the pianist

beneath Napoleon's hat
the sober pianist
slaughters our requests
Gershwin dies again and again
as his fingers stab the ivories to death
but it is "Summertime"
that finally steers even the barmen to drink

a swaying figure at the bar
lists gently as the boat drunkenly rolls
his foot taps between the missed beats
whilst his hands cling desperately to
his wrecked sobriety
he looks at the ice in his glass
as if it was a Gypsy's crystal ball
searching for the title to the tune
that eludes him
a tune he wants to request
a tune that will die without mercy

as for me
I sit quietly in the corner
praying for icebergs





(On a ferry to France watching a pianist, who was wearing Napoleon's hat, entertain a drunk)

I would fall

I would fall for a whisper
lightly dusted with hope

I would fall for a smile

that I knew was mine

I would fall for a sinner
wrapped within a promise

I would fall for a lie
held within a gentle heart

but I would fall for you
with just a single word
and I would change my course

towards oblivion

I would yield and kneel before you

like the pious and the faithless blind

for you are both the music

and the dance

beer vs mayo

I walked out of the rain
and into the Queen's Arms
I bet I can drink two pints of Guinness
before that woman finishes
her fat french stick
I watch her mayonnaise tears hit the table
as the musics whines
or is it the conversation?
twisted and bleary
pooling on beer soaked tongues
it bangs between the pin ball flippers
and the fruitless fruit machine which chirps
for my attention in the corner of the bar
a colourless man stares at his pint
as if it holds an answer
but what is the question?
does it lie in the optimist's half full
or the pessimists's half empty?
maybe it hides in the froth of the last dregs
like a silent mouthed answer which is lost in a belch
and the dull thud as glass meets bar top
the barman young and also empty
polishes a glass and holds it high
quickly he puts it back
realising that it is the light that is dirty
the barmaid a refugee from her own existence
spills conversation over anything with a pulse
but most are dead here
and even the living are terminal
or tired echoes of better days
I look up from my second empty glass
and see a discarded French stick
with its innards punched out across the table

(Just a quiet observation in a pub on a rainy day...)

coffee, smoke and smiles

embracing a cigarette

and a cold cherry coke

she confessed a young life

to old eyes

whilst dealing out smiles

like cards

until I held nothing but

hearts and aces

(For Emma)

my son, my father

The phone call.

Your grandson asked if that was you who had just called. He asked if heaven had telephones. I told him no and watched as the sadness entered his heart. I explain that you are gone. I explain that you will never return.
“I can’t speak to him?”
“No.”
He looks at me. He cries. He holds me tighter, as if trying to squeeze you from me. And as the tears finally fall from my eyes. How I wish I could make that call for both of us.



2nd February 2010

my war

the cold bit into my face

the hungry surrounded me

and distant guns echoed

but I was doused in invincibility

driving towards my war
with aid to save nobody
but myself

now I only recall

the misplaced children

the soulless grey faces

and fresh graves

graced with unknown prayers

orphans were the currency of my war

the widows with no shadows my receipts

and that romantic war that lived in me

was not a war I could have healed

there was no salvation for a broken soul

just religion tearing flesh apart

(It feels like a lifetime ago now. I took aid out during the Yugoslavian war. My father and grandfather had experienced war so I felt it was my right of passage... in the end it was my grandfather's words that came back to haunt me. He had always refused to talk about his own war experiences instead he would simply say "we have to find better ways to resolve our differences..." War is surreal and an undignified end to human life ..)

Work in progress...  within a world in progress.

eulogy

Bent double, like a closing book.
A frail grey shadow of something great yet now forever lost.
I could not look upon you.
I could not find the love I had to strengthen me.
You were gone.

Now in the early hours I mourn you.
Tears now, only tears.
The words you wrote through my pain,
Add only more weight to this emptiness.
And the photographs and film, the echoes of your life,
Fades from my memory like my childhood.

I miss you.
Yet sometimes when I’m alone I know you are here.
With a strong hand upon my shoulder and fragments of
Keats, Wordsworth and Wileman for my ear.
I loved you for all you ever were.
I love you for all you will make me be.

But most of all I miss you, Albert.




(For my Grandfather: Albert Wileman)

how to love a lawyess

seduce her with legislation
smother her with torts
then seize her precedents
and abritrate her thoughts




(originally written 14th September 1990 - when I fell in love with a law student)

haiku (at last)

big blue and dreamless
as clouds crumble and disperse
childlike without thoughts




(originally written 10th May 1990)

sarah

when you smiled
I was cleaved in two
when you spoke
I was held willingly captive
and now
even though the edge
of you memory is sharp
I would rather bleed
than let go







9th September 1990