"lounger" poems
Something about the woven leather
Reminds me of sandals you once wore,
In the garden enjoying the sun.
Your shorts and that old cotton vest
the one that was probably once white,
but Nanny wasn't around to do your whites anymore,
and so it grew greyer as your hair grew whiter.
The sun's rays danced through the waves of your hair
and into the garden,
Filling it with light, shining down upon plastic flowers planted among coloured stones.
Smells of stale cakes from bargain stalls and the sugar from flat lemonade in murky cups wafted out the back door and clashed with that overpowering cooking smell as you sat in your sun lounger and baked yourself in vegetable oil, cooking your Irish skin to a crisp!
The flower patterns of your walls in the garden and cast iron patio furniture,
The plastic mat that covered the carpet and always managed to trip us,
The halogen heater in the parlour and blanket on your knees,
The clumps of bullseye sweets in your locker and Quality Street tin of empty wrappers,
The damp and stale smells of the kitchen in your care,
The holy pictures and moving Jesus on the stairs,
The bath marbles we loved to play with and how they'd smash upon collision,
And the pink, silk quilt that enveloped your bed,
They're all pieces in the mosaic that illustrates your memory now and they'll never be broken.
I've glued them so tightly together it's as strong as your jaw!
Your jaw, always known to make eyes water when you'd turn during a goodbye kiss on your cheek and crush our noses! Even when we tried to approach with caution! But oh what anyone of us wouldn't give to feel that again, just to say goodbye and think we'd be over to the Bluebell to see you again.
So now I sit and look at the woven leather on my sandals and remember all the details, all the memories that are woven together to make you. Sometimes I wish I could click the heels together.
Bluebell
Bluebell
Bluebell
And be back in that garden, once more.
Sep 20, 2016
Sep 20, 2016 at 5:41 AM UTC
I often had dinner
with my ninety four year old father
at the nursing home,
who, towards the end
had little to say.
what he said
was mostly incoherent
and softly spoken.
after one dinner,
where little was said,
we sat together,
he in his wheelchair,
I in a lounger,
in the lobby,
in front of the television,
digesting,
he turned to me,
and said,
"I didn't think this would go on so long."
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 8:18 PM UTC
On my way home from work
I passed by a *****
In a tent-sized, plain orange t-shirt.
It was forever-stained
With fossilised fluids;
A chest cavity of spilt milk,
And subsequent tears.
A double-take took me
To the green and brown keratin
That dragged relentlessly over concrete.
His sloth paws were protesting
Every step of grey existence,
In the colourful expanse of new morning;
They were clawing the ground
And submitting to gravity.
He looked right on through me,
Through everyone and everything
As if part of a hologram
That was no happier, but at least
Apart. I re-count his limbs to ensure
Whether he is even human anymore.
I surmise: only partially.
He milks his palms whenever possible
To heal the cracks of wind exposure
And old substance abuse.
This was no doorstep lounger;
He was a stray cat with no freedom,
And only washed his hair when it rained.
Then, as I later adjust my mask
In the foggy bathroom mirror,
Mind preoccupied with dissertations,
Affectations and payment schedules,
I realise that it is I who has lost my humanity.
May 26, 2014
May 26, 2014 at 2:34 PM UTC
What is he buzzing in my ears?
“Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?”
Ah, reverend sir, not I!
What I viewed there once, what I view again
Where the physic bottles stand
On the table’s edge,—is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.
That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
From a house you could descry
O’er the garden-wall: is the curtain blue
Or green to a healthy eye?
To mine, it serves for the old June weather
Blue above lane and wall;
And that farthest bottle labelled “Ether”
Is the house o’ertopping all.
At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,
There watched for me, one June,
A girl; I know, sir, it’s improper,
My poor mind’s out of tune.
Only, there was a way… you crept
Close by the side, to dodge
Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
They styled their house “The Lodge”.
What right had a lounger up their lane?
But, by creeping very close,
With the good wall’s help,—their eyes might strain
And stretch themselves to Oes,
Yet never catch her and me together,
As she left the attic, there,
By the rim of the bottle labelled “Ether”,
And stole from stair to stair,
And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
We loved, sir—used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was—
But then, how it was sweet!
2.4k
I asked my Father when I was young,
"Father I wonder who I'll marry one day"
He used to laugh with his beer belly hanging down, rough my hair,
And tell me
"Son you're a prince, you'll find a princess"
As the night turned I would go to sleep early excited for my dreams night by night
Hoping I would meet my princess soon.
When I was a teenager, I didn't breath a word,
At least most of the time.
On my eighteenth birthday I asked my father after I had a few too many beers,
"When do you think I'll meet that princess"
Whilst my smile was off-centred,
My father looked and said
"One day son, you're a fine man"
I went to go to bed, but my father said
"Son, another beer"
Pain in my voice of too much alcohol probably said it all.
"Erghh, I can't drink anymore"
So I went into my man cave and dozed off.
A few months after my 21st, I was outside,
Sitting on a garden lounger with a fire stick,
Prodding away with a cold beer in my other hand,
As the night progressed we had drank a pub dry,
We sat mesmerised at 3:00am by the flickering flames,
I turn and tell him
"dad, I think I've finally found the girl in my dreams"
And he asked me
"How can you be sure?"
So I replied
"Because, I've nearly drank that whole crate of beer and I don't feel tired, nor do I want to sleep. Because living in this moment, even if she's not here, even with her on my mind, knowing she's mine. That's better than any dream, you've ever dreamt".
Jun 2, 2017
Jun 2, 2017 at 7:45 PM UTC
The evidence lies
before your very eyes in the cardboard cities and the plastic tents, where poverty rents bedspace for the night.
No friends in here, only beer and **** and a passport someone drags across a sweating brow,
Insulation tape and heat does not escape, you'll learn this trick when you're down and out and you'll find that names do stick.
******
dosser
lounger
mission hall scrounger but what's in a name they call,
when you fall through the mesh have yourself another sesh' on the pipe, with the pin, supping out the dregs of one more tin.
When it rains, when the drains all overflow, when you know it's time to go and you don't know where, they'll be there taking strands of DNA from the few strands of the hair that you have left.
Cardboard cases cut out faces, barred from all those lovely places that we all take as our right
another bedspace for the night.
Apr 12, 2015
Apr 12, 2015 at 12:33 PM UTC
I dream of holidays by the azure sea
The sun beating on my face
Of swimming freely in the waves
Of dozing on a comfortable sun lounger
I dream of music
Playing games
Laughter
Friends
Good food
Refreshing drinks
Breathing clean air
Staying up late
Lying in
Creating
Sharing ideas
Loving
Being one with the earth
Being one with others
I return
Only to dream again
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 8:41 AM UTC
Ginsburg threw me a line…
"on the black waters of Lethe", as I floated by.
A ware, launched in antiquity as tonal code,
lazily waiting the call,
dum did dum dum dum, drum drum drum
Big bass,
tickled in tune to the whistler washing dishes,
in the back, we've all seen
in the back, on TV
but are you,
really, for all reality is worth,
are you experienced, have you gone this far
before?
Have you changed a diaper on a rich old lady?
Seems like, right, one word to another,
line upon line, precepts perceptively retained.
Precious little is as it was.
Pre is a time-wise measure, how can we think
past thoughts,
we never cross the same river twice.
No question demands an answer in truth,
demands are put on servants, while we
are known as friends,
to all those floating on the Lethe,
well below the leavee, see, there those
same ol' good ol' boys discerning whiskey from rye.
They see time's a river, and I agree,
says this story to me, but
I say, it is a river of light on a bubble's inner edge,
I been there, Age of Lethe, a game I invented,
-- a virus, plays by lethargic rules, no effort needed,
living to steal and **** and destroy,
a minimalist First Person Shooter, steal **** destroy,
then it was hacked, steal **** destroy, mutated into
take **** destroy give,
which was odd, because all truth comes in three
pointy things, if then else
oops opposites spoo ffffffff effect
****** drama writ large, it was us,
the muses, dis-mazing the mazed again
a loss of time,
too bad. Three points equal one try. Aim.
So sad. Grieve for the fallen all we never knew,
the heroes unsung.
Goto the ant, thou sluggard living in a floating Barco
Lounger, drifting aimless--- ah, what if not,
what if I know a place,
just around the next bend, and
we get off there? What then, it's my story?
Dec 24, 2020
Dec 24, 2020 at 4:46 PM UTC
*Every lounger taken
buckets spades and boards
families doing what families do
on sandy beaches in their hoards,
lashing on the lotion
for protection from the sun
lunches in the chiringuitos
a respite from the fun,
then it´s back to cheering, laughing, screaming,
bats and ***** and floats
splashing in the breaking waves
with plastic rings and rubber boats,
but now the shadows lengthen
the burning sun sinks to the sea
everyone is packing up
and heading back for tea,
the sunset shining glorious
the beach lit up with amber glow
saffron skies as the evening tires
and the pace begins to slow,
the beach is now deserted
as I stroll along the shore
beneath my feet the cooling sand
to my left the oceans roar,
a silver moon lights up the sky
and shines a path across the sea
a tranquil way to close the day
just a summer breeze and me,
come the morn it´s back to the norm
for the holidaying hoards
some lying bronzing in the sun
others surfing multi coloured boards,
every lounger will be taken
as another day unfolds
tomorrow on their flights back home
their holidaying stories will be told*.
Note : Chiringuito = Beach Bar/Restaurant.
Oct 10, 2016
Oct 10, 2016 at 9:25 AM UTC
No matter how hard I try to force down my heart’s hopeless desire,
I cannot help it; you materialize by the holly tree on the corner of my house,
Your sunshine and freckle-drenched face smiling at me
Sprawled out on the sun lounger, reading in the garden.
You appear alongside me at the traffic lights,
Grinning from the driver’s seat of your white 80s drop-top
With the wind in your hair when the light turns green.
You dance with me in the kitchen, and lay beside me in my bed,
But only if I never blink; and oh, how my eyes water
As I try to keep my dream around for just a moment longer.
Jul 16, 2019
Jul 16, 2019 at 3:21 PM UTC