Rat Race Relations

The future is POP-UP
when or where or we’re going
END UP now like
these car curers, manicuring men
on old forecourts and wasteland standing
ready and entrepreneurial selling
cheap gleam from wheel trims to ariels,
with styling products to apply to try
to wring out a dollar from a day to
lather the ladder of opportunity like
pit stop healers, like shoe shiners
offering a restorative service to lords
mounted in metal, needing rid
of stubble and infestation from the grind
before returning to estates-
they polish bodywork like armour;
they can see their faces in its mirror,
shining, excelling with hosepipes and buckets;
pop-up people tapped in and
offered their cleanest elbows to bestow
our precious, free resource upon us, shower us
with its abundance as we pop
here there and everywhere

Outdoor Marital

she irate bent by a gusting anger
gesticulating a tirade of demands at
the object of her ire crossing over
he with can in hand he bends too
ready to ram like a beast might do
like a fuse with each end lit
they approach the two forces
single courses drawing each other in
tunnel vision towards a collision
surely very upset she is to say the least
but he too seems possessed unleashed
inevitable violence on the verge
but his last step is a side step
a clever divergence clean away
from the crunch she turns
a last blast of hate at his back
he free from harness off and posturing
no more but relaxing as if
he had found a room and closed a door

Smartphones

When phones were dumb
we had to stand by the shaft
to draft arrangements;
portals were unportable;
fixed, neutral apparatus,
revolving dials for numbers and
familiar codes, memorised.

Now they’re highly evolved pets;
extensions, quick mini pack-horses
overloaded, dangling into our faces,
cutting out all the corners, stairs of life
transporting us, keeping us
hooked on contact,
eternal; our pilot lights

Smart? Arse. I miss the old,
passive things, content to stay put..
I miss being left to my own devices.
was life less various back then with duller spices?
Once upon a time I read a book
or two; I wrote and now I text.

There was no mind in such matter,
I didn’t have one eye endlessly
washed by a stream of visual chatter,
underestimating the potential of the universe,
for fear of silence, darkness;
bathing in torchlight to abate agitation.

So comes a generation;
kids with phones, blank brains;
receivers, happy let Google give
all the answers to whatever they need
making memory an external resource
following life’s course always within range
with updates and readouts and data,

if that’s smart, I’ll be smarter
I’ll keep my songs in my heart
for a starter.

Mr Robinson

Here’s to you Mr Robinson:
Little shining trumpet man.
Self taut, all valves well oiled,
Sonorous old bones; a musical relic.
Old fashioned youth, well seasoned
Sound of heart and mind and soul;
An ever-ready fanfare declaring
Pomp-pomp-pomp! With no pomposity
You always bestow trimmings, finery,
Friendship; giving all you know to all you know
A blessing, living-breathing, blowing
From big pockets you are a pick-me-up,
Eager and insistent, excelling in your task-
Band master and social expert-keen to share
Ceremony, stories, sandwiches and flask.
Well-tuned with generosity you resonate
A rare pitch; pure as gold, bold as brass,
A fine specimen. A gentleman,
Here’s to you, ever youthful, Mr Robinson!

I Really Won Ophelia

a sad wall between us, a creeper with roots
I don’t know about; this sound board
is almost my alarm now, a disturbance
an emotional gagging reflex; a calling

with a slight snarl in the sob; some fuel drawn
but not enough in the exhaled accelerator pressed,
some bite in the bitterness, in each manic twist
but I sense futility, a starter motor of pain

igniting a secondary engine and she purrs
sorrow through the head banging walls from
her interior, her frequency, curled up
somewhere crying in impotence

nobody knocks, goes round; she wouldn’t answer
anyway I face away, summon up soul get ready
to fight for my birthright; I write, deny, delay.
She’s not on her own today.

My Deerboy

DeerBoy is essentially an elaborate attempt to escape from normality and (while I’m at it) mortality. It is also a process of ‘seeing through’ in the sense of screens, masks, surface and also not running away or shying away from the truth I feel (or what I feel to be truth).
A long time ago I spent a long time in a friend’s bedsit and he used to refer to me as his ‘dear boy’ (think Withnail and I). The idea of misinterpreting these well known terms of luvvies endearing themselves to each other and becoming a slightly pagan, man/beast poet/thing took hold.
So it was a joke really, at first, but for the last 12 years (at least) I have found DeerBoy (certainly IdeaBoy) has evolved to the point where it can just about stand up. Then I sat in a puddle with some antlers on. My mate took a picture and Deerboy was born. That is the cover of my book: My Deerboy.
My Deerboy was written by Yorkshire based Dan Greenwood. It contains over 40 poems set amongst images gathered by the poet. It includes a CD that contains 4 studio tracks and 4 demo tracks

Longwood Summer

We take off up the edge
with steep land in our face left
and right emptiness, sending our eyes
skimming into the shaping distance
draped in summer and resonating
from the green frame
of jagged bracken, the open palms
of elderflowers.
It is picture postcard today
with clots of clouds on the horizon
ballooning in the east.

At the top we turn west
the sun is cooked, is pressed
between sky and Earth
and bursting at setting point,
staining the blue cloth of sky
like a blood bruise, imbuing
children with rose gold, gilding
horses, walls, fences, blades
of grass. Longwood
in summer; Longwood’s fields,
hillsides, reservoirs, a river, the rec
the open-air amphitheatre, and tower
its quarried cliff edges and pubs;
old milling places for mill workers.

Peering westwards from this neck of the woods
even the M62 has an aspect of charm-
a shuttling vein, sealed in silence,
deadened by moorland insulation,
moorland like seabeds ever aching,
waiting for night to simulate the sea.

Church bells ring like cherry stones
into our overflowing bowl of light;
where we live.
Safe and sound in Yorkshire stone.

Train Sketch

‘I’m not against it; I’m not pro it’
I just keep turning wheels said the poet
Spinning out time and sins.
Thursdays are bins and boom rooms
And baby on a bicycle and loaded bags
And that’s the peak of the week and
Other days I’m running for trains
It was seven a.m and the day was almost
Exploding with June life; a nuclear sun,
A gathering boom, birds and green corridors
And we sat opposite each other like chess players.
He said, ‘know what you need to protect.
Don’t neglect it. Sacrifice a bishop
If you must; a rook but don’t get sucked in,
Off course. Stick to the plan and guard it
And go’.. Then when our platforms arrived
We gathered our things and made our moves.

Canada

I am bottled and moving incrementally
Towards Canada. My top to my shoulders
Aiming, willing me to get there one day;
If I do it I do it the hard way. Telepathy;
No carbon footprint there. Sun glinting
And buoyant, I am a capsule of explanations
Of what happened to Spain. Nobody gives
A hoot about me in Canada; nadie. Nada. Nor
For a horn of stories I grabbed off a bulls head.
I can pour guittara, tell about dusty, dark
Dreams where east is stamped with west;
Spun and fused together (flamenco dancer
You know its true; I still get a click out of you) anyway
I’ve heard Canada is a big place but I play a long game.
So draw me up, I’m coming out of the sea.
Up the arms of the Atlantic like a floating nut shell
Hollowed out to tell. When I get there twist off
The cap. The message is in the fumes.

Can For Me

Can’t you dance? Tap your toes;
suck it up into your body.
Draw off your soul. Can’t you sing?
You can for me.
Join the club. Join the choir.
Draw off the milk; get to the cream.
Draw off the haze until things become clear.
Your tongue will grow from your heart
and that song that was sealed will start
to appear. You want to get your guts up.
you can pay me to pat you on the back
while you’re hacking.
Trouble is the din we’re in.
people always having to have
and hardly ever having to be. I say
get what it is you feel you’re lacking
then when you can dance and sing
save the world
and all the best things that are free.
Well you can for me.