Denial

Nineteen, or Seventeen, what’s it matter
If the target to achieve is seven, or eight

In this way your morning awakes you
In this way reality catches your solar plexus

Amazing really, that it’s taken sixteen years
Think of all what you did in your first sixteen

Which is where your memoir faltered
Thirty years before news of this illness broke

As it did in that telephone call
To a Yorkshireman visiting Yorkshire

Of course by now you know I’m skirting
You too can feel the words meandering

That is how it must be, I have to conceal
For concealing is my learned behaviour

But, as you can see, I sort of want to reveal
I want to, but no I cannot, what is the point

What is the use of giving you news
Which actually is only of any concern to me

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Bays Set Out For People Watching

What to do, where to go
How to let the day develop
How to help affairs shape up

Watch the waitress take the orders
Watch the waitress pour the coffee
Watch the waiter serve the breakfast

Look at the glum-looking chap
At the next table, not a smile
So far, not one hint of happiness

Who knows what his worries are
Who knows the troubles in his life
Who knows the debts he has incurred

Maybe he looks on me in the same way
What a miserable sod he might think
He could even dismiss me, as a waster

Though I don’t feel at all uneasy
I don’t feel at all out of place here
I don’t, until I see, and hear, his laughter

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Olden Days Are Not Forgotten...

One day out of seven
Not a bad ratio
But of course that all depends
What you talk of
What side of the equation you are on

In this instance it was running out of words
Not knowing
The next thing to write
Not knowing
The next thing to think

And most certainly, in those moments
I did not think back
To that last one in seven chance
Such then as were my opportunities limited
Such then my escape into silence
Ever more profound, ever less pronounced

Then to read, thanks to Maria Popova
Of the damming of the word depression
An onslaught on its lack of anything useful
Better then to return to the previous term
Melancholy, and how that word now so so
Rightly masquerades, if sung in a mohair suit

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In A Room, With A Memory

Listen, listen to the quiet
Bathe, bathe in the collective calm
Even the tip-tap tapping
Of the keyboard is helpful

Yes, yes, yes, no it is not repetition
A whole swathe of letters
Are brought into play
As I imagine climbing over the five-bar gate

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Parked, On An Incline, By A Field

Between the grey, and the maroon
Sit the rolling Lincolnshire Wolds
On this mist filled February afternoon

Between the hedgerows, and the trees
The tarmac highway takes over
Towards a welcoming, melancholic tune

There goes the last of the coffee
And no longer any cigarettes
To go with that Cornish vacation fudge toffee

There go the coasting four by fours
Also the rampant, excitable speeding youths
All intently exploring; what this here life is for

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