Tag: brighton

On Brighton Pier

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Spun sat – a gamble of co-ordinates
[wrist-rolls a cruelty]/ We steer silent
journeys – then instant guffaws as if
this pier screams – Roll-up & ride! A

bob – Ogle our fat fubsy lady! Once I
saw a mermaid [her lustrous breasts
were lifted by a sea lion] & I paid for
a closer look – via a penny telescope

A lifeboat landed an inert man – we
were spat at – Turn away from it all –
he was oily [slumped] with whiskers
& stared eyes [I paid him 2 pennies]

I walked from our empty family car –
from silence – a sat-nav directed us
here – don’t look – it will show more
rides to turn me on to bewilderment

[one last time – I wish] as Ivor reads
my tarot cards in his caravan up on
Brighton Pier – I see a mermaid & a
drowning – hindsight equals a quid

these days – we shove our modern
florins – no Britannias rub in purses
before being placed in an arcade’s
agape slot – drop a ten pence coin

then nine more to find less fortune
under a hundred cheap songs – our
greed sees gold in lit-orange rows
of one-armed bandits – we’ll go on

& climb aboard their doubtful ghost
train – a slam & shunt of mechanics
on a loop of terror – fondles & feels
were taken here by mods & rockers

until such pleasures waned/ I turn a
pound telescope back on to us – we
are now ghosts as we point phones
at rides [we long forgot how to feel]

Quadrophenia

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Shingle/ Vinegar/ Under-pier
strokes of cock – undesired
[pills were not dropped after
a fuck]/ Complaints by age-
weighted sunbathers – youth
scum/ Sing to me [when you
can] ’bout zoot suits & sharp
creases [being a Mod wasn’t
about anything honest]/ Gull
calls & chip wrappers – upper
litter still blows into seafront
trippers [they used to ride on
scooters]/ Old Mods look on
as girls bare too much – hard
times of under-pier I-love are
lost – There should be a sign –
Here is Brighton’s least costly
room [a consummated place]
& let every Jimmy there-ever-
was return to savour old spray
[but – I gotta get running now]

 

Football – Nil

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Primal tempos of match day routines
are missing – tension between games
have slacked [to monotony] as soccer
offers nothing – a doldrum – no crucial
ties & needed points to pray for [every
89th minute of watching] – no Bovrils
or beers in our rumble-guts to absorb
on top of other football match results
& tabled machinations [can we dodge
relegation?]/ & Falmer has reverted to
fields of bird song – no stadium ones –
no trudge of sopped trainers on paths
back home [quick pint – eh?]/ No result

@BHAFC

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We are feral troops off to our
home ground [trudging on a
route levelled by worn boots
on almost every other match
day’s summoning to paid-sat
places] They don’t adore cars
so we make our own footway
Such a commitment [of never
really knowing how it will play
out] is not appreciated – ‘Sad’
when eyed by non-believers &
feeble snoots [f#cking snobs!]
who’ll never speak our prayers
or sing in our choir – It will be
another afternoon of elevated
expectations not-possibly-met
[football’s a game of 2 halves]
We are halfway back to my car

A Window

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Creased net curtains
with stocking details –

old man’s smoked glass –
a soiled two-way mirror

His fag-stubbed ashtray
brims high with butts

Half-read thrillers
sit sliced by bookmarks

Yesterday’s puzzle –
cold clues unsolved

Ink stains his skin –
a love deeply carved

She remains in him –
his beloved strife

He is now alone –
a Brighton still life

 

On the Pier

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Can you rouse your future
without looking at your palms?

Whilst they are pressed together
will you forget your past?

Each space between each timber
appears much tighter now

as if my clenched memory
has squeezed a recall held

She sells to opened hands
once her’s has weighed your coin –

palmistry is a sideshow
positioned to profit a void

I watch you squint in daylight
and take those four steps down

I watch those gaps expand again
as if they wish you drowned

Below Victoria

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For J

A loosened thought
was unexpectedly set adrift

like a sea-wetted sandal
sucked into whisked white foam

off foolish seventh wave treaders –
those salt-splashed day trippers –

as my viewfinder caught you blown
and turning to me – iso-fixed

in my camera as it framed that
installation under which you stood

You as my suddenly important art
buffeted upright below an artist’s

weather-required turned response
My portrait of beauty in Brighton

The Elephant at Her Eightieth

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I do not want a piece of cake –
Thank You

Your mother brought it back
from Great Aunty Sue’s wake –
or was it her birthday party –
from that family jamboree –

Except for you and me my boy –

at The Grand Hotel – Brighton
which featured an elephant
in The Ballroom

It was erect – so huge –
tight between their party pieces
and it stood on your mother’s foot

John rode it for his entertainment
as your mother stroked
its flaccid grey trunk

And Aunty Sue asked –
Why isn’t your lovely family here,
dear Niece?

There was no honest answer –
not with such a whopper
in the room

By Love’s Light

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For LB & JB

A lone traffic light beyond Kemptown
oscillates with near-nervousness
as it instantly switches between colours –
older-type bulbs – now made redundant
by lower prices and higher brightness –
once took time over their slow instructions –
But we no longer have that eased luxury
as we drive at our uncontrolled speeds
through a few more degrees of change –

Queen’s Park’s leaf-naked rooted troops
lift prayers for god to temper wind speeds –
it’s bloody hard work staying upright –
for plants – for people of various sizes
before rolled surges of shingle-lifting wind
and air-thrown salt kisses – rust readied –

My car cannot settle when parked up –
a moored rocking effect upon its axles
almost slips me into sleep’s slowed nod –
but my ajar window is a penny whistle
played by the gale’s fat-puffed cheeks –
and it jolts me awake to my missed cue –
bringing me back to my nervous state
about weather not carrying old-line labels
and of less comforting climate forecasts –

Within fifteen minutes I have driven us east
to Rodean Cafe and a high view out
to Brighton Marina’s rigid lines at sea level
as repeated waves crest in a broken spray
over a long curve of that rebar-pinned wall –
smug like a reinforced Canute – to stem tides
like mine – under this nameless rage
of a nervous separation and blast-tipped fixings –
I say to you both –
By love’s light – there will be a slow change

 

BHAFC 1 – Burnley 3

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There is a beer-and-pie feast
in the bar-fed anticipation
in the echoing East Stand –
high on the Upper Level
with the buzz of line ups
and incoming league results
in other parts of the land –
but by half time the sense
of dread has resurfaced
and is not pissed away
by one more pint and bogs –
instead we then succumb
to the gnaw of raw nerves
as the clocks stop at ninety
and extra time is not enough
to pull us up a place above
where we were the last time
we were here and hungry

#OpenMic

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In a rather cruddy function space
above a time-stale pub in Brighton –
sat uneven – at beer-stained tables –
we sipping poets of no published note

fingered our place settings of paper
in folders – our kicked headstones –
Here Lies M.A. Bell – and other writers –
who died slow deaths of dull rejection –

There is no air or space these days
for me – from the other side of poetry –
quoting verbatim Atilla the Stockbroker –
he put me in my place a long time ago –

There sat – that fusty room’s rum alien –
in my coat – offering quatrains of fear
about warm croissants – and disease –
and Del La Warr – and surrealism –

not getting close to the slam-generation
with their pert feats of rhymed memory –
my voice not near their flat intonation –
do not attempt their shopping list poetry

BN1

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BN sweats under this carbonised heat
as hard-hatted men kick up coughed dust
among those lost floors of Hanningtons –
that now-gutted department store

I sit in Brighton Square where I hear
every nation parade as the coffee
cakes the inside of my mouth –
a bitter rake across my taste buds

Still the Italian girls chatter
in loud tongues – untroubled
Their volume drops when the jack hammer
is suffocated by the lunch hour

My eldest arrives from her office
for our lunchtime that is becoming
a regular retreat for me from Sussex
and her own escape from her desk.

Eating Out

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Grown men nibble on ice cream cones
as a Chinese woman commands her dog
and two girls giggle whilst playing crazy golf

Below Volk’s Electric Railway
I drink coffee and watch the planet rotate

On the horizon the wind turbines move
to the onshore whip of nature into wire –
giving us that current and difference
which the rattling train line absorbs

Forever connecting nothing but thrills
the steel and iron of Brighton Pier
creates another kind of consumption

I fear for the woman with her stacked tray
of chips and teas as she crosses the beach
The gulls here are quite mordacious

Beachcombing

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On the shingle-driven beach – I looked for shells – but found plastic

We are no more the guardians because everything we use returns

The indicant we find is a tide mark of oil-based products

As kids – we looked for rare treasures after the waves had retreated

Mermaids’ purses and seaweed – our stolen weather stations

The currencies of beachcombing are no longer nature’s ways

 

E221018

Full English in Brighton

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

The bare strip lights and over-loud radio
nudge me into an uncomfortable state
in this low rent cafe

A grease-shadowed place

I stir my mug of tea and drop the spoon
into a water-filled pot of stained cutlery
as I have done so many times before

My order cooks loudly
in the best-not-seen pan
as the chat back there
gyrates between water rates
and about the old man

A square plate
piled high
(the dish a brown colour
which briefly worries me)
is placed on my table
with a nod to the few
sauces available

Coffee in Brighton

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For LB

First the shuffled shopper’s fanfare
that rasp of chair feet on pavement
and then finding a place for my phone
whilst not spilling my lip-high coffee
which measures
like a spirit level
my ability to perform the simplest things

In that fifteen minutes of talk
your beautiful honesty made me admit
that I have been a slowed down fool

The loud gulls swept around us
as they have always done in Sussex
those opportune white vultures
which pick and steal the best bits

You said that girls had been feeding them
down in the Pavilion Gardens
I have been feeding mine for too long

West Pier

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

It may have been the 1970s –
it may have been Brighton –
but no one can confirm
when my father saved a pier

I was railing high –
navigating the gaps in the planks
with a slender fear –
a cheap thrill
as you walked above the sea –

and below – under the bolted timber –
waves hypnotised the iron work

The tang of salt over candyfloss
was taken up like Friars’ Balsam
through your head –
as we passed the rides
Dad saw smoke

a daft smoulder rising up
from the deck
and we stopped – bent –
to look for timbers –
for them burning

but it was just
a cigarette butt
still curling

PC 883 -as he was at work –
called out to an attendant
and the fag was drowned
with a red bucket –
marked ‘FIRE’

 

E311218

BN01

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I only know I am walking in Brighton
because the numbers 74 74 74
on taxi cabs semaphore the fact
that and the Number 24 is in club mode

It could so easily be east London’s
red bricks and lunatics
pumped bars
shops of tat and shops of coffee
with scooters outside McDonald’s

and pairs of staggerers off to shag
whilst round the back of the Co-op
people raid the big-mouth bins
looking for out-of-date two-for-ones

If I was younger
if I was single
only ifs
I would struggle less with urban stuff
which is Brighton’s after-dark equality
to every other smacked-in city

On Duke St.

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As I left the car park
men hunkered down,
in stain-greyed sleeping bags
they bartered their pains:

I passed a young bride
outside a loud bar,
she was laughing
unaware of the rain:

I found Duke Street,
there for a book launch,
a drink in a record store,
to tip my glass to his.

On my way to the bank
the black sky collapsed,
and on my return
I gave the bride a soft kiss.

From this road

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The razored lawn cemetery –
there – down from this road
with lonely St Dunstan’s
always kept distant – beyond

here – as a fixed backdrop
on the near-blind cliff-top –
a far sight now reduced
by a short-lived sea fret

as gulls in the foreground
rain-dance on the turf
to bring to their plate
too easily fooled worms

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West Pier, Brighton

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Along the beach
to Kemptown,
the long way back,
beyond the curdle
of murmerations,
that over-shoulder
look to the sunset,
at the skinned bulk
of rotten dark piers,
with a low tide touch
to creme caramel sky;
bursting in and out,
the flexed shadow,
and translucency,
of clouded starlings;
their murmerings,
such sung things,
followed me home.

Upstairs Room, Prince Albert.

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Dead-weight, rouche mourning drapes,
long-fitted, allying the room’s beams,
accentuated by the dusty refraction
on the glitter ball, still, yet working:
Ghost flecks off the mirrored-planet:

Look close, a sphere of a thousand selfies.
I hold my phone up, like we do, to be
there in the room, on record, uploaded,
few particulates of life are ever captured,
by these devices for palm memories:

Polaroid proved it, before our kids were born;
quickened development misses exposure.
On the wall an almost life-size John Peel
stands in this room, analogue approval,
for every act to appear here, upstairs.