King

Here’s a hand from the right side
holding a tangle of cotton.

Finger and thumb from the left side
(turning before the wind catches)
take up the end of a blue one
and master it into the sun.

The sky of sixty nine

look up at a screen,
and the black and white sparkle:
Armstrong strides the moon.

On a train

it’s only when
another tunnel comes
that darkness falls
and her old face
reflects back in
the window pane
- smiles again.

When foreheads meet,
that moment’s when
she integrates
her eyes and ears,
mouth and nose;
blesses back
her misty angel soul.

Slovakia in Winter

‘Buy my perfume – BOSS – boss?’
asks a dapper at the station
- graffiti hits on every wall
(graffiti reaching carriage windows)
and desolate, slate-grey, the journey
out from the city, smoke hard as nails
until the ground rises and fields

heave in view and the river we follow
twinkles and sparkles, turns with our train,
and the mist in the valley
climbs to the hills with a first glimpse of snow
and the far distant mountains flume out a welcome,
tinkle my heartstrings in hopefulness,
amber and russet and black and then go.

Andrew Spice

When he dances

in a turn, a jump,

a killer smile,

he has a plan

more cunning than

a Broadway star,

more ancient than

a Stratford Bard.

Whatever they’re thinking

he’ll make them feel

more human, more real,

from the depth of a wellspring

 ‘Remember. Remember; yeah, yeah!

They will remember me!’

Superman

goes back to the wife and kids,
drives through amber on the way;
ready for his running club,
then a final drop of lids;
snoring like a dozy bear,
snorting like a horse in hay.

One day he’ll come back home and blub,
- wail - as every baby can:

missing sunrise, waving corn,
huddles, eyeballs, nothing more.

Pantomime

Granddads and grandkids,
bald heads and roundheads,
teenage cavaliers
snorting at the prospect.

Grandmas with twinsets,
princesses with crowns on,
teenage femme fatales
sneering at the scene.

Open featured actors,
passion of the children
clean our dirty heartstrings

and fledgling troubadours
cheer with all the action,
clap until they’re sore.