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Xanadu 

The Funeral 

A Sort of Inferno 

Epitaph 

Getting Drunk While Watching the Sun Set 

Recognition 

Red Wine Lullaby 

The House 


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Yellow Brick Road

Oh, Yellow Brick Road not one
of your golden cobblelocks touches
my sole as I walk, just the grey
concrete that turns black
at the onset of rain.

The religious orders were right:
kneel and bow and pray
then build pagodas and give votive
donations into bulging clerical coffers
labelled: 'Save your souls!
Ticket to heaven, buy now, pay later/
Excellentest of results guaranteed'.

No glint lies in the street.
No street leads to an Emerald City;
that way lies on a high toll
express-way, be it really, spiritually
or philanthropically made.
And fear not these investments
are safe, for hard grind and sweat
are rewarded with minimum wage.

Entrepreneurs lie silent in your grave, your souls are saved.


How to be a true blue (or dress in shining armour on a square table)

Where do we draw the line blue across the page,
to highlight all those fine 'true' characteristics;
honour and dignity or a humble approach to time and the constraints
imposed by the rigid barriers that maintain our trust
in brothers, friends, employees and the weather,
or just a sense of the difference between good, bad
or god's work and the devil's dark hand tentatively dwindling
caressing the soft sandalwood grooves of the knight's mane
while reading the certainty of the chess board?
Despite our intentions and purpose one must function
in the appropriate fulcrum of three up and one to the side
tactically moving forward with a sidestep to assess
where the pawns will line up and where's best to recline
and wait for the moment to ride once more, armour shining
in the setting sunlight  with sword unsheathed and raised,
'I will die for you' shouted until the end when the final step
is taken to the side; true to the cause and true to the colour
                                 - blue as the sun is yellow.

After midnight writing

Drinking whiskey alone
under the stars with you trying
to focus with bottle-end eyes: we
all are single stoned moments
passing through frames
a second plagiarising the past
like we owned it claiming a hold
but not knowing if in between
the other billion or so multiplied
by some prime figure the same arrow
doesn't take the same flight with
or without more mega-pixels
or high definition and me
with my bottle-end incandescent
eyes that can't see if it really
matters what are the pictures we see:
silver wouldn't shine in this light.

Summer Solstice

The summer day's length extends to late
after eleven if you're lucky -
Children out playing long past eight
you won't get that in February!

Windows open to breeze drifts
washing the love witnessing walls
of the bedroom obscured from passing chatterbox children
by the height of the sill - only the swallows that perch
on the greenhouse gable see the naked thights and crevices
and I imagine they would grin if they knew what went on
in the sunless room hidden from the passers' view

We walked home to the first birds
risen and shouting about whatever it is
we don't really know but it was all but five;
early enough in the morning to offer a chance to wonder

A single movement brought the sheet
perched on a toe and a shoulder
to scrape and scratch for grip but tumble
away to the floor - the ever migrant voyeurs would not concern
themselves with the helplessness of bodies' blatant
rebuttal of their state of undress allowing
continuance of the suppliant rest.

The mornings see children in shirtsleeves making their way to school
The afternoon chimes with the ice-cream van.
In the evenings lawnmowers moan constant.
The night remains. Weak. 
____________________________________

Climbing Trees in the Devil's Lane*

The treetops wavered on whether
to tilt from east to west,
gracefully as if caught by wind
but just burdened by my brittle self.

It was almost like a pendulum
swaying, five metres up,
it seemed higher than heaven
in my kingdom a tall Scots Pine.

From here I could see the world!
It was a wide and wild place;
I saw cows in fields like statues
and my house far away, silent.

There was the river with all
the echoing oil drums,
and the sewerage plants
constant clockwise sludge stirrer.

Oh, my mighty summit
had made me master of my brother
who lingered two branches below
staring up at my red shorts.

For once I was the best,
and I savoured it like a pound note!
It was a treat I rarely tasted;
feeling like king of the world.

*The Devil's Lane is an old disused train line where we played much to our mothers' disapporval...
Unfortunately all of which I wrote about has now been knocked down, dug up, and removed. It is no
 longer a wide and wild place but very quaint with lawns and dormer bungalows. The Devil's Lane
is still there.
_______________________________

A Lighthouse

Red apple ripens
above the boughs below,
topmost of it's
fellows - so high the
harvest did neglect it

The sun polishing its skin
in the open, swaying,
dangling, hanging
perpetually it seems
on the branch
almost signalling
for any hero's ships
that may be lost at sea.

It was not forgotten,
staring up with a smile
at the beacon's shine;
hiding my envy - unlike
the sun, it I cannot acquire.

____________________

The Crush

February feels fierce

Yet is subtler here in a coffee-shop where the glass

stands between us

as I watch legs stamping and breaths caught in the cold

in the street outside.

Feeling fierce February  

for some reason unknown all reminds me of when

I worked with my father,

boots soaked through, toes frozen and fingers numb

from the wicked wind,

squeezing cattle into a rust primed red crush for a dose

for scour or flukeworm,

their breaths corralled in the cold, forming a mist thicker than smoke,

their feet stamping in time

to their beastly huffs and snorts as smacking sticks frightened and herded.

We shouted and slapped their hinds

smothered in a farmyard porridge of melt-water and mud and shit

stirred up real good,

drove them through the gap, squashing them tight, jabbed them,

and sent them back out.

Cured for a while they would saunter back to graze as if

concentration camp

like treatment were a daily Saint Paddy’s parade.

Fierce February feels

the commuters outside as they are herded by a bus stop,

tamed and driven,

like those Friesians and Herefords,

shuffling their feet,

breaths captured by the cold, anticipating the rush for the bus

I watch cosily

through steaming coffee in the company of thoughts

trying to understand,

what is civilization; the cow, the commuter or the crush?

_____________________________________

Namsan*

(after listening for five minutes)

 

This is where

the nature goes

to hide from fog

born out of Seoul.

The cold breeze flirts

with delicate

leafless, young

and old trees

on their cheek which

watches the streets.

This chilly air

peacefully

leaves the belching

streets below.

All the life!

It’s alive here!

Assorted birds

sing and call

from branch to bough,

they hop and skip

about naked twigs

as they dance,

rehearsing songs

for when winter

has finally

passed on.

*Namsan is a forested hill park in Seoul. Its direct translation is ‘South Mountain’.

_____________________

Driving Close to the DMZ

Like the Light Brigade buses and cars hurtle on
past endless rows of rusty barbed and razor wire.
Fatigued figures pose with machine guns on guard
all in front of reed marshes ignoring the charge.

And you silver-plated Hangang in the background
rippleless sneaking silent through the sentries' lines,
beneath long bridges by muzzles searchlights guard posts
manned with boys - you are oblivious to them all.

_______________________

An Alley

Two ignite together
in the firelight
of a love motels
undying neon blaze.
A silhouette
to match the tune
of the love songs
we have yet to hear.
______________________________

The Night Hawker

He calls into the night,
like a coyote that
circles solitary
around a wild camp fire,
he comes close, he roams far,
hidden but for his howl.
What is it, which makes
the Deokjangsu*, lost, late,
call into the empty
skies above my dark street?
To deaf ears and blind eyes
I fear he calls upon.
As he calls at windows,
he looks up hopefully
at a lighted room above
whose curtain does not stir
just flickers blue inside.
Calls are ignored again,
famished he trudges on,
he struggles now as homes
have refrigerators.

Seoul, November 2007.

* An old traditional peddler who sells rice cakes in the winter late night.
 Before they were popular but are now in decline due to modern conveniences.

______________________________

To Pluck a Flower from the Earth

Alive with the joys of spring
my heart quickens
on the apparition
of the sprouting fresh beauty;
supple and fresh -
waiting to bare fruit to taste;
naked and delicate -
at the mercy of man's evil.

Reaching out to touch
it evades by a fingernail.
With all my passion I try
to embrace its virgin frailty
not but one inch from me.
Yet, it cannot be mine, ever,
because crude wanton lust
shall never be enough
to pluck a flower from the earth.

_________________________

Sacred Steps

A beggar bent down on knees,
shaded like a coal miner,
face buried in the floor grout;
arms outstrecthed, palms upturned,
as if at the of Gotama.
But no moktok rattles,
just heels high sharply clatter
on these metro stairs down.

Down, deep to the dungeons
where the pious residents hide
from the eyes that shift up/down
like the traffic of the steps
happening on a genuflector

Genuflecting to the mercy of a coin
that wills to leave one home
to help one other, misionary like.
Yet few coins care for a life in a hat
or a street soiled desperate palm.
These coins, are they not as selfish
as the hands which wrap
so tight around them?