Pre-Spring Cleaning

We are having a massive sort out, shake down and declutter. A splurge of a purge, in fact. All those dusty old boxes and airless cupboards are throwing up all kinds of things. A cache of my late-teenage poems, for instance. Most are embarrassingly über-romantic, but some perhaps show a sliver of promise. Dare I re-evoke my oh-so-sensitive and solipsistic teenage years by reading them? I laugh and cry . . .

I Made the Grade

With banner high
I made the grade
While in my heart
Confusion made
Redemption reel
Salvation sway
Temptation tempting
Day by day
Corruption called
And Satan stayed
But never mind
I made the grade

Buried Deep in Your Work

Buried deep in your work
you are inaccessible to me.
I lie at your feet like a book
discarded for the moment
to be used later. Now time
is paragraphed and space
comes in pages. Distracted
you look right through me
and into your mind, feeling
for a certain mot juste
at the tip of your tongue.
Your tongue is small
and pink. Enraptured by your
tongue, I turn over a new leaf.
I can be inaccessible too.
But no, not now, for you
are far away, beyond me,
in a world of capital letters
and full stops. My cold hand
on your leg surprises you.

Newcastle Blues

Among the scattered debris
of Newcastle, I sought you
in bars and telephone kiosks
and cinema queues.

Round the block and up
Northumberland Street — a dozen
faces were yours
but they looked right through me
into the next pub, seeking
their lovers, waiting under
a neon-lit sign: Newcastle Brown Ale.

In a narrow cul-de-sac
I saw an old man in a dirty
raincoat, shuffling among
orange peel, paper bags, tin cans,
picking up the tin cans.

The girl in green by the bookstall
had long cigarettes and a patent leather
handbag. A big red bus ran over
her reflection on the road before
the station which received me
like a grave —
lonely, empty as a paper bag,
hollow as a tin can, unreal,
head full of orange peel.

Meeting

A hearty slapping of backs
and a wobbling of jowls:
in a real library situation . . .
some croak like frogs;
user satisfaction . . . automation . . .
others cluck like fowls.

Cigar smoke in the air, ash on the floor.
Is this a farmyard or a conference?
You talk with practised competence,
raiding, with ease, the store
of well-known words and phrases.
But your words are numbered;
already you work no more.
You can relax, take stock,
able to read at last . . .

The future is an open book, they say,
though lives, like books, have ends.
You gaggle of retired librarians!

Larch

Larch tree ship:
Moon-anchored in a 
Midnight sea.