Now Put Down Your Pens and Pencils

Towards the centre of the page, I drew a small “V”.
Just two rapid pencil flicks.
A “V” with slightly curving arms.

And in that instant, into that empty space
came an up an a down, four points of the compass
and a magnetic north.
All shackled together by the frayed tethers of gravity.

There was altitude, depth and direction.
It had speed and velocity, perspective and purpose.
There was also a sense of apprehension.
The foreboding shadow of imminent danger.

The scene now had an atmosphere and a climate.
A cloud splitting breeze and thermals that rose and fell
like the tide below.

Yes that simple act had created oceans, land and air.
It had divided them by an unseen horizon,
out there but invisible to the naked eye.

Mountains, rivers and continents so easily crumpled into a ball.
So easily hooked into a waste basket,
the one loitering quietly over there by the door.

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.