Bacchus Hotel

I am the only patron

In the rather swish coffee lounge

I am somewhat intrigued

By the chrome yellow shadows

With neon blue outlines

Now I play shadow puppets

As I choose a replacement dessert

Due to the run on the syrup sponge

The room is an interior designers dream

Or nightmare, depending on your taste

The stamped distressed vegetable crate

Suggests the establishment opened in 1691

I am joined by an old man, with his even older

Greyhound, assuming that is of course

That each dog year is worth x times a human year

The waiter explains to the woman at the bar

That she ought to book her Christmas meal

Sooner rather than later; you know how it is

In the trade, everybody is a salesman, everyone

Wants to make their mark, in full on sodium

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Huttoft Car Terrace

No parking

Between 10PM and 6AM

To the South

At some distance

A promenade of lights

With the windmill’s red lights

On an higher elevation

To the East (straight ahead)

A grey beach

A black sea 

A blacker sky

Above the horizon

To the North

The glow you might be due

From Gods own county

Other than that

Nothing given

Nothing, as well you might expect

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Some Words Don’t Go Away

In the words of John and Paul

And all of those

Who chose not to hear

In the sense of lost control

As we presuppose

There is indeed a life of fear

If the day should fill your soul

Set fair to fully oppose

That which could easy disappear

There, with troops and wherewithal 

An idyll to compose

To see the sea, so far, so clear

Yet doubt you might, and doubt is all

In the ability to foreclose 

On all that’s wrong, and all that’s nowhere near

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Lost, Not Found

I retrace my steps

Perhaps

If I had bought a blue pencil

Or an orange pencil

Then the lost cap

Would have been easier to spot

I will buy a blue pencil

Or orange

Or whatever bright colour they have in stock

I won’t buy another black one

That would only seem to compound the error

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Lost And Found

I slow down

In search of my pencil cap

I hear the singular warbler

I hear

And then see

Another aeroplane

I hear

But don’t see

The cars on the coast road

This is a well trod path

One day a little child

May come across my pencil cap

And may ask its parents

What sort of person

Might have left this here

The child’s parent

If mindful, and imaginative

May tell a story

Of the old man, from far away

Who came here one day in winter

To write, and take photographs

In his excitement, also due to

His inability to do two things at once

He lost the pencil cap

And no matter how slowly

He walked the muddy path

The cap was not found, until today

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