Tag: poetry

Don’t meet your hero

Don’t meet your hero at the shops,

Because they probably moan to the staff

When the screen says “seek assistance”.

I don’t want to meet Steven Gerrard—

Probably not at all. Only a silent totem

Can bear the weight of a child-like worship.

But definitely not in a restaurant,

In case he exhales dramatically,

When the steak comes out well done;

Though he doesn’t send it back.

And never mind the girl you could have known,

The one from your Psychology class,

Who pops up in an absent mind.

She probably speaks slowly and loudly

In English to the Greek waiters.

And the friend you’d see every weekend,

Before they moved away: rolling out

Of their driveway in front of rolling tears,

Doesn’t say ‘perfect, thanks’,

When the barber holds up the mirror.

And sometimes I’ll start a story,

When you start to slip into chatter,

That blooms around us into a warm hum.

And I lose you for a minute,

While I speak into the narrowing space.

And yet I stay grateful that I met you.

At the shops

I think I just saw you

at the shops.

You were leaving,

I was just paying up.

An awkward confrontation.

Not with you,

But with a self

I think I’ve left behind.

Not good or bad,

Just incongruous.

An uncollapsible distance,

That suddenly bleeds

Across the shoddy divide.

The self haunting,

With whispers of things

I used to say.

And then you were gone,

Along with the feeling,

That only comes back

On wet spring days,

Or an old friend’s face.

Village

A Sunday: given clarity by the Spring’s mellow sun.

A car, rolling through the swelling hills of England,

And cutting past the unchanging, stoic fields

That fostered modesty through worn-out, modest hands.

–

Then, raised between the narrow stretches

Of borrowed Roman roads, appears the village.

A name, melting into the list of all those before,

The home of some minor poet, who I’ve never read.

–

The streets are haunted by the ghost of heritage,

As the dwellers cup the tender flame of history;

Playing at Romantic simplicity in the “Old Post Office”,

And planting roses around the “Coach House” and “Rectory”.

–

Finally, the tired church bell rings a hollow note,

Announcing the union of sharp new faces,

And, in that second toll, I hear the solemn lament

For joined hands, that toiled this land for distant Grace.

–

The flurry of houses slows, then stops,

Where a schoolyard roars with truthful words,

And the sharp sting of childhood cuts through

The sepia tone past, misremembered and misheard.

In the long grass

I stumble across you, in the long grass;

Half-static, beaming through the morning dew.

A quiet spot, where harsh grief slowly grew

A monument, off the well-worn daily path.

–

I’m carried this way by the faint laugh

Of a stranger, that rings like yours would ring,

Or a memory that trickles in,

And leads me here, back to the uncut grass.

–

I shook, in time, the gloomy, pious cold,

And left off my pulling at the gnarled dense

Gorse, and tore down the metal border fence,

To let nature’s plain reality take hold.

–

Now the evening sunlight splashes on the scene,

And all the birds sing knowing, cosmic rhymes.

Though the elements soften those sharp lines,

In time, all melts into all else that’s seen.

–

So, again, you will recede out of view,

When some bee stings me from this best-dreamt past,

I’ll carry on my way until, at last,

In the long grass, I’ll stop and see you.

Shit chat

Do you really take it as a compliment,

When the woman at the check out

Pauses, and judges the truth in your face?

You’re only just 25, with cracks around your mouth.

–

Do you care which route I took?

Which combination of tarmac strips,

That weave between our existence?

I lost my faith along a clear A6.

–

Was the food really perfect,

Like you said to the passing staff?

Did you find the time to taste,

On the ebbing tide of laughter?

–

Do you feel the funny way that,

Wrapped within those early nights,

The tender warmth escapes your mind?

Until I find you in the lingering light.

–

Buried, somewhere deep,

In our well-worn cadences.

Is the outstretched hand– reaching

Across the unbreachable space between.

Spring

Go on, and leave me at the brink of Spring:

In fading daylight’s gentle hum.

When darkness sails off in memories

And all is yet to come.

–

Bottle up the damp perfume,

That drips down off the setting sun,

And shrug against the growing chill,

That takes its time to come.

–

Think of me, amongst the breeze,

When all is said and done.

Then fill your mind with golden skies,

Before the night time comes.

At a window in Lisbon, at night

Amongst the muddled blue-ish wash,

Is a tone that shifts from pink to grey,

And streetlights bubble up below,

And glow like sap on twisting bark.

–

Some windows wink behind their blinds.

But there, across the sunken street

A cool light blares from a kitchenette;

Warmed by muffled conversation.

–

I strain to piece together the human drama,

Played out by those silhouettes,

And fill the space left with the hopes,

And fears of a ceaseless mind.

–

The air is sweet; heavy with an irony.

Despite this proximity, stumbled on

Through uncountable coincidences,

We still find ourselves,

Unbreachably apart.

–

Spots float in front of my eyes,

And push me away from the humanity below.

The eruptions of life recede into the inky distance,

As they go on, under their purples skies.

–

The fence is falling down

The fence is falling down.

The panels groan,

Well above the evening news.

–

It’s flexing with the tide,

Of the brand new coastline,

That now cuts through the street.

–

I wrote a thread on Twitter,

To try and prop it up,

And stuck my insecurities around the posts.

–

I voted for the Fence Fixers,

But they kicked the neighbours out,

And the fences still fall down.

From the Corporate Anthology

A shout out to the dreamers,

—Baked beaners.

Street sweepers, full-beamers.

Butchers, bakers and candlestick cleaners.

From the corporate marketing Zoom callers,

To a vaguely defined group of consumers.

We’ll take your cash but ease the pain,

With dramatic cadence and cliché.

Speed it up—

…slow it down.

Make it all feel more profound.

And ground your words in humble roots,

With clear-skied shots of Northern towns.

Appeals to phoney wartime spirit,

Mixed with local dialect—

“Make us a cuppa and a proper brew”—

And general fear of the internet.

Covid, back to work,

A bit about too many phones,

Every day heroes, sepia tone shots of

Yer da skipping stones.

Syntax, swapped to force a rhyme.

Break of scheme to hammer home poignant messaging.

So get out, switch it up, change the world!

With your friendly, local [insert here].

Give us your fucking money.

Or we’ll endear you even more.