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.