Modern Poetry

We’re in the middle
of a poetry reading

almost as if
Milton was there

slight and wan
blind as a mole

lusting for epic
famous as Shakespeare

when Andrew burps

“What do you say?”
a lady whispers

“Oooops!” he answers
“What do you say!!?”

waiting for a “Pardon me”.
He looks around

sweet as a bard
‘A piglet!’ he says

‘I’m a pig!’

Meeting

A flipchart, and marker pen like lipstick;

between its nib and paper – fresher air.

People sit behind a wooden desk

and talk, from plastic chairs.

Aha: the sound-bites of business;

statements, coughs, unlistening

for moments, outside, like a blackbird

expressing his magical being.

Real Poem

It would be good to stop this train

and lie me down on green grass

ideally near a shady river,

special, like a king and queen

maybe sleeping face-to-face

or hand-in-hand or toe-to-toe.

Changing trains seems risky. It’s winter

now and many leaves have fallen

but I do feel something-like ‘alive’ and

it would be good to jump this train

and stop momentum, all inertia,

long and narrow tracks.

31st December 2009

Always there’ll be our story of a light

hovering moon and snowflakes alighting

around our feet. We’ll remember a new year

eclipse, a spotlighted sky and really much more

than turning a decade. Yes, let’s make

words come round to snowfalling dark

and wishing of lanterns, high, lifted in friendship

and spangled by flakes from a blackening pelt

of the whole of the sky. We’ll hope to God

to re-make the silence; transform the land,

occluding the norm. Was that a beam

when our lanterns flew high or a gleam

from a hope of the fabulous? Steady your love

and come to your senses, it’s changing above.