Filed under: Cuba, Travel, eating, fishing, food, hope | Tags: fisherman, hope, hunger, luck, sea
Sitting on a polystyrene float
Fishing for something,
Feet soaked in salt water,
Cold on the ankles now
As the night-shift approaches,
Watching the water, hoping,
For some late luck to
Dangle off the hook,
As lovers sit, some, backs to
The sea, others, backs to
The road, always pairs
Unless a fisherman,
Solitary, but for bucket, rod
And hope.
He sits, sits, polystyrene
Squeaks and creaks and
Waves lap skin and vessel,
Taunting, teasing, ‘What?Still
No catch?’ They seem to say,
Those little bumps and ripples,
Carefree in their endlessness.
Time to go, back over the
Malecon*, home, to hunger and
Hungry Rosita, nothing to
Go with rice and beans
But chilled ankles and
Guitar strum.
*Malecon is Havana’s conrete wall, about 4 feet high and 2 wide, erected to keep the sea out
Filed under: Cuba, Travel, fishing, food | Tags: diesel, fishing, havana, sea
Sun setting on a fish just
Caught, off the Malecon,
Fresh, clean, shining like
A newly minted coin.
Couples sitting hip to hip
On the concrete tongue that
Rims the shore’s decaying
Edifices. Sometimes a gap,
Crack or gaping window-
Frame plays host to rude guests:
Gust, diesel, dust and spray.
Filed under: acromegaly, cafe, eating, food, growth, pain, regression, strength, weather, willpower | Tags: bricklane, closing, coffee, guidance, Kipling, life, lost, money, neglect, regret
Sweeping round my feet, no ceremony.
Customer-centric ? What?-
Too close to closing time.
Anyway, this tables’s mine for now,
And on its pink lino I’ll rest
THis little black book,
And a tweed elbow
Like so many others, hordes, in fact,
Vintage with Youth.
I’m here now writing, instead
of Yoga or eating, to stop time
And take stock.
Of what? Of myself, of course-
Narcissism or self-awareness I can’t
Tell, self-indulgence, perhaps.
‘Soup of the Day was three pounds ten.
Why ten, what’s in it for them?!
Three pound is round.
Rhyming won’t get me anywhere.
One day I hope to be above all this.
Taller trees generally have deeper roots to
Counteract the blast of the wind.
Blast this music! Always the same
Here at Coffee@, NOISE,
Racket designed to be heard,
No need to listen.
Why have I come here
To get myself in tune – all this din.
Well, if I can’t tune here I can’t tune anywhere..
Thats it! Back to Kipling,
‘If you can keep your head when
All around are losing theirs
And blaming it on you..’
Yes. I’ll keep my wretched head and
Forget regret and neglect
The errors of a self
Lost, waiting for a way out
Not picking up Ariadnes’s
Guiding thread.
Two times me:
One here with cake I didn’t want
Already consumed,
One there, in the future
Maybe, or now, if I let her,
A better her.
This cafe’s by the the lake-
For longer than a cake
And a cup of lemonade
I’ve sat and thought,
Watching people pass,
Making what they can
Of squirrels in the rain-
Nowhere to go but round the lake,
Past swans and reeds
Again.
Filed under: eating, food, happiness, health, hope, thrill | Tags: floats, sense, song, today
Hope fits nicely into Today.
Yesterday was small,
An awkward size, to small to
Hold an egg-
It held salt, as much as filled it, instead.
Hope fits today,
Fills it full, pills
Throb through veins,
Skin drinks up the breeze,
Food floats light and
Sense is song
Filed under: eating, food, happiness, healing, health, hope, love, thrill | Tags: care, cool, injections, pills, relit, repair
Happy day started at night for me,
Whether from pills or injections
Or Prunes and live yoghurt
Makes some difference,
But not too much.
Am I in control or merely
A passenger in a rusty car
Fuelled by pharmaceutic diesel
And in need of repair and care?
Bathe me in water and leave me
To dry in the sun.
Take me in before I fry but
keep me somewhere cool and clear
Where static glare is fenced
Out and love relit.
Filed under: control, eating, food, health, pain | Tags: bloated, doom, gloom, live, stomach, strained, womb
Back in this place again
This place of doom and gloom
Bloated stomach passing for womb
Once i was well and pain
Was something felt from a
Prick of thorn or cut of steel
Not as now when it grows
From a live seed
Planted deep, sown down
In furrows, virulent its saplings writhe
For supremacy, squealing for
Sugar and coffee and tea
Cake and wine and syrup and cream,
Drops will not do, bring
Buckets for bowls, Life must
Be strained and stretched to
Feed Pain’s sweet tooth.
