MAYDAY !! MAYDAY !!

LOOK OUT !!
LOOK OUT !!
Red armies are on parade
Here they march
High kicks – high stakes
Red armies are everywhere

SALUTE !!
SALUTE !!
Ribbons and medals on display
Arrayed in braid
Heads to right – guns gripped tight
Supreme Leader waves with glee

WHAT’LL WE DO !!
WHAT’LL WE DO !!
Their missiles are aimed this way
Hear them fly
Rickety – Rackety
Long range rockets on standby

They’re not the type to fall or faint
The outside world is weird and quaint
Only shown what’s not and what ain’t
They’ll one day give us an awful fright

WHAT A SIGHT !!
WHAT A SIGHT !!
If Trump has his way
We’ll chase them away
Nuke ’em today
These red armies on parade

Red armies on parade…
Red armies on parade…
Red armies on parade…
(fade to inevitable ending)

BOOM !!
NO-ONE SURVIVES !!

 HA !! HA !!

(based on Pink Elephants on Parade
from the movie Dumbo !!)

Severn Bridge

so this is where it all changes
where salt water turns to fresh
balanced between two worlds
adrift on the flooding tide
holding on to a raft of indecisions
to go back or move on?
and wondering how it must feel
jumping from a tall bridge
hitting hard water

they say it’s the fall that kills
not the drowning

like that funny feeling as a child
standing on a cliff in Cornwall
feeling pulled towards the edge
father grabbed me and shouted
how could you be so stupid girl?
the family holidays, the yellow dress
sunny summers all in the past now
a tangled overgrown mess
oblique and rewinding

it should never have ended here
we were meant to drive into the sunset

(bridges and cliffs are notorious suicide spots)

On Reaching Oxwich Bay: A Collaboration of Thoughts

This world is not worthy of me.
No, that’s not right,
that’s not what I had meant to say.
But you must have thought it?
…to have said it?
Yes.

I was wondering if people see things the way I do.
Those rock outcrops for example,
the way they break through the varied hues
of leafy greens.
You keep lifting your sunglasses from your eyes.
Why? Do you not trust the colours?

I was just checking that’s all.
The smell of gorse is overwhelming don’t you think?
Coconut and warm butter?
Sweet dessert wine perhaps?
I feel a need to stretch out on the warm sand.
The beach is too long, too beige.

You can’t be bothered, is that what you’re saying?
To get to the end?
Where the hotel interrupts the natural world
with the clatter of stainless cutlery
and the overfed whelps of day-trip visitors?
You could put it that way I guess.

The tide will wash away our footsteps.
Remember the burial chamber and lime kilns?
The stone ruins of Pennard Castle on the hill?
You wondered if Dylan Thomas had written about them.
I wondered did I see things in the same way.
As Thomas?

In a way.
It’s difficult to say.
Look, the cattle have followed us down The Pill.
It comes from the Welsh word ‘pwl’
meaning an inlet, harbour, or pool
like a creek or tidal inlet off a river or channel.

Very bucolic. A pastoral poem no less.
You know I should’ve said
I’m not worthy of this world.
A slip of the tongue?
My footsteps don’t fit with the past.
They will never add anything more.

Is that good or bad?
I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?
My words cannot compare to that stonechat’s song.
His voice and beauty overwhelms me,
throws me out to sea and drowns me.
Another passer-by will take my place in time.

(After a weekend walk on South Gower, Wales between Southgate and Oxwich:
A Collaboration of Thoughts is a conversation between myself and my inner voice
whilst following in the imagined footsteps of Dylan Thomas and all those who may
have passed that way before me and will pass in the future. Sunday was also International Dylan Thomas Day – the anniversary of the date when Under Milk
Wood was first read on stage at 92Y The Poetry Center, New York in 1953)

A Recommendation

Check out the work of my good friend Chris Crane who makes incredible wildlife sculptures from scrap metal. Yes I know, lots of people are upcycling and repurposing bits of old this and that but Chris has a special eye for detail and movement and his work positively breathes life.

https://chriscranefineart.com/blog-posts/

Aligned

He gave his girl a wink
She cheesy grinned back at him
Sometimes the planets aligned
It all made sense

the time
the place
the high from the drink
the smoke in the air
the banter
the laughter
the way forward into the future

It didn’t matter what lay beyond the black walls of the valley
It didn’t matter that he called this shithole home
Or the hangover and bad head that waited for him tomorrow

He had his girl next to him
She was cheesy grinning with a bottle of Vods
Cigarettes to share
Fingering her hair

The road ahead was clear despite the rain
Despite the blurry vision that crept across his eyes in waves
Like a Venetian blind that opened and closed
Opened and closed

Two eyes
Two valves
Two ventricles
Four if you counted hers
His and her hearts

He grinned back
Cheesy grinned
His girl leant over and kissed his cheek
The planets aligned

It all made sense
finally

Sangria Sunsets

Her spine was a pink lobster tail on the sand
Curls and whorls under a fat Majorcan moon
He traced her vertebrae one by one
Moved his finger in S-shaped waves
She laughed and stretched, the tide came in
Touched her toes, the soles of her feet
Her soul that needed touching, stroking
That made her giggle too, like his jokes
She’d heard them all before but she didn’t care
Not when the Mediterranean Sea plied her thighs
Or when salt encrusted her belly like a suckling pig
With a ring through its snout, her flesh
Not when Lover Boy’s hands played with her nipples

Oh gosh no, oh god no, oh fuck don’t stop no
And gosh no, they hadn’t

Not since meeting in the Pink Coconut bar and
Not making it back to her holiday apartment
Round the back against the bins
Her sunburned shoulders cooled by the night
And Lover Boy’s Spanish kisses like Sangria sunsets
On her English tower block London skin
They’d made it to the beach with a bottle of something
Strong and intoxicating that made her beats per minute heart
Pump, thump, disco dance and pelvis thrust
She never wanted this moment to end
She only ever wanted pure escape
If only ever for 7 days with a bunch of girlfriends
Wherever they were, she didn’t much care

Oh gosh no, oh god no, oh fuck don’t stop no
And gosh, Lover Boy hadn’t.

Goldfish Bowl

His head swam in a goldfish bowl of agonies
Treacle and grit clogged his mouth
Furred his thoughts
It was the alcohol, he knew
The sickly-sweet nausea of living too
Rotting, festering, flesh-eating from the inside out
That spun him, crushed him
Pulverised his motivation into motionless, quaggy moods
Before departing in a screeching wheel spin
As if roped to a fiery dragster the quarter mile
Delayering through clothes and skin and fat
Through bone and marrow and cells
And light, and more light
His head burning in a white hot furnace
Enough to melt eyeballs and fuse neurons
Bring solar flares on pulsating interstellar winds
To render useless the infrastructure of his brain

(here is where he sighed)

And here is where he took the goldfish bowl and emptied its contents
Spread them out across the wipe-clean vinyl-coated tablecloth
Took tweezers in hand between fingers
And like he was eating his favourite takeaway meal
Of sweet and sour Cantonese style chicken
He picked and rearranged the sickly throat-clogging lumps
Into a picture of past and present image shows
Future and forgotten, repeated, puked
All those childhood memories stored in recesses
Long passed by, discarded, abused
Mistreated, malformed, deformed
The child with the cleft palate, club foot
Hole-in-the-heart and multiple life-threatening allergies
Bubble-wrapped in cotton wool cocoons
Olive-oiled, basted
Rocked to sleep to be, to be
Warmed by a million mother-suns, you know?

“nutmeg”

“nutmeg” he                shouted
“nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutmeg”

there was no answer……………
so he called “nutmeg”    again

“nutmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeg”
but  he couldnot     remember

why?     why was he calling  ?
why was he sat  on a bench  ?

surrounded by   greenhedges
feet shuffling on    greygravel

the clouds  dishevelled  above
the ground     opening   below

his brain a maze of  pathways
deadend doormats untrodden

he called again……………………..
was swallowed……………………..

Fun in a Fiat 500

Two blonde girls in a pink Fiat 500

How we love you dashing through
texting – talking
laughing – driving

Too short skirts you little flirts
snapchat – chitchat
facetime – online

Two blonde girls in a pink Fiat 500

Speeding by with painted eyes
boyfriends – girlfriends
bartends - weekends

Fresh from the gym all fit and thin
skinny ribs – tiny tits
lovely bum – bubble gum

Two blonde girls in a pink Fiat 500

Phone distracts her, misses corner
wreckage – young age
big mess – hopeless

No more invites, floral tributes
sign of cross – what a big loss
parents mourn – both firstborn

Two blonde girls in a pink Fiat 500

Having fun and dying young
such short lives – never made wives
what a pity – life's so shitty


(picture courtesy Mail Online)

Notes from an Archaeological Dig

I remember it well
Humid heat after summer gales
The sweat that trickled and made us smell
Sea holly scratches, orchids, mare’s tails

August 1985…

The wind had cut through
Sallied across Kenfig Dunes
Exhuming on its way, as it flew
Forgotten bones now loosely strewn

With ancient, pursued lives

Bared knuckles, broken
Sand dusted toes, shattered
Exposed, cleaved skulls of men
Tibias, fibulas, mixed and scattered

Unknown children, hard worked wives

And in and out and interwoven
Seaweed ribbons, rib caged bars
Scuttle zones for lost crustaceans
Vertebrae for lookouts, sunny vistas

Where once a village may have thrived

We measured, sieved, elucidated
Wondered what landscape they had seen
What changes wreaked since long departed
Steel works, motorway, cars and vaccines

Like them, we’re still striving, in ways, to survive

Yes, I remember it well
Two uni students obsessing over old bones
Studying bodies, sharing warm white Zinfandel
Exploring the past and new-found erogenous zones

It’s all recorded in my own archive

(Sea Holly care of http://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/our-work/conservation-projects/coastal/kenfig-glamorganshire)