He's looking at me again.
Eyes fixed like he was insane.
Clay pipe propped on lips, pondering,
seriously sepia wondering.
No name on the severe brown frame.

He stares but doesn't see me.
I don't see him for what he was.
I see a fictional facsimile,
conflation of another's fantasies
- comic working class
- salt of the Earth
- his own man
- hero or Caliban.

Our roaming ponies lead me to see
the fishing boats off Scalloway,
hustling, bustling activity,
trawling treasures from Norway.

Watching Shetland's secret heroes,
shipping out their weaponry. Mum says,
'small arrows against Germany.
Hush! Don't tell, may Norway's hopes fare well.'

Tall trees bend to watch the circus.
Red-brown leaves dance and clown,
leaping high somersaults,
bowing off with forward rolls.

Empty crisp bags join the show.
Gallop ******* down the street.
Heads sink deeper into collars.
Flapping hats prepare to go.

Plastic bags trapeze from trees.
Overhead wires sing harmonies.
Creaking boughs play timpani.
Isobars squint spitefully.

Gold and silver battle *****
torn from swords saddles and crosses
lying beneath a farmer's field
tributes to kings and bellicose gods.

Fierce birds of prey snakes fish and bears
framed in filigree geometry
guarded warriors' savage souls.
No mercy in Mercia.

Archeologists anthropologists
historians librarians
curators and consertvators
collect confer and classify
while I just try to connect.

Some say we are all islands
solitary lonely shadow lands.
Some claim a community.
Is there a sum of humanity?

Poems - causeways between castaways
constructing insights into language
link lives, as well as brains can contrive,
summoning minds to share and thrive.

I don't know when or
who bought it, old worn,
battered, richly patinated,
ill-fitting our modern room.

Addressed with reverence
dur to age and tradition,
setting for many meals,
seances and squeals.

I was the noble Arthur
for a time, with a kingdom
to protect, a faith to defend
and my comrades to command.

I saw her stiffen when he knocked.
She'd had a premonition.
In the hall she paused trembling
by his photo on the wall.

Eddie stood at arms length, silent,
stretching out to deliver the brief
tribute of despair. His glance to me, forlorn.
How long before we too must leave for France?

They huddle in the cold damp darkness
grateful for the sheltering sandstone
shuddering at each echoing blast
a remorseless dull ache
like their meagre rations
eyelids shutting wrinkling between attacks
seeking peace and inner sleepless solace.

'Them docks is taking a pasting.'
'Me Dad works there.'

Another attack, tunnels rumble
evoking century old echoes
of rusty trundling drum-line wagons
bearing sandstone blocks to build the docks
now being blitzed blighting the night sky.

The morning brings a dusty disquiet.
Merseyside emerges curses soldiers on.

We trusted him, that voice on the wireless,
cricketer by conviction after all.
There were no other views that could
compete, but now we've grown more
critical or so we claim.

And yet we still have affectations,
our urban myths, two-faced politics.

There's strong pressure to conform with
the latest craze wherever born
We share the Ooh's and Aah's across the world
and must hooray the loudest common cause.

At least five a day! Stop smoking!
Enough messages to fatten a
health  freak, sprinkling my consciousness
like drizzle pimpling a window pane.

On Dali time - I wander
a nightmare hall of mirrors.
My watch slow, slow - marching
past the appointment hour.

Incubating my ***** sample,
I watch a young man bending forward
like a scribe studying his text.
Someone silently mouthing
her missal or her shopping list.

Ping! Will William Shaw
please go to room five.
Back to the slow march.
Please let me be next.

Knees aching climbing the hill,
gras patches, soft landings
among sandstone islands,
dreaming cold clime exploring.

Shoe gripping rocks
of concreted fossils,
weighing on times remains
- triassic scales.

My multiplexed cells,
morphed versions of those
modelled in the strata.

Not master of all I see.
Not master of me.

As we approach time moves faster
her late gate pass wasting away
though we're running through the wet
and waltzing through the traffic spray.

Breathing heavily we arrive
weaving through the pairs of leaving
clustered lusting cuddling couples
whose ardour thrives a five to ten.

My girl guides us to the last tree.
We grin and grapple futilely.

Those sentry lamps that guard the path
a checkpoint no charlie shall pass
then knife-faced Nora rings the bell
consigning men to outer hell.

They're patrolling the walls again,
but not in the rain, a ragbag
army of volunteers. Traffic rattles
through, but not the charioteers.

They're searching lurching through the past,
not seeking to know what dreadful deeds
religion's deadly kisses, or excessive powers
have granted, but how life was, in short visits.

There are others, who could know how
man treatred man to misery,
through ****, rope, fire and blade,
even the big dipper thrills brigade.

They say you should own change,
one of our few possessions,
having to pay for the past,
though changes never last.

It's said its as good as a rest,
but don't we fear some changes.
Who benefits is the test,
and who looses history erases.

So they're always taking away.
We're ren ting, repenting the present,
dissenting form changes and loss,
for loss is a change, as we pay.

They call it still life. All
as still as death. Perhaps
the painter's hand was also stilled
in contemplation, rapt, fulfilled.

Glum fish, lolling pheasants,
bread and cheese, garlic, cherries,
apples, oranges, lemons,
but it's the light that pleases.

Ravelling, revealing vision,
casting shadows, changing shapes,
glinting glasses, devilling detail,
the time warp of the stopped clock.

I'm partly this and partly that
partly veggie partly fat
trying to be a new man
and as she says partly human.

All people that on Earth do dwell
playing nukie, bound for hell.
Oh, what transports of delight
when the husbands start to fight

We are progressing upstream, no sighting yet.
Their gods are letting us pass unmolested.
Even the sun beckons us up these blue waters,
but the cliffs are closing in, scarved with the icy
torrents of waterfalls spilling their glacial flux.

In the distance is a great broad path, paved
in crazy glazing, glinting in the sun.
There's no escaping this snare's enchantment.

Surely, they don't take us for their pirate
longboat returning to digorge its stolen treasures.

Somewhere Thor's hammer is at work. We pray
we will be spared his unforgiving anvil,
for we come only with our tourist tribute.

Two cultures worlds apart
some love science and others art
we're told they'll never jell
though Da Vinci drew quite well

They only talk at night
all else is quiet
facing each other
at more than two sword lengths.

Opposite sides of the House
on opposite walls they parley.
Seeing them during the day
you'd swear they smiled above you.

Wishing you cou could have eavesdropped
learned more of what they think.
They stand aside from you in that gallery.

We drove the kids North East to
our adopted hinterland
of moreish moorland, the Brontes
heath and heather hiding-place,
near peacock splendid Castle Howard.

Town kids need more stimulation,
animal animation.
A newly opened zoo park
offered flamingos in the pink,
fapping, fluttering, squarking
round a stinking muddy pool.

We splashed about, rain soaked,
licking mud spiced ice creams,
shivering, slipping, thinking
it's what you try to do for kids.

I'm passed unnoticed
I am driftwood beached blanched
til my final tide.

Haiku 2
I am seventeen
imposed as a three line whip
imaged as haiku.

Haiku 3
Blackbird bristling bold
chirping like an angry wife
did he do her wrong.

Haiku 4

Magpies skymasters
flying menacing moguls
casting long shadows.

Some say you can't read someone's thoughts.
Some claim to read them like a book.
It's phantom pages may engage
but I move on from thought to thought.

Those readings choke like a bindweed cloak,
coiling, twining, transmuting brutes.
Stereotypes shape many folk,
stifling, stunting valuable fruit.

The roughness of unshaven sandstone,
dark from the morning's early growth,
jutting its chin estuarywards,
cold until lathered in the midday sun.

A platform for he who would rule
all Merseyside for an instant,
taking in deep breaths of fantasy
for his private meditation.

It was a very long day,
and a very late night,
waiting for her call.

I couldn't listen for the phone,
I was listening to my head,
waiting for her call.

I couldn't focus in my mind,
I was invaded by a dread,
waiting for her call.

When she phoned I left unsaid
all the feelings I had fed,
waiting for her call.

I watch a small lump of fat
fall to the lawn, surrounded
by birds. A plucky starling
takes it to a quiet spot.

Grandad grew frustated with ploitics
at work. He turned his back,
took his pension,
started working for himself.

Greedy persistent pigeons press
stealing starlings' earnings, pecking,
flapping, asset stripping.

The old man worked night and day to build
business. But the predators swooped,
their beaks and claws tearing at his skin.
They broke his heart. Today we bury him.

Like a maestro on her rostrum
she waves her arms, conducting
a symphony of clouds and sun,
synchronizing showers with sleet and snow.

Or a white witch casting her spells
on Lakeland fells and Pendle Hill,
from Morecambe Bay to Liverpool,
where slave ghosts haunt the cotton coast,
from Merseyside to Manchester,
then chants she changes over Cheshire.

She weaves her isotherms and bars
through the warp and weft of our map,
wreathing those Western Approaches,
where siren sea nymphs shimmer.

Finger soldered brilliant new gold band
proudly circling nuptial sun
orbiting eclipsing the clans
completing a family connexion
with others ovoid chipped but fondly funded
wearing thin on hardened blue veined hands
some waving some proclaiming all belonging.

Words lie in wait. Ready
to spring, invade our minds,
ambush our thoughts. They fight
each other for the prize.

Born of grisly grief, lasting love,
excitements, incitements, enticements,
realities plurality of life,
imagined hope ungrasped,
surrendered souls downcast.

Treasuring pleasing phrases,
blessed by serendipity,
and so must shout their praises,
gorge ephemerality,
soon returning to the feast.

Fighting for the right
or the left, praising
heroes and heroines,
They scorn all villains.

Time for a breath of air,
weighing their own ways.
Are they being honest with
their harmonies of opposites.

We were there on both sides of the Somme
seeking our stories of gory glory.
We were there teaching our young to **** and bomb
whipping up feelings of sadistic fury.

We were there purifying the race
destroying the foreigner - leaving no trace.
We were there fighting the just war
til all that was left was just war.

A radiant white goddess
limped onto our back lawn
reflecting bright moonbeams
the stuff of storybook dreams.

I gently picked her up
my two hands shielding her
like a communion cup.

The vets undertook her care
pronounced her a pure white dove
later phoned declared her dead
a broken leg.

What humans call a humane killing.
It eases our pain.
What happens when you **** a goddess?

I am a tree - old and knarled.
I shall open my arms,
whisper to my seedlings
just how things might be.

He's gone - dead
my memory redefined
what feelings will survive
who will remember?

Formal, frozen, inexpressive
faces, relatives and friends,
people I've nor seen for years,
shuffling funeral shoes,
nervous, rehearsing things to say.

Others never seen before.
His networks still in tact,
mine sadly declining.
Perhaps I didn't know he who goes there.
Pass friend.

He's gone - dead,
memory redefined.
What feelings will survive?
Who will remember?

Formal, frozen inexpressive
faces - relatives and friends,
people I've not seen for years.
Shuffling funeral shoes,
nervous, rehearsing things to say.

Others never seen before,
his networks seem intact,
mine now declined. Perhaps
I don't know he who goes there.
Pass friend.

Why does the grass grow fast?
Why do pigeons persist?
Why jellyfish?

Why do weeds always succeed?
I cut the lawns, prune the trees,
seed the bald patches.

Wild ways still hold sway.
Why is nature inconsiderate?

He's marching out of step, our poet.
You can see it in their eyes and hear
it in their sighs. They whisper 'snob'.
But he's always gone beyond the norm,
hiding thoughts, hiding loves, faith denied.

Duty to art, duty to country,
duty to comrades bind and confound.
Few try to understand poetic
powers. Few seek the truth inside the man.

He set out to face the slaughter, knowing
death's colours, sounds and smells, writing of waste.
His end a poet's wreath matted red. His last
trench a French canal. His pen impatient

I cannot settle in Blighty.
Wounded or not I have changed.

My feelings are with my comrades,
platonic, a complex of simplicities.
We talk only together for no others understand
beyond the old lies and the gas attack of poetry.

My being is incomplete.
I lack the wounds
to disregard life
beyond my skin.

Many sing of Shakespeare or of Keats.
I look to a Scottish lad for my treats.
He was of Irish descent,
and but for friends he would have lived in a tent.

From weaver he rose to a poet of renown,
but his contemporaries treated him as a clown.
Employed to give recitations of his masterpieces,
such as the famous 'Tay Bridge Disaster' he was a poet
of an entirely different species.

Spurning fashionable poetic metaphor and scans,
his simple language amused his many fans.
Alas he died in poverty. Yes he was skint,
but unlike many others of his time,
his poetry's still in print.

Words that flame, words that shame.
Words! Words! Words!
Words we shouldn't use.
Words politicians choose.

Words that blame, always the same.
Belligerent words, ignorant words.
Words of beauty and of song.
Words the Saxons spoke,
or some Anglian bloke.
Welsh words, Celtic words.
Words from round the world.

Words recently known to few.
Words that Wordsworth knew.
All in Oxford's Dictionary,
even meanings lost in history.

The number one of many mounds
in Suffolk's shrouded Sutton Hoo
is savage Raedwald's resting ground,
shipboard treasures the only crew.

His iron helmet and his sword,
his shield and spears and silver bowls,
rich remnants of his royal horde
declare dominion over souls.

Who would bury me with treasure?
No weapons, just my worldly goods,
my Sunday suit, not made to measure,
my poems, written just for pleasure.

They died two millennia ago
and now their skeletons are on show.
In York they excavate the graves
of fit young men albeit slaves.

There's evidence of cruel wounds
from many ****** afternoons.
Some headless, some killed by hammer blow
while bloodlust crowds shout and bellow.

Their bones bear marks of contest
from lion's bite to coup de grace.
Buried with funeral feast.
Once doomed now exhumed underclass.

How should we react today
with intrigue and concern to learn?
Where does our bloodlust find its prey?
Drop it! Dig out the day return.