"mudlarks" poems
River boats float along,
up and down
from side to side,
Putney to
Rotherhithe
all this
stems from the Thames
the arterial tree
for the sailor in me the Thames will do
on a flat bottomed barge
muddling through to
St Katherine's and Tobacco dock, to
Tower bridge and make a stop
Ferries and Wherries and
waterways
days on the Thames
making friends
with the mudlarks, the spivs
the preachers, the sharks
all parts of the stem
a branch of the tree
life is for me from
the Thames to the sea.
Jul 28, 2016
Jul 28, 2016 at 1:20 AM UTC
A thousand unclimbed chimneys but the soot lay heavy on his half starved frame,
and the woman,a name he could not pronounce waited in the darkened street to pounce upon unwary boys and men,
and then the clinging of the silt at low tide on the Thames, where the lens of greedy eyes would spy out,hear the cry out of the mudlarks
but no larking there.
The gears that grind and inner wheels that wind.
Northern towns do not exist
they're just a story that persists in our collective memory,
a nightmare that we waken from.
These mill town dressing gown like nursery rhymes
designed to make us think we live in better times,
wrapped us up in cotton wool.
Until
we were just as full of fear and fantasy
as our collective memory.
Industrialisation was the sow that suckled pigs,
look at them now,
Swines
don't talk to me of better times
don't talk to me at all.
Nov 30, 2014
Nov 30, 2014 at 7:34 PM UTC
The sea pulls..Seagulls lulling me,pulling me I wish I could fly.
Clouds floating, again they are boating across the top of the world.
Trees are free but then I see that they're not..trapped in a plot of the earth,where from birth 'til they die,they only grow to measure the sky and I can't see why I would want to be a tree...but the sea..
The sea it constantly calls me..how I want to...be afloat on the sea..where I could drift on the shift of the tide across the oceans so wide or ride on the tails of great whales and tell stories of storms and of gales.
It is always the ocean that creates such commotion and though I give my devotion she loves only the shore.
I come back..I come back always come back for more..the ocean ..the ocean is the girl I adore.
I wish I could fly.
Sep 17, 2012
Sep 17, 2012 at 5:14 AM UTC
I've survived this long, so long
It can't all just end now
I didn't stay alive for it to be
The end of the ******* world.
But neither you or I can do much else
To save our simple souls
So we'll lie in the grass to death
With Betelgeuse and Mars.
I have a treasure map under my hat
I wonder where it leads
But now I guess we'll never know
So we spin a sorry tale
Of the mudlarks and the moonbeams.
May 5, 2019
May 5, 2019 at 1:42 PM UTC