At The Third Stroke…

Today I am wearing a new watch.
And to quote the song – I am feeling good!

Others get their kicks from new shoes
fresh from the box, zero miles on the clock.

Or a wallet of cracked leather
riding low in a back pocket.

But me? It is always a watch.
This one sports a black rubber strap,

orange face and a rotating steel bezel.
It has just two hands and a window on the date.

And I wonder if the twenty seven pages of instruction
(that overlook how to actually tell the time)

are really necessary.
But tonight I will rest easy.

For if I ever find myself two hundred metres
beneath the ocean - its immense weight

bearing down upon me-
I will know the precise date and time of my death.

And there I will remain forever.
A child’s action figure, anchored by the arm

to the sea bed by my new, and now seemingly enormous,
orange faced wrist-watch.

Billy Collins

My pen has hovered over the page like a metal detector
so many times because of you.

All our walks through your woods, around your lake.
Me, the blind beggar and you leading me gently
by the hand over the twisted roots of meaning.
And I cannot count the number of nights we have sat
facing one another across the table in the kitchen,
revelling in the rusty sting of whiskey, while the
candle flame flits endlessly over the wallpaper.

But this is my time to address you and for you
to quit shuffling the deck, leave the dog to twitching in her sleep.

It feels like I have been living in the same house for years
and then you arrive one day on my doorstep to ask directions -
as ordinary as a pigeon settling on the garden fence -
to point out a door in a hallway I had never seen before,
behind which lay I room I never knew existed.

So just so you know…
the room now has it’s own bed, a bright spray of flowers
that we change daily and on the wall hangs a small picture
of a horse grazing in a sunny meadow.
A horse fenced in by the blinding heights
of a black, square frame of wood.

He's The Town Crier

Battleship crowds cruised overhead today
but were later sunk by a desert of
solid blue, pierced only by a
white jet plane that cut a chalky margin
into the sky above our heads.

So many of us gathered together
to see the soldiers parade through our town.
A silver flash of fixed bayonets,
camouflaged uniforms creased razor sharp,
each rank and file in perfect alignment.

A child ate a huge ice-cream and wobbled
on her dad’s shoulders like an egg on a
greasy spoon and wondered “Who is that man
shouting? The one in the funny felt hat?

The Invisible Circumference

It feels that so much time lies ahead of
me that the only image that comes to
mind is a fishbowl filled to the brim with
brightly coloured marbles. It’s last owners

flick their tails and glide silently into
open water. For too long I have been
the marble buried in the centre of
the bunch, the one gasping for air but not

able to kick to the surface. I have
also been the fish patrolling the wide,
invisible circumference, watching
the multicoloured gravel scroll beneath

my belly on a never ending loop.
And tonight the house is quiet, save for
the sound of the clock ticking beneath the
mirror - a sound I did not know it made –

now a tut of distain that can only
be meant for me. No tonight is not the
night I had planned. The ink is loaded in
the barrel of the pen like a bullet

but you just cannot shoot pool with a jump
rope. I intended these words to circle
the skies, to rise on warm thermal drifts and
then vanish like the silver bubbles in

a champagne flute. So I will sit here like
the fisherman’s float, and wait for the time
when I am twitched once and then dragged
beneath the surface.

Tear-arseing

If you were the first onto the playground
and the sweeping wind had cornered the leaves,
sent empty crisp bags circling like greyhounds
then there was only one game there could be.

We would untoggle our parkas and grab
the bottom corners in each fist then lift
them up our backs, over our heads, a slab
of a sail to catch a westerly drift.

Then tear-arse into the gale’s heart. Head-on!
Even the fastest kids across the yard
lost all force and felt their speed’s erosion.
Then blown down flat decked like a house of cards.

For those who conquered that grey concrete hill
lay the kite ride down. A tail winded thrill.

Geography Lesson Circa 1991

Like penguins on an ice floe we would stand
in line then swallow it down like sharp sand.
There was something about irrigation,
farming, but mostly the irritation

of colouring the coasts blue and green for
the land, my crayons on another tour
of the globe. They scrubbed around the shore line
of Europe, then the whole world by lunchtime.

All neatly reduced down onto A4.
Those pencils racked up air miles by the score.
But such a mindless task unleashed huge floods
on seaside towns where painted houses stood.

With each wild swipe of our brutal hands we
could bring life to deserts, unplug the seas.

Off Piste

Our RE teacher never somehow looked
exactly the way he was supposed to.
Bushy Mexican bandit black moustache.
His winter school ski trips to Austria

Always a sell-out, all-ticket event.
One Christmas – a few years back now – they said
deep in the first snowfall of retirement

he caught an edge at the peak of his stairs
and avalanched down, piled up in the hall.

Black ice can wipe you out at any time.

Dust and Bullets

I read something recently by Stephen Fry and he said that in his opinion most contemporary poetry was "arse drivel". He said that to ignore form and structure when writing poetry was akin to whacking a guitar and claiming to be playing chords, when it was really just noise. So here's my attempt at something with structure. It's a style known as a Blitz!

Bite the dust
Bite the bullet
Bullet through the windscreen
Bullet to the brain
Brain storming
Brain displayed in a jar
Jar in the neck
Jar full of marbles
Marbles in a ring
Marbles tripping under feet
Feet sweating in trainers
Feet bare in the ocean
Ocean of hope
Ocean of infinity
Infinity between you and I
Infinite combinations of words
Words are like insects
Words run in herds
Herds of buffalo
Herds of people rioting
Rioting as one seething body
Rioting in anger
Anger – like darkness - devours everything
Anger is a bright red cape
Cape fluttering in flight
Cape of Good Hope
Hope springs eternal
Hope is all they’ve got
Got it in one!
Got it in the eye
Eye of a needle
Eye of the storm
Storm clouds grey and gathering
Storm out of the door
Door to another dimension
Door through time and space
Space… the final frontier
Space and all of the distance in between
Between the sheets
Between you and me
Me catching a glimpse of you
Me looking the other way
Way too risky
Way too hot
Hot under the collar
Hot feverish and terrified
Terrified before the rope
Terrified of the drop
Drop
Rope.

Primary School Fire Practice

Man the lifeboats! Call 911!
Save yourself while there’s still time!
The fire bell goes off in the middle of maths
and everyone falls into line.

“Is it a practice or is there really a blaze Miss?”
“I’m sure that I can smell smoke.”
“Josh said he was going to set the alarm off!”
“And I saw him give it a poke!”

So onto the playground the whole school descends
and each child is brought to attention.
They stamp their feet in the freezing rain
anything for some heat retention.

Then in with a cheer and to a round of applause
come the firemen, all bravado and flair.
With smiles wide and flashing and a glint in their eyes
the lady teachers start smoothing their hair.

“Is everyone out? Is everyone here?”
Asks a fireman in full flameproof gear.
“And who’s that fella’ heading back into the flames?
Oi you man! Get over ‘ere!”

With a wet blanket shielding his body and face
the hero turned, gave a grin
“My Hull City tie never shall burn!
Forget me! I’m going back in!”

A few minutes later he returned, black as soot
coughing up dust and burnt plaster.
“This is my school!” He said clutching the tie to his chest.
Who am I? Why I’m the Headmaster!”

Keep Out of the Reach of Children

She sat on my knee. The shiny red bag slung
over a shoulder means you’re shopping for the day,
sunglasses riding high like a boat on the waterfall’s edge.

She sat on my knee as I explained to her our trip
to the doctor. “Will he use this?” She asked
lifting her tweezers from her nurse’s bag.

She sat on my knee as I pointed to the toy syringe.
I told her how it would squirt medicine into her skin
and it was nothing to worry about.

Even at three, she could clearly see
the colour of every card in my hand.
She had read between my lines and felt
the breeze of my unease on her face.

She sat on my knee as the nurse took a more direct route.
“You’re having an injection today so you don’t get poorly
at big school. It might make you go Ouch!”

She sat on my knee, me hugging her tightly.
A second nurse entered and together both arms
took a singled silver barrelled hit.

She sat on my knee, the orchestra suddenly silenced
the needle snatched from the record,
tears soaking in to my shirt.

She sat on my knee when chunks of chocolate
were pushed in to her clammy palm,
thirty pieces of silver was all I could think of.

She sat on my knee in the coffee shop
and drank her milkshake – mine too.
Two frothy yellow rockets for one wide smile.

But it did not cool the stinging burn in my arms.

Conscious of Time

Even in the lingering light of this early spring evening
the phrase seems to be everywhere.
It is ticking around the feeder with the clockwork sparrows,

it flicks between the couple across the street
as they read their evening ‘papers.
It is like that woman that you always seem to see

no matter where you go.
Is anyone not conscious of time? Nod, raise a hand,
just catch my eye if you have not long realised

that there are only so many cards in your deck,
your chip stack no taller than your fist.
Or that with every dawn another golden fish

is quietly scooped from your pond.
Here on this bed, hot from the shower, I would like to become
- if only for a second – unconscious of time,

resistant to the pull and release of the moon, to be the tiny
puncture point of the compass at the centre of the circle.
One of many circles circumnavigating the globe

or maybe ringing an unknown planet trapped in the telescope,
perhaps a hoop looping above the head of an angel
silently steering a cloud over this house.

INSET (In-Service Training)

Let me begin by saying that yes, we will be
finishing early. I am also conscious of time and I

know how busy you all are, I haven’t forgotten what
it’s like to be in the classroom so I’ll make

a start. If at any point you would like to
chip in, please do. This will work much better as

a two-way dialogue, rather than just me talking at
you. And if I repeat myself stop me, turn the

page, grab me from behind and hook a palm over
my mouth. Drag me into a dark alley and

tell me to shut up. I really won’t be offended.
Now if you would like to go off into your

groups to discuss that, I’ll be taking feedback in…
shall we say… five minutes?

“We Got a Runner!”

When the hammer strikes the head of the chisel
I imagine the muffled shot ringing out down the

cellblock. I picture myself squatting, waiting, listening
for the guards’ heavy horizontal footfalls on the steel

gangway just the other side of these vertical bars. And
only when I am certain that the sound has not pierced

the uncertainty of their poker hands do I deliver the
second blow and wonder how to breach the steel laced

deep within this concrete. But the purpose of today is
not to evade the probing searchlights of the towers, or to

defeat the perimeter fence, not to make it to the border
before the dogs taste my scent. Today is simply the day

to remove these tiles, to force this blade, to watch the fractured
shards fall into the tub. Such a day could even be my season

in hell, where each created space is instantly filled by
another, appearing exactly in its place.

Sweaty Yeti

Does the yeti get sweaty
in his thick furry suit
yomping over the tall icy peaks?
But you know it’s no joke
when you long for a soak
and all you can smell is your feet.

And there are so many troubles
in a life without bubbles
when there’s nowhere to shampoo your hair.
When his pits become niffy
and give off a whiffy
he can’t just go’ dry-clean his fur!

So what can he do?
It’s below minus 2!
And he’s starting to feel a bit mucky.
He finds a cold mountain river
sits in it and shivers
and plays with his best rubber ducky.

Wile E. Coyote

The long battered muzzle
sickly yellow eyes
and that unintended toothless sneer
are surely the result
of a lifetime of struggle and defeat.

If it is true that God loves a trier
then what better example than he?
Canine cannons litter the canyon
but on he goes undeterred.

Even as he plummets to the ground
he is thinking of his next big idea
which we all know will end

in a long descending whistle
a dull and distant thud

and of course

a tiny plume

of smoke.

The List Makers

What if I were on your list?
The next slippery rung on your ladder
another silver bead on your chain.

I could be a black bottle of wine
lying on the stone cellar floor beneath your house
wearing a raincoat of dust
laid out like a legion of body bags in a cavernous warehouse .

Or perhaps I am your next bullet point.
You in the heavy boots, jeans and black T-shirt.
Those dark green - watching from behind the shutters
of an elevated window - eyes fixing me in the crosshairs.

But here…let me save you some time.
A well place mine on the twelfth fairway
or a man-trap in the sand-trap by the ninth green
would seem a far simpler modus operandi.

And there is the roll call of all those who just vanished
like the frost on a sunlit field.
Those who allowed the tide to take them
or left in the normality of the moment and never returned.

Leaving not even a chalk silhouette
in the hallway, face down
just a few feet from the door.

The Flip-Side of the Coin

Sundays evenings at home
can be like the dentists
waiting room,

listening to the shrill shrieking
of the drill
upstairs.

It is on these nights
that eight hours sleep
passes too quickly.

The turning of a page.
A vase falling,
striking the floor.

Dark mornings
moan in my veins
like smoke.

But not right now.

Now is the time to let
the beads of silver
slip down the beer bottle।

A time to recline deeper
in this chair
and doze

through a movie
where I really haven’t a clue
what’s going on.

Ice Breaker

The simple garden at the back of the house
with it’s playhouse standing in the corner
and the empty bird feeder swinging from the fence
faces dead north.

Which means, if I am correct, that the road
beneath this misted window travels east.
And if the morning weather report is to be believed,
then somewhere miles beyond the end of this street,

out over the rolling slate waves of an icy sea,
is gathering a sandstorm of snow.
A vast swarm of bees,
spiralling in on itself again and again.

A biblical plague of white flies which,
whilst you and I have been playing out the introductions,
has swept silently through this place,
like a deserted spectral train

that screams through an empty platform,
its tattered drapes flapping wildly
through a thousand glassless windows.

Fridayville

No matter where you are
such a place always seems too far away.
A small black dot on the far edge of the map

cut off by thick forests and rivers black.
But in this place the coffee is always fresh
the air coloured with the salty scent of bacon.

The children sit in their brightly coloured
classrooms listening to stories.
And in the afternoons they paint pictures of dragons

insects and far away lands.
The old ones walk in leafy parks.
They eat their neatly cut sandwiches

in the shade of the bandstand.
Then at dusk some gather around
tables of green felt to play some bridge and drink tea.

And by late evening the children curl into their beds
the parks are empty
and the cards neatly stacked in the bottom of the drawer.