Alms

In need of suspension

To feel for disbelief

Parting from dissension

As the cure to find relief

Lift the lid off this attention

Learn to search upon your knees

Gift the gifts of freed ascension

Learn to sail upon the seven seas

In the midst of the passing

Called up by images and dreams

There to find by the final lashings

Nowhere is ever what it seems

In the need of right direction

To feel alive for all he pleads

Apart though from exemption

The cure is in the founding deeds

Lift the lid off this confession

Learn to fall beside the reeds

Gift the gifts of clear impression

Learn to rally by counting trees

In the midst of those harassing

Carried on by the poet’s screams

There alone in the final romancing

Nowhere is not at all what it seems

 

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New Neighbours

I cannot

And I do not

And so there is a sense

Of the waste of it all

I care not

And I shall not

And so there is a label

For the flakiness of it all

I am here

While the rose red trees

Refreshed by wind and rain

Are in my neighbour’s garden

Their bearers cannot

And shall not

Be with us today

Lifetime’s toll has taken them both

Though I do remember that innocence

And joy

As we talked of poets

Sat in their floral armchairs

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Nostalgia

They are but memories

Though memories of a youth

Spent searching for passion

Copulation sometimes mistaken for love

From thirteen to twenty

A seventh of life thus far

Heartbreak and heartache

One night and then the next

From youth club to dancehall

From football to bar

Friendships and egos

As batteries for life

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Your Teenage Town, Or Mine

The Albion

With Led Zeppelin on the jukebox

Where I walked in barefoot

On return from the Isle of Wight festival

The West Riding

Where local football stars, internationals too

Turned up on  Saturday teatimes 

Straight after the match

The Burns Tavern

One of our technical college lunchtime venues

Where Syd Brown would eat

Three rounds of pie and peas

The Mandarin Restaurant

Three-course lunch

For seven shillings and sixpence

Served to the more refined students such as I

The Starlight

A dancehall of renown

A place for meeting girls

In the lottery of the lights-out, contra-rotation circles

Lord Jim’s Discotheque

Where Steve from tech (mostly absent from tech)

Was a DJ, he also was said

To deal a  few uppers and downers on the side

The Amsterdam Bar

Save the best for last, where the gay proprietors

Would don their Shirley Bassey costumes

To entertain the pressed-in crowds at closing time

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The Window To Watch

All those old places

We all have them don’t we

Yet to be reminded

Is such a wonder-filled journey

Studio 58

Where the good folk congregated

To show themselves off

Also to be in with the in-crowd

And the downstairs bar

Where only young people would go

I forget its name

But it will have changed anyway

Slimline suits you said

Sold in the ready-to-wear shop

At the bottom of the arcade

Oh yes, with a very pushy salesman

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