I Travel

 

I Travel

 

 

Chacewater garden centre,

plants its mark on visitors,

who are mostly old.

Sipping tea, chewing scones

of gritty currants, dollop of cream,

jam – cherry, maybe

more likely raspberry,

excavated from the wholesale tin.

Spit seeds from gapped teeth

where they lodge like squatters,

dab tissues on dribbles like blotters.

Some have a partner oppositting,

perhaps there’s a little talking –

sometimes silence because they say

when you know somebody so well,

conversation gets in the way.

My septuagenarian neighbour, Kevin,

clatters metal buckets of weeds,

uprooting daily those unpleasing

thickets of intruders seeding

on his four square bit of green.

From my window his constant noise

is sometimes ignored,

and sometimes annoys –

often inoffensive, but makes me think

of other plots, days gone down

where we’re younger - it stinks

to have me around, he thinks

and he longs for the days I travel.

But here’s where it ends,

bent backs, pots and pails.

Today, I’m on Artemis, out sailing,

tacking across Carrick Roads,

maybe St Mawes, who knows?

Depends on where the winds will blow,

I’m ten years behind him,

in no hurry to rattle my tin

but know, in my heart, it’s coming.

Maybe, nations are only people –

they want to travel too,

their views may be strange,

but they’re views all the same

and we’ll mistrust our sight

as they mistrust your right

to photograph, border and contain.

Within our minds,

travels each and every state

to be explored with rusty thought,

and destination is only            

what a living life has brought.

Butcher’s Choice

 

Butcher’s Choice

 

There’s only one apostrophe.

On the wrapping. Quite clear,

signifying singular:

‘Butcher’s Choice’ it assures us,

slapped on the thin plastic packet

which some sleeving machine

took no time at all to wrap it

in. Purporting to be sausages,

high quality product, these porkers -

a year before a walker

as Squeeze would have it

in reverse – appropriate, you’d think,

but fry them, they shrink

and water come a mi eye.

I wonder what they’re stuffed with?

Sage? Onions? Certainly not bone

sawdust or reclaimed gristle – no

that’d be bang out of whack,

this is top quality and that’s that –

but I microwaved one

for a shade too long

and it turned into brick.

That or a pale thin anaemic thing

you’d get arrested for quick

if you waved it at a trusting public.

They claim with maximum fuss:

‘Good food for all of us,’

in orange wobbly Mary Ann sans serif –

but quick! quick!

Send for the sheriff -

I’ve seen shopfronts

of affronted butchers

murder in mind, downing hooks,

wielding hand saws and cleavers,

taking to a nation’s streets

screaming: ‘Where’s the fucking butcher

who chose these?’

Teatime Tygers

 

Teatime Tygers

 

It’s written as a cautionary tale,

obviously, one you can’t fail

to spot. Even a retired mallet,

gone to seed and having cracked

his fair share of heads

would leap out of his deathbed

for this one. Devised by a hack

with a nought degree, ECE, probably –

into barrel-bottoming

with a major in crayoning,

fuzzy felt and tummy time.

Couldn’t cut it as a teacher,

throws on a dog collar to preach.

Presents two or three pages

using the deepest, biggest fonts,

with, ‘Illustrate this, please –

let’s have animals, with placid faces

drawn not quite right, off centre,

clothed, standing upright,

you know, anthropomorphic porkers.’

Chalk in a comedy hedgehog

with a bonnet, wooden clogs

and a penchant for mushroom houses –

it’s Beatrix Potter with an asinine plot

so far removed from ‘Animal Farm’

the only probable harm

could come from paper cuts.

This self- published slop

is flying off the shelves of no shops

whatsoever like an out of breath

iron propellered Caxton Press.

‘Piggly Porker Chokes On Sausage’:

there’s little industry and no cottage.

Sorcha

 

Sorcha

 

Why do two truths flower on one face?

Maybe you’ll see traces

at first – like how pinks streak a warning sky

before melting into blues – perhaps a cry –

Shock? Surprise? Something you’ll recognise.

Smoke signals that always have been there,

lofting skywards – calling both to dare

to read, pore over the hieroglyphs

once obscure but becoming obvious:

and now the flames are fanned,

she’ll coyly take you by the hand.

 

But how can you both play this harmony?

Maybe you’ll settle for one key,

G Major – you’re a tonic, she’s the dominant,

all hands to duet – each as complement,

soft strokes, neither of you more prominent.

You’ll find a corner – you’ll practise, amazed,

shutting the fallboard but still on display,

to touch in blunt wonder; trace

semi-breves and breves scoring your faces,

and when you’ve had time enough,

she’ll lead you to honesty from bluff.

 

And if you surrender, what will you lose?

It’s not something you can choose,

battlements will tumble like dominoes,

as rushing water into cracks must flow,

thrusting your coracle onwards and you row

against currents, strain at oars, bend backs

until you relinquish and the rudder snaps.

All you might have wished for – yours:

Shipwrecked; entwined with each other,

and as you cling with nails to her beach,

she’ll chide; she’ll tease; begin to teach.

 

Where does elation end and jubilation begin?

That is a difficult place to find,

but together you’ll uncover it; spend time

there shocked by its relief; how fine

it is, long languid hours tracing contours,

from rippled peaks to valley floors,

dazed by the accuracy of the charts you draw –

and once complete, you still sketch more.

No longer strangers on a strange shore,

and as surveyors becoming familiar,

she’ll fix positions and chart the laws.

 

When will you know there’s nothing more?

Here is the unkindest cut of all,

a scratch, but it will serve - then fall,

Caesar - but a little way above your heads

comes some sort of chopper; you’re led

by kindly lights, subtle phrases, shepherd’s crooks

impersonations of those doting looks,

something intangible was all it took –

a smoothing of corners, a grinding of blocks:

and when at last it’s time to go,

she’ll softly sigh and let you know.

Living Testament

 

Living Testament

 

 

And Will. There he is,

rubbing shoulders with Gareth Gates.

jewel case to jewel case

with nothing rare or precious

about it – except attitude.

Some remember the blubbering,

and all that stammers

becoming stripped of glamour

that no longer gleams,

but not many of you, it seems -

given the grime that collects

under my fingernails

should I handle these rejects.

Dido, thank you for another one;

there's ships that have gone down

to escape grinding boredom,

and you can get your fucking eye

off that telescope, Tunstall,

you’ve learnt nothing that bears

scrutiny – go and join Hucknall –

where something’s got him stopped.

Behold more Sandi Thom, confused

by all the smiling, pointing, laughing

at the heap of shite that’s lining

dusty boxes – another load dropped

off in the congested Charity Shop;

not much goodwill stored here,

just some struggling space

being pulled under by poor taste -

and let’s not even get started

on Bryn Teflon and the three tenners,

you parted with to purchase

his palm-stroked, pinched face

to signify depth but betray space.

Between the ears? Could be that,

if that’s all there is, if it’s enough -

but the real question sleeping rough

on the streets, begging for scraps

is who the fuck bought all this crap,

and what does it testify to a nation’s

brains, adjusted for inflation?

So, You’re a Carer Now

 

So, You’re a Carer Now

 

 

I heard it on the grapevine

(good opening line),

that you’re spending not a little time

being a carer, now.

Well, grapevines are pretty good –

for grapes, that is – and wine,

but have little to do with messages,

covert or otherwise –

truth is, you told me.

I suppose there’s a symmetry there,

you being a carer, now,

your mother, is it? You bear it,

she bore you, we’re both 60 plus,

more than a touch of rust

upon what’s left that’s vital:

the NHS whipped yours out.

We didn’t use them, though, did we?

Had the opportunity,

I could smell it, so could you –

but, khalas, you’re a carer, now.

Do you ever sometimes deliberate

if some are born to it? Caring?

Decades spent with that wanker

who worked the cemetery, chancer

who put detectives to work,

had you followed, a complete berk -

checking your mail, chasing your tale,

editing any story we could’ve wrote.

Still, as he went up in smoke –

literally - some said, ‘Solid Bloke,’

and now you’re a carer.

Or maybe, it’s Machiavellian,

that’s what your Marxist would say,

give the masses this day

something to mollycoddle, full bathtubs

of coal, pat their heads, good job,

or promise them, when they get old,

they can travel the world -

they’ve always wanted that, after all.

If you give a shit,

you could ask yourself if the world is split

into those who do and those who don’t.

Care, I mean. I won’t.

Still, I wonder,

now I’ve ricked my knees,

if you’d come over here

and care for me?

Zeta Minor

 

Zeta Minor

 

On the very edge of the known universe

where you must learn to thrive

after passing through boundaries

that separate old worlds from new.

 

It is beyond Cygnus A,

a one way trip, and they say

bringing any matter across

is forbidden, will bring down calamity -

you may not rely upon it, no source

of energy here,

you’re tampering with forces

beyond hideously dangerous.

 

As distant again from Ortoro galaxy;

any plausible strategy

becomes nothing but fallacy

propagated by bleeding hearts and artists -

you can no more bring me back there

than I can bring you here,

to even attempt to try is catastrophe.

 

That galaxy, far from the Anterades,

where scar tissues still breed

in our mind’s eye, will multiply –

if you want, go ahead, try:

but see what it did to my limbs,

the outlook’s stagnant to grim,

atrophied muscle from the attempt -

debt’s doubled, summer’s spent.

 

Any mined minerals, any dust churned

from that sullen world

is venom, toxaemia with properties

so mutagenic you lose identity

like I forgot myself, went beyond

and left just memory to hang a peg on.

 

How naïve - to think in ways back,

that formulae may calculate the abstract

into something concrete,

you can no more turn base metals gold,

spark warmth from cold

after planetfall, Zeta Minor broods –

the furthest border, adamantine barrier

between what we left there

and what we brought here.