Our Dog Spencer

I recall our golden retriever from memory
Spencer, or ‘weasel’ as Dad also liked to call him (yes, a dog with two names)
He was the first child really
Bounding, burning mane and all, around the house before Ben hit the bassinet
His lolling tongue leaping at monarch butterflies, paws traipsing chicken shit through the house
He outlasted a goat, two goldfish, a cat, and my grandad
But he couldn’t outrun the panzers. Those little German kinder who visited death upon him
They finished him right off, the tired old guy – and gave me measles too

Where is he now?
In a box on the mantle, behind the fireplace, above the pile of old Evening Posts
It’s a small thing, wrapped in some kind of pink hued tracing paper, tied with a neat yellow ribbon
Slowly, the dust that’s settling on it is nearing the amount of ashes within
I wish someone would wave a feather or two over it

The Stygian Lake

Sinners spin beneath the white caps, slugging it out in contrition
Their giant fists swinging like currents
Stirring up silt and clouding their judgment

Their mouths froth and whitewash foams along the coast line
Like white stallions stampeding the beach
Snapping driftwood under hoof
And snorting salt spray

And watching all the while, the Absolved
Who ceased their struggle ages past
By letting hot air leak from their lungs
Whistling through lips and bubbling up as hollow spheres
Out into the firmament

As comes to pass for one and all, both large and small
Souls sink low into the pillowed embrace of shifting sands and ever-after

Original Sin

Can I have an original thought when I my eyes have been open for 31 years,
When my ears have heard both babble and bang for just as long,
When my finger tips have touched what nature already thought of,
When the green, green grass already smells like it spells freshness?

What can I offer but applause,
And a watered down version of my own
Only to then be accused of plagiarism

Quadrophenia

Hearts in hands, there’s turmoil on the beach
Mods and Greasers, batons and trudgeons
Shod tanks, screaming nails and gaping windows
Glass confetti on the streets

Making out in back alleys
That’s sex in a door jam
Get your rocks off Rockers, fall in love for a moment
The moment
“Goddamn it all to hell”

There’ll be raw meat cold on the eyes tomorrow
As Triumph and Lambretti prance with chestnut mares and scallywags
Petty hoodlums and an avowed intent of riot
Enfant Terribles

Your friend stole your lady (if you could call her that)
Threw fists up in your face
Then the bike, the cliff
Cut chalk and powdered surf
Your broken wheels and spilled two-stroke a fake eulogy
“Wot a fuckin’ liberty!”

Warpaint – Majesty

When I held your hand
When I held your hand
When I helped you
When I held your hand

You still went the other way
And you wanted me to stay
With my arms stretching away
With my arms stretching away
I couldn’t stand that sight
’cause I adored your face
I adored your face

Could it be that I’m the same?
Could it be I’m your mirror
Showing you all those things
That you never wanted to face
So you let me slip away
You just watched me walk away
And I just have to ask
Do you know your fate?
Do you know your fate?

Could it be that I’m your…
Could it be that you are my…
Majesty

When it all comes back
When it all falls into place
Could it be that I don’t want it anyway?
Could it be as sad as that?
There was a day we used to laugh
And I wanted you by my side
The perfect match
I want to understand it
The perfect match

Could it be that I’m your…
Could it be that you are my…
Majesty

You could’ve been my king

Brighton

A little smoke in the pebbles and a dip in the strait
The white cliffs of Dover just around the bend
I could all but hear the souls skimming across that wide stretch of water
From the western front
Limping home to find their lovers’ arms long gone
Their mothers’ breasts long buried, their fathers’ reproaches all but hoary whispers

The chalk dried on our faces
And the hot sun and cold iceblocks reddened our lips
We looked like clowns
…acted like it, too

If on the way down our skin stuck to the fake leather seats, clammy with the sweat of summer
We washed that off when we dove for sunk Spitfires
Then as dusk dawned we played eye-hockey with a couple of girls
A bus load of Indians arrived, too
Late but eager
Can’t say we welcomed the translucent dags and all that clamour, but their fun was infectious
As they took religiously to water, just like ducks, or virgins

That we could reprise this song
Sing it till our end of days, whistling all along

Cecil Day-Lewis: Where Are The War Poets

They who in folly or mere greed
Enslaved religion, markets, laws,
Borrow our language now and bid
Us to speak up in freedom’s cause

It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse

Cecil Day-Lewis

Ups and downs, the coast

We knew spiders lay in wait as we pulled at the sheets of plastic,
bowing our heads under the oil stained decking and a sky of smashed sea shells

But they stayed hidden, rather than having a nip at the fingers rooting around in her old things
Perhaps they thought we’d get enough stings from her ghosts from the past…

Her squeals of delight would have been enough to scuttle them to their holes anyway
Resounding peals to placate poisons, that loosened mysteries wrapped in riddles, bound by enigmas

We brought a smaller lorry than first planned and fit it in like fish in a tin
Thinking, “if this can just hold together then so might we,” as we drove the winding ocean road

Musket Cove

Pirates and castaways, in our white youth
My brother and I set oars through salt, orphans of the ocean

Pouncing upon an anchored galleon,
its rigging rustling above bare decks and mocktails,
we clambered over the ghost ship
Capturing it without even bloodying our cutlasses

Buccaneers, with smoking fuses for hair
The Fijian lagoon was at our whim and mercy
But not the tides…

Left stranded, now we lit flares
Deciding we had need of a mother afterall

On The Great Ocean Road

i

An army of sugar white moths arose in an angelic hush
Many were lost, lying on the road
Their life given for the spectacle

ii

This land aggressively devoured
The spirit of the south reclaiming
Its enzymes of decay coating
With weapons of wind and water
Fallen arches collapse, hunting Kestrels soar
Swooping site managers who nest in dripping cliffs
And a salty air of inevitability

iii

Scored slopes, stripped bare
We build our private citadels, banquet tables and thrones
The serfs’ flesh and bones hammered with hard nails

The growing graveyard groans