Mystic
I was bound to love You
from the startled murmurs
and restrained velvet moans.
Caught up in emotion
untethered soul i found
freedom in Your embrace.
Our lives are now entwined
like boa constrictors
around a helpless prey.
Ev’ry time i breathe in
the knot becomes tighter
– i am bound to love You.
A Blues Guitarist (2 Versions)
A guitarist
searches for the perfect blue note
behind a slapped raw rhythm
and syncopated shotgun blasts
inside the melancholy of glass
on steel.
Original
The whole room shakes,
dancing in time
to a blues guitarist
sat on an old wooden stool,
feet stomping on an old wooden floor.
Rocking – in a trance
fiery fingers patrol the fretboard
while an electric rhythm hand slaps out
an African bassline
– punctuated
by the melancholic cries of glass on steel
and syncopated shotgun blasts
— the clashing of frets.
Lost inside a hypnotic riff
nailed to a groove
he searches for that gorgeous
blue note.
Over-Dozed
I remember the afternoon when you appeared at my door,
blazing a trail of halcyon rust,
pirouetting like a helpless feather in the wind,
bouncing elegantly off two walls
and letting gravity pull you to the nearest chair.
Mumbling about how much,
how clean,
hitting a pipeline,
the dark crimson surge
and heaven cascading through the walls;
a tidal wave extinguishing the pain.
I continued playing the battered Spanish guitar
that some tone deaf fool had left
abandoned after judging it with their eyes.
“That’s nice” you said.
Smiled, swayed and drifted into bliss.
Content to just be, I encouraged the guitar
to continue singing sweetly
until it dawned on me that I was slowly killing you.
Gently letting you fall back to the womb
and away from reality’s embrace.
All the time watching your colours fade
into a Baltic blue.
My last resort of cold water shock
let in a tiny chink of light,
piercing the cocoon,
flooding grey to pink,
triggering a sharp intake of breath,
prompting the glare and the words,
“Do that again and I’ll fucking kill you!”
Two Bumble Bee Poems
composed by a foxglove—
sonnets
for a bee
A Jovial Evening
I remember my Galileo moment,
viewing Jupiter through a telescope.
A sphere, the sunlight on it’s surface
gradually curving into deep shadows.
A pale red smudge around the middle
and most strikingly, four bright moons.
I now had proof, it was real.
“It’s half a billion miles away”, I said
as I showed you.
And you said,
“Huh, those five dots?”
As my axis shifted and sent me spinning
in a mercurial orbit towards the pub.
An August Presence
Will-o’-the-Wisps
have taken to the skies —
noctilucent zenith
A Ship Launch
When I was seven my Granda took me to see a ship launch.
Hundreds of folk with union jacks and nautical smiles
flooded the streets of Wallsend and floated along
buoyantly down into Swan Hunter’s shipyard.
The Queen Mother was there in a posh frock
and some said she looked bonny in her frilly hat,
but Granda said, “Cannit see it meesel son
and anyways the days bonny enuff for us.”
We hadn’t come to see the fashions of a royal
but royalty fashioned in the building of a ship
on the banks of the Tyne in a yard of wonder.
Standing there in astonishment I absorbed it all.
A faint salt breeze beneath the river’s stench,
colliding steel clatters the seagull’s screech.
Acetylene flames spit sparks against the sun
as an oil drum thunders down a metal ramp.
A rhythm, a pulse, alive.
Boisterous klaxons scream a pathway clear,
forklift trucks scurry between the legs of cranes.
Frenzied shouts deliver instructions
as dismantled scaffolding collects in a heap.
A rhythm, a pulse, alive.
Electricity crackles, sparks and arcs to fuse,
the white hot welders flame rumbles as it burns.
Syncopated hammers beat a ragtime groove
as a distant pneumatic drill trembles the ground.
A rhythm, a pulse, alive.
Everywhere beaming smiles
beneath hard hats on hard heads.
Everywhere pride.
And at the centre round which all else orbited
HMS Ark Royal stood silent, slumbering on the slipway
an anaesthetised behemoth soon to be awoken
and set free from the hammer and the anvil.
Enormous serpents of rust lay coiled in her shade
set to strike should she still need a final shackling
before a river baptism and the seas confirmation
opened all points on her compass to endless horizons.
Lost in swirling thoughts of ships at sea
I missed the crescendo countdown,
bottle smash and cheering.
A hand shaking my shoulder brought me back ashore
just in time to see the skyline slowly moving
as the giant grey beast woke up moaning.
Gathering unstoppable momentum.
Down and down shaking the ground.
How she howled as her metal shuddered
and how she screamed the rest of the way
until she met the river with an almighty thunderous
boom that sent a wave surging towards the far bank.
Then, without warning
there came a furious rasping hiss
and in an impetuous rage
the serpents gave chase.
Violently jolting and shedding their skin
as they uncoiled and hurtled to the water,
leaving behind a thick cloud of rust
that hid everything from view.
Gradually
the haze cleared to reveal
emptiness.
A decayed wasteland, half a decade’s dilapidation.
Workers, wizards, fond well-wishers vanished
and in their place half dismantled cranes lay strewn
across the storm-battered yard, roofless fabrication sheds collapsed
onto seaweed carpeted slipways, scaffolding poles and pylons
toppled, power cables ripped from concrete, concrete ripped from earth
the whole damn forest all upended.
No saplings, no roots, no life except rats—bigger than ever
—and the stray cats that refuse to leave the home they’ve known for years.
“Wu used to build ships here ye knaa”,
Granda reminds the cats as he hands out
the last of the food we brought for them.
Without Laces
Uncle George told us
he couldn’t remember
how to tie his laces
and we all laughed.
Next day he had a stroke.
Now I wear slip on shoes.
Blue Garage 