Revolver

Revolver

 

He’s older now and only grabs you by the air

when he knows your hand used to be there,

drags you down Truro cobbles by tractor beam.

You forget to engage inertial dampers, it seems,

and with a shock sling shot around the sun

you find yourself down past, something undone

minus money for a choice pair of trainers.

Would you have paid that? You just wouldn’t.

Once there were cassettes, C30, C60, C90, Go!

You’ll find them in this ancient world, you know,

but later you surrounded yourself with discs,

they’d scratch - but overall, definitely less risk,

fed up with the old twisted tape and pencil

routine, and I remember how you purged them,

in one of those troughs that follow every peak:

you were down, despondent, couldn’t speak

but held Lynsey DePaul back for a rainy day;

sold all the others except tapes you’d mixed.

They’d once held hearts that came unfixed

and mean nothing to us now. Each disc a door

opening onto another past and another reason

why, at the end of the year, this midwinter season

you find yourself here, naked like Schwarzenegger.

The lightning flashes. In the past, looking forwards

at times passed, coming from dark moving towards

light, or not. Smarter than your average bear.

All that ADHD might put hairs on your chest,

but leaves you down and out, wanting breath,

and you can't ever reach discs from high shelves

that Harry Moss has yet to stamp and press.

No way of knowing a stylus would lead you here

but, by the same logic, any spiral scratch

would inevitably bring the door, lift the latch,

spring the trap and down you’d inexorably tumble.

So, those choices you made were always chosen -

times to be happy, times to be numb and frozen,

those lovers you left, the ones yet to come.

Women who'd traced the grooves of your face,

and friends who'd vanished, leaving no trace

or anyway to reach them, talk of old times

about adventures gone and committed crimes

you repent of now, wished you could forget

even those sins that have not happened yet.

He’s older now, you’re somewhere back along

spinning old discs, walking old tracks. Old songs

that I suppose, one day, you’ll leave him with.

So there’s only two ways this could really close,

tails you win, heads you lose - you choose.

Attacca

Attacca

 

Now it’s time for the year to croak,

and your muffler chokes your duffle coat,

trailing scarves, mittens from strings -

chalk up these as few of your favourite things.

Now, with percussion of coughs, sneezes,

quick, quick, take Beechams, strepsiled throats,

sing a song of cherry menthol tunes.

Now, take space between Christmas dreams

and a glorious dawning of New Year,

to relax, legs up and spin the overture,

footballs, kick backs, downfield crosses,

parked buses and celebtate nil-nil draws.

Now, Footfalls measured, underlined, flossed,

join average punters outside dim lit stores,

buy cut price roped-soaps, body scrubs,

shiver at the freezing of the blood.

Now, Janus is astern wrapped in plastic

sees you peel back everything on your table,

pictures painted of straw and stables,

they'll put jam on your carrots, say it's good,

every little helps and this is not just food.

Now, Janus is forward, scopes naked trees,

fixes on recycling collecting, uncollected,

hollow empties that bottle banks rejected,

drooling from boxes, leaking from bags,

winds whip and chase torn papers in drag.

Now, in a coda, Santa’s gifts born like seeds,

sprouts germinating from microbeads.

Interstice

 Interstice

 

 

Like seeing b/w - no one told you backed with

and all these years spent pondering meaning.

You're pretty much back with all that you give

not really breaking even, but, hey ho, let it go,

just tally up a few more of those working years.

While you keep hearing there could be snow

but not this year, not even close, the radio

recalls that they say the same every season,

some known to place a bet - not you, not yet.

There’s not quite enough space for your knees,

always conscious they’re crushed underneath

your record decks; coasters that protect the desk

but leave coffee stained rings instead –

you’ve got eight now, some shaped like 45s,

others imprinted with those football crests

of teams supported over many festive slots –

Charlton, Villa, Wolves – you’ve got the lot.

But now they pass across, build from the back,

never lump it long or feed forward attacks,

all that anticipation only flatters to deceive

like undead trees have shed dead leaves

getting between the spaces, filling the cracks,

plugging drains with a dank brown fairy wrap.

Stoppering what’s past, what’s yet to come,

raising toasts of happy new year, everyone.

Seal

Seal

 

 

There used to be plastic, that much is sure,

like the world sealed in your snow globe,

shake it, shake it once, my love,

watch the fake flakes coat the potted world

and wonder what’s behind the green door.

 

Well, we’d often buy your Kipling’s mince pies,

which made good sense; no one likes them,

ripping them from wrappers, my love,

six chucked in the oven and giving them ten,

then we’d let them jacket the bin for size.

 

But now plastic tumbles from fridge to floor,

racked up foiled boxes of unstruck matches,

peel them, peel them, once, my love,

suck jam coat sprouts from seasick sachets,

honey-glazed seals for skins and cores.

Wrappers

 

Wrappers

Overlaid in maps on blue ice ozatex skies,

those Christmas branches are bare naked lady fingers,

with bordering latticed stubborn evergreens,

twisted from nodes into unfathomable knotted tracks,

where each road twists and tangles beyond the next,

promising with a wink you’ll get there yet.

And you? The routemaster with the whip hand,

you’ve forked out enough in presents, more than a grand,

while ivy clings, points heavenwards in signs,

but you’ll follow these quiet lanes into a monkey puzzle,

rather than anything approaching a grand design.

Beneath your feet glitters the strewn rubble,

and as you’re later bagging up discarded wrappers

look long within for a diamond in the crackers.

Persephone

 

Persephone

 

 

He leans forward, and we’re in a cabal,

pulls his mouth down with a ‘listen, pal’

and ‘I want to tell you a story’, I’m thinking

Max Bygraves has become a proper stinging.

I’m staring at his rubbery fingered flesh

as he pulls on a Stella, takes a breath

and we’re the only ones stooled at the bar.

He’s agitated. ‘Have you come far?’

I’m asking, but he blanks this gambit,

because it’s obvious - we’re both in transit,

sitting in the lounge, lost between places,

moving on, kicking over our traces,

or some such - he pulls at my sleeve

with words like - ‘you wouldn’t Adam and Eve,’

and ‘let me show how I met Persephone.’

I’m sceptical. We’re in that liminal space -

‘Watching the English’ by what’s her face,

much the same age, weather beaten,

any words that pass will be fleeting,

of little consequence, so where’s the harm?

He orders; the third pint’s the charm,

but he’s rabbiting; I only recall snatches:

a child of harvests, the moon watches

her struggling with that looking glass

of the phone, dialling up woeful diagnosis,

of the worst kind of self inflicted neurosis,

and how hard it is to get through a day.

Her indulgent parents scowl, hope, pray,

here’s Demeter, with some other bugger,

an aged, kaftan toting, Glastonbury tree-hugger,

who owns a CD of Thunberg’s greatest hits,

and has indulged his child quite a bit,

but, the time comes when time’s enough,

dropped hints that she packs her stuff

and heads off over fences to pastures new.

She reaches for that narcissus that grew

beneath her fleet of foot, the ground splits,

free, free, free at last – but just for a bit.

Now, we’re both teachers, did I mention it?

I push across our fourth, he takes a sip -

all contemplative like – considers his words,

says how long before she arrived he heard

her noise and clutter, a Lieutenant Cockatoo

outside his office, but what can you do?

Claims she’s come to teach – the very latest

in a long line of innovation, and very bravest

for coming all this way across the world.

He’s smiling, nodding, looking at the girl

thinking - what do they churn out of college

nowadays – is it what passes for knowledge?

Here’s a kid to front a class of goats,

and, sure enough, there’s her sick note,

the first of many to claim ill-defined disease

and I’ll take another sick day, please.

So, he passes her a pomegranate’s six seeds

along with a letter about failed probations,

hie thee home to your parent nation,

hail and farewell, don’t let my door smack

your face as you leave, baby, don’t look back.

And that’s that, it seems, well until today

when in Costa he saw his Persephone –

disembarked from his plane, grabbed his case,

and never thought he’d see that face

again in his wildest dreams. But there she was,

an aged Demeter in reluctant attendance,

fussing over bags and her young dependent.

So my mate bolted down his coffee, left quick,

with the viscous rippling of an oil slick.

Spectrum

 

Spectrum

 

In the land of the grey, your Spectrum is king.

And when impenetrable clouds are parting,

crowds grumbling about feathers of lead,

muttering misshapen chaos of well meaning forms

stuffing caps onto flat heads to keep warm,

take the plunge and don’t be afraid to dart

like an arrow right through them, boy.

Look up, look up, and look up again,

you’re bound to see a base hanging there

in the same way that bricks don’t

and avenging angels, kick-ass angels

deploying to bring down your Mysterons

with nothing more than a plucked harp, a hymn

chanted – boy - Melody, Harmony, Martha,

lamenting the loss of Lancelot, Arthur

and his Merry Men in Sherwood greens.

Well, that’ll do the trick, or so it seems,

yet onwards they grind in flood tides

of hydraulic action, all abrasion and attrition,

tectonic plates shifting conservative friction,

your earth’s quaking so give the word:

call Jeff Tracey and launch Thunderbirds.

 

F.A.B.

 

In the land of the grey, only you and I

are the complete palette, the diapason if you will,

the full Adam and the Ants with Marco on bass

gaudy buccaneers in real McCoy white stripe face,

a seven nation army with a way that’s a will,

sashaying past any looks that kill

and going to Wichita to work the straw,

past pushchairs, crutches, fistfuls of traveller’s dogs,

muddied up thoroughfares, vaped up fogs -

wielding Steed’s swordstick to sally forth,

see a red carnation and draw-cut it off

for Mrs Peel to buttonhole our bespoke cloth;

machete swathes through these brothel creepers,

repel all boarders, disengage all filters,

Scotty, maximum warp and where’s Captain Kirk?

Now, you should see Polythene Pam or Pat Mustard

staring at us both sardonic and unflustered,

looking through at us like they just heard

a cry of where’s the warrior without his pride -

and something’s gnawing us deep inside, boy.

Of course, even though it’s plain to see,

the only ones here are you and me,

I’m certain you’ll join me when I shake and say

in this land of grey, every sod has his day.