It Always Rains

Dawn-dappled morning, slowly shaking free from the grip of night
thrusts westward gloomily.

It shakes its grey locks and spatters pavements and roofs with a
beligerant shower then sulks, moving onward as day stretches itself and rouses.

A window stares blindly out at the dawn-damp streets; cold and resolute.

The man slowly stirs, resentful of time's wilful progress which
forces him into confronting another day, and rises from his
sweat-stained bed and shuffles to the grey-grimy window.

The ragged curtain, mirroring his threadbare life, is pulled
back as the man gazes disinterestedly at the sky; grey-dappled
miser holding back the sun.

He turns from the window, grey-mottled, despiser of life's
continuum, his ears now serenaded by raindrops dancing their
dervish dance against his window.

'It always rains,' he thought, 'It always rains.'

Return to menu

Rain

Soft ceiling of clouds,
innocent and grey
presses down on the dusk-light
in the still air.

Calm pervades all Nature; windless, airless.

Then out of the blanket sky,
as though from Gods' eyes,
soft droplets tumble and splatter on the dry,
darkening ground.

A gentle cascade that cools my upturned face,
each drop felt before the next finds me; fresh, arousing.

Soon, this gentle cadence from the sky gathers force,
intensity.

The wind, worthy kin to this airborne precipitant,
keens its mournful song in sympathetic unison with the rain.

Now a steady stream, curtaining my view,
soaking in its intensity as it needles its downward path whipped
Sharp and random,
no compass guiding,and stabbing me like a million shards from an ungodly goblet
shattered.

Black roof of clouds, menacing grimly
oppressing my simple anatomy.

The rain, uncomfortable now, drives me away to shelter,
choired by the madly drumming shafts of this sky-borne
waterfall,

to wait for its passing.

Return to menu

See Me

See me :
a face in a crowd,
a face alone pressed against
a cold wet pane.

See me :
solitary amongst the racing-rat runners
plodding in my isolated fashion.

See me :
fading from the old photograph
forgotten, unforgiven.

See me ?
you never do
or I'm not there
and stare and stare and stare :
I am the 'no-one there'.

Return to menu

The Blue Boy

I saw the blue boy there and stared.
'Hello.'
I felt my inadequaces as a reflection in his cold blue stare
and wondered why
I should take that first move.

'I am conscience.'
And his words clawed at my mind
berating me with their simplicity,
their immediateness, so blue and still;
Cold, marble-blue, hard and dead.

And he spoke in my mind,
calm and discomposed at once;
'I had a life for a moment of time and was,
fleetingly, but now never will be.'
And his cold stare as my eyes,
recreant,
fell away from his.

And some part of me died there and then.

Return to menu

Slipstream

Slipstream,
you are my inter-galactic lover.
You put me in hyper-drive and I can't get enough of you.

Major Tom,
you have nothing on me you
out of date,
out of power,
out of place
redundant satellite.

I know I'm out of time-step
but that's only my heart
beat
beat

and I can't hope to keep up with your fast, hot lovemaking
only I don't want to burn up.

Sky-lab - Ha !

I will not yield to your charms and become blinded :
'Remember - don't let your heart rule your head ..'

Shit I'm so sick of cliches and you want to trap me like a
starstruck lover in a cliched, timeworn, old-style relationship.

I'm too modern for that,
too modern for you.

I know all this;
it comes as no news to me but

I'm caught in your slipstream,
you are my galaxy and I'm just a part of you in my inter-
galactic way.

Return to menu

ON A BUS

I wrote a poem on a bus
But to hear it you must
Climb to the top
of the bouncing metal stairs.

Slither snake-like
past the rail
and sit
on the rainbow nylon bench

I'll be there
at the top of the bus
reciting my rhyme
written as we ride along
past shops and houses
with musty nets
and peeling paint
on dingy doors

There's the old woman who
lives in house no bigger than a shoe box
who had so many children she didn't know what to do
But they've all grown and flown now and
she's all alone with no-one to talk to but herself

Look at that kid: grimy smile and mischevious eyes
skateboard-scuffed knees
darting out from the roadside
screech
as we stop and angry words
the kid glances back and tosses a vee
leaving just his smile behind

The bus lurches on
at a snail's pace and stops at a stop
for a giggle-girl gang
to chatter up the stairs
with a clatter of feet and voices

Weekends and boyfriends
music and laughter
as the bus trundles and sways
past shops all shuttered
old persons gathered by doorways
talking about people
dead and forgotten
except by them

Into the town now
a river of road-rage
as our bus rambles onward
toward carparks and markets
and rat-racing shoppers

And stops by a brown pigeon-stained temple
of public philanthropy
a gift from a long dead civic leader
and now proud home
to dogeared tomes of PC persuasion

Our bus like some Trojan
horse disgorges its riders
who spatter and scatter
like rays of dawn light
to shop till they drop

So just me and you seated
atop the steel stairway
and you say to me sharply
'So where's your poem then?'
I look at you strangely:
'It's happened around you' I tell you quite curtly.

Return to menu

15 MINUTES - a short story

Everyone is famous for fifteen minutes. He'd heard that once on a TV documentary. It was about an American artist or someone; he said it. But then he would, he was already famous.

The television was off, mute and glass in the corner of the grim room. The room was silent, an all-pervading silence. What sounds there were emanated from the street three storeys below. They drifted upward, spiralling like smoke from the decrepit pavements: children, indistinct, laughter and tears, barking dogs, bicycle bells, cars' brakes screeching. But the room remained silent. Not even the man's breathing was discernible.

He rose slowly from the threadbare chair and crossed the room to the corner opposite the television. There was a curtain, torn and filth-stiff. This partitioned the kitchen from the rest of the room.

Dirty, stained cups, unwashed plates, filled the sink. He took a cup, tannin-dark, and filled it from the tap. The plumbing growled with the effort and a dejected stream of water spluttered into the cup. He drained it noiselessly and hesitated for a moment before replacing it among its soiled comrades.

Again, hesitating, he pulled on a drawer to the left of the sink. It creaked on its runners and came reluctantly open. The man reached inside and took out a brown-handled knife. It was one of those with a serrated edge, 'laser-sharpened so stays sharp for life', so the advertising claimed.

He balanced the knife carefully in his right hand, turned slowly and walked back to the chair. He was still toying with the knife.

The man sat down. He sighed and looked down at the knife as though he was expecting it to respond to his caresses in some way.

The man looked up again and methodically, purposefully, surveyed his room: the grey-grimed walls, the once bright carpet bearing testimony to many steps, now worn and dark and stained, the window with the broken sash which always let in the rain but never clean air. He looked down at the knife again.

There was no expression on the man's face as he made the first cut in his left wrist, the under-side. Almost caught by surprise, the bright blood spurted out, pumped out from his severed artery onto the floor; his face was impassive, expressionless.

He transferred the knife to his bloody left hand and repeated the operation on his right wrist, his face nearly registering pain as his hand closed around the ruby blood-brown handle of the knife.

The job complete, he let the knife drop to the floor, silently, and his hands fell over the arms of the chair.

He leant back and closed his eyes.

It took the man exactly fifteen minutes to die.

Return to menu