20 Tuesday Oct 2015
Posted in Poetry
The social clicks of poke and post or such
Now facilitate the way we keep in touch
And Likes like candles light up the profile pages
To show our great connectedness.
But long before the World Wide Web
Brought new currency to the way
We value social worth,
We wished good friends
The boon of serial returns
And untaxed happiness
To mark their date of birth.
So as more ancient status updates used to say,
Let the returns be many -and happy- of the day!
07 Monday Sep 2015
Posted in poems of place, Poetry
Tags
Boston Harborside, August 26th
For Nize, Dulce, and Jarod
Somewhere in that domain of blue,
Across the sound,
A jet is landing to take me home.
I’ll leave
The flutter of nylon in the wind,
The scent of lemon brine
The smiles of well-heeled WASPs,
The bobbing lobster floats
The happiness of families
Dressed up for summer nights,
The welling anticipation of lovers,
The therapy of women talk,
The baseball caps reversed and telling jokes,
And rich mens’ launches which dart across the bay
Like screensavers to my thoughts,
So now absorbed and lost in all of this,
I leave the mobile-me upon a bench.
Life pauses and then a transformation:
I leave reflection to realization and panic
Silence.
And then with staccato heartbeat
Comes the brittle face of loss,
I glance the time – compute the options.
From nowhere yet apparent,
A thunderbolt command says ring your number
I finger tones, anticipate the rhythmic loop
And fast, a friendly voice speaks in my hand
‘We’ve found your phone….’
Across the room, three faces wave at me….
And soon I’m leaving:
My smile and thanks I’m leaving here with you.
11 Tuesday Aug 2015
Posted in Poetry
Tags
At last, on life’s long pub crawl
– Exactly where I don’t recall,
I finally crossed taste’s Rubicon
And left my youth behind
In sweeter shallows of the easy kind.
And at a darker Solstice now did halt
To drink scorched earth, dark rubied malt
Embracing, we are told, the bitter hops of fate
Now surging transubstantiate,
Its tidal foam running back from caramel sands
To fathoms of adult darkness.
And in this first communion, my mission now complete,
Absorbed full realization, that life is bitter sweet.
25 Saturday Jul 2015
Posted in poems of place, Poetry
For shall the poet starve for words
Whilst shivering in the rain?
And will he drown of silence
By the wetting of this brain?
Or could he turn to pen and air
To make his heart beat fast?
And feed himself on visions
So his thirst is quenched at last
And so I’ll not defend my words
As poets sometimes do.
The words of senses sown,
To the senses are due
Walsall (12.VII.75)
24 Wednesday Jun 2015
Posted in poems of place, Poetry
The BP Portrait Awards
You told us to lock eyes,
Get up close and personal;
Be inspired by Hogarth’s words
And if in doubt, swipe right.
But I didn’t expect a face-to-face with Fairfax
Over the Sancerre and sea bass.
But the Roundhead was a better with pike blocks than with banter
And sadly for me he sat impassively
As I munched on burrata and asparagus,
So I talked instead with Karen.
You might have warned us Dr. Schama
That we’d been invited a Game of Thrones theme night dinner
Where House Stuart showed once more how if you win, you lose
And three big names – Strafford, Laud and Charles
Looked down at us with hauteur and as yet their heads,
As we sat below the salt
Contemplating life’s greatest dilemma:
Of being wrong but romantic;
Or being right, but repulsive?
18 Thursday Jun 2015
Posted in poems of place, Poetry
The alchemy of life’s best demonstrations are found
In sudden switchback whirls to happiness,
As when you stumble upon a random piece of heaven
Around an unsuspected turn.
Today Nature envisioned for us the perfect set:
A sky cerulean pan, unblemished and unwashed;
Big trees with names as challenging –
Black Locust, Cockspur, Hawthorn, Slippery Elm
A man-made Garibaldi pointed the way
Beyond the copper glints of water towers in the lunchtime sun.
The audience gathered and seemed the perfect sample
In gender, age and color,
They cradled dogs, stroked touch screens,
Caressed familiar shoulders, checked the progress of probing ants
Or slept off the late night booze on shaded lawns.
Protected by the hawthorn trees, stood the matt black grand
Its veteran keys flanked by plastic buckets – as yet unfilled with either folded notes or metal.
A third up-turned bucket became the seat for Colin Huggins
Our virtuoso in torn jeans, a pork pie hat and the cheery patter
He introduced us first to Frederic Chopin then to Phillip Glass
He holds us all inside his fingers
And in a moment of sweet modulation
We sit within a circle inside a Square
Held In the perfect balance of infinity.
May 2015
17 Sunday May 2015
Posted in poems of place, Poetry
Tags
For Babs
A generous afternoon gave us
Tea and history,
Mystery, romance and war.
We remembered past visits,
Pictured the family line,
Of parents and their children’s children.
The sun returned in splendor after
Hesitant rain,
But the wind blew through wasted staterooms,
And we, high above the court and ditch
Were sentinels of an empty stage,
Waiting to play our part
In rituals of courtly love.
And afterwards, I framed your face in tracery;
You launched a kiss towards me
And became another layer of history
Here, and in miniature somewhere in the cloud.
.
26 Sunday Apr 2015
Posted in poems of place, Poetry
For Alex and Sarah
The slow motion soundtrack of Spring
Is of fervent excavators, insistent sirens, impatient horns
And the clattering treble of a daisy chained kindergarten
On-the-move and cute in red tabards.
Today the advance guard Easter daffodils
Are parading their yellow and green colors
On recovering lawns
Beneath as yet un-resurrected London planes.
In this theater, my seat is in the southern stalls
From where I watch a transitional stage project all this,
But also what has gone before:
Pre-colonial wilderness; retreating bluecoats;
The grieving tears of mourning families in a potter’s field,
The war cries of abolitionists,
The clattering of the elevated ghost train,
Protesting voices for peace and love,
And the sounds of the Midtown zone of No-Go.
Enjoying now the simple comfort of a bistro seat
-Mobile and thus empowering say the philosophers of public space-
I sit cozily inside this waffle-boarded open topped box
Contemplating scarves and sunglasses,
The fine old library, the resting carousel
The stiletto Chrysler, the taller Empire State and above all,
Feeling grateful for the park of William Cullen Bryant.
Poems
10 Tuesday Mar 2015
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Let’s just not flirt
Or even skirt
Around the issues of our connection.
We’ve swopped and swiped,
Blue-toothed some bytes
And tindered the touch-paper
Of our affection.
No more quip tease
Nor banter, please,
Cease mindful meditation!
My data’s capped, we’re sharing apps
Let’s synchronize some recreation.
So kill mode coquette,
Go full salami, less roquette
It’s time to seize the day.
But should this thought
Still come to naught,
Then as last resort
Please meet my magic spray:
The Lynx Effect (*Known as Axe In France and most of Europe)
08 Thursday Jan 2015
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Naseby, 2008
A Maytime full of memory,
Of Eurostar and travellers’ tales:
A Provence of insect men not Mayles,
Of Vieux Télégraphe and the other red-nosed,
Big hearted vignobles of Chateauneuf
Captured on a postcard
A tour of the terroir Anderson – proud and comfortable –
Garden, sèjour and library;
A meeting with Mother; sherry proffered but pended,
A lunch of local hams and cheeses, of Harborough curd tarts,
The essence of gentility,
And thence, the battlefield tour.
The Colonel and his Lady
In the Vanguard of our party,
Facing up to the New Model wind
And the opportunism of dragoon’ed trees swaying
Against the cavalier horizon
And at a parallel moment,
Somewhere else in the cloisters of history,
Stand some Moss Close boys in the Lichfield Street flat,
Searching for forgotten Merioneth roman roads,
And there in Tomen Y Mûr’s shadow,
John points out the road for us,
Our faces beam.
Veritas Filia Temporis!
Flotsam and Jetsam 