November Fauna

(Wapley Hill Fort, November) 
                                                           

Froth-frayed wings

Fizz against the light

November butterfly

Watch as they watch:

Human eyes

Cat eyes

An instinct for beauty

An instinct for capture

Movement enrapture 

Winged Psyche
Or prey

The split meaning

Embossed in our DNA

The cat will grab that bird in the bush

Alone, I walk 

Deeper into autumn

Startled by starlings

Unchained to the obvious

I'm balancing on the slippery
Scaled back
Of a giant red bream

Carried away by mossy claws
And invisible,
Birdless wings.

The Gun Carriage

(By Gub, London)

Police on motor-cycle mounts
Semaphore with shrill acoustic whistles.
The Aldwych’s Saturday bustle freezes,
As the London’s tourist infantry step back,
Survey Fleet Street’s empty horizon, agog.
A flat autumn city silence.
Empty trees.
A parchment road – folded in residue of orange and green
Littered leaves.
No turning back.
A slow rumbling thunder
Hooves on tarmac, growing harder.
Cupping the tapestried street
Like a thousand arrhythmic shells.
Then the coarse jangle of harness, of bridles,
Leathered cases. Men on the move.
Bright in scarlet and plumes, huge white equestrian
Beasts – a pageant synthesis in sound, smacking the ground – thud, whack and judder.
Magnificent – behind the ranks of pinioned capes, the flooding flow of crimson colour, the gun carriage wheels crack, wood on steel.
Towards the Strand this glorious phalanx of man, beast and monstrous machine rumbles – on their faces, the grim determined jaws of purpose, driving forth with fixed intent.
Tomorrow the salute.
At 11 – the same hour, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
Remembrance.
How could history ever deceive, or dupe memory – with such an unforgettable passing?

Universe and Chips

(By Gub)

Life passes through us 

driven by some cryptic calling, 

searching for worthier vessels, 

less fragile containers, 

that are more robust. 

Magnetized by deep faith and an insatiable need to trust, 

the infinite force can't rely on humans

to fulfill it's destiny - 

better leave it to more able beings in some corner of

the universe - 

creatures that don't rely on sex, crosswords, politics or

curiosity about their origins -

blind, dumb, sequins 

stars with indefinite

radiation 

I bet that's where God is stashing his chips.

Now

(By Gub)

Now you are now

The second run

The bullet spent

The blasted gun

The air breathed

The moment spun

You are now

Until Now

Is done.

November 11

(By Gub)

I have passed the middle of my life

bathed in light,

midway between the rising

and setting suns.

Your body, my clock, each hour 'glass'

Shins

(By Gub)

Articulate
We bend least
Where we need a joint
The sensitive shin
Being a case in point
But mastery of the universe
Man cannot reappoint
The 'shins of the father'
Neither reanoint!

Shinbone

(HBC)

I palmed the torch
Cocked my head up to the stars
Sheep moved
Shuffling avalanche
Across a field
A black dog
Dissolved and reformed
As twinset bouncing dots of light
The universe hung over me
Detached
An oversized bell-jar
Inside,
The acute impact with life
A kick in the shinbone
As I was learning to play

Rituals and Road-kill

(HBC)

Mornings stretch at the threshold
With slug-like stoicism
My vertebrae cling
To the memory of sleep
The ritual of waking
Cannot be observed backwards.
From dreams, to open eyes
To unfurled limbs
To layers, to crumbs -
The arresting picture of
A child in ill-fitting armour
Quickly emerges,
Idly put together
Like a six-piece jigsaw puzzle.
We ride towards the sun
A squashed toad stretches
Next to a squashed newt
As if a child had abandoned
Am impromptu dissection
In the middle of the road
Living beasts
Zoom across the road
I believe in the tail-flashing rabbits,
But the moss-skinned deer
Seem ghostly,
Unreliable apparitions.
Nature has painted
The spectacle of the dead
And the near-dead in
Vivid greens and reds
Colour-blind,
Death gently exhales
Under the car tyres

With Wood

(the 3rd of August, HBC)

Not every day
I slow down enough
To notice my heart
Confused
By a clock ticking too fast
Against a lazy jazz beat
I rest my cheek on the table
If could be pinned down like this

Locked into the warm contact
With wood
And my arms, the colour
Of unseasoned pine
Could grow out into planks -
Better - into ships,
I’d dream of fantastical figureheads
Swallowed by wild waters
I’d wake up – wood grain
Tattooed into my skin -
Into the same evening prayer:
Please don’t stop
Please don’t stop
Please don’t stop

Home is only...

(By Gub, July 27th, 2012, HBC)

Home is only this

an abundance of definitions

Character references

both good and bad

History

and the marks on the wall

of height

regarded...

Of siblings and children

If you look carefully you can see

that life passes

A silent force

The jugular of this essence

in transit

is where we dwell

Where our memories are spun

We are molluscs and our shells

are more than houses

They are an outer skin

shedding them is painful

The loss of weight in outer orbit makes us spin

Sideways

Into the next galaxy....

Walls

(London, the 15th of July, 2012)

A day will come
A day of walls
Voices will echo - empty glasses
And sound will carry back
Some insect-like feeling that wants
To burrow under my skin

Home is
Waiting outside a locked gate
With the last of the dinner ladies
Kicking dust in the early hours
At the bus stop

Home is
A priest’s mantle
Kittens in bags
Couches on concrete
The railway line

Home is
The extraction
An empty wall inside
Where a heart should be.

A Fork In The Wood

(By Gub, the 7th of July, 2012, London)

Ahead the verdant valley
Behind us, the ‘hood.

Sheeps’ bleats for sirens now
Street lights – withstood.

Oak trunks
And cud
Tarmac banished
By rain, by mud
Will our lives
Ever be the same?

Hearts waiver
Waiver again.
Choice and reason
Reasons with gain.
Losses?
Partings In the main.

Yet change is a must,
Tomorrow’s
Bites back the dust.

The places missed
Most – are warmed
By faces,
Yesterdays
Filled with kindness.

Our new landfall ?
The hang’d bank
Portent hope
Friends will not
Forget us

Even absent hearts
Need a stall.

Migrations

(London, the 4th of June, 2012)

I watch swallows
Flitting past, diving low
My eye shutters to slow
And break
The movement
Folding unfolding p
Penknives
They disappear
Under the roof
Of my grandfather’s shed
Out of reach
I hear
The begging of hungry chicks
Well tucked away in dried mud nests
Relentless on hot summer afternoons
Does their mother think them pests?
Grapes ripen
The great migration beckons
One fallen mignon
Wide gaping yellow beak
Wrestles inept against the dust
A cavity of hunger, surviving streak
I pray
Tatal nostru, care esti in ceruri 
Save this chick
My grandmother
High priestess of the burning matchstick
Extinguished in water
Does not pray,
For prayer is a balm to soothe
A child’s unrest
Birds feather, follow the heat, or die
In God they rest
No qualms,
No questions
And no quest

Grenouille

(the 11th of April, 2012, HBC)

Do I play the seductress?
Sprawled out on paper
I must appear
Exciting, vibrant
On stage
I burn
I dazzle
Make a mess
Collector of
Pretty things –
Painted silks, butterflies, violets
Killer and poet
I want to know
Where memory lives
Stalk and capture
This shy beast
In love, yes
Shamefully obsessed
With what I can never possess:
The propensity,
The soaring
Yearning souls
Of the barefoot beggars
All those cut deep

At Times You Play the Lover

(By Gub, the 11th of April, 2012, HBC)

At times you play the lover
Occasional wife
Most times it's the mother;

A cloak of first resort
To hide from unwelcome visits,
Retire to early bed,
With a warmer thought,
Than marital consumption
- or tedious rendition
Of 'thank you' for the most
Basic partner function
Like :- is the dog fed?
Are the lights off?

Are we dead?

Am I your soul mate,
Your husband,
Your chauffeur
Or fortunes' croupier
Raking chips
Across the green baize ?

Are we passing roles
Or passing out ?

The red light flashes at the
End of the Causeway
The oceans cavernous reach
A Perplex of white and dark creases

Never ending questions
Never ending
Waves

Such tension -

Ascend, descend,
Unceasing,

Life may be tedious - yes
But death is permanent
And dull.

Roadside Picnic

(the 1st of April, 2012)

In silence
We break the bread
Of doubt and terror
Share battle folklore
A longed-for release
From above
And below
The punctured reality
Of the Room
We’re visitors,
Facing the same wall
Uncertainty
So cast the un-retrievable bait
Threat, thread, rupture -
Precarious weave of
The full empty
Call on poets
To drag Cerberus
Out of the Underworld
Hold up
The three heads of the beast:
Shame, Loss, Envy
Frantic road-side feast!

The Map

(the 26th of March, 2012)

Don’t force the handle
Or confuse span and depth
Open the bundle
Of within and without
The Spirit slumbers
Unfolding, enfolding
Sacred numbers
Etched on the wall
A cave of experiments
Staring at shadows
Makes it not so hard to believe
That the world is propped up
On a turtle’s back
It’s the occasional stare
Into Death’s toothless mouth
That teaches you to read the Map
Sea/Wave
Part/whole
North/South

In-between and digress

In-between
(London, October 2011)

The world begins
Days roundabout
Staring at trees
The hour of glory
Cow-bells danga-langa
Haloed heads, eyes ablaze
Cruel scientists
Probe into nature’s flesh
With knives and catapults
Experiment cat
Chases a tin tied to its tail
Chickens hatch
And when they sprout feathers
We recoil at the grey ugliness
Of the in-between
It doesn’t wash off
So we shove one down the latrine
Hanging onto the window sill
On the edge of a ten-inch precipice
Hovering above deep water
In the living-room armchair
One push and you drop
In the sharks’ lair
The moon
A light-bug trapped in a matchbox
Queens of the night bloom
Scent buzzes
And we wake from dreams to earth’s quake
Standing in the door frame
Still against the wave
Fresh towels and candles
The cupboards are heaving
For the dead must leave gifts for the living
And a death feast suits rice
Seasoned with sugar not spice
To drink Christ’s blood
Cut with gas water
Large syphoned bottles
Are balanced in each hand
If I drop one will it go “bang”?
And so childhood ends in hormonal boom
Long before the sun recedes
To dwarfish doom.

Digress
(London, 2011)

I am late for a meeting
I decide on a fiddly blouse
I force sixteen buttons
Through sixteen minute holes
The organza folds onto itself
Mille feuille
Blundering fingers dig
Into the delicate fabric like moles
I race for the last wagon
I curse the legged crowd
I hurl my bulging bag across town
Shrunken in my seat,
Compressed to my slightest
Oh, F*** it
I’ve got the day wrong
Put me down now
(Or get me an eye test)
U-turn sequence gets tied up in knots
My thoughts spin at the speed of automated bots
Outside Brixton station
I’m oblivious to the sweet fragrance of dope
Until I witness the woman’s encounter
With the undercover cop
Her eyes bulge up into a plea of stupidity
His are greedy for validity
Under the arches I’m a captive
To gaudy Technicolor neck-laced roses
But the sale-woman only has eyes
For the girl who suffers from
Word trichinosis
I let the young man
With bleached eyebrows
Powder my cheek
I buy my little relief compressed in a tin
I can afford to walk past the crying woman
Clutching a baby with Downs
But on the bus I’m pinned down
To her private hell
Her sadness strips me of my shell
On the pavement
A robin’s orange breast
Lies arrested in death
An unturned postcard
That says: “To live is to digress”

Idus Martii

(London, the 14th of March, 2012)

She dreamed of purity
Death, a coy child,
Was watching us from behind
Words wonderful,
Loose, rolling, rolling mandarins
Perfumed fruit that
Tasted bitter in my mouth
I could not hear her laughter
For the toll bells’ strident ringing
And please don’t ask – don’t ask who
They were ringing for
We tap-danced on a coffin
She dared me not to look down
But I saw her true face under the paper mask
Beware the Ides of March!
I preached – lunatic prophet of doom
Beware the Ides of March!
But she was the Labyrinth,
The Sacrifice
And the Minotaur

In Mind

(the 19th of February, 2012)

The mind is a child at play
Boundlessly vivacious
Then bored
Throws smaller toys
On the floor – to be swept away
He gestures the loss by opening up a
Circle with both hands,
An invisible container of puzzlement, grief
The entire body is called upon
To pronounce rigor mortis
Uncertain of its age
It will keep asking for a place and a time
It moves on to grander projects
The basic facts of birth and death
Never owned
Swallowed whole
In the arms of the grandmother
Hailing rides at dawn
Mischievous
“Now pretend you are sick
And lay your head on my shoulder”
Or, crushing,
“You should have known better
You’re that much older.”
The huge leap
Required
To recognize one’s face in the mirror
Goes un-noticed
The quiet enterprise of creating a self-story
Un-heard
The maverick testing of wit
Stealing money for sweets
Sneaking away for a swim in the river
Was found out
And crushed.

Pulse

(the 14th of February, 2012)

Attuned to love’s pulse
Days quicken
Nights come round
Suppers of sweet and sour
Fruit picked green and ripe abound
One little seedling nestling in our bed
Caged between arms and legs –
The branches of two arbours intertwined
Locked in rest
Pillow tenderness
For that which is yet to grow
For that which at dawn half a-dream we caress
But will never possess.

Restless

(London, the 12th of January, 2011)

Timed out in this spot
Restless, restless,
This day is a fugitive
That creeps further
Into corners which cannot be filled
With wild patterns and pretty dresses
Moving pictures or strolls in the park
There, between the ironing board and the keyboard
Lies the choice of epitaph
In passing I also touch piano keys, back-door keys
And keys labeled “Poison Cupboard”
A dance within the limits
Of a twenty-four hour enclosure
Choreography with repeating steps

Tide

(By Gub, the 30th of January, 2012)

The rip tide
The autumn fold
The clutching at summer
The fever's cold

Roots entangled
The gape
The yawn
The cavity
Circumference
Of tidal spawn

Flotsam,
Jetsom
Mice and men
The beach combed.

Coxwains
Dead
God rest
the men.

Blunder
On past ripples
Grey
The owl dust
Ochre
The fade
Of day

No heart for hope
Numbskull
Squall
The beach
A desert
For the herd
That suffers

The beckon
The lowing
The cloud
Ducked
Call.

My winter
My cold cold air
Frozen before
Breathe

I fall.

Interview

(the 13th of January, 2012, Sutton and Merton) 

What’s on the other side?
Will you guard Our fears? And if hope is a bird,
Will you let it nest in your back yard?
I sit still. You're asking a Fool.
You're begging a Begger.
So you want to adore
And submit to my whims
To pound me with your need
I'm a robin sitting on a fence
Surviving your winter
Is your longed-for Saviour
Riddled with doubt
And bent?

A New Unfolding

(the 4th of January, 2012,)

Time’s elastic ball stretched before us
It unravelled
We chanted meaningless songs
Bone on bone grew
And youth – a drawn out project
Was built leaping about concrete platforms
And iron bars
There were no limits
We drowned in the world’s boundlessness
Aloof and unchecked
Fearless
On summer days
Forgotten in the playground
At New Year
Midnight strangers set fireworks ablaze
In love’s arms I wished for love’s haze
This night I sit with adults
Licensed in control
To prove it they scuff the hour’s eyeball
Midnight is summoned by convention
A sterile play – tossing around of
Judgements and proclamations
Existence dressed in beige
I'm wearing feathers in my hair
Defiant in my out-of-place youth
A silently aggrieved witness
Of miss-aligned joy and age.