience put to him and I must admit, most of it went over my head.
But his poetry was superb. It was the first time I had heard or read any of it. Listening to him reminded me of something Billy Collins said about writing for the reader - how it was like inventing a new card game. If you turn all the cards face up, then it's too obvious and there's no game. But likewise, if you deal them all face down, all you have are 52 bits of obscurity. Bernard seems to understand this perfectly and for me his poems have a perfect balance of obscurity and clarity. He made it sound so easy. But of course this kind of writing only comes with skill and craftsmanship. Next reading? June 6th - Carol Ann Duffy!

Casing the Joint

As a boy I did not sit dreaming
of a more exciting existence.
I simply pulled my black mask down
over my eyes, raised my weathered
garden cane sword and ran fearlessly into the sunlight

or the cold teeming drizzle of the street.
Today I am one ant in the line,
grounded by the air bag, held back
by the embrace of the seatbelt.
As I wait to pass this red light

I feel the mask of my childhood dropping
once more onto the bridge of my nose.
And then it is just me
and the three hundred horses of a ’75 Charger,
waiting with the rats and yesterdays newspapers

in a damp alley by a jewellery store.
Or maybe by a pair of black iron gates,
in the shadows of some country house.
Its owners turn on their mattresses in the moonlight,
whilst downstairs - among the riding boots and fly fishing reels

- men like me listen to the clicking tumblers of the safe
and pocket their priceless pieces of art.
And now in our kitchen with its leaking kettle
bills, junk-mail, I wonder…
how long can I keep my secret double life from the both of you?

A Teacher's Holiday

As you are packing your cases
and wishing for nicer sunglasses,
the primary school teachers are boarding
the flights of their stairs and fastening the

seatbelts of their office doors
- typically a neglected bedroom with
a cheap desk and a floral roller-blind.
And there they will sit amid the damp laundry,

used coffee cups and unopened junk mail,
trying to create a gourmet feast from just some
broken bits of egg shell and a rusty colander.
The commanders and generals, hidden deep

inside their bunkers, have set the objectives,
decided the targets at which these infantrymen will strike.
And then with no thought as to how all this
will be implemented on the ground,

without so much as single shell of ammunition,
these men and women are booted unceremoniously
from the tail cone of the airplane
to faithfully do their duty. To blindly soldier on.

While you rinse the beads of sweat
from your sun bronzing skin in the pool,
the teacher sits under the glare of a sixty watt lamp,
doggedly trying to spin silk from straw

to tell the wood from the trees.
They also say you cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear,
and that you simply cannot juggle soot.
Yet this is what the primary teacher does,

one week in every eight, six times a year.
Holed away in their dimly lit little rooms,
listening to your footfalls beneath the window.

You on your way to do whatever is it is you do
on all those evenings off.

Evenings

I arrived home this afternoon
to find you already back from the park.
I showered with our playful little girl
while you made my dinner.

Refreshed, I ate from a plate you had washed,
in a lounge you had cleaned,
while you turned town her bed
and warmed her milk.

As she drank, I watered our patchwork lawn
and the applause of flowers you had potted.
Then later, behind the curtains
I read her the tale of the nutbrown rabbit,
as you talked to the TV and marked my papers.

The sun bowed, the cool air came in.
I tapped in my numbers, as you stretched out.

And then we were together.
You reclined in the easy chair
and I hunched on the sofa,
over a notepad, straining to see
in the dim light of our evening.

The Pavlovian

This morning I am in the woods.
An odd tribesman in pseudo-fleece jacket and boots,
wanting an inside view of things
Rigid timber poles of Scots Pine
stand motionless,
while their lofty crowns sway

in a breeze unfelt down here.
The ocean in a sea-shell.
Squirells – with so much to get through today-
dart erratically through branches, over ground,
as if trapped in a glass bubble,
frantically searching for an exit.

Hammers twitching inside a jazz piano.
I was going to tell you
about this brittle brown carpet
of dried fern.
How it blows away as dust
under my weight.

About the flirtation of the sun and shadow
and the tension in the spaces in between.
But the air is suddenly salted
with the dry smokiness of bacon,
crackling and sizzling from our small cabin.
I become a fish on a hook,

going belly up,
no more to fight a losing battle.
I toss my guns in the dirt,
clasp my hands behind my head,
fingers intertwined
and prepare to sign a full –
very un-poetic – confession.

An Apology

All that remains in this garden
of the pond I exhumed last spring
is a bare sandy circle
edged by a flat tessellation
of trapezoidal stones.

Squatting on the rim of that ring today
was a frog, all horny eagerness and expectation,
oily wetsuit sparkling in the sun,
who clearly hadn't heard.

A slow, deep breath in
through a pair of forward mounted blow-holes,
eyes slowly closing as he savours the moment.
Then the twin pneumatic pistons of his legs
sent him high into the air.
All limbs extended into a very X-rated X.

I can hardly speak of the disappointment
I felt for that seemingly insignificant amphibian.
The guilt I felt as the soft silver keel of his underbelly
hit the dry gravel with a dull thud,
rather than a long awaited wet splash,
followed by the pure chimes of water droplets
falling back to ripple the surface.



How could I have known,
that as I stood waist deep in silt
under new green leaves, bailing years of neglect,
that my actions would bring such sadness.

So then what then of the lawn,
lovingly mowed just this morning?

The neighbour, hauling old concrete
who I did not stop to help?

And what of this pen,
frantically scrambling along
the blood red veins of this page?

Beverley Westwood

On a summers afternoon, pinned behind the wheel,
feeling entombed by a grey vinyl dashboard,
I decided on more pleasing route home.
The road through wood, field and pasture.

Tree after tree passed on both sides,
heavy with foliage, so dense in the sunlight.
And the parallel lines of the road,
now bridle reigns pulling me in

through the rise and fall of a meadow covered
in buttercups, spreading their colour to the horizon.
Scattered in the fluttering grass
lay cows by the dozen.

The ancient beasts were down on their bellies,
heads up looking on down the road.
As if seeing into a future, that to the rest of us
will always remain shrouded.

Sparrows (Haiku)

Brown bomber jackets
In your high garden hanger
A cheerful squadron.

Day Spa

To finally close the door on it all,
albeit only for a short while,
and to step barefoot onto the wet tiles
of a room holding only heat and steam.

Then to sit on a hard marble slab,
breathing in, breathing it out.
Every weeping pore a hissing valve,
releasing a pressure that had been
building for too long.

And later, reclined in muted light by a pool,
I wonder about all of you here with me.
So seemingly deranged and confused
in towel robes and damp slippers.

Those of you managing to stay awake
stare in apparent desperation at an
empty space just beyond your noses.

But this is not a sanatorium from history’s dark pocket.
We are just tough little kernels,
ground down by the pestle and mortar of life.

And for a moment today, we all - for a
little while at least
felt better.

Hollow Bones Embossed

On lifting the blinds this morning
I saw the dusty image of some woodland bird,
imprinted on the outside of the glass.
A transparent freeze frame,

an x-ray of feathers, hollow bones embossed.
The head was in profile, turning away
in its final moment – almost as if he
couldn’t bare to watch.

So little ghost, hovering at my window,
where you fleeing the talons of some predatory raptor?
Where you seeking refuge from the rain
and finding no one home

left your watermark message.
How often I trespass into your world,
the ridiculousness of my seed bag,
my lumbering, gravity laden gait.

Your shadow is smoke from a signal fire,
rising into a sky under which nobody stands.
Paw prints in the snow. The clawed bark
of a tree trunk.

Tiny bones entangled in a ball of grey fur.
An puzzling envelope marked Urgent,
posted first class, but on opening
is found empty.

Today is Good Friday, I realise
as I admire your shrouded image.
Angels wings, fully unfurled,
hanging there – a perfect cross.

God's Sixth and a Half Day?

After eating and apple in a garden,
warmed by sunlight this afternoon,
and lazily tossing its skeleton in to the shrubs,
I was nudged by the elbow of possibility.

The potential of that casually discarded
collection of seeds.
What they might become.
And then it seemed such a waste,

that when we finally exchange our plastic lawn chairs
for the permanence of a wooden box,
hidden in the depths of the damp earth,
that we cannot do the same.

While our essence swims on in the ether,
our remaining lifeless shells could germinate
into a green and leafy existence
a botanical Lazarus, rising to the light,

emerging from the pointlessness of our tombs.
Each crowded cemetery
replaced by a teeming forest of life.
Every graveyard, a humid jungle

of chattering vegetation,
breathing life back into a gasping,
wheezing atmosphere.
The aged ones left behind,

will no longer soap down our headstones
twice a year, enduring a freezing drizzle
with a red bucket, a yellow sponge.
Released from obligation and guilt.

Yes they would sit in the shade of our branches,
listening to birds, leafing through old photographs.
Maybe reading aloud from an anthology of poetry,
compiled by a faceless writer,

a thousand miles away.
But now, here in the garden, the sun is dipping
behind a far off bank of Chestnuts -
which I had never noticed before.

And as my notepad closes,
I wonder who they may have been
and what might have been,
if humanity had been created as seeds
from a crisp green summer’s apple.

Pushing Things a Little Further

I feared our conversation was over
and admittedly, it had become a little one way.

Earlier today, as I was sitting legs dangling
in the slate grey ocean,
waiting for a wave that would not come,
I felt a powerful bump
on the underbelly of this notepad
that has become my surfboard.

Was this an omen? A prophecy of death?
A warning not to push this any further?
Enough is enough it seemed say.
So I began to stroke with a frantic rhythm
for the safety of the shore.

But then later, dozing on the unforgiving bedroom floor,
waiting for my daughter to succumb
to the soft caress of sleep,
I whispered softly into her ear.

And I wish I could tell you how it felt.
When in reply she took her
comforter, favourite toy
and pressed them to my heart.
When she said they would make me go to sleep.

Thank You Billy Collins

Billy Collins' writing inspired me to take up writing poetry. I was so impressed by how he combines clarity with such imagination and brevity. He makes it look so effortless and easy. Something that it definitely is not.

I'd love to hear him read live. I was mortified to find that last year he read at a high school less than 1/4 mile from my front door! Although I hadn't heard of him back then.

It's hard to pick a favourite poem. Even those that didn't appeal to me at first eventually rose to the top to thrill me.

At the moment I keep re-reading "Istanbul". It's about a visit to a Turkish bath, and having experienced the real thing myself in Turkey, he really rings true. It's quite an experience.

"Driving Myself to a Poetry Reading" and "Wires of the Night" contain some wonderful images and similes.

I love listening to Billy's MP3 recording of "The Best Cigarette" anthology late at night in bed. I hear something different in the poems each time I hear them.

I'd love to hear from others fans, particularly those here in England.

And as you're here... read on for some of my stuff. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Round Midnight

It is the unexpected life raft of Jack Vettriano -
into which I gratefully climb this afternoon-
and wring the monotony of the hour
from my saturated self.

She is sitting on the edge of the bed,
in the darkness, her back turned,
soft gas light exposing, warming and enriching
the flesh of her arms, shoulders and back.

The full curvature of her waist and hips,
accentuated and magnified
by the shimmering fearful complexity
of her lingerie.

He is backlit by a cold moon,
framed by the leaded rectangles of the window.
A dapper, double-breasted silhouette
of masculine anonymity.

I feel my flesh and bones melt to oil.
A somewhat muted shade I think.
I penetrate the glass
and take my place on the canvass.

I become the arrow splitting the heart,
tattooed low on her hip.

My unseen portrait stares out from his wallet
as he fumbles inside.

Or maybe I am their warm breath,
becoming tiny beads of dew,
forming on the inside of the window pane.

No. I am that thin thread vein capillary
of platinum cigarette smoke,
that rises from her hand into the air
like the fading scent of her perfume.

Level Crossing

Impatient, fuming lines converge
needlessly it would seem.
Each trunk lovingly coiled
around the tail of the beast ahead.

The silky sheen of a blackbird
tunnels under the barrier,
ticking over the tracks
like a mindless mechanical toy.

A jogger – all aspiration and perspiration-
simmers at the gate.
Steaming like a thoroughbred
before the first fence.

Yet the train which serves only cups of ageing,
from which we cannot alight.
Hurtles to a station
were all services terminate.

It calls at Joy, Grief and Love.
Where the first time traveller
nervously shuffles
from foot to foot.

But a fist gripping a hard iron lever
in a white lapboard shed,
raises the rails skyward
to a precarious vertical plane.

Tee Off Times

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

Winston Churchill


It was such an electric morning
that it had must have risen
before first light,
took a solitary swim in a chilled pool,
then showered and dressed in the scent of pines,
and was now feeling exhilarated.

It was a triple distilled
icy plunge of a morning.
Pure and purifying.
A fragile crust of frost
brittled each blade and spear of grass.

The pale blue sky soared
and rolled overhead
with the arctic freshness
of lime citrus vodka
tumbling over ice in a glass.

We sensed each bird and insect –
all of evolution maybe –
was afraid to exhale for fear of disturbing
the still vibration of the air.
A rare vintage only we could taste.

But we did not take for granted
the innumerable elements that had convened
and cooperated in that place
with such synchronicity
to create such a day.

We knew we were merely two grains of salt
spinning in the perfectly balanced flavours
in this dish.
He and I were but two teeth
in a collection of cogs and gears
turning together,
with immaculate timing, balance, precision

Waiting in the Car With Lowry

Whilst sitting in the car park today
of the local supermarket,
I began to feel something
of what Lowry must have felt
as he sat in the Mancunian chill,
pencil and pad desparately trying
to capture everyday life
in the steel trap of its pages.

And the he was there with me,
sitting in the passenger seat.
His cloth cap was pulled low,
spindly legs jammed against my dash,
sketch book and pencil poised.

But he tucked his pencil behind his ear,
pushed his pad into the inside pocket
of his greatcoat.
He folded his arms in a gesture of refusal.

Where are the chimneys of labour,
their grey smoke struggling
into a smog choked sky? He asked.
I paint the ties that bind people
but they avoid each other with hoods
and deliberate noise, he says.

And at that point I realised
that I had – moments earlier
- felt nothing of his appreciation
of such scenes.

I watched him walk away.
A stooping question mark of man,
in a world that had forgotten the answer.

The View From My Armchair

In the late afternoon
winter sun fading in the street outside,
I recline in the plush arms of new leather.

My daughter, two years old, barely three feet high,
has for the first time adopted that classic
“child watching TV” position.

Yes she is lying on her front
propped up on her elbows,
her feet slowly kicking up and down
alternately in the air.

Later she begins to shift
between this and kneeling.
Her feet tucked neatly under her
forming the perfect cushion.

As she chatters away to the friendly
foam and latex clad actors
that dance across the screen,
I ask if she would like to sit on my lap.
We could snuggle down,
watch together I suggest – maybe sing along?

But politely she refuses.
Not for her the sensibilities of adult sitting.
The imagination confining furniture.

She just returns to her prone position
and as the next song begins
she giggles like a jelly.

Friday Night

Tonight I stand shaving before
the giant reflection of myself.
The parallel lines of the blade
cutting across the blank whiteness,
revealing another me.

A glittering snowfall appears in the glass,
penetrated by the plow.
Deep in roads and clear pure tracks
that uncover the surface below.

And the foamy white crests of oceanic pollution,
that cover this sea are raked and cleared
by the toothed head of the dredging rake.

The blade removes, reveals
and leaves no trace.
Just as the sculpture is released by simple tools
from a mass of cragged stone.

Points of No Return

As the light pushes its way around the blinds today
I hear the executioner’s key
unlocking the door of the cell
of the condemned man, as the
clock strikes the hour.
It propels a white, dimpled golf ball
over the highest part of the break
now off the leash, free to silence your round.
A hush that is ended when you stand up
to make your address,
steel spoon ringing the glass, your loud and deliberate cough
all piercing eyes on you.
The penetrating scratch of the anaesthetist’s needle
as it prepares to deposit its load.
That point where you realise that no matter
how hard you stand on the pedal,
you are going to hit the car in front.
And the hard slam of realisation, when flying at 30,000 feet
that the emergency services are not coming.
Neither can you hold your breath forever at the top of the thrill ride
because like it or not - you are going down.
And with the sun now throwing shadows onto the bed,
another page has turned, another day has begun.

Origin

These carefully arranged letters were not spewed
from a bland machine of beige.
Nor stamped by the spindly hammers
of a much cherished typewriter.

I would like to think their existence began in bright red wax,
at the curled fist of an infant as he wrote his name
for the first time, on the back of a used brown envelope
his mother gave him.

Later, his gangly, noodle glyphs took off into the world.
To see if they could stand on their own, make ends meet
and reach full cursive maturity.

Some took to the trees, hanging upside down
by their looped descenders.
Swinging in the breeze like bats.

A few began community service,
attached themselves to road signs
and spent their days shouting their warnings.

Others paired up or grouped down.
Finding that together they could make strange and beautiful sounds,
they resided in the flared bells of brass instruments,
propellers and high voltage wires.
Buzzing, humming and whirring away the hours.

The more adventurous adhered themselves
to the tail fins of airplanes heading for Egypt,
They paid their respects to their ancient ancestral roots
that are forever fossilised on the walls and chambers
of the Pharaohs’ tombs.

Some of like-mind sensed a higher destiny.
Finding strength and power in unity.
With limitless creativity and possibility
they organised themselves into phrases, sentences.

Today, these marks of meaning fulfilled their life’s purpose.
The rest remain stacked and squashed into the cartridges
and refills of our pens,
waiting to throw themselves at the mercy of the great silver ball
that will press them onto our pages,
with a permanence we will never know.

Dead Arm

The uninvited guests and intruders
that call in the night and rudely pluck us
from the body of sleep are legion.

The neighbours making-up inside,
their cats making war outside,
are but a few of the guest stars and plot lines
in the nocturnal soap opera
which we, the audience, are obliged to endure.

But to be woken in the night besides a disembodied arm,
some dismembered upper limb
is an alarm call which never fails to amuse.

A corpse remains, but its essence, its armness,
its ethereal mojo, has made off into the night.
Without leaving so much as note
to say where it has gone
or what time to expect it back.

It is deaf to my commands to rise
and shed its shroud of death,
and as I lift it from its steel slab,
and feel its limp cold flesh
I begin to speculate.

What was it that came in the night
and disconnected it cables and wires
from the sockets of the senses?

Or maybe, taking female form, it slipped silently from the bed
and is standing outside under the streetlamp,
its orange half-glow sweetly illuminating the fit of her jeans.
The dizzying altitude of her high-heeled boots.

Like a bird of prey, its return will be slow and silent.
But as assured as the healing onset of spring,
after winter’s bite.

It begins with a gentle scratching at the door.
Then the teeth of a key, lifting the pins
in the hasp of a lock.

Then just as a final piece of a jigsaw
drops satisfyingly into place to complete the picture,
the spectrum of colour and sensation is restored.
He hangs up his coat under the stairs
and casts his shoes into a corner.

Matthew Coombe

The Kids' Pool

A father wrestles with his little boy.
His treasured angel gently grasps his finger in her entire fist.
They are so excited about their morning swim with dad,
that they hardly even notice
when this unimposing, quiet man kisses mum goodbye
and she retires for a rare and precious hour of “me-time”.

After changing, he attentively shepherds them through.
He gives them reminders about not running on the cold, wet tiles.
He check their float aids and adjusts their goggles,
as they hop excitedly from foot to foot.

But it is not this example of paternal care and love
that causes the rest of us to conceal our stunned shock,
as if the water we are in had not just suddenly been electrified.

It is the visibly protruding hand-gun,
its muzzle tucked neatly into the waistband of his shorts,
that gets out attention.

Not to mention the demonic jester, complete with tri-belled hat,
that screams “Excessive!” at us from his upper arm.
With its venomous serpentine tongue striking, jabbing at us

Between his shoulder blades, squats a piratanical skeleton,
complete with eye-patch and rotting, brown leather boots.
It shrieks with laughter, as it sends a pair of bloodied craps die
tumbling our way.

The unfinished phrase “Love is…” spirals across his chest
in an ancient, yet ornate, cursive script.

And as dad playfully sprays his children
with water from a toy rubber whale,
they laugh and leap him from the edge.
Meanwhile, we all exchange glances,
not wishing to appear judgemental or snobbish
as we drift by, trying to get a better view.

Late Night Rain on Windows

I like being out in wild, wet weather,
when it dribbles into my hair, my eyes.
When getting soaked through ceases to matter.
When it is impossible anyway
to become any wetter than I am.

But at night someone turns up the volume.
Maybe it is the act of lying down
that lifts and recharges the hearing sense.

The immense tonnage of my head, heavy.
Now an immovable granite rock fall,
resting on the cool beach of my pillow.

The gusting rain spattering on the glass
fires me dead straight into some wild west town.
I lie still in my darkened shelter.

I can find no rhythm to its beating.
But the drummers madly lead the marching
through the night to the silence of the day.

The Jumper

No, not the hunched figure,
standing, with stooping shoulders on a motorway flyover,
above the fumes of speeding traffic
on some grey and dismal afternoon.

Neither is this the hand-knitted variety,
that you received each Christmas
from an old aunty
(who was actually a friendly neighbour of your grandmother’s)

Out Jumper cuts a Messianic figure,
save for the T-shirt and combats.
His arms are outstretched, feet planted firmly
in a tumbled outcrop of rocks.

He stares out across the gaping black abyss.
A blind, prehistoric eye-socket
in the mantle of the earth.
The bottom line lying somewhere deep and unfathomable.

In what must be the ultimate leap of faith
he ascends a moment into the thermal breezes
then descends into the oceanic void
and is gone...

A striped plume of brilliant colour unfurls,
beginning a slow and whirlpooling downward spiral.
Down to a concealed and unchartered zone.

Da Vinci, Vrancic and Lenormand look on smiling
as they decide between them just who should deliver
the acceptance speech.