She rises at dawn, chilled
by the lost embrace
of her sleeping pills, brushes

summer's blown ashes
with the shuffle of footsteps
on old stone floors.

She thaws her hands
around a coffee cup,
sits at her desk,

 ******* Ariel             arrowed from
 yesterday's tide           hoof-printing  
ocean waves                 jetting barnacles
telephone wires            a man's black boot

routing them through
cold English mornings,
a gold Sheaffer pen.

Words seep
across the page,
trail toxins of grief.

Light edges
between churchyard yews,
fingertips the curtains.

A thumb's worth
of breast-milk
stains her nightgown.

Take these tears from yesterday
And kiss them all away.

In the shuffling long, long line..
..stood men from another world..another time
Dressed in linen shirts and boots and kipper ties
Men with tired sad..grimy eyes.

And in the Labour exchange a man would say
Ninepence ha'penny...unemployment pay.
This..
..for men who had gone to war
And evened up the score...crushed the fascist state.

Why do they call this country great?

Those men who sat beside the Thames..
..and with one stroke from Sheaffer pens destroyed us all.
But these proud old men..did heed this country and its call.
Left the fields and left the ploughs..the pits and mills
The rolling hills where they were born
A forlorn hope..for a brighter day
Kiss my tears from yesterday away.

Why do they call this country great?
This Island state
The ancestral homes
Of dead mens bones.
Expletives long deleted..hope depleted..future boarded up.
We will not drink a cup and sing to..
Auld lang syne.

The Beatnik Café’

Cigarettes, coffee, a ****** beret
Blue smoke and Blue Mountain, blue verse, blue rhyme --
O Come to the side-street beatnik café;
Here present-tense yourself; caffeine the time

Here order your Bacon very well Donne
And jam your java with croissants and Keats
Orate from Spenser; groove with Tennyson
Tap out a line of Seafarer-four beats

Tap out a manifesto; everyone does
Pulp-print Red rags yelp “Revolution Now!”
The typewriter is holy, and Up the Fuzz!
Bongo that Kerouac, and Howl, but how?

Bongo that beat, oh, yeah, it’s crazzzzy, man
Sheaffer that rhythm, cat; Parker that line
Ferlinghetti your truth to a yellow pad
Sharpen your verbs to a rebel design

Sharpen your verbs from a bottle of ink
Light up a Camel; blow intellectual smoke
Teach the ****** bourgeois how they should think
Grey-suited capitalists – what a joke!

L’Envoi – Time Slouches On

Tee-shirted capitalists joke in Mandarin
The latest chained coffee’s inside the mall
English and Apples are original sin
On glowing screens where the pale pixels crawl

And no one crawls through rhythm, rhyme, or verse,
Or bongos out an existential cry
For poetry is dead; the twitters terse
Reduce the ancient loves to I, me, my.

Foxy John’s:
Beer, Wine, Good Food, Low Prices

Between class and the night shift, Foxy John’s:
Books and ideas, an old Sheaffer pen
Notes scribbled on a yellow pad, a pipe
Of Holland House, coffee, another cup
The old MG stands loyally outside
The San Diego night smells of the sea
Damp and cool out beyond the fluorescents
And at dawn, between the night shift and class
More coffee, more tobacco, weary eyes
Ill-focused on Henry at Canossa
And the ocean tides and the morning fogs,
Turning the seasons, mark shifts and studies.

How curious never to meet ol’ John
And so to learn just why he is foxy