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Alan McClure Mar 2013
Every ridiculous thing I did
every time I flipped my lid
Every crime I vainly hid
Who needs a mirror when you've a kid?

The ten percent I'd like to see
and every other part of me
Not what I say but what I do,
Who needs a mirror when I've got you?
Alan McClure Apr 2016
I suppose it was
an act of mercy.
"Put him
with the other Earthlings!"
Dragged
down strip-lit corridors
a million miles
from home.

At last
they cast me
in a gloomy cell
with a woodlouse,
a guava
and a chanterelle mushroom.

I appreciated the thought,
but we had little in common
and an awkward silence reigned.
Alan McClure Apr 2018
We don't beat hate with hatred, you know.
You just corral them with contempt,
get their defenses up, their bile flying.
Let folk feel beleaguered and defined
and you strengthen them tenfold.
Look at the ****** church, for Christ's sake.

They can't all be bad. They just can't.
There must be plenty decent folk
rocking themselves in darkened rooms
disgusted at the devastation
their party has wrought on the country.
Looking for a way to save some face.

So here we are. A national holiday,
an amnesty on regrettable social views
and rampant self-interest - Hell,
we've all helped out our pals when we could.
Go find a decent Tory. Open your heart.
Leave your partisan badges behind.

In gentle, soothing tones, explain,
"Your party's ******, mate.
They have no plan. You really don't want
to be with them when the dust clears.
If you keep voting for them, you're an enabler -
it's like handing a bottle of meths to an alkie."

They don't need to join your party.
They don't need to change their views on anything important.
On national Turn a Tory Day, all we ask
is that they stop voting for these dangerous morons
so they can get to **** out of the national consciousness
and let the rest of us clear up their mess.
Alan McClure Jan 2011
A scientist
on TV
was watching an abandoned bear cub
search for its mother.

The scientist knew
where the cub's mother was.

"I'm not sure
how much I should intervene,"
he agonised,
"or whether I should just
let Nature take its course."

As if
his kindest instincts
and his burning desire
and ability to help
were not some of Nature's
most glorious bits of work.
Alan McClure May 2012
The mother of invention lies asleep
and sated yet again beside the fire
It’s no surprise she should so quickly tire
Restrained by offspring turning us to sheep

Our need to overcome, explained, expires
And we , too tired to weep, feign boundless joy
For what we’ve lost and gained - each wretched toy
We keep can strangle resource in its wires

And rendered gutless, idle hoi polloi
we stagger dumbly higher, grinning, keep
believing we could buoy her from her sleep
Ignite her brain, and our minds re-deploy.
Alan McClure Dec 2014
Midwinter approaches.
You'd barely know it.
Galloway's soft murky skies,
Low clouds born of mudflat and peat,
don't waken the sparkling frost in me

A sudden unexpected pang
for the cut-glass winters of Aberdeen,
skies as clear as no sky at all
and the Dee all poised and crystal
descends upon me in the thick southwest smir

And I long to crunch along the riverbank
with my brother in the frost,
laughter-born clouds
dissipating in the hawthorn branches,
blackbirds startling
in the ice-bound undergrowth -
deep pink sun bursting and bleeding
across the wide blue horizon.

I could return -
follow the waxwings
reclaim my winter home
but I won't -
instead,
I'll cast a glance
of sparkling northern granite
across the fields and mulch,
see if I can clear these skies
and freeze this other Dee

And build myself a fresh white landscape
as crisp
and clear
as memory.
Alan McClure Jul 2019
But he hijacks your mind, you see -
you start thinking
in pithy vignettes
and seeing ancient injustice
in a drunkard's bloodshot eyes

The universal
in the particular -
God, aye! Sheep
as avatars
for all society
and majesty in language
as it's spoken, and heard.

Then you imagine him
hiding other poets' books
behind his own
in Waterstone's in Dumfries,
and remember -
he's as human as you,
thank ****.
Alan McClure Feb 2014
The dads on the bus go, "Not right now,
Not right now,
Not right now,"
the dads on the bus go, "Not right now,"
all day long.
Alan McClure Jan 2011
Be careful with her
her heart is a balloon
and it wouldn't take much to pop it, doctor
Well I wait and shiver
and I pace this sterile room
after fifty years I can't have lost her

Well I was seventeen and she was twenty four
We were at a protest march against the Korean war
I can see her with her placard held aloft
An anger hard as ice but skin so
skin so very soft

Be careful with her,
that skin is paper thin
and it wouldn't take much to tear it, doctor
Oh please deliver,
don't let this pain begin
Fifty years, I can't have lost her

We never married though our parents thought we should
We knew that you couldn't improve on anything this good
Well traditions don't seem quite so foolish now
If you know of one to save her
won't you please just tell me how?

If this is twilight
then give me darkness
for I can see too much
No-one to turn to
No-one who knows me
and no-one there
no-one there to touch

Oh be careful with her
I never cared enough, I know
I need to tell her
I'm still so much in love

An old man
sits
alone.
Alan McClure Apr 2018
Me and Robin
rockhopping
round seaweeded,
barnacled beaches
where the river
shakes hands
with the sea

When up pops an otter.
Straight out the silver waves
it comes
and starts chattering at us
in Japanese.

I scratch my head.
Robin looks baffled.
The otter is urgently
incomprehensible.

We look around
on the offchance
that a Japanese tourist might be around
and willing to translate,
but we're the only ones there.

"I wish my dad was here,"
I say,
"Or Auntie Lynn,"
adds Robin,
but they're not
and we lack their talent
for languages.

We try our best
with shrugs and gestures
but all we have is apologies.

Eventually,
with a tetchy 'sayonara',
the otter slips back through the waves
leaving us
none the wiser.
Alan McClure Oct 2016
Put past
The pretence of protection.
Propagandising
her preciousness
is prohibited -
proprietorial
preparation
for *******.
Parents paw
the pretty pretty
Pa approves the partner
partner plucks the petals,
proclaiming
‘She pleases me,
pleases me not’ -
matters not one jot.
Pet and preen
her perilous perfection
a prophylactic
precaution,
in place
of progression,
promotion,
professional appreciation.
Proud paternalistic patter
imprisons.
Presidents pronounce
on *****,
parroted by ******
and pissheads.
Petty, pathetic
and petrified
of power,
placing people
in parentheses
participating
in playground politics.

I’m sick
that this
paralysis
persists.
Past to present,
passed down
passed over
passed off
as perfectly
practical, natural,
a place for everyone
everyone
in place.
Please.

Parade our pride
in pyrotechnic protest
in partnership perpetual,
productive, progressive
people
as people
as people,

powerful
and equal.
Alan McClure Mar 2016
In line with recent policy
we are outsourcing
our poetry services
in a bid to increase efficiency

This will make savings
and improve the service
just as it always does.

Daffodils

Out a walk
saw some flowers
there were loads of them
they were quite pretty

APPROVED

Dulce et Decorum Est

War's *******
and it's no fun
being gassed

APPROVED

To a Mouse

Sorry for wrecking your house, mouse
but we've all got problems

APPROVED

The Raven

I miss my bird

APPROVED
Alan McClure Apr 2015
Conditions are prime
preservation will occur
as another murky layer
settles and sticks

The smoky dawn
holds no redemption
harsh words have left
their scorch upon the tongue

In one room, he lifts the toppled glass
In another, she straightens sheets, silently
A careless word, a glance
might prove the unwanted spark

No explosion will follow,  
not with this black and bitter tinder
Only a slow smoulder,
a quiet, crawling conflagration

Amber light in the quiet kitchen
sees him unscrew the cap
tip the whisky down the sink,
penitent, confessional

Dull thoughts
of drunken microbes
a mirthless smile
and a bottle, as empty as the gesture.
Alan McClure Mar 2011
The shale abounds
above the pounding waves
with perfect snapshots
of a lost, impossible world

Images beyond the skill of sculptors,
ridged, spined and rippled
frozen in rock, of rock -
who could have guessed
how long the armour would protect?

And yet -
trilobites
who ruled the shallows
when dinosaurs were but a glint
in Pachamama's eye,
are dead, gone, passed over
in the battle for existence.

While in the boiling surf below,
the jellyfish
who still blithely ride the tides
insolently call:
"Good luck wi thae shells, boys -
"Bet yis'll be safe wi thaim!"
and disappear
in a bubble of translucent laughter.
Alan McClure Jan 2012
Briefly entranced
by a swish of hips
as they sashay past a doorman,
he takes a breath, approaches
and asks to get through.

"Sorry sir," the tall man says,
"your purchasing record suggests
"that you dislike jazz.
"I think you'd better move along."

Of course, of course,
what was he thinking?
A narrow escape, that.
And on home through the empty streets he goes,
Untroubled by the wide wild sounds,
the horns and pianos,
the reckless freeform blast and chatter
that might ruthlessly have smashed through
his carefully constructed identity.

Safe at home,
his television allows him to watch
a comedy he has seen thirteen times before
and so must really love.
Alan McClure Dec 2014
From horizon to horizon
stretch flowers
waving, trumpetting
refracting brazenly, dazzling

as children, blinded,
fumble through,
coughing on pollen
drowning in nectar
deafened by the buzz of fat, sated insects

brutally and thoughtlessly robbed of the chance
to find the startling beauty
of the solitary blossom
on the wasteland.
Alan McClure Feb 2013
The frantic crackling log
sends forth a chemical lament,
filling the room with ghostly branches,
spectral sunlit needles
against blue skies
the laugh and chatter of us as children,
hiding and seeking from trunk to trunk
and climbing, resin scented,
to where the blue **** perch and squabble.
This dying breath
contains the whole life
and we sit, breathing it in,
remembering.
Alan McClure Nov 2015
Four feet by six feet,
good black soil
in a good back garden.
I stand, transfixed.
When I was six,
this plot was purgatory.
It could swallow
a sunny afternoon
without mercy.
It stretched, relentless,
an Amazon of weeds
with no beginning
and no end
and I would spend
hour after miserable hour
merely looking
at the horror ahead.
Punctuated here and there
with a desultory dig,
a scrape at the surface,
dock or dandelion
briefly inconvenienced
as the whole, howling,
heaving hoard
of grinning, gobbling green
grasped me, held me
in sticky-willie stasis,
a chickweed choke-hold
between buttercup buttresses.

Today it's tiny.
I could sweep it clean
with three good strokes
of the ***.

So I stand, at once
amused and wistful
lamenting not
the verdant self-pity
but wishing I was still
so easily convinced
of eternity.
Alan McClure May 2012
I am no expert,
no expert at all

But when I am compelled
to write a poem
the compulsion comes
from a pure wish
to distil a thought,
to communicate,
to ride language *******
across the open spaces
of my brain

But you would lasso me,
corral me,
shut the barn doors on me
and the lowing, braying herd
for some self appointed *****
to cast judgement

So that the best possible outcome
is that I step on the faces of others
on my way to institutionalised,
establishment-approved freedom

Well,
*******
and the horse
you wish you could have ridden in on.
I've been tempted to enter poetry competitions in the past, but I am delighted to say that I no longer have the slightest inclination to do so.  I'm sure most are genuine attempts to give poetry a higher profile, but what kind of profile is it when it makes art competitive?  If you don't win, you lose, by definition - but if you've managed to craft a poem to your own satisfaction, in what sense can you possibly have lost?
Alan McClure May 2013
I had the bottle
I had the well
I had the population
and the cold interest
in consequences.

So simple:
tip it in, see what happens.
But it would have been too obvious.
I was not interested in being caught.

It gnawed at me,
for all my polished indifference,
the knowledge of the power I wielded
but could not use

Then one day
strangers came,
rolling into the village
in their painted caravans

And I wasted not one second.
As soon as the moon was full
I crept out
through the villagers' suspicious mutterings,
unseen by the baleful glances
cast at the foreign shapes and colours -
forgotten, in all my oddness,
in the wake of this new devilry.

It was the work of a moment,
a soft sound like summer's rain
then back to the shadows
to wait.

And now,
riding past the lynch-mob's clumsy justice,
circled by merry crows,
briefly entranced
by a burnt-out caravan

I can finally
enjoy
the silence.
Alan McClure Dec 2010
What hollow, caustic foulness lies behind the neatly edged hedges,
fences, plastic window frames and glass?
Resting, waiting to be woken, scream what now must not be spoken
Blood-lust of a gutless middle class
What simple lies must needs be told in bold authoritative tones
To activate the drones and make them fight -
To know, that if the call should come they'd march to that benighted drum
And sacrifice intelligence for right?
How big a monster must be built to shoulder guilt for every creeping fear
and insecurity and loss,
Till every hip and critical disclaimant finds a reason for believing
and then carries it, across.
How many layers must be stripped to tip the wretched shreds of indecision
into morals blown apart
And harmless bigot who, at work, was tolerated with a smirk
Now drives a dirk into a stranger's heart?
Now doctor, teacher, business leader, well-respected educated man
proclaims his harmlessness anew,
Make no mistake: the quills are fine and ready as the porcupine
prepares to show what harmless beasts can do.
This one was partially dreamt.  'Dirk' is a Scottish dagger.
Alan McClure May 2015
You are bored and tired
on a day that dazzles me.
I am distracted, impatient
on a day that calls you forth.
My achievements are old news
and you shrug.
Your achievements
are not the ones I wished for you.

The world is unfolding before you.
The blinding light you brought here
is dissipating far and wide
and I blink – was that a dream?
Did I stop it all for something?
Did everything change for something?

So the painful, slow unpicking begins.
I know it from before,
as my dad became a separate thing,
a man I like but do not need.
The years as nodding strangers
telescope ahead
as the brief, blissful bubble
of you and me as one
collapses.

Let me hold you one more time.
Let us feel each other’s heartbeat
one more time.
Let this be what we mean
when we shake hands as men,
when I pass the phone to your mother,
when you drop off the kids and go.
Let us have a speechless moment
when we remember what was,

and stake our separate claims
to the future.
Alan McClure Jan 2013
A million people
marched on Whitehall
every footfall
was a trumpet blast
every placard
bore an epic poem
every eye
flashed righteous lightning
and it made
absolutely no difference
at all.
Alan McClure Jul 2012
Well it's funny how quickly things change
what seems certain goes fast out of range
and it's hard not to wonder just who was to blame
as if that makes a difference at all
Things get broken, that we all know
you can cry or think, 'Where should I go?'
There is always someone with a light that will show
and a heart that could cushion your fall

Here comes the cavalry, the army of friends
to judge and advise you on justified ends
to hell with the horses, to hell with the men
you're putting yourself back together again

Well there's love and there's lust and there's ***
one thing one day is not that the next
when we're not messing up well we're trying our best
it's a wonder we've lasted so long
You can fret over games that were played
and regret the mistakes that were made
but this crap from the past will just stand in your way
you've a life to be lived, right or wrong

And here comes the cavalry, the army of friends
to judge and advise you on justified ends
to hell with the horses, to hell with the men
you're putting yourself back together again

So things may be awkward here and there, now,
disapproving glances, icy stares, now
got to wonder why you'd even care, now
life is waiting

Here comes the cavalry, the army of friends
to judge and advise you on justified ends
to hell with the horses, to hell with the men
you're putting yourself back together again.
This is on the Razorbills album 'To Hell With Youth and Beauty', and if you'd half a mind to you could watch the video for the song at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twx6_7JJneg&list;=HL1343069704&feature;=mh_lolz
Alan McClure Nov 2012
Work your fingers raw for a pittance
and you wish one day to bid good riddance
to your destiny,
good riddance to your destiny
Looking up you see them grinning down
but ask why they keep winning
and they'll label you the enemy
they'll label you the enemy
So you've got three kids and you're ******
because your salary's been cut
and you're burning up the furniture
you're burning up the furniture
Well they can trace their ****** blood generations
and their current lordly station
is their holy primogeniture
it's their holy primogeniture
You can sing and dance apologise and grovel
You can mark your x and ******* to the hovel
that you'll never own
the hovel that you'll never own
Meanwhile they will never leave the school
that tells them they are born to rule
till we vote the buggers on the throne
we vote the buggers on the throne
This land ain't your land
this land ain't my land
not the Glasgow dockyard
nor the empty Highland
this land is their land
it's bleed you dry land
and you'll be laid to rest here
beneath the wonder why land.
Alan McClure Apr 2012
We reach for things where once they were
and grasp, confused, at empty air
And try to catch the time we've missed
by glancing at a watchless wrist

We follow patterns long since drawn
although the artist's dead and gone
We pantomime a lack of care
but reach for things which are not there.
Alan McClure May 2011
He lies on his back
creaky bed, darkened room
and wonders how he would be
if he had chosen differently.

Mind goes fractal
like Russian dolls
he thinks outwards
but really in

Oh imagine!
Nerves tingle -
what an original thinker he is:
There must be millions
of alternative mes
in unreachable universes
and untold dimensions!


Of course,
if he weren't too busy
contemplating his navel
all he'd have to do to find them
is knock on his neighbours' doors.
Alan McClure Jul 2012
I will not plug in, you fools -
you may dazzle, tempt and cajole
with high tech-cessories,
interactive goggles, voice activated,
touchscreen detachment-inducers

But I will smugly refuse.

Because the information you impart,
while instantly comprehensive,
is flawed.
I will hear-see-smell my way
through this beautiful life,
truly connected
and weaving through the cloud-heads
with impunity.

Until -

composing a poem
to explain my superiority
I stumble
and break my ankle
on a jaggy branch
which moments before
a rabbit
unfettered by language
noted
and bounced effortlessly over
before merging
with the quick green undergrowth.
Alan McClure Jan 2012
Well now, I used to teach.
I mean, I still do, but it's only for their benefit now, isn't it?
It's like the doctors and the greengrocers
and the streetsweepers and librarians,
still going through the motions
while they take recordings and what have you.
I guess we should be glad
that they're interested in the way we lived,
you know,
before they arrived.
But my kids, you know,
they're all actors.
They might learn the odd piece
of arcane knowledge
but I can tell they know
they don't need it.

No, no, I'm no rebel
I don't want any trouble.
Things are better since they arrived,
of course they are.
I mean, their technology -
we couldn't have come up with that
in a million years.
And they're very polite.
I have a colleague who says
this is because they feel guilty about their success,
but I don't know about that.
Things were bad for a while,
but I guess maybe that was our fault.
We didn't know how to react.
We adjusted poorly.
It's hard to accept that you're, you know,
obsolete.

Even me, you know.
For a while there I was,
well,
I was drinking a little too much.
It was hard, seeing the school destroyed.
They've done a good job
with the facsimile though.
even smells the same.

Yup,
can't complain.
Can't complain.
Alan McClure Dec 2012
Christmas died with Santa Clause
when I reached a certain age.
The magic revealed as scam,
the wonder now an act
maintained for the sake of form.

This descended, in my teens,
into outright distaste -
all the trappings
a failed attempt
to light a lost wonderland;
a decorated tree
incongruous and distasteful
as a chimp in a suit.

Anger waned,
disinterest set in,
and I merely wished to avoid it all.

But through your eyes
a miracle occurs:
Papa Noel, mistaking his season,
makes an Easter of Christmas
by rising triumphant.
A tinsel star becomes a true Polaris
and love,
for anybody's sake,
is everything.
Alan McClure Sep 2016
You wear your presence lightly,
you politely undermine it
for the folks who'd find it fright'ning
in the normal daily grind
You are jocular and flighty
wear a self-effacing grace
although your shoulders might be mighty
were they not so undermined

We met at a rehearsal
for an amateur dramatic act
to shrink the universal
to a comfortable size
They took a work of genius
the timeless peerless grandeur
and they whittled it to meaninglessness -
There I caught your eye.

"I hear you need a drummer!"
you intoned in toffee baritone
and sad, diluted Shakespeare
did evaporate tout suite
"We're gigging in the summer!"
I replied in my delight and then
I knew I'd found a friend
who might just help me keep the beat.

I found you were an artist
of broken, brittle beauty
who believed an artists' duty
was to challenge and defy
Who had washed up in the genteel
artists' village of Kircudbright
where the art is safe and snooty,
boats and trees and sunny sky

But your canvas is elastic
is electric and eclectic
as you drastically cast an angry
eye across it all
Any prettiness is sitting
on a nauseous unwellness
where the skeleton of Elvis
boogies by a butcher's stall

Well we found some fellow feeling
in our mutual defiance
casting darts at art and science
and amusing just ourselves
Made some music, sank some bevvies
wrote a book, got raging drunk
but what we managed withered, shrunk
by what we planned and simply shelved.

Well it seems that I've been hoping
that our business was unfinished
that our plans were undiminished
by the passing of the years
That some catalyst would manifest
and shake us into action
dissipate the dull distraction
of the daily hopes and fears.

But it seems that you are leaving
that your talent, brightly blazing
and the fact that you're amazing
has been missed by this wee town
Well I undersand it, ******
but I'll miss you now, my brother
and the tumbled jumbled colour
that you spun from Solway brown.
Alan McClure Jan 2011
"Haw!  You!  Come back here!
Dinny walk aff while ah'm talkin ti ye!
Didjiz no ken we won a fight
a mere sivvin hunner year ago?
Are ye no impressed?"

Flower o' ****** Scotland.
Fighting and dying
for a wee bit hill and glen.
When will we see the like?
Every ****** day
an' Ah'm ******* seek o't.

See when we start lovin and livin
fur a wee bit hill and glen?
Then Ah'll get tae ma feet
an sing.
Alan McClure Nov 2011
No tribal scarring marks your face
no cinder walk or thorn-pierced tongue
to prove you are no longer young
but fit to take your rightful place

Your generation never fought
And you have wished that you could see
the selfless, brave camaraderie
of which you were so often taught

Alas for you to fetch ashore
when we had lost our appetite
for making children go and fight
and briefly grieved, and said "No more!"

Condemning you, unreconciled,
to shed no blood, as real men should;
to feel that life is mostly good
Oh foolish knave!  Oh hopeless child!

And saddled with this gross mistake
your quiet kindness gently spread
and harmless fascinations fed
and left no corpses in their wake

To think we looked to one unmanned
as children, hungry for a clue
of what it's right for men to do,
led, blind,  by your unbloodied hand

Sought thoughts from one who could not brag
of marching forth to suicide
for waxed moustaches' sense of pride
Nor bleeding dry beneath a flag

But you had naught to tell us, save
that life is hopeful and sublime
and we should use this precious time
And I'll be grateful to the grave.
Alan McClure Feb 2011
I trained myself to hold my breath
beneath the surface of the nut-brown river
for three minutes and more.
My companions would watch
as I slipped from sight,
their own breath held as the seconds wore on.

Above and around them the riverbank was a lens
refracting a swarming jungle,
macaws paired and perfect splitting the blue,
tangles and torrents of green
and the liquid burble of oropendulas and caciques.
Why should anyone depart from this,
deliberately descend into the murk
for no more than a party-piece, a prank?

Because,
the river carried news,
the river throbbed with hidden life
it was the Andes and the ocean and all points in between
and down below the light and beauty
it was mine alone.
Alan McClure Oct 2013
Grim grey day
starts in the dark,
grumbles, glowers
shoulders hunched
Everyone in bitter agreement -
"Miserable!"
Rain driven against windows,
streaming pavements,
shoe-squelched curses
cast at baleful sky.

Travelling home at last,
raincoat defeated
tricklebacked discomfort,
Windscreen wipers ten to the dozen
under sopping sorrowful trees,
headlights strobing relentless rain

And -

Those aren't leaves.
What are they?
Tumbling across the road,
crisscrossing parabolas
of peculiar joy

Frogs!

I stop:
I have to.
The night is alive
with manic delight
as secret creatures fling caution to the wind
and bound into sight,
into frantic celebration,
unphased by cars, by foolish bipeds
who thought this planet was theirs -

Open mouthed and uninvited
I gaze, displaced and foolish
for not knowing
It is,
it is the most beautiful night
that could possibly be imagined.
Alan McClure Feb 2011
My pulse is slowed by the tide
that sighs twice daily
over the sparkling mud,
a slow scatter of wading birds at its heels.

Inhale and brambles dot the hedgerow,
purpling our mouths -
exhale and the snowdrops are back,
advance guard of a trumpetting spring
as the circling bay holds the circling year
in its silver grey water.

Our house plays host
to dramas and dreams
but they are beautifully small
in the middle of this
and I have never been so at home.

The trees planted themselves decades ago
in preparation for our boys.
The sea rose and fell for shelled and pebbled eons
that there might be the perfect clatter
when Fergus leaps from the rocks and runs
into the waves
and if three cars go by
within an hour
we say, "Christ, it's busy today!"

This, and us, is home.
- From Also Available Free
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 Mar 2016
So aye
We wir watchin
that David Attenborough
or tryin tae -
fower weans tearin up the joint,
an she's like,
See if youse dinny shut it...!
an aw that, ken -
You no gonny tell thum?
So ah'm like,
"Aye.  
Wheesht, youse."

But it wis amazin, like.
These fish.
Years oot at sea.
Tiny wee at first,
dodgin sharks an jellyfish
an aw sorts,
awa oot, miles fae land.
(God!  Youse!  Take it up the stair!
Tell thum, you!

"Aye, boys.  Listen tae yir ma.")

Then wan day, like
they get the urge, ken?
Got tae go.
An in they come,
surgin fae the sea,
these sleek, silver bullets
fat wi feedin.
(I'll no tell yis again!)

Nothin, an ah mean nothing
is gonny stop them.
Waterfalls?  Nae bother.
Just pure hungry
fir the lassies, ken?
The boy Attenborough sais
they dinny even eat!
(That's it!  Ah tellt ye!
Here you!  Take some responsibility,
wull ye?

"Eh?  Oh, aye.
Away tae yir rooms, boys -
yir ma tellt ye.")

These pure ***** divils
will loup up sheer cliffs,
baws burstin, bi the look ay it.
Poetry in motion, ken?
Like, ah dinny ken, pure water
brought tae life, an that.
Jist pure savage.

An then, haw -
they find the lassies!
An it's jist, like,
'splurge'!
Done the deed.
Gemme ower,
job done,
deid.

An there's this shot.
Ripplin shallows,
just fill ay the twitchin bodies.
Craws an bears an that,
queuin up fir the bonanza.
Jist, like,
totally
spent.

An she's aw,
Here, is that no terrible?
Pair buggers!
Eifter aw that!

An ah'm like,
"Aye."

But see inside,
ah'm thinkin,
"Lucky,
lucky *******."
Alan McClure Nov 2010
On the face of it, there isn't much about this bird
To stop me in my tracks.
             Brown, oblivious, busy with the ground
It totters along on stilted legs
Probing among the frozen fields.

It's the name that's the trouble.

Childhood hours spent copying pictures
From the Readers' Digest Book of Birds
Call to mind the name, 'Curlew'.
In my house, though, birds had Scots names
and my dad, a linguistic David Bellamy
Urged us to conserve these rare words
or lose them forever.
Goldfinch?  Gowdspink!
Starling?  Stuckie!
Blue ***?  Umm...

But the undistinguished gentleman before me
was definitely a whaup.

Curlew or whaup?
Which is it to me?
The English of books
or the fading Scots, maybe closer
to the bird's wild home?

Textbook reality
or romantic poetry?
Or both - can the creature sit
in two states at once?
"Schrodinger's Curlew", I think with a smile.
("Schrodinger's Whaup!" bellows the bit of my dad
that lodges in my head.)

           Here, under a cloud of my own breath
In the low winter light,
            Neither seems quite adequate.

And then, untouched by my musings
The bird spreads its wings and lifts,
Naming itself, with a long, pure note

          And my heart, in two states,
           Leaps
             and breaks.
- From Also Available Free
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.
Alan McClure Mar 2011
Susi sees angels here and there
magical creatures are everywhere
I canny see them, I try and look twice
I kind of regret it, it must be nice

but I think
Why should I personify
my sense of wonder,
sense of wonder
I laugh beneath the starlit sky
with my sense of wonder
sense of wonder

Ewan sees reason in everything
knows you can measure pieces of string
and he is my brother I love and respect
and proof of the other we've never found yet

but I think
Why should I categorize
my sense of wonder
sense of wonder
I laugh beneath the starlit skies
with my sense of wonder
sense of wonder

And I salute you, one and all
who've seen the light, who've heard the call
I'll not dispute what you have seen
I'm just not certain what you mean

Susi's a human, as sweet as can be
and magic or not she's amazing to me
and whether we're born here blessed or alone
I hope that her angels will see her home

but still think
Why should I personify my sense of wonder
sense of wonder
I laugh beneath the starlit sky
with my sense of wonder
sense of wonder
sense of wonder
Alan McClure Aug 2011
Another numbered summer, over
plans packed away
watches wound
boots back on pavements
lawns forgotten

And the sun apologises
as it rises too late
and the cackling wind
reclaims his domain with a flourish.

Have a good day, boys -
see you at teatime.
Alan McClure Sep 2011
Victoria Falls
with all its mighty battering roar
was merely background noise
as I wondered what Camilla was thinking of me.

Machu Picchu from the sun-gate at dawn?
I was distracted by Helen,
and whether she'd keep in touch
when she returned to Britain.

Debbie eclipsed the solar eclipse -
The outback rolling into premature darkness
spectacular, sure
but nothing to what she was doing to my heart.


But you and I
feel the simple Scottish lawn
beneath our four feet
together, complete.
Alan McClure Nov 2016
Will you be the German
who is tutting through the shutters
as the trains roll by?
Will you be the Christian
busy ticking off the reasons
you can shut your eyes?
***** the left, ***** the right
this is everybody's fight
and we're battling the evil in our hearts
It's a long road to hell
but we know the journey well
and a hatred of the strange is where it starts.

Will you be enchanted
by the pretty little whispers
of the self-made man
Strutting on the scaffold
of the skeletons he shackled
as he made his plans?
Well his dazzling election
is a clever misdirection,
builds a figurehead to follow or defeat
Still whenever evil comes
braying trumpets, banging drums
it's the likes of you and me that keep the beat.

See our little kingdoms
slickly built to keep the guilt and trouble
out of range
Mastering the darkness
simply saturates the masses
with a fear of change.
We cajole, we corral,
who's against us, who's our pal,
Who's the sacrifice to calm the raging seas
Tides will rise, tides will fall
breakers burst against the wall -
It's our terror that will bring us to our knees.

Each of us is given
just one minute and a million choices
every day
Struggle for the love
or love the struggle
of the jungle hunter gone astray
wicked wishes crack the whip
comfort loosens our grip
and a black and hungry vulture takes the air
Every road goes up or down
we can climb, or we can drown -
be the beast - or be the angel, if we dare.
Alan McClure Nov 2012
Six in a row,
coincidental in itself,
all screaming at me
like the audience at a pantomime:
"Look behind you!"

So I do.
And there's still nothing there.
Alan McClure Mar 2011
Sixteen children watched
as I played a video of unimaginable horror.
The planet misbehaving
water turning into tumbling concrete
boats heaved up mountainsides
helplessness too small a word.

It is important
to bring the world into the classroom
and I put my misgivings aside
trusting the children to understand.

They had seen the images already,
could say 'Tsunami',
didn't laugh, though the scene was ridiculous.
I was proud of them.
Perhaps we will write to Japanese children
and wish them well.

Ten minutes later,
Harvey pushed Aaron off his chair
and all hell broke loose.
- From Also Available Free
Alan McClure Jan 2011
No-one told the snowdrops
that the world is coming to an end
that there is no sense in trying anymore
that darkness has finally defeated the light

And ignorant of the truth
they push once more
through the mould and grit
raising their heads above ground

Stopping me in my tracks.

Oh yes!  Things used to live here!
The wan Scottish sun used to warm us
and the endless pounding rain slaked thirst
and pumped like blood into new life and hope.
How did we forget?

And they change everything.
They change everything.
They return the world to the state they need it to be in,
they are nodding heralds of the coming supernova

which will happen
with us
or
without us.
- From Also Available Free
Alan McClure Mar 2014
Twilight falls across the bay
Soothes the worries of the day
As the shore adores the sea
Me for you and you for me

Stars appear across the sky
Whisper leaf and curlew cry
As the lock is for the key
Me for you and you for me

There is traffic, there is waste
Icy doubt and black disgrace
There are thunderclouds of fear
But they cannot touch us here
There are nightmares, there are wars
Broken hearts and slamming doors
There are phantoms of the mind
Here, we leave them all behind

Gentle darkness on the land
Beating hearts and touching hands
It's as simple as can be
Me for you, and you for me.
Alan McClure Jan 2013
Well it was Tarquin's idea, actually.
It came to him after watching 'Slumdog Millionaire.'
Have you seen it?  Marvellous film.
Such resourceful people.

Anyway, we were looking at schools,
and the local comprehensive -
simply ghastly - we couldn't put Eugene through that.

But two blocks away
there's a school for the blind.
Ofsted simply raved about it.
So, we popped the old eyes out
- easy as
- and Bob's your uncle.

He starts in August.
More tea?
Alan McClure May 2013
Money wants to be spent.
It sits in your pocket and bellows at you,
it tugs you into shops and boutiques
and weighs so heavy on your mind
that you gasp with relief
to be rid of it.

I don't like this, but I get it:
I accept the hypnosis
and resist when I can,
and perhaps it oils the system
which keeps me comfortable.

But I am fearful that our feel for time
is going the same way.
Hours are things to dispose of:
days, once spent, are lost and gone:
all our energies ****** us on
to the next thing, and the next.

There is no sense
of accumulation,
no glorying in the growth
of knowledge, experience, wisdom.
No respect for things which have been
and thus we shuttle, rudderless and dumb,
Barren, and infinitely poor.
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