New Poems on Internet Poetry Forums
New Poems on Internet Poetry Forums
Grandfather, like the Mariner, his beard as white with hoar,
is sedentary, situated by the kitchen door
to catch the breeze, should one come by, or make his own to bore
his children and their children with. They say that they adore
bon mots he makes like snowstorm flakes although, they emphasise,
they’d visit oftener had he not so often told them. Lies
are less a crime than those they think hide in his sunken eyes.
He thinks he’s good, they acquiesce except when they surprise
him by the bile they billow up at unexpected times.
For whom the belle tolls, he goes on, till in them something chimes
reminding them of history and how they hate his rhymes
when what they want’s approval, not a smidgen of old times,
his version, when their own turn in and into writhing things
that plague their presents, they decide, and that decision clings.
Why won’t he be their puppetry, they wonder, winding strings
of indignation into knots that makes them say harsh things.
Applause, sir, for your fine defense of fie.
With your complexes one can simplify
raw algebra to what I analyse
you take as geometric squares of PIs.
Does 'complex' stand in for 'imaginary'?
Like a miner mourning death in his canary
with something of self-interest in his tears,
I tread with trepidation on my fears
that should I weigh in with the kitchen sink
asserting that these 'complex' numbers link
entirely different parts of higher maths,
you'd ask me how, and I'd fall on my aths. (top)
“Two and two makes five
for large enough values of two.”
A seagull said this yesterday.
Do you think it could be true? (top)
To love is mad as thinking that the sea
is heaven fallen in a pit of sand.
Down dune she waves, the waves can’t be for me.
Her love should warm another, braver, man.
I balance olives, ten per glass of wine.
Receding tides expose more of the pit
of sea than I would see. I squint me blind
and bash me blue and black. I am not fit.
I am fitter than I thought. The tide turns flood
and heaven, wet, comes nearer every wave. (top)
Appearing nightly in her push-down bra
the stop-stop woman works her way around
from cadging drinks from patrons of this spa
to passing out adagio. Not far.
Bartenders, wondering if this time she’s died
and fearing flames from all the drink inside,
approach her slowly with big bags of ice
and pour them on her. Eyes and smile go wide.
Before she leaves she kisses each man twice. (top)
(written at Café De Zwart in downtown Amsterdam. I can't imagine why.)
We talk together of things that matter
but not to each other.
On the roof the rattling rain,
envious of its kin
falling directly into the harbour,
descends to join up,
guttering,
incessant as conversation
until it stops.
Hearing what you say I startle
at my own silent response.
I wonder how could anyone mean
what I think I hear you say.
I am sure you are saying something.
People do.
I remark the unusual stillness of masts
of boats we both see
moored for all this weekend
while the rain comes down
drowning the joy, savings and daydreams
of the holiday makers who hired them.
When I tell myself my life story
it rings false
in the first person
because I’ve continued
to assimilate
so long
that I succeeded
long ago
in becoming no one.
I can tell you are not listening,
which is what I said.
My ego descends from the porous roof
of the air castle
it made up while you talked
or was that me. (top)
Her aunt enjoys English boys,
Lucinda favours men
from France, who have expensive toys.
At night she lets them in
on secrets they imagine they
are privy to, then prettily
she shows them to the door. (top)
© Alan Reynolds, 'Benidorm Flat Watch', 2006
I feel at home here, foreign though I am
both everywhere, and by my disposition.
It’s a goodly roost now I, so like Siam,
no longer have a corporeal position.
I cannot write the sorrows of the world.
My own exist exclusively in places
I gyre in still, antennae all atwirl
as if one of the few remembered faces. (top)
The music startles red and white corpuscles
into ecstatic patterns in the blood
and total strangers flex their buttock muscles
and see their unknown neighbours in a flood
of hell-I-hope-it-happens, and they smile.
Bass guitars kick a rumpus up: we dance
while those no further from us than a mile
catch fevers from our own and catch our trance.
You don't do hillbilly, darling? Do you rock? (top)
He had sanded down the sliding board to death,
sat on it in silk trousers, said his prayers.
Not bothered really, he began to slide.
He can’t talk over his own irritation
and all he hears is static to his ears.
The view, fine at the board top, gets no better.
The only thing he’s picking up is speed.
Whole sentences from books he will not read
rehearse outside his hearing while the wind
winds memories round his neck and chills his spine. (top)
One fewer of us, in our sombre crew
assembled us to see out one more of us.
To see one of us out. We are too few.
A hundred other people swell the fuss
of quiet waiting. They had known him well --
his family, work acquaintances and friends --
for decades. We came later, cannot tell,
but for position in the procession, as it wends
among the filled and tightly tamped down graves
to the open one that, decked with flowers, waits,
which mourners were related. My mind raves
but lets my tongue stay silent at the gates
another, he, has passed. His spirit goes
ahead, away, above the pacing crows. (top)
Assuming the position
equidistant
between allusion
and caring
the Survivor
crosses the sand
noting down the dyings’ names
and emptying their pockets
of sand, in the sand,
taking nothing away
giving nothing away
or to the dying.
There are few birds
anymore
in this desert.
Scorpions stake
positions out
equidistant
between shade
and carrion.
The Survivor
stacks stones
to throw tonight
at returning feral dogs. (top)
Grandfather has gone barking mad,
whatever good sense he once had
obliterated by the bad.
He’s bought a silver mountain bike
and rides it where the spirits hike
at night across the seawall dike.
He bolts each morning from his bed
offended by what has been said
in conversations in his head.
He promenades off to the john.
His gods – young Jesus, Zeus, Old Ron –
call him more faintly, whereupon
Grandfather turns back, still irate,
and spits – he won’t expect to rate –
"I've no appointments but I'm late." (top)
Their lives so far escape their own detection.
In the four dimensions in which they are bored
they see no far horizon, no direction.
In lieu of heart, the gap a bull has gored
bisects the thorax, casual vivisection
which though it leaves them picnic-ham skin scored
they notice only when an artery pumps
depression on the sand. They're in the dumps.
She, the dumpster, looks at him, the dumper.
She sees him little. Lashes let in light
until she braids them shut: an eyebrow bumper
with painted slogans showing him the slight
at which she took offense. His actions stump her.
At first he seems asleep, and then he'll kite
into a chasm where dead dreams take space
and time eclipses memory's last trace. (top)
Accordions chase wine fumes through the air.
The drinking woman slumps into her chair.
Her makeup cheers up no one very much:
It's restricted to a dab around her eyes
of blue, a la the mandrill, and a touch
of whiskey in her voice when she cries.
A baseball hat, eyes saying she speaks Spanish,
and has not been to Spain for many years,
except in dreams, and weeks when she is manic.
She is drinking cava to combat her fears. (top)
Thank you. I will leave you now,
for my cottage by the sea.
I can be sane for hours a day
when that’s required of me.
When we were young the Dragon’s song
boomed softly in our ears,
so far away, so very deep
it frightened us for years.
They say the Dragon died last night
It was extremely old.
I’d ask you down. I will someday.
Just now it is too cold (top)