Guitar

 

Guitar

 

So, he said he wanted a guitar

that played A Flat Major - well they all do,

don’t they? Step, step, half step, step,

will make a musician of him yet,

firmly press that fourth fret.

 

He has not yet got calloused skin

and it’s enough to see his toothy grin,

if he wants to learn it, learn it young,

this much, I know.

 

But, I’ve already bought him two –

electric and acoustic, he sold the last

for a quick buck, down past,

and the other’s depressed, broken string,

sat in the corner fading.

 

I plug and pick up my bass,

trace the laugh lines on his face

with ancient, thickened prints –

you frown, you think

back to when you were him.

 

I could teach him the riffs,

how fingers shift,

cross strings, up necks, plucking,

but his drifting mind’s on other things

and he’s already much the master.

 

So, we scour Truro Carboot sale

and cannot fail

to see consorts of lost guitars

in various states of disrepair,

marking all the scuffs of frustration there

upon the casing and the body.

 

And for North of not much change

from fifty notes, he chooses that one

he claims has many songs

that sit unplayed within.

 

He’ll take it home, corner it,

and it will sit forming a dusty shell,

until he feels the pull,

and somewhere something clicks -

and I know that we’ll duet.

Champion

 

Champion

 

Sometimes, Dobson claps a telescope to his eye.

In fairness, a phrase that could suggest many things -

for when they weren’t thinking,

The Beatles would burble on about diamond rings.

Think Can’t Buy Me Love or Eight Days a Week –

or why is K T Tunstall putting her thick eyes there

when she was lacquered up and want to speak or greet

an uncaring audience, her apathetic listener

who couldn’t give a toss that she was irate

about whatever people called Katy and spell it K T

get knickered up about. Bargain bins, he suspects.

However, whether or not it is correct

to clap that telescope, to offer up applause

to raise from the bowels of the hall seditious roars

or drag up words from some old classic like Peter Pan

because she’s painting her nails by Costello’s lake -

if he’s not a mop, why, of course he’s a rake

who never gets the point, for goodness sake.

Well, here it is, thinks Dobson, indeed it is here,

how very difficult it is to raise a cheer

after all these wasted fucking years

rolled by, like Fat Nelly Melba and her Elephant Parade

and if that wasn’t something, it should have been,

when, after all, he stares through one end or the other

big, small, perhaps macroscopic,

but always inconsiderate in black analysis,

always selfish, or so often enough he was told:

Blake sold us out Avon, even you, we’ve been sold,

and now all those hawkers are getting comfortably old,

comfortably numb, forgetful in their ancient dotage,

through false teeth sucking gruel and potage,

pea and ham, oh, how apt,

dropping dead, like flies fall from a window sill

you dust into a shag pile of suffocating carpet –

here’s an A Flat Major, well, he can work it now,

a single most important scale that exists,

but back then, they were taking the piss,

and he’s stuffing hay-bags, cleaning shit from hutches,

holding axes while the other hefts a sledge,

thinking he should risk the ledge,

the noose, the shotgun, out run pellets,

fashion a workable home from pinewood pallets,

live above donkeys farting in the barn

with straw enough to keep both warm

or use a double-bass as life raft, downriver with the bow,

as Vonnegut said, well, so it goes, thar she blows,

oh, he could forget that which he should forget,

forget, forget they’d beg – or would if Dobson ever arrived,

but, the problem is, he’s still fucking alive.

Crust

 

Crust

 

Sir, your pie has no filling.

Oh, it has a crust –

a little indigestible, to be sure,

not enough butter, too much flour

with saccharine enough to choke,

ah, you did not rub

and there’s the joke.

 

Sir, there is no filling in your pie,

just a heap of ingredients

piled high,

culled from an old, old book:

Fanny Craddock’s Victorian Pantry,

Beatrice Mould’s Garden Panties –

they sit beside your lumpen suet,

you thumbed the pages,

shook the cruets,

stirred in vain, but could not do it

and pebble dashed the porcelain

with whatever’s in there

that passed for brain.

 

Sir, that pie lacks for filling -

a homity pie, a pasty pie,

but you’d hardly call it a humble pie,

beneath your crust

there’s only sky;

echoes of something hollow,

a knuckle bread without the yeast,

an empty church that wants for priest,

a disused chimney,

a frigid flue,

a Copycats version of Who Do You Do,

an impersonation of a cliché -

Oh, Betty, you are awful,

without the laughter

or the pratfall,

Oh, Vera, I don’t really know,

too prosaic for a piece of prose

dressed in other people’s clothes –

when it’s cooked,

you hold your nose,

it’s stinking out the kitchen.

 

Oh, sir your pie is only vacuoles,

eat it and effluence flows

downriver upon a common stream,

to a confluence

of empty theme,

which only the mediocre laud,

and any sort of criticism is poured

into tone deaf, cloth ears

excuse me, for I will not hear,

and even when it’s hard to swallow

they’ll lap it up

and surely follow.

Forever

Forever

 

Thirteen, quick witted,

and his chunky monkey

is last year’s handle,

firmly in the past,

gone at last - the way all things go,

flame furiously then glow,

quick, quick, quick, slow,

a last drip of a firework’s drop.

 

You’re wondering

should he be reminded

or should it be forgot –

you could bring it back,

an old, shared joke

between us both

that landed, kept giving

but life continues living –

cannot countenance delay,

you’re waiting for push-back

when his airspace is full of flights

already on their way.

 

For him? It is forever,

as it was for us all,

but I remember a photograph

she sent, sepia tint

or at least it had faded,

fallen from an album

of her back pages, lain for ages

amongst dust, in colour

of dusk musky rust

and perhaps those sticky hinges

had relented, set it free,

a fluttering moth of the past.

 

The lines were familiar,

but no cinnamon scent,

no warmth, no kind words,

or fingers through thick black curls -

through your mask, glimpse deep below,

where black urchins

on the seabed grow

fishes flit, skip within a silver spark

you haven’t the skill to seize.

 

It is forever, sang the breeze

dancing with the olive trees,

the carob and the weeping fig,

but Maltese lizards scutter

like castor oil slips the flask

for what is past, has passed.

Handful

Handful

 

A handful of people

arrived by boat today,

yesterday; the day before -

cast off their pine oars,

hands of sore blisters raw,

and draggled themselves 

up the shore.

 

Gooseberry crumbled

on fair beaches

where the white cliffs soar,

dreamed of those who slept

on a black ocean floor

and maybe they wept.

 

And your grouses shriek

go back, go back

attack from vantage places

on clattered moor

for Swallows and Amazons

don’t live here no more.

 

No Peter Duck, No Missee Lee,

the land from which

all visions flee,

where imagination died,

and there’s something rank

that lives inside.

 

They’ve collected invalidity,

our one-sticks.

Would like to club you dead,

but knock-up greeting cards instead:

Fuck off, fuck off,

piss off home, bro, 

you ain’t welcome

to our bread.

And she keeps a life-size placard

of Nigel Farage

and calls herself teacher.

 

Swarm greenfly of Beelzebub!

Infest carparks of district hotels,

invade quaysides by harbours,

one hand free for swigging lager -

know-nowts scream something obscene,

cursing what you should have been.

 

Beg you never to forget -

no pity lives across this land

no outstretched hand

to take a cup of kindness yet.

Miss

 

Miss

 

You’ll miss me when I’m gone -

and she might.

 

Like waters closing quarters over a shipwreck

dragged down until the upper deck

is nothing less than a defiant turret

the struts and frets

its hour upon the seabed and collects

barnacle crusts and wasted mussels.

 

Watch, boy, as she folds into folds,

pulls herself over like tarpaulin covers holes

or sticks conceal a trap

you read between the pages of some crap

book set in a mysterious coffee shop

or convenience store selling slop.

 

She owns it, you know? That shop.

Many were the years she sat, waiting,

push change with fingers, contemplating

your arrival, counting coin,

round and round

like ice poked with a stick,

behind her desk and there she sits.

 

In her domain, my Snow Queen,

oh, and how there have been

so many, in multitudes of Bechers Brook,

writing disoriginal books

with disapproving looks, ah, those looks,

and pens that stuck their foot in the craw

where you might not find

no capacitor to be kind, just a resistor.

 

Never kill your darlings, he said,

refuse her, thank god for daily bread,

here’s a lip curler of contemptuous sneer,

no room for kindness here –

you’ll end up on the cutting room floor.

 

Concourse an airport, where

her new employee, anxious, checking time,

settiing compass for some warmer clime.

Dancer

Dancer

 

In her Purple Sari of royal colour,

she comes with husband or with lover,

by hotel pools to film each other

ready to get up and do her thing -

but no swimming.

In epic fail to get wet,

models decorative ankle bracelet,

of Eastern silver or rolled gold,

perhaps right modest, right delicate,

in ornamental filigree -

and dances solo her latest flambé.

Strikes poses taken off the shelf,

taking selfies of herself,

flinging arms, throwing shapes

twists to Bollywood soundscapes.

Her camera tracks her as she goes,

it tilts and pans and flirts,

while husband-lover Striped-Shirt

is by jacuzzi, on the steps,

remembering never to forget

to stand before her in a trance,

a posey by the potted plants.

Flick water at her and you'd feel

a fountain in an eightsome reel,

but already she’s on a call

and pouting - happy for all

 to share her weighty exchange

and never finds it strange

that nothing ever really changed.

Once, a fledgling wanted to bring

joy to the world, influencer

crossing waters, a tiny dancer

and happy slapper

be one of those clowns

that jump-scared towns

when that was still a thing.

Shaky-cam, maybe travel worlds

filming Filipino street food,

posts room upgrades on YouTube,

TikTok, Instagram, X -

adds bagged laugh sound effects

that echo with joke shop emptiness

and reverberate inside hollow heads.