Glyndebourne’s turbine
is that active youth high
on my quick horizon/ In
my foreground a spire’s
weathercock [in uniform
gusts] is less/ God’s bird
pivots indifferently/ Spin
is left to that upstart – it
bleeds sparks/ I’m ribbed
by honest blows as nails
are hammered close by –
perhaps a fence? Here a
kid kicks a ball & another
in a skip [perhaps reclaim
of streets is underway &
they will rewind my view]
Tag: sussex
On Brighton Pier
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]
When did you last listen?
When did you last listen to all of Quadrophenia?
Pull on a coat designed for offshore wind]/ I will
attend/ We will ascend Firle Beacon’s pinnacle &
l will ask Why did you? – or similar to – no replies
from you – muted [as you re-slice deeply into my
old body] My bared skin will also peel with stress
See – laughter lines’ll be backfilled & see [they’ll
show you how]/ At Firle Beacon men fall at your
heel – but not me/ Your mouth is a visible sneer
of bloodless lips – daub smears of rouge lipstick
[as sideways rain rips at your clothes] & you’ll lie
but only to not lie alone [Quadrophenia streams]
Gloss Black
They repainted tall railings
set around a granite tomb
[but left metal on gates to
to curdle to flakes of rust
in old layers]/ Here Lies A
Father & Husband/ Loved
By His Family [lies – damn
lies]/Born & Died & other
worn words read less well
what with rain & pollution
ingresses ‘tween palisades
retouched by a servant of
our parish – paid well by a
priest who cannot lift any
tool or know how to begin
[except in Genesis & other
fairy stories]/Give it winter
& a cruel spring & we will
see those gates limp as if
St Peter was superfluous/
It rattles
It rattles – as if a thousand
thousand bottles of drugs
are shaken [to reprove my
lacklustre skills in ticking a
prescription off – as thuds]
50 gram tablets – for God’s
addiction to sorrow-hits &
we wonder why July’s now
a monsoon season/ British
summertime’s hiss of burnt
offerings on wet barbecues
confirm it/ Global warming
& other seasonal shifts piss
down [inhale rich stenches
of methane’s quick release
& other disasters below us]
Two hundred yards away
Two hundred yards away
a teenager tries to stand
upright on a rolling bale/
My right-hand dares on
your inner thigh – you are
loosened straw alongside
me – a fat man in running
attire walks past [sex pest
threats are laughed off] – I
want to [but we have only
just met]/ Tinder dates for
ill-coupled counsels haste
& only my imagination has
you naked & rolled tight – I
put my thoughts into you/
One Man Show
His Truman-esque Show stretches to Peacehaven
in his hoax East Sussex
Here he sucks on sea air tasting far away origins –
but no sandy footprints –
shores are shingle-thick & slope down to meet a
cold dip of toes – no sun
from falling lamps/ Paint your backdrops in green –
your long tales are fakes
& Zoom will not save any alliance built on groping/
A blind fool counts waves
as they break [over bared flesh on beaches] He’ll sit
& count for a seventh curl
but love will not deliver an easy refrain – a gale blows
away his lust-pulled attire
as he stands & sighs – he is offered no focus pull to
ease him from this scene
Sussex Lines
Stale air sits above river routes
without winds to move or shift
enough to aid sight of lay lines
in Sussex/ Spires look towards
burial mounds/ We stride blind
along Stane Street without any
guide book toward Chichester
Cathedral – not mistook for old
Winchester’s up-turned ship of
God – paced out as if dod men
at work/ Plague stones mark a
previous crisis [met on ancient
markings worn flat by weather]
Lewes rots over Brack Mount –
where graves were piled – as a
hill to climb – our dead deform
to skeletal ladders – here there
is an electrified lay line running
down from London [DFL curse]
Hill Walking in Lockdown
We roll in an encyclopaedia of grasses –
flicked by a wind/ Your off-white blouse
is ripped open to burns [but not a hand
or eye] – enough has been imbibed – by
both of us – we filled before we left for a
walk over Firle/ No social distancing – or
other protective measures were taken in
our day’s exploration/ Idiots toss reams
of litter – they strew word of McDonalds
across a seen-it-all tumuli/ I bend – help
you up/ My eyes ache from map reading
& staring at you/ We revert to hill walking
Sussex Racists
Openly-racist Grandma B’
unfolds a [crisp] Daily Mail
& mutters ’bout Foreigners
invading [no family correct
her] & lip-held Grandpa B’
minds his P‘s [deems] Well
it won’t take much to upset
my old wifey – better agree!
She crows [weak] squawks
in her kitchen As for those
bloody coloured protesters!
Her spittle-phrases scatter
off her tongue – until scorn
is her dull song/ Nephew J
said She was so lewd years
earlier [he fooled with her
eldest – best keep hatred in
one’s family]/ Inbreds you
say? You may say – indeed
you may say that – indeed
there be racists [in Sussex]
who believe in their status
On Hills
I’ll lie with a sun at my feet
& a moon above my head
[flit birds intone] – at blind
north you are nine-ish km
from my swoon where we
had undressed [stretching
& bathed – but not in rain]
Your unchecked meadow
is a rule-broken hill – slips
of grass & breakfast hens
[an incline of nature-sent
breaths] – I’ll cycle to you –
my captured heart rate is
safe [no concerns for now]
Old ways – a basket arced
from skinned brambles &
other wonders – hands-on
matters too – honesty rips
thornish – you pull my tear
of thin skin & usher me to
your own [here deer graze]
Nine-ish thousand stroams
of to-be-discusseds wait on
our auld Bartholomew Map
of Lost Empires – our times
are not to be contained [we
were made in empire days –
you a flesh map of marks &
I am yet to read yours] Slip
me time – before collisions
& cataclysms [not knowns]
to untie my tied-down body
from moon-sun alignments –
then I’m free – laid out – your
rule-broken hill to astrict us
as lovers – no pulley-weight
or worn-gearing of recalls –
not enough to re-route each
of us – there’s a path that is
marked by green dashes on
my OS map – spitting north –
we will walk on it – it calls
without clumsy 3D heights –
best seen from at your feet –
travelled naked – backpacks
left at our bedroom door – I
will allay my afear of heights
to climb with you & so belay
your choice of rope & routes
After Lockdown
My walking stick whistles
[but I cannot]/ We are met
by ire-blue clouds – hefted
& sullen in gestation – sick
of their sour discomfort &
weight – brushwork inks &
greets hard from her stain
above us & hail hits us – it
stings skin on Firle Beacon
finding ice-stoned sinners –
a sheep pen & spiky patch
of brambles is a salvation/
A battered cyclist wobbles
past [his lycra-skin too thin
to shield him]/ Dog owners
bend as their pets lag [This
squall was never forecast!]
We forget God is covetous
& not one to bow to orders
from torpid meteorologists
droning in air-less studios/
My walking stick whistles –
a note blown across height
adjustment holes – but I do
not/ Frore-misery urges us
to a warm pub’s profanities
[where ice is better served]
& here I’ll warm your hands
& we will plan our re-routed
way – furores’ll not stop us –
we walk on [& to anywhere]
Ancient Ways
Our ashen marriages
are trace-cartography
on our drunken maps
of tolls – drips of wine
circle our old haunts/
Merlots are our ink in
marking our routes/ I
track my tired footfall
on gradients – we see
tumuli – each labelled
in gothic font – a man
stood there – a digger
with flints to scrape &
form his remembered
monument/ No recall
of this evening will be
left – so I vomit hasty
poetry – I traduce fact
& delineate spillages –
trippers can sidestep
our cists/ We’re not a
sober triumvirate – my
sips enervated [but for
for gritted sediments]/
My tap spits as red ink
circulates & remnants
are washed off/ Come
morning & three stains
will have dried [rubbed
at drips to scour clean]
& our maps will be set
aside [out-of-date] – no
worth left – lost routes
to diggings in Wessex
& nothing more to see
Stone-circled
Six men sit – perching –
on suffering bar stools
Six etched chunks – an
almost-even arc offset
[nearly of Stonehenge]
A curve with no motive
apart from supping ale
& muttering objections
& unruly explanations /
They grumble together
to a misogynist ‘banter’
There’s no women ‘ere /
Their justifications pool
as pints are dispensed
[equally tipped out & in]
If standing stones ever
fall then fools fill gaps –
to stone imposed rules
[of concentric intervals]
Also on Medium
Flood Alert
I am on a long-bet flood plain
An elevated gravel path leads
beside pumpkin-cut grimaces
Eight grin-lit detached houses
bid shameless sharp views of
rooms & rooms & rooms [It is
too early to draw our curtains!]
& I walk [spectral] below sight
lines of slipped lounge lizards
on an orbit back to my ghost’s
town / Not much has changed
[apart from rain] in my scarcity
Troop-hoofed paths capitulate
to further boot tracks – to trails
of dogs & bikes / There’s more
rain on its way! / Amber flashes
heighten concerns for riverside
mortgagees [reviling long bets]
Here pebbles melt into grass &
a playing field – untouchable to
kids at this time of year – now a
playground [of sorts] for nosing
dogs & their equally dull owners
[my tribe of lead & turd carriers]
A hill rise – between doped rides
of swings & slides – then there is
my grey Ex-wife – I pray she can’t
see me – but prayers never work
on side-raining days – & my plea
is unanswered as she raises her
voice as if to her dog [but to me]
& I’ll vomit [spew?] all her letters
back at her – spit – no matter how
wet it makes her [Love is a route
to hatred – if your lover lives a lie]
There are no wagers now for our
solicitors or mediators to pursue
My climb finds me sitting – a rest
as my dog runs rings around her
bitch – I’ll call & she’ll return – see?
Sussex Sex Slaves
Her’s was a parvenus route without
valid qualifications – apart from her
betrothal to a provincial manager &
his executive home – such stiffened
allures are a kind of love – a security
[rarely bodies]/ Her yearning to f#ck
a young builder was never a shock –
see her hubby [such a bore tuned to
Radio Two] He always answered to
loud calls of full pints & pulling men
beneath pub beams – sharing gags –
[old misogynists & racists always do]
Her love re-ignited [for her husband]
after she found she could not afford
to live without his pudgy currencies
Half of everything was never enough
Half a life of sadness – her new price
He paid for her new hard tits – they’re
rearing her lover’s grin [life’s still shit]
@BHAFC
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
Picasso in Chiddingly
Picasso stood beside a finger
signpost showing three ways
to places from a raised island
of rough grass & wheeled ruts
as if caught painting in a beret
& brumal layers – wool-clothed
for changing English elements
He was marooned – Crusoe’d in
Muddles Green contemplating
CHIDDINGLY – raised up in iron
under others – GOLDEN CROSS
& LAUGHTON – places reduced
to state GOLD LAUGH by Pablo
There is … nothing now
There is … nothing now
No weather to speak of
No kicked-up teasing of
litter to torment my dog
No layering lakes of hail
and no struggles of heat
No stern frosty response
across this opened field –
no boot-cracked ditches
No complaints & nothing
re-touched or tipped into
a bending under old rules
There is no compulsion …
The Shortest Day
Time has not yet inclined enough
to coerce any kind of difference –
perhaps later – sometime in June
when we’ll see our pined-for light
[stuck as we are – in addled mud]
Our need for summer dried paths –
of kicked up grit – of lifting dust –
of seeing our harder route ahead –
no more digging out trod-in ooze
Scorched days will be our saviour
is a rumbled thought under clouds
But we forget how humour sweats
under a higher temperature in our
too quick to exsiccated landscape
Longer days will not find us shelter
from any localised weather events
& so we reshape our collars & caps
to make this shortest day bearable
Over Ringmer
Below blae whirs
of imminent rainfall
two not-too-distant
butts of voices
needled each other
leaving loose stitches
of unthreaded words
on a path above us
as your hair licked
in that same cut wind
which blew their ire
across our track
Blackberrying was
never an easy thing
with sprung thorns
and others’ sour pickings
Traditions
She has our crushed boxes
of wedding pictures
and our Christmas decorations –
our cheap jewels brought out
on a shortened day –
a day requiring a ladder
to help us lug up
our November weights of Sussex
that bonfire costume crate
pushed through our knocked out
loft’s gape
and exchanged for seasonal stuff
This will be my first Christmas
without our hung reminders –
without her late anniversary card
Number 54
I am not blood-steamed
by spine loosening grunts
across bare white backs
laid out below Istanbul
on arse-warmed marble
Instead
I am pinned and pressed
sweated
as if sleeping badly
but up
awake on a chassis-rattled bus
sat with other stained weights
drawing my dank suspires
Old condensation cools
on glass
almost rolled tears
on soused windows
There’s no near side view
Above a wettened aisle
fellow devotees look on
with a quiet resignation
We are gathered
together
in Our Driver’s
rear-view mirror
It is
again
my lost route
of timeless sways and whines
of an engine in county lanes
taking me
a cold damp traveller
I am compressed
and sat stop-blind
I am not
sauna-wrapped
this time
You can walk with me
You can walk with me
along another path
It’s not too far
but be aware of fallen trees
Watch for twisted boughs –
turned like a lover’s thighs
crossed – coyly – enough
to keep to wedding vows
An overnight layering of leaves
masks raised roots
A wild rose curls – armed
with thorns bared like teeth
Without broken clouds
there is less to see –
no backlit leaves
to play out a sideshow
It is this gate now
A Field Near Ripe
Two crows in black robes
ghost into my untrusting
edge of sight –
that miscalculated corner
of slights – of misinformation
A pair of hooded monks
float across this field
angled south
of Golden Cross –
a hectare of grass pasture
We take a triangulation
of boot-dashed footpaths
Here
a temporary centre
of a loosened ruin of bales
We follow b2 from a2
towards millennial years
of old adding ups
before
Pythagoras came to c2
Same River
It is impossible to maintain
a constant perspective
Heraclitus often reflected
between wept moments
Democritus often laughed
at blubbed floods of words
A month’s worth of rain
fell in one single day
Hellingly’s bi-sainted church
sits above our Cuckmere’s threat
from change-swollen reaches –
wet acts of Peter and Paul’s god
You stood naked in our risen river –
that serpent slips – a gelid rising
You were bare at its quick confluence
with a rushed stream – name unknown
I found you in bed with a clay figurine
Sussex has a hundred words for mud
Just south of Nash Street
Just south of Nash Street
lies an eye-straight road –
not laid by bent-to Romans
or rutted under lost pilgrims’ carts
but a later by-way pegged
between tool-twisted turns
of fleece-carding pricking wires
nailed to long-paced posts
Untouched oaks claim sunlight
in their overhead boundary
Their bare roots act as hazards
for my blind spot boots
which then slip on acorn grit –
that loosely rolled resurfacing
of brittle spawned shells
under emptied boughs
All found-hushes are lost
to door slams of a far off shotgun
At a saturated junction
unknown mushrooms stand
as if randomly placed bollards –
circles of tipped fragile caps
standing more connected
to this land than ourselves
We take a hard turn
to find – again – our east
to leave that subsoil route –
to tread on returning home tarmac
Birch Polypore
Scores of lady’s gloves reach
out on this chain sawn patch
whilst less urgent saplings
have slower ambitions
There a sometimes-killing –
but also useful – fungi
sprouts from a rot-set
silver bough
You see it too –
but as a foreign shell
washed up far from tides
without a limpet’s blind tenacity
I tell you – it is also known as
razor strop fungus –
due to its rough edges –
many lost uses – like fire carrying
We crush this season’s litter
stopping at bright busting
sweet chestnuts –
buffed peel-able virgins
to be split by my heeled
crush – to an extraction
Along our crackling path
of bitter acorns – those
discarded ancient fruits
of last week’s storm –
we see where swung blades of gusts
broke a woodsman’s coppice
Care of AstroTurf
I am to return
to my adopted small-town
of mischievous lies –
laid out unmarked –
landmines left for me
to put my weight upon
Until then a tardy parade
of rental days in Golden Cross –
in my contracted place
with easy-to-keep
plastic grass and off-street
parking
I will build a wooden porch
to sit upon – there to look back on
leases – my temporary places
from my bought viewpoint
above my adopted small-town
and there to lose sight
of other – older – agreements
left to other’s disabuse
with a sofa for my dog
and a hammock for me –
no need to put my burthen
on that small-town ground
The Boundary Ghost
A crop of prime turf
is to my back
My thin brick perch digs in
to my lowered leg aches
after a blind walk from Ripe’s
church across three fields –
now sat stiffly in Chalvington
Here they face me –
Picknell’s dead family
Engraved stones staring out
at an unmarked boundary –
was it laid in my eye just now –
was it suggested by Robert
Who Departed This Life
February 7th 1869
A slab is sunk tightly
between three yews
It bears equal surnames –
set to unequal end dates –
to be kept In Loving Memory
More of his
relatives crushed
in their compressed beds
Then a blackbird’s repeated
yack-yack of late insistences
lifts me from that moment –
away from Robert’s ghost –
to have me rise
from that low wall
and to leave them all
well alone – for now
and to walk back across
that even outfield –
around his unmarked boundary
Uckfield Carnival
This floor is piss-sweated
as are those swilled bowls
at Cinque Ports in Uckfield –
more beer-strewn puddles
of splattered cock misses
across slipped wet tiles
Old men flatter too-tight birds
by sleight of words of fucking –
we old fuckers are cursed
Commissions
To live at all is a miracle enough – Mervyn Peake
He wasn’t a signwriter by trade –
These dabblers have other uses
A wartime false commission
to inscribe – For Officers Only
on lavatory doors was sufficient
for Mr Peake to steal drawn hours
and cross-hatch his written lines –
to give rise to Lord Titus Groan –
to see an Earl born under Arundel –
for Mr Peake to guide Steerpike
to towering observation points
below matched scowled brows –
before our artist set his slow eye
among Belsen’s drawn atrocities –
before his mind was drained –
Mr Peake was a miracle enough
Again – Another Fall
Again –
it is that time of year
of carcasses picked apart
by visits of daggered beaks
of leavings
of black stains
of crushed-to berry juice
of later felt stomach aches
[spread like buckshot pellets]
A stag is stretched –
set upturned –
laid out of the way –
dead parallel to passing traffic
with its legs rigid
in its last-struck gallop
Roadkill –
it is that time of year
of car strikes
between Uckfield
and Halland
in Sussex
Again –
another Fall
Country Lanes
Mad Max offered me shares
Fifty-fifty in a gentlemens’ club –
I could
Taste their wares – test their tits
was his opening roadside pitch
Girls ain’t the problem –
undergraduates aplenty –
it’s the bloody bouncers
with their qualifications
That’s now our problem
Max is missing some teeth
his breath stinks of dog food
Turn on your heel, Mike
and carry on along this lane
Strange men lurk in Hailsham
A Golden Cross
There is a medium wave
interference around me
off roost-massing rooks
This county hums and emits
Even our sunsets hiss –
dipped slow into copper pots
My westerly siphon of hedges
should be muttering
but it has been a while –
our native small birds
have been lost for good
Their calls have no place
Lost For Words
A conqueror’s high esteem
of varied Pevensey shellfish
is marked up – still to this day –
when out catching pandles
Sussex’s fathoming in
Latin’s infectiousness – off pandalus
But reducing – a word in decline
in this part of the country
Something to do with grammar
schools and formal education?
There is no local voice
or old inflection –
no dialect in
our National Curriculum –
surelye
Below Snatts Lane
Our spun dogs leapt
into a hidden swank*
only reappearing – only –
when cooled
by that glum – that cold –
woodland pond
Their wet coats stunk
Quick on spindle legs
they fast-darted in
and faster beneath
another clump of
undergrowth
Not late enough – not then –
for mist-above-dusk
over heat-sucked ditches
and almost rivers
Not late enough to rise
from dew weighted grass
We followed those routes –
those laid before
by others and left those
laid behind by us
We were those last two
travellers on earth
*swank – Sussex term for wetlands
Memory Fields
Behind Chiddingly’s
mouse-crept churchyard
a still minute’s silence
was being observed
by two dozen plus
quite brightly-dressed
stoolball players
A quarter-hour chimed
from high and behind me
as they rained
a polite light shower
of applause
and then took to field
for their ageless game
as a slumped family bent
beside a turned soil mound –
under helium love
for Her – recently lost
They also met silence
before that rung reminder
of time’s impatience
Migrants – 4th July
That Americanism
of Autumn to Fall
came with Sussex
men and women
who landed on a slip
of their new world
Now another conceit
rewritten as Americana
but stolen old English
Their cast wide seeds
were sent to feed
future revolutionaries
and land thieves
Blame Sussex for such
misappropriation
On Church Street
Shortly after closing time
outside my unknown church –
feeling a stone’s frore
off dead men and women
upright as chiselled recalls
and staring – all – in disbelief
at that zealous parish priest
who dolls up as a spectre
A welcome departure
from his-biking leathers?
Do you fancy a whole Sunday
of such wanton dressing-up?
But – note – none of that
purely Anglicised-God-stuff
No vertical iron pressings
No M&S slacks in ageing beige
I am not of that creamy dotage
marked heaven-ready
My dark walk is guided on
by each clack-clack-clack
of my tapped black stick –
no more standing as a stone
Satan will catch me
if I stay too long
Fighting in Newhaven
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
Slower
I choose a minutes slower
route within Google Maps
Such a lottery takes us longer
as we drive through mid-Sussex
Huge delays are common here –
because J.Deere tractors blast
along summer’s uncut lanes –
that narrowing of back roads –
fuming in their camouflage
of brand green and yellow –
ploughing dead straight –
making cars meet hedgerows
We hit dry spittles of sunlight
under jiggered shadows –
Here old wapple ways
are low to fields – almost-gorges
hoofed out by tramped centuries
of stick-herded stock
Where canopies intersect overhead
as prayer-grabbing fingers lock
to make summertime rooflines
under which we drive in instant night –
swooped – whilst our confines
of air-conditioning and auto-beams
make us – modern travellers – immune
to such a cool pleasure as shade
A Common Spotted Orchid
For JC
It is a highly successful
coloniser of wasteland
and not at all in danger
Both my Google Lens
and a quickie Wikipedia
yielded to your knowledge
Just an assurance of such –
there was no doubt in my mind
that you were right – none at all!
Seeing such beauty has an effect –
How can a thing so vivacious
be left – without being taken?
An uncommon allure
among easy rough grass –
there is more to this orchid
Such observations ran quick
as my eyes and mind
took you – assiduously –
from behind
Furze
They grew low gorse
alongside their homes to
thorn-tie bright laundry
under drying high winds
Clym cut back high furze
and disappointed his wife
It is a rough plant for sure
but promises – or removes –
depending on your view –
kisses by force of fashion
It was an uncrossable border
in my common land youth
There was a story of a man
recovered from a thorny whin
by a coastguard helicopter –
help waved down by his hand
Furze flowers were yellow pebbles
for insects to skip between
It was my first time on Ashdown
in a too long time – and bared
gorse was my quiet surprise –
We have lost natural assurances
We once knew a season’s place
by month-ends and blossoming
Also here: Places of Poetry
British Aisles
Among slow movers in Waitrose –
who have all the time in the world
to hunt and gather tea time’s treat
to eat under sheltered rooflines –
there is a muttered dignity in aisles
These retirees place select items
in shallow trolleys as they stop-go
Unhurried in their emeritus ways
In its café even us – such younger ones –
adopt the hushed reverence of age
and put off less urgent ‘phone calls –
a church service is about to start
Then fluorescents flicker and douse
and our light snacks are in a dark place
But those old shoppers do not stop
because such an act would be surrender
And their jokes flare up about shillings
and no one’s fed the meters
Their only way out is by those steep stairs
because no one trusts those German lifts
Super Veterans
This lake’s shore is disturbed by cutters
and mowers at two-stroke Sunday work
of keeping back too much growth –
still their gig crew rolls through turns
of hard rudder and clean recoveries –
breaking out a wake and six puddles
Four – together – power – six – power through
cries their cox above Canadian chatter
from a disinterest of drifting geese
I wear a bench well – even at this age –
my practice of securing such comfort
in open spaces is my latest fascination –
along with finding a place to live
and other such micro matters in life
which pale under this sky – seated lakeside
Above Glynde Reach
I picked a bent path of grass treads
between time’s tipped-hat stones
in St. Andrew’s – Beddingham’s
dry-high whispering graveyard
It hasn’t absorbed any rising tidal
surge or sudden winter wash – of
God’s clearing-out-no-chance-flood
since He-knows-when-of-last
Once vagrants were listed here
in this river-fashioned parish
in a sub-Lewes rolled distance –
68 villains, 6 bordars and 5 slaves
Now Major and Mrs. lie thigh-to-thigh
in parallel places under that shadow
of repurposed stone and fixings –
another bypass and road of sorts
as cars hurtle at a throw’s distance
taking travelling parishioners
beyond unmarked boundaries
without a detour to see bowed stones
Piano Men
The unannounced pianist
was a pummeler –
less Jools Holland
more jewel robber
We politely relocated
from The Griffin’s bar roar
and found ourselves in
a Rocketman party
at another restaurant
five minutes south
where women wore glitter
and sang loud homage
to Elton John’s flickers
of flares of greatness
Divine
You travelled there alone –
you said – to discover
a hidden watercourse
under Devil’s Dyke
against received wisdom
and geological sooth
with a pair of readied rods –
almost as ridiculous
as a stooped detectorist
with his singing pendulum
We laughed at them
But should it greet you?
Farming Today
Under Glynde’s grey turbine
I know I am irrelevant
It is as if my chest’s creaks
are now unsure ship timbers
set grinding by lifts and turns
of blown low pressures
Her blades swoon over us
in that signature revolution
She asks of me a greater effort
to stand for any time in her shadow
Can you find a name for her grab
and snaffle of another westerly?
Words hurt you – they are your
turned blades in your turned head
And this act of standing upright –
above Gote Farm – is my anchoring
on these Downs of compromises
made between giving and taking
No Rest
Do not tarry for too many minutes
below Chanctonbury’s decimated
circle of silvered-skin beech trees
They were planted without regard
for any long-term fixing agreement
set fast to grow by a man’s measures
of water on their fragile root balls
There on disturbed nights
that dark copse is circled
by foul-mouthed flying guides
Above you in the weighted boughs
are stirrings of banshees and phantoms
as you tremble under battery lanterns
Too many whitened deep roots
screw through long-buried
druid bones and other scatterings
of now-forgotten Roman emperors
The trees endlessly finger through soils
disturbing turned souls with their tubers
once lost and unequal in life and death
but finding a rare settling of parity
under levels of pressed Sussex chalk
and now haunting your visit
The Witches of Newick
Husbands of Newick
beware of your wives
they gather in quorum
to exchange their lies
And do not get sick
do not suffer reductions
or those sibyls of Sussex
will seek compensation
A Crew
There is a slight run of resonance
with squared dips of catches –
it quickens with timed recoveries
along those rumbled turns
of leather-collared connections –
so that the forward lean-to-timings
lever everything to leant finishes
and the opening up of your lungs –
and we haven’t even talked
of power with the blade’s bowing –
We can master the cockboat’s turn
through hard rudder tips into the wind –
by finding strength in fixed ways –
by using the entry and exit in unison
Sea Rowing
There – almost baiting us –
ten thousand wind-ripped
waves palpitated on the lake –
but they are merely
breeze-skipping ripples
for us would-be sea fishers
of much bigger catches –
We are required to practice
in such innocuous conditions –
this millpond darkened stew –
before that unknown swell
beyond our harbour wall –
where there are no hard tugs
of a circling gig’s rudder –
but instead sideways drifts
and cuts by undercurrents –
high sea arts to be mastered
in ungenerous conditions –
We will then be willed to shore
by pulls of oars and others’
fears – with salt on our lips
providing a taste of sea rowing
Hamilton Place
The tin top cottages
should be haunted – but there is no ghost –
no made-pail Hoogstraten –
A man ripped the roof
off his own propped home and so next door
was left for him – alone –
Now stand those twins
with no tiles or grace – rotting near Hoogstraten –
and his resting place
The Last Corner
First an eye-crash –
that was the quick blindness
which I slammed into –
it enveloped me under
a tugged-at gallows hood
as I ferried our slumped
kids through their unsettled fears
of the dark – a risen thing
with the hour’s rainfall
which spat – then gobbed
across the lane’s shifts –
springing like shone frogs –
a slimy tide of refraction
down the switch – on and off –
of the unintended chicane –
set by claws of branches
and lumpen road kill
in that true – truest black –
I drove under the storm
that had redacted all colour
from my high beam view
of the tongue-wet road –
that horror film palette
of some evil and of some good –
in stretched marks to bends –
in white lines which warned
of the too-tightness
of that last slip away camber
First Class
As my path-running dog bolts – yet again –
at the vertical thinning of grey squirrels –
I hear – and then see – those almost–vermin kids
gather across the far side of the school fields –
where they struggle with bunched keys
to unlock the rattled and knocked store –
where the bright balls and corner flags
are piled behind the fist-drummed tin walls –
There the brazen – almost-male – chorus
of laughs and throat- bubbled testosterone –
of catching-ups – is loud before the blast
of Sir’s voice from afar – which pulls them
to five-a-side battles in their dark uniforms –
until the rattled shed is locked hard again –
I return from those few seconds of my school days
to see the dog waiting – I call to her on my way
Cold
Believe in your child’s ghost –
but then let her spectre run
from the road-kill shock –
from the flare of the
body-struck headlights –
those halogen matches
will ignite her terrified flight
into the woods –
But don’t eye that place
where she first learns to haunt
in the permanent night
of tightly weaved birches –
where Nan Tuck flies afeard
of her burning death throws –
where the recently
spilt spirit runs
from the quick-kill road –
Who let the trees take the young
from our arms?
The wounding country lanes
kill our flightless birds
with too much winding speed –
She will be cold tonight
The Remained
Even in the unfair fall
of rain on the night – of
discharged un-loadings –
after the torches lit
the memorial bonfire –
the three wives of war
will be still – to remain
without any complaint
about huge losses to
King or Country –
or other such standings
of the state’s manhood –
that stupidity of men –
Keep back from
the lightings and fusings
of the electrical lines –
It is as if God was unable
to save the widow wives
Inside My Lover
I am entertained inside her lento lungs –
travelling alone and partly dusk-blind –
within her low suck of cooling breath –
I inhale her exhale of purest oxygen
and with it comes an unwinding –
an expansion of my otiose senses –
an awareness of this as existing –
of living things set around – but
obscured by the falling of the hour –
Now the manic chp-chp-chp-chp-chp
of panicked blackbirds to one side –
joined by the rude crows overhead –
that tuneless duet of birdsong is overlaid
on itself by others’ alarms and queries
which set off – concentric – around me –
As I tread – as I compact the leafy mucus –
which she absorbs into her membrane –
the fallen are re-sown by the plough
of my steps on this weaved footpath –
Her cold stew of re-use – of rotting down –
is nature’s re-design – it is not random –
be it the branched capillary urge
of saplings – or the fork of tipped boughs –
or the patterning of her cast off leaves –
already thick enough to hide the paths –
Now on cinders I miss the give of the mulch –
the weighted compress and its last sound
Naming Rights
Should I give a name
to those stolen logs
and breaks of wood
which were dragged
and then laid in place
in the muddiest parts
of our dipping routes?
They span the indents –
the heel-suck puddles
in the uneven paths –
Not bridging boughs
too stepping stones –
I will leave it now to
a far greater authority
to find the best thing
to fill that word space
Above the Ouse
Here are the random spillages
of sorrel-glazed sweet chestnuts –
an overnight downed bounty
which has settled on the layers
of leaves and paths underneath
The splayed-open spiky cupules
offer – like unclipped purses –
their copper-only change –
I finger out those fattened nuts
which were once so desired
to fill the bowls of soldiers –
As I gather – not easy work for me –
the loosened crop on my route –
they mass to make my pockets
weigh as if full of dreadful stones –
but these will not pull me under
Pevensey Levels
The filleted contrails
meet at an equal
destination over there –
weak carbon offsets
of traceable aspect lines
for the flightpath artist –
but not strung long enough
for the followed eye to apply
into the capture of nature
It is runway flat under them
so pray they don’t align here
and find this level for land
Late Out
This dessicated path
is an off-white scar
under the moon’s phase
of waxing gibbous
Boots and tamed dogs
have worn this route
into a grass-bare map
which I read by that light
The holding flightpaths
of man-made meteors –
of ephemeral accords –
circle among the clouds
The transmitter mast blinks
with a beast’s red eye
shaming Arcturus and Mars
so even those stars fade
This as the bypass hums
a song of our war won –
our tilt against creation
by over engineering
Above the Weir
The kayak wobbled
on the tamed river
as we paddled –
but out of time –
past bikini-strapped girls
and kids your age
whom we sat above
in our inflated craft
Within ten minutes
we had found
the quiet normality
of an unbroken tension
where water boatmen
skated in spurts –
here dragonflies dipped
to a secret dance
above our bright bow
We kept time for a while
and then you gave up
to let me drag routes
around low branches
and through narrowings –
I briefly quit with pain
so we were set adrift
against the nothing current
below the next weir
You held the ropes
as I tried to lift my weight
from the muddy berth –
but my legs could not do
what legs should do
so I dragged myself
up the herd-worn bank –
gripping grass clumps
to bring me ashore
I hold the memory
of that recent evening
as fondly as those of my youth
when I lived for the Thames
and her sly currents –
when I could cross
the tops of weirs –
but now I am reduced
to the sloth of the Ouse.
The Lanes
The local lanes have been narrowed
by the thickening of nature’s ripeness
The scabbed tarmac routes are reduced
by the slow encroachments of greenery
Each blind corner is an increased fear
but still taken in third gear at over forty
as if TE Lawrence had never died
on such a cluttered route as this
Summer is an alien with her land grab –
her low leaf boughs weighty obstructions
which hide rotted bodies and tossed litter
until the rape of leaves under winter
I drive between my rural commitments
of drop-offs and collections along roads
which were never designed for our speeds
nor any misjudged braking distance
Tea at Charleston
A heavy shower traps me
it bolts me inside the car
under the fry of rain on roof
I am returned to campsites
and useless kagoules
those flimsy foldable coats
The windscreen streams
with hundreds of floods
and another revisit
when I was pressed
to the panes in my bedroom
where
on the wettest of days
the only sport was teasing
the fattening condensation
into vertical rivers
with my breath as mist
I find
the tearoom is closed
Sussex opens on Tuesday
A Place to Sit
His round carver’s mallet
rung out vibrations
and workbench chimes
as he forced his chisel
into the oak
Other redundant tools
hung
shelved
and sung with the whack and saw
We talked about art and ecology
and how they could combine
as he formed his perfect edges
against nature’s aged grain
He was crafting a bench
one commissioned to sit
in Alfriston’s book store
No plans or dimensions to hand
because this was true art
We compared the unwritten notes
of our marriage dissertations
and found that such study
provides no long term rewards
Snake
A blonde hair spun
from the towel
like a flying snake
that leaping wonder
but this spin in Sussex
was slow motion gathered
by the early sun in bathroom
and in this marriage
there is no certainty
who is Ishah
with whom I fall?
Two Women
I met Makris and Demeter
bent over a half-inflated dinghy
and me, the old boy,
interrupted their labour
with a brief history
of my youth on The Thames;
‘meander’ came back to me,
along with ‘blade’ and ‘gate’,
my recall faltered at Barcombe,
on a twist of The Ouse to Lewes,
their sure sweep of youth’s grace
patched my pause with their words,
they were back from The Anchor
to this downstream landing;
they sparkled in the late-May light
with an assurance, in such love,
and I walked on against the current’s force,
but only knee-deep in meadow grass.
Untitled
supplicant
came to mind
and I had to check the word
but it was right
almost fingers
twined to prayer
but also humbled
entreating
bowed under
the rooted canopy
the artist
lifted
to pull
you
through the woods
By Windover Hill
No rich patron for St Andrew’s Church,
unmoved by digging at historical facts,
dropped, slumped, almost marooned,
leaving it off-centred on Alfriston’s Tye,
a cross set high on a rough mound,
above the bezier-curves of The Ouse,
of her flood-carved meanders,
kept from the village by a low flint wall,
this house sits, quiet, above the tide,
that moon’s claim upon timed rises,
which shift according to typed charts,
there is more than one God working here.
This low Cathedral of the Downs
will always be half-framed by the slope
of that grazed slant of Windover Hill,
unsure of the Long Man’s presence.
Inspired by – Keith Pettit
Published in Flights Poetry – https://flightsscc.wordpress.com/
Continuation
This is my constant (since childhood):
along a rough path of almost-identified
bird song, high-scattered;
but I am no longer drawn to the slip and suck
of uneven grasses, to be welly-filled
so my socks squelched:
Not over the land topped by last year’s
stamped brambles: As ever the grey sky
has dropped,
she rests lightly on this damp copse,
where locked-in trees are north-greased
against climbers.
The birds I once shot, our farmers’ pests,
ruminate overhead on bowed wires,
adjusting with flap-claps,
and, still, ever, that distant roll of
tarmac breeze, of sped tyres
on a constant road.
A Letter from Maria’s Seat
Quem te deus esse jussit*
1.
Lady Maria-Josepha Holyrod,
a quill-scratcher of enquiries,
sailed badly from Brighthelm:
‘L’Unique Miss Madam’ –
Mother re-anointed Maria
in ink and long-hand love
in her last address to her child,
her travelling sweet witness
to sword-thrust royal-shifts
across bloodied France,
posted from the girl’s carriage
on visits to grande houses.
2.
Maria looked from the mound,
Sheffield Park, settled in nature,
‘I live almost in the Garden’
she wrote, March 9, 1794:
Her planned wood view, back
on all that her family owned,
the land, the trees, the life,
but no more such a sure future:
She wrote in fear of local orders:
‘Drive the Cattle from the Coast’.
She signed her many letters:
Adieu! Ever yours, MJH.
*Learn the person God has commanded you to be
SOURCES:
Google Books: Girlhood of Maria Josepha Holroyd [Lady Stanley of Alderley] – Link HERE
Royal Collection: – Link HERE
Our Last Frost in Sussex
08:24 and I am touching that poke of a cold God
under unornamented woods
now contained by us – for the good of us
February is sugared overnight – here underfoot
The stripped hedgerow is briefly lit – crowned
by the blinding hour
Those umber-dipped high stick fingers
touch that very last of His
visible burnt presence
Along a raised path – my short timber route
over flood-expectant meadows – a convenience
for us dog walkers – commuters – drunkards
It has a ship’s complaint under my overweight –
a seaworthy distrust of an unstrapped cargo
My stick a peg leg poke across her slippery deck
Greater tussock sedges – rare Sussex clumps of grass
are green icebergs – gathered – they wait for an onslaught
by knotweed and other foreigner floods in this field
after the cold-breath time has been put aside – quicker
with each warmer year – a woodpecker stopped
in Buxted – 08:32
The Last Frost in Sussex
08:24. I am touching the last of a cold God,
over unevens, under unornamented woods,
now contained by us – for the good of all:
February over-sugared, overnight, here underfoot;
the stripped hedgerow is briefly lit, crowned
by the blinding hour, those umber-dipped
high stick fingers touch the very last of His
visible burnt presence.
Along the raised path, the short timber route,
over the flood-expected meadow, a convenience
for us led dog walkers, commuters, drunkards:
It has a ship’s complaint under my over-weight,
a sea worthy distrust of unstrapped cargo,
my stick a peg leg poke across her slippery deck.
Greater tussock sedges, rare Sussex lumps of grass,
green icebergs gathered, wait for the June onslaught
of Japanese knot weed, a foreign flood in this field
after the cold-breath time has been put aside, quicker
with each warmer year. The woodpecker stopped
in Buxted. 08:32.
Bonfire 2016, Lewes
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong
gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
Thomas Paine, former Lewes resident.
Here – trapped again –
clipped at The Swan
with a Liquidators track –
a requested song –
ska for the drunks
who cannot dance –
especially the white
low-middle-class –
and those blacked-up
for bonfire fun –
hoping to upset
everyone –
White men as black men?
Not very ‘clever’ –
please torch the cocks
and their racist feathers
E021118
Moving a Sculpture
For AM
Farley Farm
was close to drugged,
slow with November’s
perpetual damp;
my view was short-taken,
by dozens of time-kicked
bricks in the long-revived
fat hip barn:
Having spent the morning
stacking dusty blocks
I was all for piling-up
everything more artfully.
A gardener appeared,
arm-locked in the steering
of a wheelbarrow of plants,
now lifted, redundant.
We required his own way
of up-rooting things,
and the piece was loaded
under his soft advice.
There, laid in two parts,
the sculpture divided,
over scatter cushions,
to soften the journey.
A grave length remained
of worm-turned turf,
where the statue had stood
we left a patch of earth.
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 