Poetry

Friday, 3 November 2023

Identity

 It is a bit of a come down

But I'd come to expect this of life

In its lifeless distress,

The clock ticks on but I'm not bored

I've just become like the stone on the sword

Waiting like a weight

Heavy as a date gone wrong

But this is meant to be my song


I was a someone, once

But that was all pretence

And I should not be afraid

To throw off my disguise

My make up had started to flake

And there was a small dark look in my eyes

And a sense of the fake

The imposter crept into my skin

I had to drop all the lies


So that was when then

I lost everything like Trump

I must admit defeat

Perhaps it does take more courage say

I didn't win

And return tail between my legs back home

To England

Because I never wanted this ego

This ID that was created by circumstance

Inflated opinion of one

Who is a native English man in a foreign clime

But really I'm

nothing special, just one who had a chance

And took it.

But back in England I am nothing

To speak about

I will need about a year of hard graft

To turn things around

And get back on my feet financially

And now there is a slim window of opportunity

I may be able to grasp

If only I can let go of Hungary and my ID

Low cost

Honey you're so low cost
Why don't you just get lost
You know you are so low cost
You walk in and I feel your frost
Creeping up my neck I want to scream
Into the pages of my magazine
No I don't mind about your baggage
Just don't bring to me your luggage
Now just get lost

Honey you're so low cost
Why don't you just get lost
You know you are so low cost
You kick me out like trash tossed
You might think we are just savages
But all you cause are ravages
Now just get lost

I don't see you anywhere joshed
Hiding behind the last post

Taken for granted

 Taken for granted

Basic and slanted like a tree in the wind

Of the wood

Slanted like the wood

The basic income

The basic good

Taken for granted,

taken for granted


I can see the cure

But I don't want to take it

I'm high on life

and the ride

Is killing me

in spoonfuls

of sugar


She was just some image on the wall

Stuck like a poster

Beyond it all

Yet in the centre

Of the feeling

Thank you

Thank you for the flower from India
I received her pressed in a cardboard shoe box
She had a Saffron head
Smelt of Juniper
Reminded me of the subcontinent
A pity she was dead
Thank you for the thought
From India sent
Mumbai street scenes
Elephant grass, high humidity
Of boggy marshes
The tiger's trail ahead
Thank you for these false dreams
The cut out conveniences
Of mind, snipped, cellotaped at the seams
To run the reel of old India
In my post-colonial, mobile-phone-rung mind


Gate Road

 Down to the gate road,

And beside the running brook

The gargling of sea gulls

As the starving starlings look


The road is cold

The frost takes hold

But robin cheerily sings

things unfold

He is bold to talk of happy things


And mist enfolds the hills

And clings to valley bottoms

It is sticky in the trees

Where the river sheppey rolls

But not forgotten


And we wander over storks of fields

We crunch in icy puddles

As spinneys of trees shine on hill tops

And the sun breaks through

As a yellow shield shining

Through bright dew drops


And snaking along the treeline

The sheppey does take shape

And lifts the pages of the mist

Like bed sheets from its face


The old oak with the spidery crown

Waits beside the gate

And we take turns to clamber down

Across a broken field stile plate


The post is rotten in the ground

It wobbles and it shakes

As we walk around the Lorax patch

Where the cocks crow as men of state


The hens are brooding in their hutch

Like glamorous fashion models

Kept there ready to lay such and such

A golden egg to bottle


As proudly strutting cockerels parade

Their fleeces, like dandified fops

Their ruffs like Elizabethan curls

The court of the Queen of chops


Off with their heads she cries

And headless chickens run a mock

And chicken feet run down the street

And upon the hills spill their blood


As the Cathedral peeps over the brows

Of hills which are vacant of cows

And streaming white whiffs of clouds

Float gently in the blue


I can see through these see through days

Can you see through me too

Invisible in the olden ways

Awaiting the tides of new


As I bend down to tie my shoe

A cockerel cries a murder blue

And digesting all that we've been through

I fill it up and bring it to you


You offer it back like your take affront

I take it back but not from want

I wish I could give, but what I have

Is taken up by the ditch grab

Joke words

 Antonym and Cleopatre

a history of the opposites of Roman Gods, Egyptian dieties



Partner's hip

or partners hip


a sign post for a hipster campaign

and you do it again

and again


scarcity - a very frightening city



Thursday, 2 November 2023

Hell bound

 The birth of clouds

and lightning


the ants set sail on a cornflake


I am a heart I have been transplanted 

I don't know the man for whom I beat


Earth cakes

As the mantle piece of the earth is chipped

And the fire in the hearth skips

And trips in power burst

 The smoke rises up the chimney


the house is

Hephaestus hammering down in hell

Is sending up his magma thunder

As plates are torn asunder

And Others are pulled under

And clapping irons

And molten chains


Mountain bend but also break

John Snow knows nothing