Shouting

My voice is very loud

So loud, that at full strength
It can demolish a building

My voice sounds normal to you
Because I am whispering
Very, very quietly.

When I was six
I became so excited
Watching a football match
That I shouted
And deafened several players
The shock wave
Burst the ball.

No one knew it was me.
A freak underground explosion
The local paper said.

As I grew
So did my shout

 When I was nine
My mother took me for tests
She explained to the doctor
About my voice
But you could see he didn’t believe her

I remember wondering
What would happen to him
As the ambulance drove him away

Las Vegas

I need a bigger pen

to write about Las Vegas

and a bigger book to write it in
A pen
with pictures of Elvis
or the Rat Pack
etched on its barrel
picked out in diamonds
and rubies
A book
covered in the skin of okapi
its leaves rolled from the finest papyrus
stolen from a Pharoah’s tomb

And I must clear my mind
as I write about Vegas
of Elvis singing Heartbreak Hotel
to the jingle of slots
and Frank singing
My Way
on a loop
from here to eternity

At the End of the Day

At the end of the day

all you have left is the night
When all is said and done
all you have left is companionable silence
When the fat lady has sung
all you have left are empty seats
and used plastic beakers
At the end of the line
all you have left is an empty carriage
and discarded Metros
At the end of a lollipop?
The stick
At the end of a dream?
Harsh daylight and broken blinds
a cold bed
At the end of a book
the after images of words
a maelstrom of thoughts
the plastic petals of hope and heartbreak
already leaking through
gaps in the memory bank
and sluicing along the gutters
towards the end of the poem.
And then what?
A pause for reflection
or maybe time
for a brew

Feeling Sorry For A

Some people feel sorry for A

Few people travel there,
it’s a starting point
if you’re heading for B.
But not I.
It is a first choice destination, after all.

Some people feel sorry for B

but I think
it’s useful to have it up your sleeve.
It’s a back-up plan
It is a popular destination.

I feel sorry for C.
No one travels from A to C.
And how often does plan C come into effect?

I feel sorry for the others, too
with the exception of X of course
who is a bit of a grump,
always marking things wrong
but is very good
at marking the spot

Spider Woman

Now we know
What's behind

The Pink Door

She enters, takes a bow
To applause and cutlery
She wears a red satin top
Black tights
She swings easily on the loops
Of blue silk
To La Vie en Rose
By Edith Piaf

You ease
a fat finger of crab
from its shell
glance up at the Spider Woman

as the music grows louder
As she spins those fantastic shapes above you
Shapes rarely configured by humans

But this doesn’t excite you
No

Only when she slips
Lets go of the blue silk
And tumbles
With a spider’s luck
Into a bowl
Of oyster chowder

Do you nod
A smile of satisfaction
As if you had expected that

You dab your mouth delicately
With a white napkin
Before checking
An incoming text

Tea Ceremony

Sadly

In the Seattle Art Museum
We didn’t have time to watch
The Japanese Tea Ceremony
Video

The Naming of Stones in California

Amethyst for wisdom

Obsidian for protection from unknown spirits
Rose quartz for protection from blushing
Wear a tiger stone and
you will never be caught unawares by a tiger
Likewise Lapis will protect you from rabbits
Serpentine will protect you from unusual duck behaviour
(not, as many believe, from snakebite)
Nephrite will hold your hand
at confusing road junctions
Adventurine provides an antidote
to proselytizing parsons
Greyish rock with white flecks
will help you relax after a heavy meal
Turquoise for successfully looking something up on Google
And discovering you were right all along
Nephrite Jade for stiff necks
Iron Pyrite to guard you against shoddy souvenirs
and people talking bollocks

In the Beginning

Hello, God.
Hello, Dave.
What can you see?
Nothing.
That's right.
Lots and lots of nothing.
Now watch this...
WOW!!!
THAT'S AWESOME
What is it?
I call it Dark.
Now watch this.
WOW!!! WHOOEEYYYY!!!
That's even more awesome.
What's that?
I call it Light.
And I've something else to show you, Dave.
What's that, God?
Come back tomorrow
and you'll find out.

Bamboo

And so, I was wondering

how these notes and scribbles
could be fashioned into poems

The chewdog technology
at the Pampered Petshop, for example
the Tequila Mockingbird,

Hearsy’s Cartage, “Careful since 1890”,
The mythical feats of the shaman, the warriors
and spiritual beings

And then, in Victoria
I found a book of poems by Billy Collins
in a sale at Munro’s

It led me, in a series of verbal winks,
poetic gestures and the subtle movement
of vowels, along the sidewalk

And around the Writers’ Block
to this small coffee shop

I can't wait to drink
these freshly-brewed metaphors
that smell so warm and sweet
as the small, Italian waitress
with the delicate hands
pours them into
the Chinese porcelain
with its brush-stroked
mountains and bamboo

Stuffed Animals

Dead and cold

In the back bedroom

That was always damp

Dad probably swapped them

For a tuppenny blue

Or found them

In a house he was demolishing

Maybe in its loft

The glass case jammed beneath a beam

Gathering dust

A squirrel, a crow?

I can’t remember now.

I was probably seven or eight.

I think there was a badger.

I wonder where they are now.

Twenty Five Years

Twenty five years

That pass in a nod

In a wink

Whizz by in the blink of an eye

Quicker than drinking

Before you can think

Twenty five years

Jammed to the rafters

With boxes of laughter

And crates of adventures

And loving hugs crammed into corners

and crevices

Shoved down the backs of sofas

And hoarded in cupboards

In nooks and in crannies

Momentos and memories

And even the kitchen sink

Is filled with flowers long gone

Black-eyed Suzies and yellow roses

But their perfume and colours

still lingering on.

Twenty five years

Who would have expected

The fun and the joy

To have lasted so long?

The stories we made, the music

We played, the melody still going strong

Twenty five years

And the past grows and grows

And each month overflows, and each day spills

Into the next like a song you can’t lose

Showtime of new shoes,

Tears in the shade

But fun in the sun when you ain’t got the blues

Such a shame that the memories fade

But the game carries on

New memories made

Our marriage just doesn’t feel old

Twenty five years, we’ve the silver

Now the thrill of going for gold

This Week I Like Cats

This week I like cats

I gather them and mould all around me

To the shape of cat

Cat plant holders

Cat towel rails

It’s an all-embracing cat experience

I line the walls with cat paintings

And the mantelpiece with cat figurines

And re-post hilarious cat videos

And cute kitten videos on Face Book

I worship the constellation Orion

And conjure ancient Egyptian Gods

I wear a cat-emblazoned tee shirt

And Siamese cats peek from my socks

A Persian cat sparkles in my naval

This week I like cats

Next week I will be liking frogs

Listening Through My Separator

Travelling along Forest Ridge

Also known as the Winged Eel’s Tail

Sometimes called The Devil’s Bridge

Or the Dandelion Moonlight Trail

Often called the Pancake Trap

Also the Valley of Old Tin Cans

Where the chrome-winged bone crows flap

And Ant Man Bee makes jagged plans

I am listening to Trout Mask Replica

On the border of the Land of Frown

Listening through my separator

I think I need a lie down

Silver

Silver, a metal of mystery

Spun by the light of the moon

Not brash like gold

That’s spun in the sun

All heat and fire

An unsubtle metal

Soft and so easily unshaped

And undone

No, silver

Beguiling

Suggestive of rivers

Flowing into a midnight lake

Of clandestine meetings in forests

Of lovers impatient

For that first kiss

Of the magical light

That just before dawn

Grants you a wish

Oh, and smiling

Lots of smiling

And all of the love you can take

Who Do You Think I Am?

(For Liz Brownlee)

Who do you think I am?

The Fount of all Knowledge?

The Fountain of Wisdom?

The Tap of General Information?

The Well of Understanding?

The Stop-Cock of Interminable Trivia?

The Spigot of Specific Information?

Who do you think I am, anyway?

The Spume of Curious Coincidences?

The Spring of Eternal Hope?

The Geyser of Self-Consciousness?

The Waterfall of Disappointment?

The Gutter of Good Intentions?

The Hydrant of Poetic Gentrification?

Who the hell do you think I am?

The Faucet of Unreliable Narrative?

The Hose of Sesquipedalian Verbosities?

The Storm Drain of Gushing Sentiment?

The Standpipe of Cloying Sediment?

The Spout of Poetic Declamations?

The Drainpipe of Dithering Ineptitude?

The All-Smiling Man

I am the all-smiling man

I am smiling for you, the trees
You are losing your leaves
and withered winter branches
I am smiling for the last leaf

I am smiling for you, the clouds
covering the blue sky like similes
or with slate grey metaphors
I am smiling for the last cloud
as it wisps beneath the departing moon

I am smiling for you, the stars
the final stars of a false dawn
And for the morning star

 And I am smiling for you, the new sun
I am the all-smiling man

Arrival

I can’t remember arriving

At Coventry station

Or how I found my way to the pub

I found a place to stay

From a card in the newsagent’s window

Left my suitcase and guitar

In the large, shabby room

Full of cold space

I can’t remember what was in the suitcase

Or what I wore

Headed for the college

I do remember thinking

That the art students

Would have claimed a pub for their own

And would now be in out

Renewing acquaintances

Swapping stories of summer conquests

And finding the pub

I do remember

Talking to the new second years

Exotic, long-haired

Bright colourfully-clothed

About the college

What I could expect

Drugs

The noise. The music was loud

All Along the Watchtower by Jimmy Hendrix

Was that then or later

It featured heavily that year I’m sure

But some things seem so vague now

I don’t remember how the evening ended

I don’t remember returning to my room

Or how I slept

Or if I dreamt

I know I only slept there once

In the morning I lifted the mattress

And watched the bedbugs

Scurrying from the light

Sky of Bone, Land of Stone

I can’t write another poem.

That’s what I think sometimes

I’ve nothing more to write

Just another poem for another place

Another fizzing morning

After a noisy night

Alone in Edinburgh

In a hotel with Perspex walls

A drizzle of rain

After the hot southern cocktail

Sky of bone

Land of stone

I wander the streets

By chance I glimpse a lap dancer

Through through the open doorway

To an empty bar

She sticks out her tongue

In, what I imagined afterwards

As I walked the half-familiar streets,

A come-hither gesture

Using reverse psychology.

Sky of bone,

Land of stone.

Do you know what I fancy right now?

A cigarette. A roll up.

If I were on my own

And didn’t have a loving wife

Three hundred miles away

I could do that so easily

Embrace the deathly cocktail

of chemicals and carcinogens

drawn them into my lungs

My friend and I

We’d would walk out into the night, together

Beneath the bone sky

Into the land of stone

Into the dancer’s arms

My friend would glow

With the warmth of human contact

And the glow would finally die

And the wind would obliterate all traces

Of his soul, his dying breath

And I would toss his empty carcass

Into the road

And only his shadow would remain with me

In the land of stone

And then I’d want another friend

Making Love to the Dead

Making love to the dead

It’s all you can do
Thoughts whiz round your head
Shed a tear
For the things that they said
They’ll no longer see clouds
The sun on the golf course
From high on The Downs, the views, the windmill caught in the wind
They won’t see the daisies, buttercups, hawthorn, the blossom
And they won’t feel the wind on their faces
Or the wind behind them
As they rush down the slope

Making love to the dead
It’s all you can do
Thoughts that dart in your head
The people you knew who are gone
Good times that are done, bad times got through
Can you dance with the dead?
Can you speak with the dead?
Sure, It’s a monologue
But you hear them speak back in the wind, in the traffic
Time races
You imagine the things that they’d say,
Each moment, each day, every week, every year
How long have you got?
Will you be next?
Your turn to be dead
And your spirit becomes the shadow of cloud that’s sweeps
Down the hill, filling the head of the walker
Still walking in hope
Making love to the dead

Cloud

When recently attending a wound

I was struck by how much
the cotton wool resembled clouds