Blackberry Way

 

Blackberry Way

I am old –  groan noiselessly

when she announces in pebble smooth tones,

‘Grandad, we’re coming to your home.’

 

Whatever shutters that exist

inside the head descend in whatever that is –

tiredness, maybe the need to be alone,

flushed thinking usurped by another’s design,

because you need time to take the time.

 

Or energy, where did that go?

10 years ago I was scarcely this slow,

and before that, watched my children grow,

taught them to read maps, trace contours

with fingers, choose safe roads, avoid detours.

 

At the swimming pool, I clowned it up,

although I’m not sure my heart was in it

I did my trick, with the shades and stick:

the blindman, tripping over the edge, falling in,

looks of disapproval; laughs from them.

 

Later, on a ramble down to the stream

with bribes of some-day, one-day ice cream,

3 of us counting flowers, cataloguing colours,

making super-slow progress

due to defective shoes, wardrobe issues

trying to find rainbows within undergrowth

and above the sun shining like it’s summer.

 

And there were blackberries – along the way –

our lips purpled from picking at splays

in the thickets and thorns.

 

So when my little one looked up

from his bowl of grub

children's menu in a tacky traveller’s pub

just off the A30 at Fraddon –

spooning pasta and peas inside at mach speed

and says: ‘Grandad, more please,’

had I ever in my days seen such joy,

or life in the eyes of a young boy?

Fused

 

Fused

 

Something nabbed your attention

before you upped, took flight

early morning - the night’s

just given up the ghost, packed his bags

calling a bad job good while it lasted

but some things are just past it –

irretrievable – expired warrantees.

On the unvarnished fence, beneath the trees,

not one wood pigeon, but three –

an odd number, you’ll agree,

and all sorts of jiggery pokery on display.

You shrugged, went for coffee,

the kettle’s bust – well, of course it is –

the culprit’s hammocked upstairs,

blasé about the whole affair,

everything breaks when you don’t care.

So, that’s you in need of a flat white

because everything’s called something shite

these days – in your pocket a fuse.

There’s only handfuls of peoples, don’t lose

any hair over it, no need for grief,

know that each and every one’s a thief

of what sanity’s left – don’t grit teeth,

keep your eyes fixed on the cobbles,

avoid the desperation in those hobbled

gawps of Big Issue pushers, high-viz jackets

gives the vigilant an advantage –

you’re in Wetherspoons, any damage

kept to a minimum – scanning headlines,

thinking replacements, crossed red lines,

blown sockets, burnt junction boxes

and, of course, cost. Whatever the causes,

were, or will be, or had been,

in the end doesn’t matter, it seems,

and, on your return, you look to the fences –

two of three have scarpered, one’s alone,

seen through the ruse, feels blown.

Broken

 

Broken

 

 

Not hearts, not yet – that’d be a crime,

I’m told – no, consider the washing line

in the garden, planted plumb, now askew

beckoning to you, come, come –

it looks like rain, sodden cloth will strain

and science points out foregone conclusions.

Why your frown fords rivers in confusion

a wilful blindness, or, if you wish,

incalcitrant unbelief that you dish up

when things fall apart, strewn in bits

around your feet; it gets right on my tits.

A sort of a Shinigami syndrome,

I turn my back on you; it’s broken,

reaching for my wallet, pulling out cards

as weeds crack open paving on the yard,

your fan oven's blown her cover aghast - 

surely if something’s serviced, it lasts,

but without effort it’s next to no use,

when I begged the kettle today, it refused.

Such Stuff

 

Such Stuff

 

Sometimes there’s a flurry of interest

in some older lines

I wrote, when the universe

was less than half its present size

and such wisdom I was gifted was not wise.

These words wrote for bad luck – named for 96 -

penned 10 years ago when I was sick,

and, as such, more a McFlurry of a poem

rather than a stiff breeze

raking her insubstantial hands through leaves

to pour over what can be read

in such shed skeletons littered there.

Such stuff is hard to scan,

some younger self buried within

interred in murky caverns where

the only touch is the feeling fingers of despair

scoping mossy walls.

Ah – we’re scarcely there at all:

Recall, it was dubbed voluntary

but do it - or we'll all go to the wall -

they’d offered parting presents, a speech

from his own to each –

‘Here’s a record voucher, take it to Pete’s.’

At first you refused, shook a sullen head,

but, acquiesced, spared shame – redeemed it:

there was no love - blank slates

that waxed lyrical and £20,000, give or take.

So, you can see, any words from then

are tainted like a sailor’s tar–dyed nails,

scarred autumn brown; when I sailed

I left a mess behind, well, you do

when it’s sprung like a trap – it’s true

she said she’d wait, but I don’t blame her:

I did, you understand? It burnt,

tormented those coils within until unlearnt,

a rubbing of sea salt into rashes - make it sting,

flesh abraded, buffed raw, to delight in singing

dirges – yo-heave-ho – something Siberian.

Leave it at that –

ten years after the fact, those words

were mulch, a sediment forked

after all that was said and more that was thought –

such stuff

as blossomed windfall apples.

Like As the Blackbird

 

Like As the Blackbird

 

 

Like as the blackbird uproots the sparrow

who offers temerity as occupied space,

so do you, one unsown day, stride the narrow

Cornish quiet lanes, strewn like straw – make haste

while the sun burns golden fields fallow.

On the right flood tides have swollen Truro River,

placid she lies, satisfied, hardly a contraction –

‘Push,’ you think, ‘Let’s see action,’

for nothing so deep can ever be empty,

scoped troughs disclose her horn of plenty

where Lady Mary Killigrew’s ghost mans sentry.

So, now, here’s a dog – a real beast – carnivore

that snaps your leash between his jaws,

not one of your crawling mops – arrow straight,

he leaps out to symphonies, a dreadnought,

an iron spine, a bulwark cutting barely a wake,

who yields at last to his master’s voice.

Rounding the bend – as if there ever was choice –

come across at last those squat dwellings

that bed themselves into rocks, hang off cliffs

like a crooked mouth full of milk-teeth

in need of dentist, tooth fairy or both maybe,

rest awhile, sip beer, look to see that same blackbird

harrying near, ‘Release! Let slip! Take flight!’

It’s but a fancy – but even as the day becomes night,

let Robert Culliford push open floodgates and write.

String Beings

 

String Beings

 

 

Let’s talk leads, the cheap nylon sort,

dyed, red, green, blue; an eye for a hook,

just one notch up from baler string - look,

they’re sprouting like runner beans supported

by cack-handed, fist planted bamboo cane,

hanging off bent nails in budget petshops.

You know, leads presuppose guidance,

direction, the firm hand of a flight lieutenant,

chocks away – they’re off. Here’s a couple

with a fistful of dogs, small - burnt crumpets

on four legs with barks like toy trumpets -

your Mini-Milks scraped off the bottom

of the Poundland ice cream freezer

bargain basement acquisitions, less Caesar

more seized, hung bags of shit from trees

comes extra. They’re tripping the Gay Gordons

in a Gordian knot of cat’s cradles, cordoning

off safe passage, choking thoroughfares,

any protests made falling on deaf ears –

like: ‘Hey, walking here, I’m walking here!’

too late – dog’s seen the rabbit, he’s off,

owners phone scrolling, vaping or moths

to any gossip candle, hers on hers and hers,

in words tossed out so fast they’re blurred,

sheep in wolves’ clothing tugging herds.

‘Well, did you hear, did you hear, no, well -’

if words were mince there’d be pies enough,

shepherds a-plenty would have their fill,

most of them on pills, ill defined diseases,

dragging their dolly-dogs just as they please –

‘You can’t bring that bloody thing in here,

she says to me, there’s produce to flog.’

Strange – you don’t see guide dogs

as much anymore, negotiating safe routes -

who knows, maybe they’ve been crowded out.

You’d like to remonstrate with them, shout,

but no such luck -        

ah, you’d envy the life of a root vegetable

just before it’s plucked.

The Sunken Kingdom of Lyonesse

 

The Sunken Kingdom of Lyonesse

 

 

‘Will all Great Neptune –‘ Trevillion cries,

on horseback mounted; bound for St Michael’s:

between a trot and canter, abandoning lance,

raising his visor, skimming his hevva dance

on top of black churning backwash.

Did not the sea lick hooves, lap fetlocks,

advance on her pastern? As the land dropped,

Admiral Benbow himself stirred his ghost

to walk Chapel Street from post to post,

summoned Baines – ‘Cease your spinning,

there are greater yarns than these to be told.’

For it has come to this – that gold scimitar

bending Marazion into Mousehole far

as soft Devonian bounded by granite blocks,

owes dues to her serpentine and schist rocks –

is invaded, has fallen. Dogs, choked by string

do strut and fret, yap at the smallest thing

that stirs within oceans deep, trip the unwary,

lift legs to leave their mustard marks.

Baying hollowed hordes bellow nothings

to scroll and ring across the retreating bay –

there is nothing left they did not nothing say.

And that once great Kingdom of Lyonesse

sucked reefs - fled to sink itself within distress.