Money Talks

and what it said back then on the railway bridge
at Bloomfield Road (no longer there of course)
was "You can spare me – it means only one less
penny ice lolly from the corner shop !" (no longer
there of course) and the train will make me huge
(steam no longer here of course) and the others
will laugh and cheer as you scramble down to
the line place me centred and climb back up
here again before the train shoots through to
Central Station (no longer there of course).

Gigantic copper-coloured disc and this recall.
Still talking half a century after.

(c) C J Heyworth August 2014

I want this to be about you, 
But it's not

It resides in the hours
That I spent wide awake
When I couldn't sleep so I smoked
And I couldn't dream so I wrote
What I hoped I'd see

For the metaphors 
I couldn't keep churning out
So I smoked some more
And I spurted out
Lines about lines

For the driver on the dented highway
With the window cracked
To feel the chills of the air blowing past
Listening to Bob Dylan tell her
The person she was supposed to be but
Never was
And never will

I want this to tell you how I feel,
But it won't

And if she drives far enough she'll reach that
Looming exit
The one she knows she must take
Back to the life she's sick of living
But fights through the pain
For the same reasons that I
Fight through, because
I want to meet a pretty girl
With great vocabulary,
And a smile like Rita Heyworth

I'm still looking for that girl
To drive me across that highway
And recycle old Dylan lines
As if they were personal dictums
She had synthesized herself
And we can freewheel this road together

See I'll never be that great poet that
Three hundred and twenty-nine thousand people
Have watched on the Internet
And that is a comfort

Because the truth resists simplicity
And in my heart of hearts I am a simple man
And telling the truth through words in meter
Or in stanzas
Will never come as naturally to me
As it does to Dylan
But in my acceptance of my ignorance
I become more powerful
Than I'd ever need to be 
Poetic.

So if writing is always my hobby
And never my workhorse
If I can self-satisfy through 
Strict stanzas that I will
Seldom share
If it is only to a girl 
Driving on a highway
Singing songs about formerly-modern America that I
Recite these rehearsed thoughts of mine
Than I will have succeeded

Because my career will have been love
And maybe I can write this 
About you.
And then, and only then, it will be.

As a uniform, he always wore
the grey ironmonger's coat
immaculately pressed and bore
clipped hair neat as well as a
close shave.

Mr. Cornthwaite (all of us
minions called him only Mr.)
was no "Do It 'Cos I Say So" boss
but with patience would teach
and preach retail folklore:

Cooks' staples stored well inside
our mini-market shop advanced
for its 50s' existence; shelf-stacking
to re-arrange for early use-by at the
front; fast-moving lines checked
hourly if not sooner; trusted staff
becoming the Tasting Squad for
new fresh produce being considered
for supply - The Cornflake (never
uttered in his hearing) circulating
to ensure not only that his ever-clear
commands were reflected in full shelves
but also that staff were coping not
rushed or overwhelmed.

The best Warrant Officer cares
just as much commands as
my de-mobbed Warrant Officer
father used to tell me when I asked.

(c) C J Heyworth

In conversation about
the realities of War
a salient observation
surfaced again and
yet again - that current
creators of film or TV
images favour clean,
so fail the filth test
that for troops and those
who tend them once
bullets & shells have
wrought their harm
scar everywhere with
muck & misery - such
crisp white pinafores
and hair so carefully
coiffeured just never
figured - real warfare
harrows like The Victors
& D-Day scenes which
open Saving Private Ryan
as bloodily as any wound.

(c) C J Heyworth June 2014

For the past two hours
this Mac has hypnotised
my gaze to its white screen
and every website has
sentries at the door -
Username ? Password ?
Already registered ? Login

When did we become so
chary one of another ?  Were
folks so paranoid in the pre-
digital age when existence
had not been magicked into
noughts and ones in Silicon
Valley?  It did not seem so.

(c) C J Heyworth July 2014

Poulton Library and
Adele & I are here to
share with whoever
arrives some thoughts
concerning War and
Literature.  Linda sets
us up with chairs and
table, and first here is
delightful surprise: Pat
who I taught thirty years
ago - there will be no
need for me to dig a
trench and put on a
jacket bullet-proof
with tin hat on my
head - Philip Larkin
Alun Lewis, Sassoon
and Wilfred Owen
give staunch support
to Jon Stallworthy's
World War One tome
Anthem for Doomed
Youth: Twelve Poets
but doomed not us
this century later.


(c) C J Heyworth June 2014

School urges us
ever to accumulate
yet what dawns in
maturity is selectivity
not bulk - how I soon
began to seek white
chickens and essence
of red wheelbarrow
glazed with rain.

(c) C J Heyworth July 2014

is different for each meandering
but arises unbidden though there
must be a prompt a spring a welling-
up that begins to trickle down the page
as the current courses down this arm
to fingertips grippimg the pen lightly
but firm enough to make the marks
and trickle a stream to slake again
my thirst.  Wyre ? Ribble ? Mersey ?
Thames ? Rhine ? Danube ? Ganges ?
Amazon - yes immense over life as Amazon.

(c) C J Heyworth

Thursday morning and I board
the Preston train, a dumpy DMU,
but less of a cattle-truck today.

Over the bridge or beneath
lines to Platform 5 to wait:
Branson's Scarlet Pendolino
will glide in soon bound
for Birmingham - wonder
who I shall meet and share
travelling moments with ?

At the caverns of New Street
I must wend to Moor Street
and a Chilterns train trundling
me south for Warwick's 1,100th.
birthday weekend and 100 years
since trains of Lancashire PALS
cattle-trucked themselves to
Flanders fields never to return.

(c) C J Heyworth June 2014

I'm sure the teachers concerned
and especially the Head and
The Chairman of Governors
whose Mayor-making I went
to on behalf of school would
hope it is my learning to read
and write well enough to win
handwriting competitions as
well as pass public exams that
occupies my brain and heart, but
what sticks, really sticks to prompt
a torrent of recollections is the
reek of soap in the washrooms:
'twas a Carbolic Childhood mine.

(c) C J Heyworth September 2014

During this sort of fallow period
my inventiveness has been
hibernating within for the months
that are beginning to feel endless
where are the fresh shoots ?

Do I need a salvo to stir
the soil so that like poppies
long lying in wait under
too undisturbed soil pop their
red clarion call being vivified ?

Here I chop down pen not *****
and loosen the words waiting the
flowering of fresh inspiration.

There - just a flick of the wrist.

(c) C J Heyworth September 2014

The Queen, snowed-in, stopped for
Cigarettes and milk
Then drove another hundred. 
The Governor told her not to. 
I suppose I did too.

But it's two weeks later and 
I'll be ****** if we've heard
From her. 
Passionate about black lines,
And smaller yellow ones,
Metal arches, sweating salt
Since stained rain came,
And big green signs,
With numbered shields. 

She said, before she left, that she felt,
"Like a consequence.
Something that is constantly flaunting
How severe it is. 
A recourse, to a long-forgotten mistake,
That just learns to be dealt with."

Traversing the wasteland of white
Can teach you a thing, or 
Three. Like how you're not ready
To move upwards, if the
Phantom's shovel keeps filling
In your igloo. 

Every time she left,
I wrote myself down. 
Stories about how, when, and who
Should-Be-Growing,
And the day she lost Heyworth's smile.
I changed her name.
Poetic license, and whatnot.

It doesn't take long to 
Realize, picture or
No picture, they'll all
Still say their 1,000 words.
They earned them, when they
Caught you with the flash,
In-between dreamings. 

I don't need to hear from her.
I know what she'll say. 
A scathing remark about my advice,
A bite-back.
"Lay off the smokes. The Greyness may not claim us, 
Flagstaff, but sure as hell, has it made me paler."

Not just the
red
wheel
           barrow
but rain, white
chickens.

(c) C J Heyworth