Of Gales, Crows And Zoot Suits (18 Poems)

1. St Nicholas Kirk, Spring The ivy's creepin up the wall Towards the clock. Old Father Time Already turns the snowdrops brown How short their flowering! How sublime In purity those sun frost days When Winter leaves & Spring steps in! St Nicholas in sober greys A sanctuary from city's din. Beneath the graves the quiet dead Make the transition like the flowers Who seem to pray with bended head Their seconds spilled by fleeing hours 2. Gale in a Northern City The wind is rocking the bus, like a steel cradle Ownerless plastic bags, graze in the trees A raging tethered ribbon, causes commotion Beech leaves rat-at-at-at on a postman's back He is folded over, facing towards the gale Like a bull, about to charge a grinning matador A man in blue pyjamas stares into the empty Street from his council window. He is three Months late in his rent. He'll not go out today A wheelie bin lies toppled on the road Refuse spills from its mouth like a sick drunk A trampoline lies where the gale has flung it A child's toy, tossed aside for another plaything Dark granite confronts the sheering wings of gulls The wind sighs from a giant wound in the sky Heavens' breathing runs off the accustomed scale Animals cower beneath the roots of houses. 3.The Murderess Sally was sturdy at school, with reddish hair, With a meditative stare, and freckles Nobody shuddered when she walked through a door Her fingers were squat and nimble, Her handwriting, precise and bare of scrolls We shared the vista of roofs and sooty clouds Walked between classes to the sound of the period bell; Dreamt, like that Mr Right would canter boldly up On his snow-white horse, from the happy-ever-after Our alma mater became an ancient wood Where beetles scuttle through memories. We were all quite bewildered, in our quiet lives Hearing that the dunce of the class in bravado Had murdered her faithless husband Everything has the potential to reach the edge To come to the starless abyss, its grave conclusion Did she know, in her virgin girlhood She'd put her handsome prince in a bloody coffin? Amo amas amat Well well, the age old story. Vintage husband Sniffs out younger model Even the humble daisy can crack cement Women deteriorate, but men mature Events blow over us like mournful shadows Lawyers made the heartfelt apology; Crime of passion British justice held no truck with that I think her skull, in which the brains grew bright Filled with a howl of grief against betrayal His life, her freedom, gone in a knife flash In all respects, the woman was perfectly normal In war time people are killed for lesser reasons 4.She could have come from anywhere She could have come from, anywhere and nowhere Vienna, Ireland, England ran in her veins, In Prague she slept in a squat, Sang gypsy in sleazy corners. Men went mad for her straddlings, moanings, lickings Oh, she could pack them in, a full house every night Her jade-green eyes were deep as the cool Pacific But dead behind, like a drowned ship ten years down Looked like she bathed in a golden tub of ass milk Skin like a peach, with a sex-life down and dirty Spoke like she'd been born to rolling lawns Playing at poor, gap year of roll-your-owns Lived life at the edge, in Marrakech Chose junky lovers, relished the crazy buzz A dangerous woman, of the ancient line Delilah, Sheba, Mata Hari, Eve Even streetlamps agreed the girl had grace A cougar who could eat men up and purr. 5. A Very Auspicious Birthday: for Sally Evans, poet & editor We are gathered here together To give thanks for the birth of this poet, Sally Evans, in the month of the Ram This self-same day, was born on the birthday plate Alessandra Ambrosio, Brazilian model The very rice pudding of pouters Rembrandt, Chopin, Rita Hayworth, Boris Yeltsin, Mike Tyson, Billy Graham All hail, this Sally, This gardener and beekeeper, hen-wife and poet This Pegasus amongst editors, Born in the year of the horse in the Chinese system Feet unbound, galloping out in style A high bred filly, with an independent streak Hard working, intelligent, popular In the Zodiac, she is a ram Three Cheers for the Stanza winner of Grand Slam! May her hens continue to lay their golden wonders And all her poems hatch out in perfect flight 6.Cauldron Rocks Running North from Machrihanish Camper vans and loaded cars Surfboards, wetsuits flippers snorkels Crabs in creels an fish in jars Barefoot tousled water dabblers Bubble round the cauldron rocks Barnacled crustaceans scribblers Race from chasers without socks 7.Child Model He holds a pose for a painter Hoping he'll fill his bowl Hurry up mister his eyes plead Look. I've scratched my drawing on the wall Any buyers for that? 8. I Think I'll be a Sailor I think I'll be a sailor. A-pirating I‘ll go I'll have a monkey up on deck, wine barrels down below I think I'll be a tailor. I'll be a wealthy man I'll dress the rich and famous from Paris to Milan I think I'll be a soldier, with bullet bomb and gun I'll be a famous general, with medals, twenty-one I think I'll be a tinker, I'll travel all the while I'll have a shiny motorhome and roam the world in style Hope I won't be a beggar. Hope I won't be a thief I think I'll go and grow some more on beans and bully beef 9. Quiet Moment So thin the curtains that the light shines through Wild flowers make a shabby table gay A shadow falls across the whitewashed wall A stifled cough. No work begets no pay A clutch of weary fingers stitch a seam The evening passes quicker with a book Two sisters, locked in weary solitude Both hungry, but with little left to cook. 10. Girl in a Punt The punt, a wooden water lily, glides Along the Thames, an idyll green and wet As into Hadley Pool the vessel slides And here the trailing willow briefly hides The love-forsaken Lady Henriette Fleeing from heartbreak, gossip, cruel jibes She'd hoped to join the Season's summer brides The peak of her ambition, poor coquette Vain hope the very raucous crow derides She has fast growing life between her sides The seed that means she never can forget How trust betrayed, launched her on troubled tides And this is how a springtime love duet Becomes a shame, a shudder, a regret 11. My Uncle's Ladies Cranking my clock back to Eden, I revisit a blink of life Colossal, cherished I shared my childhood with my uncle's ladies Cows who walked from the byre Swaying fabulous hips Together we lay in clover chewing the cud Learned to take life on in peaceful mouthfuls Munching in sunny meadows under the cornflower skies 12.Crossing Princes Street, Edinburgh Princes Street… The trundle of trams Patter of toddlers… rickety strollers Judder of buses…. the traffic jams Down in the gardens cricket and bowlers Lights flash off and lights flash on Dodge that motor and you'll be lost Bang it's the castle noon day gun Here's the pavement. Phew! We've crossed 13.Eavesdropper Bohemian life's corrupt and vital in Marseilles where the sailors go Women sell themselves for a trifle. Trade sails in where the breezes blow The scented bushes and jasmines flower. Shady pleasures are out on show A bored Madame from her fusty bower, eavesdrops on a negotiation Fashion's sexy but facts are power. Kaleidoscope of tribes and nations Trawl the bars for a bit of skirt. Drink or the current drug sensation False façade of a jaded flirt. Here is danger, delight and dirt 14.Zoot Suits We come to Britain from Jamaica man An Trinidad, West Indies labourers It's cold and dingy. We ain't got no plan We can't afford no fancy cars or furs Lordy, we miss already swaying palms The smell of Mama Babba fryin yams Check out our zoot suits. See us flaunt our bling And when yo' British rain falls down, we sing 15.Campden Town Camden Hill Road, a Sunday night Baptist Church on the corner of the street Pub, church pavement's where the people meet Sunset city in the warm half light Children playing before tea & bed A slice of the evening. A lemon curd bite Sunday sermon tells that Jesus bled To save us sinners from the fires of Hell Old folks listen now they're almost dead Granny in the wheelchair like a sucked out shell Mouth pursed in and her jaw sunk down 60 years ago, a Cockney swell Sunday, Sunday the week's pell mell Slows to a sidle with the Baptist bell. 16.Hand-me-down Joe Hand-me-down Joe rolls his trouser tops Over his belt. As the hemline drops From his second hand jacket and his stitched up shirt His knees are scabby and his wellingtons hurt He hasn't had a bath since the Lord knows when An his folk doss down in a squatters' den Hand me down Joe, no fixed abode Dirt for a pillow and his bed's the road 17.Crows in the Frost Leaves curl around their spines Like famine-hungry people, Hugging themselves for warmth In the multi-storey woods Crows glide into their landing bays Up in the sharp-edged air Planes drag strings of pearls Over the plate-glass heavens 18. As the Clock ticks Clouds like fraying damask, loosen and unravel. Amongst the skeletal beech trees, Scaffolding waits for its brick and concrete cladding Under the boots of shoppers, Trampled down in the lust For desperate sales, Early stars drown in city mud I am still acquiring knickknacks My family, soon, must toss In the skip of my out lived time Three cormorants fish from a rock beneath the prison. In the tarry ripples of dusk Rats whiplash their tails at the river's edge Two swans dream of their cygnet days Amongst the freezing tangle of the reeds Tonight I fill with peace like a tired cat As the clock ticks into the new year I am not tomorrow yet Aloneness is a comforting companion. It does not mind that I am a limping fox A fiddle with no bow A high wire walker, wobbling A many-faced chameleon In the human jungle I listen to the sand Hissing through the hourglass I am not tomorrow yet