A Shortage of Angels

On Christmas Eve
Mum brought the box
Down from the loft
And happily
We tipped it out on
The rug and set to work
Upon the tree
A mess of tinsel,
Gold and silver,
Robins red and baubles blue
The lights were twinkling
But - no angel for the top
What could we do?

Dad was at once
Sent out to buy an angel.
He was well wrapped
Against the cold
The man in the corner shop
Was very sorry
No angels.
The toy shop, too,
had sold out.
Newsagents,
and Supermarkets
Everybody said the same
This year there's
An angel shortage
We believe Christmas
Is to blame

I woke that night
I thought I'd heard
Soft bells
I went to the window
And stared up at the sky

I caught my breath
As the dazzling stars
Blazed a halo around the Earth
Each star, I thought,
Is like an angel
Celebrating Jesus' birth

The morning came
And great excitement
Opening presents
All for me!
I bought Mum
her special perfume
And Dad a film
about Bruce Lee
But later
when the house was quieter
I went, all alone
With my thoughts,
to see the Christmas tree
And there,
upon it's top-most branch,
looking down at me
Guess what I saw?
That's right -
An angel

Two Poems

Billy Elliot

When I was a boy
I hardly knew what was what
Unlike Billy Elliot
Dancing, spinning, spiralling
Through the heaven
Of the Victoria Palace Theatre
Bending the imaginations
Of the stalled audience

But are my tears
For a childhood lost
Or a life beginning?
And am I really any wiser?

For Paul

Your sadness
Overwhelmed us all
Drove us from the road
Upturned us in a ditch

Your new love?
You wrote songs for her
But she betrayed you, lied
Took all your loving
And sold it for a silver hammer -
Bitch!

Moveing

I dreamt I was moveing
That’s how Americans spell the word.
Well, in this dream they did.

This dream was not of blood
Nor of swimming in a crimson lake
Of paint
Which in a dream is a symbol
For death
Nor was the dream
Of a blood-dripping moon
A symbol
For sex

The dream was of a word
The word that is a symbol
Moveing, travelling
From here to America maybe
A misplaced person
And then, as often happens, the dream woke me

I am woken by the letter e!

I travel to the bathroom
Try to get back into the house of Nod
The roosters are crowing
Even though the sky is still black
And Jill turns on the light to read
And this odd poem is nagging me
To be written down

There! It’s done!
Now maybe I can go back to sleep
And dream about
A misplaced f

Word Break

Here in France
I am relaxing
And reading a poetry book

And look -
I don’t want to appear
A sanctimonious git but
I do believe that a poet
Should be able to spell the word
Ukulele

Et se laissant tomber
Dans une expression Française
Hors du bleu
Est-ce que c'est vraiment nécessaire?

Meanwhile
It’s nearly suppertime
And the smell of rabbit stew
On the stove
And scent of burning logs
And the lost beetle
Buzzing round the room
Looking for a new bolt hole
Pretty much
Says it all

The Poetry Kit

Stan the Postman delivered it this morning.
He leapt through the hole in the hedge
With a loud – Da Dah!

I carefully slit open the flaps of the padded envelope
And the thin box slid
On to the newly-polished kitchen table

The box was red plastic
It was disappointing, I have to say.
I was expecting wood at the very least
Or silver
Or maybe a substance not yet invented

And red
Such an obvious colour
Cheap

The box was smaller than I’d hoped
Not tiny – that would have been fine
But thin
Insubstantial

Looking back now
I can see my naivety
Was it really such a surprise that,
as I pushed the small plastic catches
with my thumbs
and the box sprang open,
was it really such a surprise
to find it empty?

Royal Observatory

You need time to see
All there is to see
At the old Royal Observatory

In the octagonal room
The long pendulum of time
Swings slowly
And on a cool New Year’s Eve
You find yourself
Standing on the frost-flecked slopes
Of Observatory Hill
Watching for the second
Which every year escapes

Meanwhile
The new-fangled atomic clock
Loses only one second
Every billion years

How can we live
With such a gaping margin of error?

A Thousand Mile Journey

A thousand mile journey
Must start with a step
A lesson begins with a queue
A mushroom risotto
Begins with a cep
The many starts out as the few

The story – four figures
Dark suited and sad
Who carry the coffin above -
Begins with a second glance
Shyly returned
And proceeds with a kiss
And with love