"pebbledash" poems
We know as children that you shouldn’t stare directly at the sun,
“You’ll go blind!” parents say. Still, we take mischievous glances,
Scared, brave. Trying to separate the perfect, lemony roundness, from the burnished halo all around.
I remember standing on the front path of my Aunts house,
Eagerly waiting for a solar eclipse, the pebbledash grazing my back.
4 children staring boldly through a square of tinted Perspex. It was novel.
The first time I looked at you, I looked away, eyes glaring, seeing white.
It was like looking at the sun, I needed the dull, brown tint.
Eyes adjusted. “Hiya!” you yelled. Golden
In the moments after the rain,
Look at the sun, in the moist air hangs a rainbow;
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.
You’ve worn them all, not a colour left alone.
Joseph looks on, jealous, in his dull, lifeless overcoat.
You’re a solid rainbow, one that you can touch, feel, put your arms around.
Laugh with, learn with, drink with, dance with, love with.
A rainbow personified.
For L.C
Aug 10, 2013
Aug 10, 2013 at 1:48 PM UTC
clue time game of bluff-man blind fuss of obstacles scold up my mind -(the-vermin-are-quite-rife) / portrait, ambitious portrait racing a train - broadsword toward - a fertile pocket of prissy death ;/ crown, fist and sprawl in the court of The Charmers sole hissy-fit upon your knees
Jan 15, 2024
Jan 15, 2024 at 6:21 PM UTC
Negative,
live and live or die and slave to sieve your life through the fine light wire
where the buyer controls the market and the product is factory made.
I was conceived in a small town East of the city of spires,
one of many in the land of Shakespeare and Shires and fired in the kiln with the clay from the pit
hardened and *** red with pebbledash dreams setting suns in my young head,
for a bit it was fine and the wire didn't cut,
but when you're dead you don't know that the way it is so is not the only way to go,
sold out and told off and mixed up I coughed up my penny for the guy toll which rolled into the gutter, a puppet on strings to stutter his way to the factory where scissors are polished by steel wool to finish the job.
The old man, my father knew better than I who gets by on a wing and a gallon of grog and the dog doesn't mind being cussed by the master, just as on the Dansette we go round and round and the stylus is us being stuck in a groove.
I move on in tandem with me and my random collection of thoughts and things I have bought though not factory, there's too much of that stuff and it bungs up the works and clogs all the gubbins.
Here's enough time to live and to live it right here or the engineer may turn us to burn us once more,
the overseer sees everything, hears the 5 o-clock bell ring and me with a wing and a gallon of grog.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 4:44 AM UTC
I
In the garden with the cherry tree -
where daffodils curb the fence -
cats in long grass stalk the birds
and the rhubarb patch is bursting.
The back of next door's shed.
A white wall of pebbledash.
It's one almighty canvas,
the same size as a goal.
II
In the garden with a trampoline centre -
first love sits poised in morning air -
though we haven't shut our eyes all night,
we're more alive than ever here.
King of the burning woodpile.
Trimmed weeds in a mound.
Neighbours chirping out of view.
Sport scores over a blaring tune.
III
In the garden that's become a home -
close to my place of worship -
guests wave outside the temple,
years and years of well-wishers.
Looking out for hedgehogs.
Feeding a family of foxes.
Like a wave in my brain,
memories come flooding in.
IV
In the garden that was aforementioned -
long after daylight has drowned -
a friend of mine sits next to me
and we gaze through broken cloud.
We've seen everything here:
sun, rain, snow and hail.
This garden knows all my pain
and has helped me to heal.
Sep 24, 2020
Sep 24, 2020 at 1:51 PM UTC
Heaven was 1977.
See how the Vauxhall Viva rusts aside shooting rhubarb,
How the shed tumbles in golden creosote,
A gate latches with a clunk and there I stand on pebbledash shed tile,
Pushing red Raleigh Grifter to shed with the family rides.
A cat slinks towards a Whiskas tin a rattling under winding can opener and I am back in 1977.
Heaven was 1977.
Vicky Kingsford was by my side.
Sun played on my home and I was in heaven.
Sep 21, 2019
Sep 21, 2019 at 7:08 AM UTC