Found ourselves with the forever few,
battling rainwater and tumbling truth
while latitude and longitude;
geographic limitations restrict our progress.
Pitched our odds against the fear
of flight, and something happened here –
such violent lines cannot be measured,
or buried, followed, farmed, uncovered.
(Written in Leicestershire, August 2014)
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ poems.
WITNESS STATEMENTS
Living amidst muses and crude groups of poets
sat waiting for life to happen
or halfway through the Great Adventure.
Don’t ask me what I’m writing in this bluey haze,
getting beaten down by the vulgar vocabulary of the modern and untamed.
Tightrope walker suspended between trees and speaking for all of us
without moving his tongue.
Time in minutes and days suspended between colonial street and bright, blood orange sun.
Sleeping in a light sweat behind a mesh for mosquitos
and waking early to meet white-feathered scavenging birds
on a terrace or balcony, on someone else’s terms.
Lost in another long deep coffee and nervous calm,
knowing nothing good ever stays ripe for long enough,
we walked from the coast to the city in a day
between boutiques, cafés and real real bookshops
staffed by families who really know words.
The ocean beats relentlessly beneath low-hovering police helicopter looking for someone and
the ocean is carrying carefree surfers or handkerchief-white sailboats and
the ocean washed us all up here once and can take us away in a matter of seconds.
Bolaño pushes the pen back into my hand while
they sit talking about Tommy who went to fly planes in Arizona
and told me he was really living.
Can’t stop once I’ve started this engine –
but make no mistake,
the romance of Europe is not here
and the tide is immeasurably less hopeless.
(Written on Manly Beach, Sydney, December 2013)
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ poems.
THE FIRST ACT
Sometimes, once or twice in the long year
I just close my eyes and give up the act;
let myself drift and think of you
remember how I thought you were everything,
Don’t remember when –
Laid clues for the last of my friends
and sat quietly, waiting for it all to become predictable.
(Written somewhere between Birmingham and Berlin, September 2013)
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ poems.
FURNITURE
There’s nothing left in this house but the furniture –
Just a flight of stairs leading up to unmade beds and windows
with curtains drawn, to keep out the light
Just a buy-now-pay-next-year sofa
And the best wooden table and chairs you could afford
No fights, no feelings,
no familiar scent of home in the kitchen –
Just cleaning supplies under the sink,
a cold boiler and a refrigerator full of food
That could never make a meal
There’s nothing left in this house but the furniture,
All too real, too tangible
Leaving no room for meaning or memories
Just walls lined with photographs of strangers you don’t recognise
Shelves full of books from literary greats to buy-before-we-pulp bookshop bargains
And that stern man in an oil painting from the car boot
A dozen or so candles sat on windowsills
And a couple of bedside lamps that stopped lighting
Just that old car in the garage you never fixed up
Surrounded by tins of spare paint, rollers and trays
Just the bags of old clothes you meant to give away, and
Boxes of things you’d surely need some day
Nothing left in this house but the furniture,
Just a collection of things from a previous life
No evidence of living or breathing,
or thinking or feeling –
You can’t take it with you,
But hell, we all try
(Written in 2010)
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ poems.
THE REACH OF OLD ’60
To the end of the pier, we marched
Fifty cents lighter, uncharacteristically triumphant,
Surprised at our own spontaneous move.
Away from the super-sized accents, buffet breakfasts
and awful, chaotic bedspreads –
And out to the middle of the great sea,
A scent of fishermen’s lives and
a distant, flickering memory of neon ‘vacancy’ signs
At the end of the pier, we stood,
Battling away creeping uncertainty and
staring dark in the face –
“Feels like we’re miles out” from the holiday homes, and
have-a-nice-days. To a fresh salt breeze
and just enough warmth for our t-shirts and shorts.
The occasional guiding glare from a boat sending
ripples of light dancing across black waves
From the end of the pier, we looked
Back to the beach where we’d burned
earlier that afternoon.
Above a coastline littered with high-rise hotels
From Hiltons-to-Hyatts, and stubborn, steadfast motels
The sky began to turn, solid grey inevitable clouds
Gathered and hanging furiously, building and brewing
until with Hammer Horror forked lighting, they broke.
(Written in Florida, April 2013)
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ poems.
OUR FINEST HOUR
Crippling hope
left to swell
just above
the undergrowth
of mangled tape
(or private hell)
Of simple tunes
with tangled songs.
took a run,
a final ditch
pretend to care
for everything
Pretend to speak
in sorry tones
a tense that does
all that’s required
of it, and we
would spend a night
both swept and slept
through damp heat dreams
of broken air
conditioning
The finest lungs
could not inflate
in time, enough
to overcome
the passing train
or hurricane
with any words,
or cries, or yells
(Written in Florida, April 2013)
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others’ poems.
writtendown 