Filed under: childhood, happiness, home, love, memories, nature, strength | Tags: blossom, bread, gran, ironing, mary, mash, pie, pudding, sea, winter
Mary moo Mary
You were there
When the blossom
Came, Mary you
Were there when
The winter
Went, Mary you
Are here just like
A Gran.
Standing ironing
Sitting moaning,
Laughing, crying,
Listening to ‘Lipstick
On your collar,’
Telling tales from
The betting shop or
You and Marge’s
Latest trip to Wimpy,
Brian, Moreen
Leighton,
Patrick the Irish
Queer next door.
Have some more
Cream slice,
Bread pudding,
You’ll buy four for
For me, ‘Only a paahnd
Fifty’, to take home.
Or pie and mash for sister.
YOu? No, no you
Don’t eat like
You used to,
In the caravan,
Round, happy,
Just the sun and
Slot machines and
Walks along
The sea, girls
On leads, so’s
We dont ‘draaan’.
Please remember,
We thank you
And love you like a
Gran.
Grand old Mare
Filed under: death, fishing, hope, nature, regression, willpower | Tags: deep, jonah, prisoner, sea, trapped, whale
Inside a whale sits
Jonah, pondering
How many more rotting
Tuna he’ll
Stack up in the corner
Before he dies of
Stench and despair.
Not a scale can he see
Only slime to the touch
As the creature heaves
Through the Deep,
Filtering fish through its
Radiator teeth.
Jonah dreams out
And up, into the light
And over this rut.
cards fall on the table,
Dry, clean in the sun,
Behind the horizon,
Life’s line, noone
Can question
The silence beyond.
Always there.
Forever, back
Down fathoms and more
To our whale and
Trapped Jonah.
Never to see the sky
Split from the Land
And the sea
By the line.
There in the gut’s leviathon walls his
Murmurs sift the
Gloom for gold
But none drops.
Patience and hope
And his jaws will part
And out he’ll fight
Then float like a
Ripe apple, spongy after
The long winter store.
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: Cuba, Travel, Uncategorized | Tags: havana, lost, love, moon, night, sea
Why am I choked as I
Look up at you
Smiling down on your
Malecon, Drawing the waves close to lovers
making the sea spray
Them with foam
While I sit high up
And far away, over
Havana but not of
Or in her, suspended
Beyond blotchy balcony
And spotless faded sheets
Hanging over windows
Crisscrossed with tape
From the last hurricane.
Need a Cuba Libre, extra
Rum and maybe even Santiago,
To fill this gaping aching hole
Between my ribs that
No sunsetted dome or
Timba drum can fill.
No, give me a bottle of Rum-
Do I miss him or that
Time when I felt
Good about my looks with his on me?
Filed under: eating, health, pain, regression | Tags: breathing, dark, deep, feelings, fish, sea
Beneath the solar plexus
Is where it starts
That is where all the year’s
Undone things crowd for
Warmth, shivering like tramps
Round a spitting petrol drum.
Undone, why? Because I
Filled my cup and bowl too full
Scared that if
Too light
I might float up to the
Surface and, breathing,
See the whole universe.
Things left undone, good things,
Real things,
Like collecting leaves for
Compost or supporting a
Shoulder stand.
Things that require presence in a world
With me at the centre,
Such things are left undone.
Instead, come feelings,
Doubts, thoughts about the size
And shape of things unseen-
THE thing, the tumour- shhhh-
Not that, don’t think it,
What if thoughts be things!
Better to sink back into
The dark Deep for a while,
Where life is lightless and
The bloated stomach cannot
Taste or choose,
Programmed like an angler fish
To digest all passers by
No time to wait for hunger:
A leisure for the light.
