"lancaster" poems
Nan,
being slightly Victorian and
very old
would decant a bottle of Mackeson
into a teapot and
pretend to us children that she
was having her
daily cuppa.
We knew though,
could smell the sweetness
of the alcohol even through
the odours of Number 3 ***** and
macassar oil which seemed to
be an integral part of
Nan
and her Lodge street home.
Mar 10, 2015
Mar 10, 2015 at 5:13 AM UTC
that night, i wore a polo shirt.
i thought *hey, i'm going to a friend's
dorm, no need to dress up, right?*
so i wore a polo shirt, a yellow and blue and pink
thing. i'd bought it from a charity shop
only weeks earlier, when i was still exploring
a new university town
and finding not-so-hidden gems;
and sure, it was three sizes too big
but it was comfortable, and made me feel safe.
turns out, you didn't care about polo shirts
or tank tops. you cared about what was underneath
and i was drunk enough to let you - or,
well, not really let you, but i didn't need to dress up
so i wore baggy clothes and a smile
so i had half a bottle of jack daniels
and i had a nineteen year old point to prove
and i had a pill that you gave me
and i had - sorry, have - a therapist's bill.
but this isn't about you. i don't write about you.
i make a point of not writing about you,
actually. which is to say that i write about you
in a way that doesn't let you hurt me anymore.
i write about what i was wearing
(did i deserve it? in my 1970s male t-shirt?)
or what i was drinking
(it was university)
or how i tried to throw myself into a river
in the aftermath
(but i didn't, because i got thirsty, and i didn't
want to die thirsty, so i went home).
no, i'm writing about the polo shirt i was wearing.
cotton, i think. polyester, probably.
the amazing technicolour haze of am i sober enough for this?
who knows how many iterations
of the same lancaster charity shop
it circled through, old men with families
and wives and kids -
it probably saw birthdays and christmases
and, safely tucked in the back of a closet,
shielded itself from the almost-crisis of cuban missiles.
and then, me. a nineteen year old
branching out into the world for the first time;
a lover of poetry, maker of music, naïve and beautiful.
then, it was just a polo shirt, and i wore it
as long as it was laundered, for a month or so,
until december. not that i stopped wearing it
because it was cold. it just reminded me of hands
and hands and hands and
**** how many hands can a man have?
how long will i have to feel them?
i didn't shower the day after, just slept.
a hangover, right? just a hangover.
and then, when the hot water in my dorm
daily ticked on, i washed every inch of myself
to get rid of you, and your foam banana shower gel
that your mother probably told you to buy.
so, what compensation do you owe me?
what price should i put on things?
you touch it, so you pay for it.
one charity shop shirt, three pounds please.
Jan 26, 2022
Jan 26, 2022 at 10:55 PM UTC
If only you could see
I am like a mimosa tree
My branches you can climb
My leaves will give you shade
When my spring arrives
My flowers you can see
The aroma is only for you
In the night
My leaves close
It is how I hold you within my arms
In this way I exhale
And you receive the oxygen
For it enriches your blood
And your heart becomes happy for it
Dig into my roots
They are dug into the soil of our togetherness
Feel the richness
Smell the earth
Look upward towards the sky
As the light of happiness
Filters through
If only you could see
I am more than just a tree -- Wade Lancaster
Aug 15, 2015
Aug 15, 2015 at 10:50 PM UTC
The party starts at ten to three.
On the second floor,room twenty two
two vicars who had come down from Crewe were wondering just what to wear, to the shindig going on down there.
They collided,both decided to put on crimson frilly frocks,this was not a 'do' for cassocks or for smocks.
Room forty four up on the forth,was Lucy Ann,a double barrelled name of course,a horsey type who came by invite to liven lively up the night.
In number ten slept teacup Ken,who had never once imbibed,the porter was slipped a twenty,but was bribed to keep his big mouth shut, as ties were cut and Ken found Zen in a brandy glass,
and discovered parties were a gas.
The police arrived to room fifty five and found Miss Sterling doing the jive around the severed head of Fred the cook,
poor Fred never had any kind luck.
There is no escape from the party at Lancaster Gate and those who come are those who'll die
but the party is so flamin' good I'll try to sneak in,got to take a peek in room number twenty seven,where it's said,that the lady there can show you several kinds of heaven before you meet your doom.
Got to get in, get a room,check in time expires at noon.
I shall no doubt expire,naked by the fire in
room, one o one.
Jul 26, 2013
Jul 26, 2013 at 4:44 PM UTC
On Bosworth field the die was cast
As banners flapped and arrows flew
The King of England breathed his last
A new one crowned before the day was through
Spewing lead the canons roared
Armour glinting in the light
When Henry's banner Richard saw
He led his men into the fight
The standard bearer he cut down
Then ten feet from his foe it's said
His horse got mired in boggy ground
So failed the charge that he had led
As Henry's men surrounded him
Richard stood his ground and said
I shall not flee, I'll die a King
England's crown upon my head
For the House of York the cause had failed
His skull was smashed, the deed was done
The House of Lancaster prevailed
On Bosworth field the war was lost and won
Jun 20, 2015
Jun 20, 2015 at 7:55 AM UTC
Men of the Twenty-first
Up by the Chalk Pit Wood,
Weak with our wounds and our thirst,
Wanting our sleep and our food,
After a day and a night --
God, shall we ever forget!
Beaten and broke in the fight,
But sticking it -- sticking it yet.
Trying to hold the line,
Fainting and spent and done,
Always the thud and the whine,
Always the yell of the ***
Northumerland, Lancaster, York,
Durham and Somerset,
Fighting alone, worn to the bone,
But sticking it -- sticking it yet.
Never a message of hope!
Never a word of cheer!
Fronting Hill 70's shell-swept slope,
With the dull dead plain in our rear.
Always the whine of the shell,
Always the roar of its burst,
Always the tortures of hell,
As waiting and wincing we cursed
Our luck and the guns and the Boche,
When our Corporal shouted, "Stand to!"
And I heard some one cry, "Clear the front for the Guards!"
And the Guards came through.
Our throats they were parched and hot,
But Lord, if you'd heard the cheers!
Irish and Welsh and Scot,
Coldstream and Grenadiers.
Two brigades, if you please,
Dressing as straight as a hem,
We -- we were down on our knees,
Praying for us and for them!
Lord, I could speak for a week,
But how could you understand!
How should your cheeks be wet,
Such feelin's don't come to you.
But when can me or my mates forget,
When the Guards came through?
"Five yards left extend!"
It passed from rank to rank.
Line after line with never a bend,
And a touch of the London swank.
A trifle of swank and dash,
Cool as a home parade,
Twinkle and glitter and flash,
Flinching never a shade,
With the shrapnel right in their face
Doing their Hyde Park stunt,
Keeping their swing at an easy pace,
Arms at the trail, eyes front!
Man, it was great to see!
Man, it was fine to do!
It's a cot and a hospital ward for me,
But I'll tell'em in Blighty, whereever I be,
How the Guards came through.
3.1k
I dont know how to say goodbye to a man I never knew.
Clifton. Tail gunner ,Lancaster bomber.
1942.
I tried to write his story but I came up short. Black man fighting to free the world in his Majesty's air corps.
1944
A man who answered the call.
One of many. One of a kind.
A man from the colonies..Belizean..
Family man, father, patriot.
Has fired his last round.
R.I.P.
Sep 11, 2014
Sep 11, 2014 at 1:28 AM UTC
lonely chord tired guitar play
soul numb as callous fingers
heart hollow as sea rusted string
flat wrought steel,
peeled off tire
fire face melted
fleeting garish glimpse of starch shirt 60s
itchy lice life like gene spliced flight patterns
bioengineered space age
Han Solo with (hold) full o'Spice
Synthetic Cannabinoids sprayed on Marshmallow leaf ruin life
Chewie grab the bowcaster, ill grab the glock foe blaster
Smash, mash and crashed'er like Britons of Lancaster
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 3:04 AM UTC
*England 1942
The war was endless she thought it would be over in six weeks when it was declared.
now three years later she found herself in this airfield crowded with young fighter pilots flying Spitfires and the bomber crews flying the stalwart Lancaster bombers.
She was twenty eight now getting to that age of being called a spinster of the parish. The young airmen were interested in her but really only for one thing.
She worked in the photography department of the RAF and developed pictures taken by the recon airmen of France and Germany and Holland .
Recently an American had joined her in the darkroom.
He was a big man and had a crooked smile and big hands he lay on the belly of the bomber plane taking pictures he laughed and said he never fired a gun in his life.
And that he had no beef with Germans he just fired his camera at them.
He liked to develop his own pictures and they worked alongside each other in the darkroom all though the war.
She got used to his crooked smile and big hands. He got used to her being there.
The war finally ended and he went back to the States. Where he opened a small photography store and built a darkroom with his own hands.
When it was finished he returned to England on a ***** steamer to save money. He knocked on the ladies door that had worked with him in the darkroom.
She answered and he asked her for her hand in marraige.
She accepted his proposal and they sailed back to new York.
When she explored the photography shop she found the darkroom.
On it was pinned a note in his nice neat handwriting.
It said I fell in love with you in the dark my love.
But I want you spend the rest of of your life following the light with me.
She was to be my grandma and he was my grandfather.
My father was born a year later
he had a crooked smile and big hands with a love of photography.
His specaility light and shadow.
I was born much later and did not share the family love of photography and was let off by God with only a crooked smile no big hands.
Instead I used to get into trouble at school for writing poems in the margins of my exercise books.
Grandma passed away a little while ago
i was given the task of clearing her personal items from the house.
In her memory box I found the note
in Grandfathers hand that he pinned on the door
of his darkroom so long ago.
It moved me to write this story.
So Go follow the light Grandma
Look for a big man
with a crooked smile and big hands
Hes waiting for you.*
Jul 2, 2016
Jul 2, 2016 at 4:51 PM UTC
.
I survived Cameron and his band of hatchet men
remember when Thatcher took the axe to school milk?
but you ******* voted her in
as smooth as silk
but we see her now as the sows ear she was.
I won't vote for Corbyn
he never went and yet he's already a has been,
never seen that before excepting Jeremy and they named a park after him.
Thorpe.
Once
when I drew a breath in Toxteth
and the carnival was the riot
I got a bit
but that's censored.
Anyway
in Lancaster it's raining although it was cool down in Blackpool with the Duchess and only a slight breeze and a sneeze or two passing by Blackpool zoo.
Goodnight y'all
don't fall asleep
before you've said
your prayers.
Aug 3, 2016
Aug 3, 2016 at 4:45 PM UTC
The whole thing smells like chlorine, which is extremely unsettling because chlorine always tastes green and a lot like hereditary paranoia. These pants were only two washes removed from brand new, and now there's a slit in the knee, a slit as precise as the shape my eyes make when I'm suspicious of wanderlusting newcomers who moonlight in my former prison cell. And I'm unsure if I should call it like I'd like it to be and say the **** things were defective or if I should investigate further as to where I placed my legs while hacking bits of plastic.
I'm TIRED of hacking at bits of plastic. I daresay if things start looking up, I could get there. I'm desperate, while this pumpkin-leaf hole grows in my chest, I'm realizing I'll never get to Lancaster at this rate. Sure, sure, I'm obsessed. I also have a blonde tail hanging from a tack on my shelf and a lot of cards tacked to my wall. They either resemble a quilt, a window or a complete mess.
I'm relying on plastic cups and the Internet to continuously foster this false sense of belonging. And I don't want to shatter it, but I'm terrified by the threat of a midterm and I feel trapped by my own sky. I mean, have you SEEN the prices for quaint bed and breakfasts? But the sad truth is, I would be haunted by insurmountable guilt at leaving her behind. The cash flow isn't flowing, either. I'm thinking I'll have to forget about it and sit at my shiny laptop on an empty desk, staring at the cottage cheese ceiling and wondering if God is looking back.
Jul 11, 2016
Jul 11, 2016 at 10:17 PM UTC
You are the sun. I am just constellations, so close yet too far to feel your warmth. You are bright and beautiful. I get boring after watching for a while, just there, lost within the darkness. I can’t help but think about you, every moment possible – not in a weird, ****** way – but thoughts of your thumb caressing mine as our fingers interlock; of your tiresome voice at 3am, when you’re slurring your words and your eyelids become heavy. The passion and excitement in your voice as you speak of music and literature. The way your warm arms wrap around my skinny body when I tremble as the cold air blows against my skin, all of that is just amazing to me. You aren’t just average, a generation of the human race, nor are you just a son or a friend. You are a beautiful masterpiece crafted by the hands of God Himself, He is Michelangelo and you are David; you are the most beautiful and perfect combination of atoms, you are my Mona Lisa, my art. The sparkle in your eyes when you speak of life and the meaning to it says it all. I fall into oblivion each time I just imagine your skin against mine; not in a ****** way, but in a sweet and caring way. I love the way you say my name and look into my eyes, as if analyzing my soul, figuring me out. That usually makes me feel uncomfortable, but it’s you… and that makes the difference, the fact that it’s you thinking why I say each and every word I say when I say it. You are Augustus Waters (without the cancer) and I am Hazel Grace Lancaster (without cancer and not as beautiful). You are ambitious and amusing, whilst I am a cautious bookworm. My room is full of unread books and loose sheets of paper with what seem to be meaningless words scribbled all over. Your room is possibly filled with guitars and old records of your favorite bands and artists from the ‘80’s and ‘90’s and old trophies you now find meaningless.
But I want to know more about you. Even if I could know every possible thing there is to know about you, I will keep observing and I will keep spilling my heart to you, and listening when I have to. I want to know the passion in your voice when you read your favorite book, quote, poem, or even word. I want to know your thoughts at 5am when your eyelids feel like heavyweights. I want to experience seeing you laugh hysterically to the point where your rib cage hurts and you cry from the laughter; when you’ve reached your breaking point and you’re curled up, or on the floor, crying until your heart literally hurts and your chest is looking for release; I want to experience it all, I want to know you and not just a part of you. I want to know all of you. The way you fall asleep, how you are the moment you wake up and how you react when you had a nightmare. The human mind is so beautiful, and out of all minds I could observe, I chose you – not just the mind, but you. What makes your heart race, what gives you goose bumps, everything. You’re my observation and I enjoy it.
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 11:13 PM UTC
I stared, stupidly, at his head
and the pool of red he bled
from the brass rail down onto
the barroom floor.
Had it been a half an hour
He, so cocksure of his power,
had first set foot
inside the barroom door?
I'd been alone but for the Doc
a Presbyterian Scott
who just come from
a hard delivery.
Mom and child were doing well
but the Doctor looked like hell
so I sat him down
and gave the man some tea.
I 'm the Pub man's assistant
and my job that Winter's morning
was cleaning up the place
for this day's trade.
Had I been out in the snug
I'd have never met this lug
who is lying on the floor
fit for the grave.
I am Irish from Tyrone,
He was from Lancaster-shire.
To his thinking I was
a blight on English soil.
He was spoiling for a fight
which he started with a right
that sent me sprawling
on the barroom floor.
He said "Get off the floor,
and I'll treat you to some more."
"You stupid ****
His boon companion smiled.
I'm not one to shun a fight
when I'm firmly in the right
and these arms were toned
by years of quarrying stone.
Was it surprise I saw
when He learned I'm a southpaw.
Satisfying was the sound
of fist on chin.
As he commenced his trip to earth
It was the foot rail caught him first
He cracked his skull
and then he was no more.
His friend ran for the police
as his pulse and breathing ceased
Doc looked up at me and said
"This won't go well"
" Take my bicycle and flee
Off to Scotland , listen to me,
unless you fancy
dancing on the wind."
So I rode like one possessed
on the narrow winding roads
Early winter darkness
coming down.
After, I worked on dairy farms
and spent three years in the mines.
Eventually, the case grew cold
and went away.
I emigrated to the States
where they too have
their loves and hates
but the Irish are accepted in a way.
Nov 10, 2011
Nov 10, 2011 at 7:08 AM UTC
In Room 204 of the Lancaster Motel,
I ease myself into the bath.
Music plays. It's the kind
of pan flute and finger-picked
guitar tune you hear over fuzzed out speakers
in grocery stores. I don't know the source.
The place smells of mildew
and cheap coffee and self pleasure
and Febreeze. I'm tired.
More tired than I've ever been, I think.
Do I still have a job? Until I call in to check, I suppose.
And I suppose this pocket knife will have to do.
I never seem to have a corkscrew on hand when
my mood calls for wine. I stab and jimmy the cork
until I can pry it loose with my teeth. A few
bits of cork float on the surface of the wine.
This does not stop me, nor slow me.
Pollyanna and I stayed in 206,
a detail that calls attention to itself, a detail that
longs for a poetic phrase,
yet I feel little other than the
dull thud of coincidence.
I remember asking her
before that first time if
she thought of *** as
a form or erasure or
addition. She said
both sounded nice.
And something
in the way she said nice,
led me to believe
she landed on an unspoken
third option. I no
longer had an appetite for *** that evening,
but we acted on it to satisfy expectation.
She turned down the air conditioner,
and we laid there shivering and saying little.
She told me not to leave her.
I said I wouldn't.
I'm in the tub now and the bottle is almost empty
and all of this is so selfish and stupid
and I'm just doing it for the sake of habit
and sad sack poetry and ultimately
an "I-Eat-Pussy" consolation fedora in heaven. And I'm
self aware but the trajectory spirals against my will.
And my life entire burns a little slapstick,
so I get outside of myself--watch, enjoy.
Nov 5, 2018
Nov 5, 2018 at 9:26 PM UTC
i don't think i'm getting better
but i'm drinking oat milk again.
it's the stuff my parents buy,
rich and creamy, and it doesn't
have the aftertaste of thick curdle.
and, i mean, i'm still listening to mitski,
but it's strawberry blond, not nobody,
which is equally sad when you read into it –
except i'm trying not to read into things any more.
i got a degree in reading into things
from the same university wherein i walked
the unfamiliar city streets at three in the morning,
looking for a suitable canal to drown myself in.
it was all dropping rocks to test the depth,
hands stuffed in my bright yellow raincoat pockets,
van gogh quotes and 11am seminars
and "i don't really want to die thirsty, maybe i should just
go home, you know?"
but i did that. three years of it, and i went home
to a not-quite home. that's what my parents say.
"what time are you home?" and "aren't you glad to be home?"
except for me, home isn't a four bedroom in warrington.
it's not even a seven bedroom (or, as we had it, six-bedroom-and-one-unusued-gym-room) in lancaster. it's...
well, that's the thing, isn't it?
what is home?
it's certainly not a dairy substitute.
although, i suppose, i'd rather drown in swirls of oat
than swirls of lactose. my parents say i've always been quirky like that.
me. quirky little girl from warrington.
Jul 21, 2020
Jul 21, 2020 at 7:05 PM UTC
It's 7:17am
and I haven't slept
I've been playing chess
and watching videos about people
probably perceived as less fortunate
one man had a condition from birth
that left him without cheek bones
and his parents rejected him
after 36 hours in the hospital
when he was growing up he worried
"I thought I'd never be intimate with anyone."
he explained and went on to mention
that he hated being stared at
he recalled his first love
her name was Beth
she wore skinny jeans and liked the same music
and eventually left
I felt the pain he felt at reading his adoption notes
how his parents were horrified by his appearance
and felt no maternal or paternal connection to him
when he was just a little bundle of love
I almost shed a tear myself
when he told of the time he wrote to his parents
then in his 20's he felt it was time
they replied with a letter
that said they did not want to hear from him
and that any future attempts to make contact
will be ignored entirely
Feb 12, 2021
Feb 12, 2021 at 2:49 AM UTC
In a Green Friar car park
a professor turns the key -
his engine shudders - falls mute.
Leaning classword into the wind,
his footfalls cover the echoes
of the lethal chaos beneath his feet -
masking the curses of proud Richard
struggling to keep his saddle.
Then, in a whirlwind of swords,
the final Rose of Lancaster
falls in slow motion
to the Leichester earth -
merging with the primal dust.
The professor's archaeologists
have arrived for the dig
and Richard's bones begin to stir.
Sep 28, 2015
Sep 28, 2015 at 11:29 AM UTC
I have discovered that my blocked nose
is not the reason I can’t smell roses.
The smell has been cut out of the genus
for the sanity of sensors on cargo airplanes.
What then, about my children and their’s,
when they discover old books for themselves
and ask questions about the smell of flowers?
About poetry, and the Nineteenth century?
How would I tell the tale of family Plantagenet,
with flags as dead as Lancaster and York?
This tragedy seems so terribly unfair when roses
are so much prettier than instruments on planes,
every petal a miniature piece of God’s own skin.
I need to walk down to the roadside florist if I can
get out of this sweaty blanket into this chilly weather
and find one of these ****** roses so I can dismember
its petals one by one. I must disembowel this litany if I can
she loves me, she loves me not, she wants me extinct
bred out of this world for convenience,
just like the forgotten smell of those roses.
The tragedy to be told is that women are not supposed
to be the main course in your life, the glorious bouquet of roses
that you set the table around. They are more like condiments
to an existence already charmed, but if the ketchup has gone rotten
it tends to put a damper on how everything tastes and everything smells,
I can’t smell the flowers and there are too many forks.
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 11:45 AM UTC
For Kara--
I was an idle mind miles out at the wheel, just combustion
On a road. The borderlands
Lose their sense of place and aim
Just skirting the middle space with no face or claim to
Dauphin, Lebanon, or Lancaster.
I’ve given my love to any of the three
One is in memories and
One is in late, and
One is where I graciously keep moored
The threads of my rebirth.
These signs are riddled in bullet holes, their figures
Come to semblance of entangles, brilliant in brunette
And a gaze, reluctant ever to be caught,
I wouldn’t wish to go back
If she could be remade from bones, copse, and sunlight
Through auric clouds of mayflies.
But, the illusion scatters, and in its lack,
I do find her, much more real than ever
She is what keeps me settled in the several fawning hours
And though weak from sleep she’s the very victory of a single breathe
I start my day believing in, that she’s a spirit,
There’s this life of hers inside the countryside
Like winds who speak in sweetened tones, mild
In mockery and bewilderment, the very grip of control
Has her fingers playing palmistry, pretending magic
Distorting the sad matter of earth, her very being is a song
That to lose or to grieve my lonely way
I, to Mt. Hope, find clear direction back.
Fall in love with Lancaster girls and they can break your heart
They'll have you already like rolling hills and city lights,
And she is the entire scene commingling
Where it ought, that summer aura of hers
Is a blessing just so hard to bear,
For stories are not so wearing on me, they are easier to believe.
I no longer need to pretend
That airplanes are shooting stars
When there’s no need for wishing to a home
Where the heart is anymore; there is the
Hand that leads me everywhere,
Back to the miles of shimmering land
Where one hears always sighs of content
And rests easy in disbelief.
Mar 28, 2015
Mar 28, 2015 at 8:30 PM UTC
In your granddad’s bookcase
was a book you liked
with a blue hardback cover
with German warplane
pictures in it
and you loved to study
the photographs
even though
the words
were too big
or long
for you to read
and on that Sunday
you sat
while the parents talked
and studied
the bookcase
hoping your granddad
would get it out for you
if he saw you
looking that way
long enough
but the parents talked
and the grandparents
listened or talked too
and the book stayed put
in the bookcase
and you stared
and counted the books
on either side
taking in
the various colours
and sizes
on the shelves above
and below
and how neat
they were placed
and tidy
and well polished
it all was
but the book
kind of attracted you
with its German warplanes
with the Swastikas
on the wings and sides
and some pictures
had Spitfires
and Lancaster bombers
with red white and blue
on the sides and wings
but that Sunday
Granddad didn’t
get out the book
and hand it to you.
Jan 1, 2013
Jan 1, 2013 at 3:35 PM UTC
Oslo that summer
having left the base camp
and the tent
with the Australian guy
(he was with the Yank girl)
you walked about
looking at the sights
Moira beside you
in her denims
and white tee shirt
and her hair frizzed
after a shower
(which she had taken alone
worse luck)
and she was talking
about the Yank girl
with whom she shared
her tent
O the perfume she wears
I’d rather sleep
in a tent
with a camel
than with her
and her voice
***** my head
and do you know
I've heard about
her love life
from the very beginning
I’d rather spend the night
listening to a duck quack
you nodded
and listened
taking in her fire talk
her four letters words
filling the air
floating there
like black
angry birds
you can share with me
any time
well you could
if I didn't have
the Australian guy there
smelling of beer
and talking about Sheilas
and how he did this
and that
you said
no
Moira said
and have them
talk about me too
no I’m not that
kind of girl
besides
how would we work it
to allow that to be?
don't get so angry
about things
why do you Scots
get so moody?
it's not just us
she said
it's the ******* world's
view of us
as wee tight ********
when we're not
anyway
she went on
giving you the stare
what do you
know of Scots?
lived in Edinburgh
for a while
you said
nice place
so much history
well there you go
she said
anyway what’s that
got to do
with the Yank *****
and her perfume
and the love life
of a ******* rabbit
nothing I guess
you said
I think she's over here
studying art
O then
that explains it
the way she has
the I-couldn’t-go-a-day
-without- a man's- ****
-in-me
kind of talk
and philosophy
Moira said
spitting out words
like broken teeth
what about a beer?
you said
chill out
and take in a view
and have a smoke
and I can tell you
of my love life?
the beer's a good idea
but I’m not so keen
on the tales
of your **** life
she said
so you found a bar
off a street
and sat outside
with two beers
and a couple of smokes
and you wondering
how she bedded
and how indeed
to get her into your tent
and what to do
with the Australian guy
and the Yank dame
and off she went again
moaning about
the Southend
teacher guy
did you see him
at the from
of the mini bus
giving it all
that talk of history
and that Lancaster *****
all ears and ******* teeth ?
you sat and smiled
listening to her
talking of herself
and the world's grief.
Dec 22, 2013
Dec 22, 2013 at 2:20 AM UTC
The sun rose pink over Lancaster;
Its frozen rains came quick in tow—
Here, we sense the passive and the active:
To take the drag or pull:
He is dragged by the way of the automatic hand-to-mouth;
The Other, is my command—
But that, even, impelled snowfully toward
A closed fist, a locked grasp, an unwilling departure.
I suggest a dislocation somewhere in parallax:
Take paper dimensions and fold them 104 times
And everything flattens out—
The ocular inversion becomes like-real; I’ll swim in that!
Puddles are dragged by the wind, whilst the pull thinks in spite
Of I, its strange corpus of author, and opus
Drags to the creature of appetite deign to call to order.
But a power powerless to its name given it:
Destined desiring of sunnier metaphors—
The alcoves of the thread, brought to just us
Caesuras of what satisfies, in food, in just us
The depth of image holds true: one cannot live on bread alone.
Thus, I muse and mull back to locks of hair and bellybuttons
Waiting, in time—the deepening of time’s cloth
Where my hand caresses her thigh—
One can feel the gravity pressing on the heart,
All the love that self-reflects, combs out the wrinkles,
And has faith in the good inertia.
By this secular host consubstantiate
And Other (surely a pleasing affair) is but moments away.
And she and I look so pretty together,
Our is of whom and what and the third conditional.
That which presses upon itself, the one dimension,
Cannot disentangle from name or alliance, nor faith,
Greedily picking at the oily ruptures, effulging in transparence,
Contradictions care not for astrology,
And whether you are poetry
Is not important here.
Mar 10, 2015
Mar 10, 2015 at 9:01 AM UTC
Bound by the soil
The richness of knowing
Self, home, heart.
Who she was there was only
As true as the roots that clenched
County to country
Tree to earth.
There was a ****** to
Each footstep
Having paced each step thousands of times.
Some sets of eyes marked the way
As much as a
Curve in the road;
A sign on the street.
Perhaps it was the memory
The recollection layered in thick
Varying shades of red, gold
Ash and dust
On everything to see.
So many whispers, all vying to eddy against her skin
Her flesh.
Oct 11, 2017
Oct 11, 2017 at 9:34 AM UTC
A month after
our mother's ninetieth birthday
and a month before
my older sister
comes to Grasmere
to visit
we went to see
My daughters
Yoga Dragon Studio
In Lancaster
and it was truly wonderful
A quiet place
Light airy and spacious
Lord Shiva dancing
and looking down
on yoga mats and
various sizes of
singing bowls
which were played
by my five -year-old
grandaughter
I was delighted to see
what my daughter
achieved
Aug 24, 2018
Aug 24, 2018 at 5:27 AM UTC
What do I do with this longing?
no bags can carry it.
I grab at the mist
it floats around my head,
clouding my vision.
Outstretched hand returns with nothing.
An inkling of wetness, or something.
Waiting for the vibration in my pocket
a sensation
as close to aviation
as I can find.
To a dragonfly's wings.
Mar 17, 2023
Mar 17, 2023 at 11:53 AM UTC