Haugh Lane

Haugh Lane


1.
Those yellow stones changed colour in the rain.
And what precipitation we would suffer:
the hands of sycamores pressing against
the slate-grey sky in vain, while slabs of butter
dulled to day-old toast. Pigeons and sparrows,
denied the camouflage of wilder species,
reliant on the town's gutters and furrows,
dispersed to copses, nested under eaves:
the bakery, the school, the mill, the church
all unsuspecting bustle. Come the sun
then come the green, the effervescent burn
of earth. Top of the town, the steeple shone,
a suggestion that religion quarries best
where nature reigns and education rests.




2.
With its foreign parts, like vestibule and alcove,
the house enriched my lexicon with names.
Goodness, we were moneyed then. Dad drove
a Volvo, and Mum shopped at C & A.
The cellar housed a games room, we had wicker
furniture in the kitchen and an open
coal fire in the lounge, with tongs and pokers
hanging by the hearth, wrought from iron
and fashioned into figures of medieval
knights. I loved their weight and heft, the coolness
in my hand, the thud and clatter when they fell.
I watched them plunge deep down into the furnace,
the cinerator, the crucible, the grate,
excavating grails of light and heat.




3.
Never a full chorus, not even a verse.
Sometimes a couplet, but mostly just a line,
his sudden, fitful a capella bursts
were lights flicked on and off inside his mind,
Catherine wheels, cocked and knocked askew
firing off their lyrical constellations
at random. Names of girls or towns he once knew,
a distant life, one never forgotten.
He would disappear beneath his soap and brush,
then re-emerge, always naked to the waist,
with all his teeth, pomaded, Old-Spice-splashed,
with tissue Japanese flags on his face
and that map of Ireland birth-mark on his back
as red and huge and permanent as the past.




4.
Almost three decades have passed and still
the same red cheeks, the dryness round the mouth,
relaying how I would drag her up that hill
to make it home in time for Danger Mouse.
And every time she tells it there's a slight
embellishment, a detail lost or gained:
the bus perhaps an extra minute late,
an inside-out umbrella in the rain.
And each time is more difficult than the last
to hear, our whole relationship condensed
to a sugar cube. I urge her to relate
her thirty-something body, her muscles tense
and taut, the burning in her calves and thighs,
the breathlessness, the windows rich with eyes.




5.
We'd climb into our Dad's parked car and rock
it back and forth, imitating with our mouths
the sounds of freedom, declaring our next stop
London, with just an inkling it was South
of Manchester. Sometimes we'd fool our friends
that we were really moving, that we could drive,
perfecting the illusion of a bend,
a three-point turn, the speed of traffic lights.
Our older brother drove a Ford Capri,
with racing stripes, a black metallic finish,
spotlights, spoilers, bucket seats, and a CB
crackling out its alien forms of English:
Breaker, Breaker. Copy, are you reading?
How many candles are you burning?













~

Appears in Envoi Issue 160 November 2011

The Kawamura Museum of Art, with Children

The Kawamura Museum of Art, with Children


1. An Introduction to Chagall

That fish is not a fish but a crayon
the artist designed for drawing rainbows,
and the whole thing is a candy bar.

Except the marzipan goats of course,
and the King in the corner cut from icing. 
If we stuck straws in this nocturnal background

we could suck the juice out of the canvas,
blow bubbles through the petals of floating
bouquets, ruffle the feathers of flying poultry.

Maybe stir the flames of this candelabra,
illuminate the face of the hidden painter
crouched in youth behind his easel.

I'd urge him pack his colours and grab
the other end. We'd pull him from his dream.
You could show him the cracks

where the black has been lifted,
point to the ledge of the sun where a child
paints the world with rainbows, rainbows.



2. Rembrandt's Man in a Broad-Brimmed Hat 

I'm less impressed with the hat
than the beard. Such fine strokes

you must enjoy in your stone walled chamber 
where intricate shadows cast by candlelight 

reveal as much as they conceal. I envy 
the frills that dance with your bristles,

leaning this way and that with each turn
of your head, bowing like servants as you glare,

rising like soldiers when you reach for a thought.
Flamboyant hat and matching velvet cape,

warm enough to pink your cheeks, speak
of privilege. You do not bow or rise for others. 

All these textures are but leaves 
of an artichoke— peel away, peel away,

peel away until the eyes glisten,
wet, raw and unflinching, following us

around the room, out the door
all the way home and under our beds.



3. Rothko

Imagine allowing a child to run
around inside a broken human heart.

Broken, that is, in the mechanical sense,
with cogs and cylinders strewn about,

loose wires that trip, screws that snag,
protruding springs that sometimes draw blood. 

What else would a child do in such a room
but gather up the various parts 

and assemble something new. Attach nouns
to abstract shapes, find windows of meaning

where before there were none. When finished
they'd step back to assess their work, grab

the sleeve of any nearby adult, point
and say: "Look. What's this?"

~

Appears in Envoi Issue 160 November 2011

Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival

Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival

No-one could do appalled like you:

thirteen hours on a bus to hear some

bimbo narrate the Holocaust?

You slurped through screenings and speeches,

(Je ne parle pas Français became your mantra)

and kept tabs on Clare's scarves and shawls,

niggled by how a home-counties mumsy

could suddenly become une critique chic.

I frolicked with salamis and testicles of garlic

and covering up my ignorance of cheese

mimicked a sommelier, replete

with elongated vowels and rolled rhotics.

You cottoned on, dismissed me with a grave

smile. We'd never be the next New Wave.

~

Appears in Snakeskin 182

Darwin's Beard

Darwin's Beard

Often, he would trim it on a Tuesday,

lining up his accoutrements

from longest shear to alum block,

a man of grand ideas but simple pleasure

mesmerised by the blacksmith's art,

admiring the pivot and opposing grip,

the leaf-sprung tension and tapered blank.

With blades rustling through his outlands

he would imagine a predator, belly-down

in stubbled turf, perceive

the occasional flash of a hungry eye;

lantern light and stainless steel

conspiring to deceive a willing mind.

In his later years he would pluck

the few remaining blacks out

one by one, would trap them

between his tweezer's teeth and turn

them slowly over a candle's flame,

savouring the smell of death,

of time's brute confirmation.

~

Appears in Snakeskin 182

In the Dictionary of Lesser-Known Collective Nouns

In the Dictionary of Lesser-Known Collective Nouns

An error of English teachers frolicked

with a frigate of immigrants,

egged on by a barrel of publicans.

Predictably there was a zoo 

of party animals careening

into their future as a puddle of drunks.

Even the divorcees formed a copse,

lining the cemeteries of roads-less-traveled

reciting a Bougainvillea of broken vows.

You could throw a dart anywhere

at the English language 

and always hit something to fear.

The margins are littered with pithy warnings:

nouns hit with heavier gloves

than adjectives; strength in numbers

must always be measured against

the cost of a collective consciousness;

colourful seeds often bear dull fruits,

same goes for farmers; the right to die

alone belongs only to the planet;

there is nothing unique in loneliness.

~

Appears in Snakeskin 182

The Fact of a Bubble

The Fact of a Bubble


Although these liquid spheres that sit inside
a child's hand may be smaller than an apple
and marginally larger than a marble,
this dance of surface tension, space and light -
more fragile and impermanent than an egg
whose enigmatic source has long beguiled
Theology and men of agile minds -
enchants, and has for fifteen minutes fed 
my son's imagination. Simple bubbles:
soap and water, mouth-blown, filled with air,
contain no less potential than a planet,
no fewer seeds than fields of pomegranates,
a whole cosmos of metaphor and symbol
for those who hold an open hand, and stare.

~

Appears in Orbis #157

Osmosis

Osmosis 

They're sleeping through the third conditional
and later they will snooze right past the passive voice.

Nestled in baskets of warm slumber, they will float
down rivers of relative clauses, drift  

from one island of conjunctions to the next
ignorant of indirect objects and causal agents,

or the correct usage of these punctuation marks
alighting from branches forever beyond their reach. 

An occasional rule might edge through a crack,
slide across their unconsciousness

like moonlight on an attic floor. Some time
in the future it will reveal itself unexpectedly

wedged between the capital of Iceland
and the name of Henry the Eighth's fourth wife,

but for the most part language will remain 
a note slipped quietly under the door

and they will sleepwalk through life oblivious 
to why knife is spelled with a letter K. 

~

Appears in Orbis #157

Eating for Two

Eating for Two


1.

When push and shove come, at last, 
to stirrups and forceps, 
protocol is waived and sans-mask
I take my place blindside of the mess.

First sight of his crown has them aflutter,
like pigeons round a bit of crust:
finally, right way-up, our little miner
tunneling his way into the hubbub.

If I remember right it was Trafalgar
Square, over a tuna-mayo sandwich
and a bag of salt and vinegar,
where you talked me into talking you into marriage,

a lunch-date neither of us would believe
would lead to me reminding you to breathe.


2.

Twenty-two laborious hours, 
twice as long as her brother,
on an empty stomach too, unless
you count that brief encounter

with a tuna-mayo sandwich, 
before the hollers wrenched me headlong
back to theatre, where my stand-in
was doing it all wrong.

At last, our little girl, 
made of love, moulded by will—
I clean forgot
why my hands were cramped or what
it was they had been trying to shape
from your back, your shoulders, your nape.

~

Published in Antiphon, Issue 1

Mail

Mail


1.

Deeper than
a splinter, she 

sits
and waits

for him
to bleed.

Ring
and buzz

a pocket
full

of what
he does not know.


2.

With consequences 
unexplored
words are written
their meanings born.

With her affection
pixellated
the answer comes
abbreviated.


3.

Dark as hollyhocks
smooth as whipped cream

form and function
bullet clean.

Apathy masks
a seductive mind—

he finds his future
digitised. 

~

A Secret Hobby

A Secret Hobby


We keep hinges in a jar shelved and sealed, 
six degrees shy of sunlight. No-one bothers to look 
or even ask about the doors, but sometimes

we lift them out and turn them over in our hands, 
work the dust out of the mechanism, watch the plumes 
in miniature caught in the slipstream of a second

thought. Holding them to our ears, we coerce 
the holes to recollect the threads of screws,
to hunger for the door jamb's grain; with hushed

voices speak the long unspoken words—
Architrave. Mullion. Lintel. Stile.

~

Published in The Journal #33

Still Life

Still Life


Hayashi-san has no elastic in the waistband 
of his old pyjamas— bunched like a fist,
they're held up with a rubber band.

Orange peel dries by his feet as he listens
between the lines of enka songs
and studies the geography of his hands.

The painting looks crooked—
a bowl of fruit she painted
when the light was different.

He took it down once to look
for something she'd said. It's been crooked since.
He keeps moving it around the room,

chasing that same different light
that somehow strayed from a Siberian plain
right onto her brush. He has something epic

on the tip of his tongue
and every word is stone.

~

Published in Other Poetry, Series 4 No.3

You were saying something about France

You were saying something about France

It doesn't surprise you to hear the opening
bars of a symphony, but you don't expect

birdsong through the rain, and it has rained
so long you have forgotten how cellos call

to mind old friends, cities you once walked
through till dawn, and a favourite sandwich

filling you haven't eaten since before you
knew the names of birds and symphonies.

An occuptional hazard hailed the article
you were reading in the library with some

dead painter on the cover, another day of
rain, the day we met, I seem to remember.

~ 

Get Lost

Get Lost

When the other kids tell you to get lost, 
go build a sand train in the middle of the park. 

Take spades, trowels, chisels, rasps;
buckets and pots for carrying water.

Coarse sand works best for chassis and boiler;
finer grains for the pistons, rods, axles. 

Find a hollowed out tree trunk for the funnel,
a large smooth marble to use as the dome.

Fashion the couplings from filigreed
willow leaves and oak branches. 

Raid the bottle bank for windows and dials.
Ignore raised eyebrows when you rip up benches.

Reforge the slide, swings and roundabout as rails.
Recycle fence planks and gravel as sleepers and ballast.

Let the finishing touch be the coke can whistle 
that sings your departure. And not a moment 

too soon, as the tender is crumbling
and the park-keeper's arrived, scratching his head.

~

Published in "Did I Tell You? 131 Poems for Children in Need"

Fun with Black Ships

Fun with Black Ships

Most of the officers were afraid to speak to the press.
Which was to be expected considering newspapers weren't invented.
It took weeks to entice the men from the lower deck.
All those drums added up to little more than a fake tan.
Of course, no-one dared breathe a word to the Commodore.
Frustration already threatened to shred whole forests of diplomacy. 

Shiny buttons were a harsh introduction to the art of diplomacy.
Demands were made, but the interpreters were reluctant to press.
Of course, no-one dared breathe a word to the Commodore.
Instead they faked blueprints for gadgets not even invented.
Negotiations took long enough for the gunner to work on his tan.
He used ropes to scare children into thinking snakes lived on deck. 

Rumours soon spread that the ambassador was shuffling the deck.
Dint take t'savages long, quipped the gunner, to sniff t'fart o' diplomacy.
Sensibly, tongues were bitten on the subject of his tan.
By now the children were ogling sketches of a prototype printing press.
Guaranteed to touch these shores no less than a year after it's invented.
Of course, no-one dared breathe a word to the Commodore. 

Of course, no-one dared breathe a word to the Commodore.
Ship's log, a thousand-plus pages, recorded all incidents both on and off deck.
Historians bicker back and forth about what facts were invented.
Example: The Islanders Are Not Savages: clearly a flourish of diplomacy.
Not to mention farming exaggerations such as the steam-powered rice press.
Anyway, the wives soon grew bored: they had fish to gut and backsides to tan. 

Village girls sneaked on deck to see for themselves the gunner's tan.
Of course, no-one dared breathe a word to the Commodore.
The gunner suffered rum sweats and challenged fishermen to bench press.
Stronges' bloke 'ere can tek t'lass of his fancy b'low deck.
Officers and village elders were now a few bottles deep into diplomacy.
The ship's cook was spellbound by a dicing technique a local woman invented. 

At last, shouts bounced down the hill when the diamond mines were invented.
The Gunner was distraught about the hours wasted on his tan.
Pistols leapt from their holsters: a kick in t’solar plexus o’ diplomacy.
Of course, no-one dared breathe a word to the Commodore.
Even the sand shook with the sound of wooden clogs on deck.
There was little time to take names and the interpreters didn't dare press. 

The girls wore tan stockings and carried the best torture tools invented.
Any man could press against their flesh in the name of diplomacy.
Once back on deck, no-one dared breathe a word to the Commodore.

~

Published in BlazeVox Fall 2010

The First Breakfast of Winter

The First Breakfast of Winter

We have been diminished.
Now bring out the big nouns, draped
in monochrome with books
suitably tucked.

All the eggs are cracked. 
Even the sausages mock us.

My eyes find comfort in the cornices,
ride the dado rail around the room.
You dip yours in a cup of tepid tea. 

Soon we'll wheel our sofas outside,
despite three feet of snow forecast. 
We will wait 
for the beards to descend,

hirsute angels come 
to take us away.

~ 

The Moment of a Centimetre

The Moment of a Centimetre

"Gravity is a myth: the Earth sucks."

White noise bursting through
the space between dreams is when
the scalp expands. Some have been known

to sneeze, as if the act of stretching
strummed the nostril's strings.
Heel and ankle bones interrogate

the pliability of flesh and the value 
of a pumice stone. Knees exhale.
Bulimic cartilage chow down on sleep

as burns between the toes recall
dormitory pranks involving
tissues and a few swiped matches

struck in a huddle of shush.
What you wouldn't have given then
to steal and stack an inch or two,

to hurl a larger frame along
a corridor of sneers. Where they go
these millimetres we squeeze

from a paltry night of slumber
remains just one of many mysteries
we carry around skin-wrapped

and writhing in sense.
Stapled to the back of yesterday
a shorter you on tiptoes fades to black.

~ 

The Inevitable Consequence of a Glass House

The Inevitable Consequence of a Glass House

Downwind of the gossip's where
she drops her anchor. Not enough
to know the weight of gold in metric
when what's at stake 
is brunch and tea
is served with pearls and twin-set.

Curtains either close too tight
or never meet and daylight stabs
a pinky finger in every pie
she bakes. When the RSVPs came late
summer was a one-woman 
washout. Unstuck 

by a rueful combination
of broken watch and too-high heel,
she bounced her big fat tongue
from snide side-swipe to full blown gaffe
with no regard 
for testaments and wills. 

If only she had cocked an ear
and caught the candy-coloured names
of all those one time only dinner guests—
there'd be cars parked in the drive,
and gossip brightening up the hallway.

~

Woman, shelved

Woman, shelved

The way she fluffed the pillows 
was as if she was looking
for her side of the bed.

Even when we asked her to stop
sending gifts, her hands
would find a chore in every cushion.

Chintz yellowed the arms
and back, in fact
the whole room was jaundiced.

Empty washing lines meant 
nothing till it rained and then 
his wallet was a church door. 

She dared to peek and glimpsed 
an image of herself she'd thought
lost, shimmering there like stained glass.









~

The Shrine

The Shrine

Rising before dawn, she slides into suede slippers,
plucks wing-tip glasses from the unlit nightstand,
this ritual now as mechanical as the scratches
she makes on lottery tickets twice a week—
4 digits from her son’s dog-tags, and the calendar
date, circled in red, the day he returns from Iraq.

Cold breath leads her downstairs where Iraq
waits on television. Bare hands on cold walls, she slips
into the tunnel of day. The draft disturbs the calendar
as she coerces door from jamb: she never could stand
to set it right, he'd spent so long hanging it, the week
before he left for combat. Usually quick to scratch

an itch, but war casts light as well as dark and a scratch
serves only to kill a feeling. She switches on Iraq,
pokes on the kitchen light, lights up a pot of weak
tea, saving the bag in a chipped egg cup. Outside, cowslips
dance in wait of spring and birch withstands
another March. Nature has no regard for calendar

months, she thinks, as she shuffles to the calendar
armed with sharpened pencil, ready to scratch
off another day. Framed by photographs, she stands
and waits for the first wedge of sun to light the dust. Iraq
burns under the same star. Do Iraqi mothers wear slippers
at dawn, waiting for news of the dead, a week-

long skirmish lingering longer than the taste of weak
tea? Pencil between teeth, she flips the calendar
and conducts her daily count, a habit she slipped
into as easily as comfy slippers. Pencil scratches
on a calendar and photos on a wall now define her: Iraq—
her son in uniform pointing a rifle, standing

atop a tank, no longer the 3-year-old fireman stood
on tiptoes, chest out. On tiptoes she sees a week's
worth of dust on every frame. Is it sand in Iraq
that collects on photo frames? Are calendars
with circled dates, stirred by desert storms, scratched
with pencils by mothers on tiptoes in slippers?

She drains the weak tea from her mug, stands
tall in slippered feet and scratches
another day of Iraq from her calendar.











~

Selected as Poem of the Month, January 2009 at Poets Against War

Typhoon in Three Acts

Typhoon in Three Acts

After

Just once I want to be chosen 
by the weather,
to have my world thrown 
to the wind,
to know the stench of sleep 
in a schoolhouse
somewhere in the white noise.

Here there's only phoned excuses
and slightly messy pavements.



During

What are you looking for
under all these houses
and all these trees
in all these lives?

All you'll find is death
and you
already have his address.



Before

Air fizzes,
taut enough to strum. 

                    Smells arrive first,
amphibian and somehow nostalgic,

rain being the same in tropical climes
as it is on speckled moors.

                    Strongest winds
for over a decade, they inform us—

they, who deal out weather like tarot cards;
us, who await The Hanged Man.







~