Onwards sprinkled poppies

In the seventh summer
Slip, I dipped on the
Trip to pink flamingos

Now my seventeenth number
Flip, I’m clipped on the
Strip of fairway gringos

In between the innocence & the heartache
What seems the green grass, the second class
The mother, the child, the both without a father

In their seven rows
Strips of once wild poppies
Nipped in bud, for the county flower show

Now my seventeen insecurities
Drip into my shattered mind
Rainy days; the sipped sour wine of impunity

In between the hazel & the hedgerow
What seems the pasture, swift past rapture
The other, the wild, the both without hope, rather

To be in the seventh seventeenth summer
Somewhere between home & away & eternity
Graveyards & birthplace; endless, timeless journey

Trips to pink flamingos
Stripped bare the fair play gringo’s; swathes
That wave, rave on - onwards sprinkled poppies


This poem didn't quite make it into the collection Rainbows On My Spectacles - Love Through a Lens
To see what did click anywhere on this text

Incest and other conversations

Mottled
Colours through crimson bottles
Glass with past you do wonder

Petticoats on soft skin
Racehorses on close run rails
Fairways these last days of summer

Cared for with loves
Deeper understandings

Shadows only on the raindrops
Or the quenching waters
Blast furnace you do recall

Cold beers; for brow borne beads of sweat
Share incest and other conversation
Cast figures days when daylight fails

Shared with untouched love
& deeper misunderstandings


This poem didn't quite make it into the collection Rainbows On My Spectacles - Love Through a Lens
To see what did click anywhere on this text

Shame of sensation

Green wheat
On the sweetest day of summer

Where Tennyson heard
That Byron was dead
He engraved the news, deep
In the sandstone of long memory

That first day of summer
& the corn was high

Or would be later in the year
For Tennyson, the corn
To disappear, life too dear
Cleared of his father’s reputation

Feared of shame and sensation
An odd kind of situation

Humans with emotions

I walked there
And back again
Looked in all the windows
Opened one or two of the doors

In truth I wasn’t really looking
For there is nothing that I need
But I liked the time just to wander
To see the pigeons feed

The pensioners study
The racks of three for two
The tins of pilchards are past
Their sell by date; nothings new

The flautist plays
His electronic mandolin
He sells lots of the Big Issue
It’s hard to stay so thin

The schoolchildren size up
The cost of liquorice sticks
Choose one colour or two
Or better value in the lucky dip

The opera house is open
The autumn catalogue is news
Blues Brothers, or Tourandot
The eclectic amongst you choose

Sun shines on the fountain
The dress shop picture is quite a pitch
Tourism given over to pride and prejudice
Thank the Lord, Chatsworth made it rich

Back past the old disused spa baths
Stone flags; great worn slabs
Weathered for centuries, but now
In the hands of developers
With tentacles like crabs


…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here

Indifference

If only it was indifferent
Instead it is silent
Mute

If only it was significant
Instead it is blank
Brute

Charles Causley I believe once said;
“That a good poem was always about something else”

If that means different
About some kind of piled up, pent
He's really quite astute

If that means insignificant
Is that to slide down the blank
And blind refuse shute

Carl Dennis wrote;
“And write about the life
You can talk about”

You left to walk away
How often have you heard it said
Or said it yourself

You would talk, but
Have not a thought to say
Just words with which you play

Jane Kenyon in her poem Happiness:
“No, happiness is the uncle you never knew
About who flies a single engine plane”

Over moor of purple bramble hue
Under cider presses wooden screw
The hope is ever new

In factories and submarines
We bang the drum
Tam the tambourine

The love now blue
Was for a while
Ultramarine


…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here