Tag: Newhaven

Seaford Beach

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Do you want to sit on that strand
with me and my old sun-tarred men
of Seaford – bent to sipped coffees –
as Newhaven’s headland is scorched?

Or do you take a click-clack walk
into other light on your fuck-me heels
with no one man you really know?

Tipped families and broken open souls
forever perambulate up and in and out
along tugging – dialling-down – shadows
as you decide which is your way to take

And my eyes will wait – still wait to follow
your choice – my own steps only echo
if yours are not into that sunset’s pull

because my last light will always be
seated and fixed among my equals –
those smile-tanned and happy talkers
without a wet desire to set to flames

Our true separation commenced
when you went with old lustrous ways –
too many times – too easily – for my liking

Fighting in Newhaven

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Here Ho Chi Minh – under
his pseudonym of Thàn –
served travellers’ pastries
on a French ship routed
from Newhaven’s docks

His silver service ways
and polished tableware
have been long-buried
under that now piled skyline
of scrap metal and waste

Still a French ferry – but today
slipping out to diesel rumbles –
with beer-plied pleasure seekers –
holidaymakers – and
a deck of saturnine truckers

In this light a ghost-white hull –
Turner’s Fighting Temeraire –
awaits clearance to enter
and roll her weak bow wave
through her last high tide

But she is no more than a fret
breathed out by those who lust
for lost British sea power
This slumped harbour reeks
of sun-dried fishing nets

Below its fort’s high facade
Newhaven’s battalion collapsed –
West Beach fell to le Tricolore
Sussex were druv when a strip
of her sand was lost to France

It would be easy to follow steps
and reach an edge of this island
but stupor and heat keep me seated
Rust is pre-eminent in Newhaven
There is no revolutionary cure