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Alan McClure Jan 2012
On a lip-crack Wednesday morning
with a mind as dry as ice
my cold Mojave fingers
make it difficult to write
and the radio is laying
sentimental sediment
on a limestone lack of lustre
that's as solid as cement
and a sad Sahara sunrise
bakes a barren riverbed
where the trickled inspiration
once went gushing through my head
and I point a brittle finger
at the unrelenting sky
and I ask it why?

Then you
dawn
upon
my memory and

My heart becomes a waterfall
cascading through my very soul
refresh the butterflies that fly
in coloured clouds below
And if you'll take me, I will grow
I will grow

I recall a conversation
from a few years down the line
one voice isn't shouting
but the other one is mine
laying words like sandbags
against the battlements
making promises which, made,
cannot be made again
I was sure of something
but my certainty was wrong
now I'm sure of something else
I can't tell for how long
I point that brittle finger
at the unrelenting sky
and ask it why?

Then you
dawn
upon
my memory and

My heart becomes a waterfall
cascading through my very soul
refresh the butterflies that fly
in coloured clouds below
and if you'll take me I will grow
If you'll take me I will grow
If you'll take me I will grow
I will grow.
This is a few years old now but it just came back to me and I rather like it!  Nice tune, too...
Alan McClure Jan 2012
Halfway up a mountain
on an ice-bound January day,
I sought to reliquify
a few calorific assets.

I am no fool -
I had been carefully investing
a portion of each meal
in certain holdings
(mainly around the waist).
Of course, I knew the safe route:
balanced diet, carbs, fruit, veg;
but a venture nutritionist such as myself
pays little heed to such extravagant prudence.

Fried breakfasts looked like offering
a quick and reliable payoff
and sure, for a while it worked.
But guess what:
Just when I needed the big windfall,
nothing.
Not a sausage,
if you'll pardon the pun.

"Sorry," a regretful body explained,
"I know you'd think you could call on your investments
"at the drop of a hat,
"but actually they're kind of clogged,
"a bit like your arteries."

Wheezing, waiting
for the mountain rescue helicopter,
I spared a rueful thought
for the taxpayer -
the reluctant buyer
of my safety.

You might imagine I owe something in return,
but I watch the news
and I reckon
I'll get away with it.
Alan McClure Jan 2012
The sea cast a gift ashore
one stormy sullen day
and the barren rocky coast
was suddenly recast
as a natural history museum.

A whale.
A real whale, just lying there
shining on the shale

In another time,
we'd have known how to react.
This astonishing bounty
would have been quickly stripped
Bones for building
baleen for support
blubber and oil for fuel.

But now it lay
surrounded by detritus
made of better stuff.
The truth was,
we didn't really need it,
couldn't really use it,
like being presented with
Casablanca on VHS.

A sign appeared:
"Quad bike rides, £2",
red paint on rainsoaked cardboard.
I wasn't tempted.
Children poked it with sticks
in a desultory way,
stricken, intrigued, ashamed,
and utterly dwarfed.

The weeks passed
as we coughed in embarrassment
not knowing what to do,
until finally
someone brought a digger down
and discretely buried the beast.

By now, it will be a perfect skeleton
a prehistoric wonder
an artefact from unjaded days
when nature could still astonish,
trampled by unknowing tourists
as they dream of sunnier beaches.
Alan McClure Dec 2011
She’s gone! The nurses came today
and carted Mother far away
to give me peace to kneel and pray
before the cross
Don’t think me harsh if I should say
she’s no great loss!

That endless screeching banshee wail
can carry on to no avail
the staff will hear but surely they’ll
not bend like me
And now I’ve peace to find the trail
to Calgary

Oh holy vision, cruelly slain
Your endless love is not in vain
I pray and understand the pain
of sacrifice
for no reward (except to reign
in Paradise).

Such selflessness I can but follow
(not like that ***** who’d lie and wallow
spit the pills she had to swallow,
curse and choke
Think yesterday would buy tomorrow -
some ******’ hope!)

Take her diploma off the wall
what it was for I can’t recall
she never needed it at all
the lazy bizzim
But come - and heed the joyful call
the Christ is risen!
Alan McClure Dec 2011
I'll trawl the squalor, if you like,
stick blinkers on to hide the fact
that my life has so far been a charmed one.

I can conjure a face,
small, forgotten
black against a duststorm sky -
There's your poverty for you,
And yes, I was there

And sure, I smelt the days old sweat
and can remember hunger as a curiosity
The boy's name is known to me
but I won't share it

Because he was real
but I missed his reality
and I have no right to it.
***** hands notwithstanding
I was just a tourist,
a passing mote of dust
in his drought-stricken life.

I was there for me
collecting picturesque snapshots
which would inform my return
to an undeserved comfort
(but only slightly).

To say he was important,
totemic, symbolic,
is false.
I remember him, that's all -

My boys,
my clean, happy,
here-now boys
eclipse that shadow in every respect.
An honourable assertion
only in that it is true;
and a brief regret that I made no contact
flickers out before
a blaze of contentment,
a bedrock of good fortune
with little to offer
the vicarious seeker
of hard-won wisdom.
Alan McClure Dec 2011
We just can't make them
like this anymore.
The skill and craftsmanship
have been sacrificed
on the altar of accuracy
and machines and computers
have sterilised
the smell of hard work and love.

To make such a map
with no satellites, no certainty
meant wallowing in the mystery of the world.
In the space between knowing and supposing
there was a beauty
we may now miss, or deem unimportant.

However,
if I want to get from my house
to your grave, to pay my respects -
through the shopping malls
and bypasses,
the glass and steel towers
you could never have imagined,

I will use my sat-nav
and be grateful for it.
Alan McClure Nov 2011
My friend published a book
of collected Scots Proverbs.
200 pages and more, filled
with countless ways of saying
"Don't show off."

And that precious wisdom,
generations in the making
percolated through smokey thatch
in dismal dripping glens,

Tattooed into tenement bricks
with the soot of dead industry,
added to the diet
with the excess salt and saturated fat,

Paving the roads
on which all ambition travels south,
And fizzing through the lager
on its way to the head

Now hangs around the kids
like the stink around an ashtray
and stifles any pride
they might invest in themselves.

They will pass it on
with their genes
and their endless disappointments,
despising anyone who rises
above the station
at which they are
eternally delayed.
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