Amongst the rings of bouncing lake
the she-swan is left now set fast,
a subtle flick-flack of tail that hints her mind state.
Smooth-sailing in the setting of the sun
to swathe through the drab ducks who
bristle with mock indisposition,
knowing better than to stray too long into
her meditation.

Guitar

She staggered up to me,
finger pointing,
mouth gaping.

Small, growing big,
two feet of life
with years to match.

Gaping and pointing,
with eyes that bounced with her footsteps. A tottering dolly
in mini-sized sneakers.

I strummed on my guitar
and continued to busk, beamed out a benevolent smile and hoped
she’d drop coins in my case.

“La” she bellowed “la”
(a poor attempt, I thought but at least she likes it)
I nodded and bridged and patterned-out chords.
“La!” (louder)
“Laaaaaaaaaa” (screaming)
“Laaa aaaaaa aaa aaaaaaaaaaaaa”.

Where was her mother? Appreciation for my
efforts should be accompanied by ritual;
you drop a coin, I duck my head and mime ‘thanks’
when our eyes meet;
“Laaaaaaaaaa”;
then you stand for a few seconds whilst
I play a little more earnestly and you smile
like you own the music.
“Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”

Then her mother came and scooped her up:
a red-coated parcel.

Gently, on her daughter’s cheeks
she turns the little face towards her and starts to
mouth her words theatrically
“music, honey, this sound is called music”.
Then, to me “I’m sorry, it’s all new”;
“Laahhhhhhhh”
she points to the metalwork behind her daughter’s
ears;
“implants”;
(I fret E minor and stroke down on the strings);
“Laaaa laaa laaa”;
“switched on today…..you’re her first guitar. I think she likes it”.

Big Turtle Circle
I am the moon and the stars,
the clouds and the Sun.
I am the rivers
and the lakes
and all of the trees.

I am all I was
and all I am
yet I’ll billow as dust
in the arms of the wind.

I am all of the creatures,
all of these things
but I am nobody too
yet I am all of you.

Let’s go Alice, let’s jump into Ron’s garden filled with the
bouquet of silica and sand melted and colored for us
roses of flat, imperfect glass
in pop art arrangement
of the profound tic tac toe of the choices of life.
An overwhelming smell of green cubes of jelly glass.

If you stoop, and gaze through, your world is there.
Through the looking glass. Box upon box, rose upon rose,
lens upon lens…reality upon reality.

In the top row are the roses of happiness. Puppies freshly
brought home to chase toilet rolls into shreds of naughtiness.
Champagne bubbles up your nose. Flowers on Valentine’s day.
The urgent kisses of a new love on an unfamiliar doorstep.
This is where the rose of unexpected pay rises and ice-creams
that drip down your chin in the summer live. The smell of a baby’s head,
the feel of good food on your senses, wine in a warm sunset.

The second row is the row of roses of despair. Break-ups for
shattered hearts. Pink slips at Christmas. Fatalistic diagnoses in
dark corners of a doctor’s consulting room. Gums that bleed and turn
out to be something serious after all. Dogs that die in hot cars.
Last wishes that are a litany of regrets and missed opportunities.
A T-bone at a jumped red traffic light. A spill on a speeding motorbike.

The third row is the worst row of all. Row three is the gathering of the roses
of the illusion of choice and the blooms of excuses. A flower of party party
party or study hard while your mind is young and fertile. A bud ready for breaking
of fitness and ready horizons where you can step into success with shiny skin
and bright eyes to become….someone. Someone who looks into their
morning mirror and smiles, who sings in the shower with a voice that
carries a bouncing spirit of vitality, who pats the backs of strangers
with genuine want-you-to-do-well bon viveur . This is a rose
that takes time to say “I love you” and who hugs their dog and because
it knows it is loved it wags its tail back in little flicks and scrunches its muzzle
into a toothy doggy smile.
This is the row from which to pick flowers and place them all in
duckling lines in the row of happiness.

Row three is for you..if you want it, if you choose it, if fate lets you have it…
and that is why it is the worst row of all.

Oh Mr Tran stop taunting us
with your legs that pose a fine Irish jig, frozen in time.
Dainty, dainty, decorously sword-dancing, suspended perilously
above a discarded cigarette packet
and your cane, Mr Tran, knotted and ridged –
weapon of choice of a time-fighter
leaned ready to strike when the clarion call comes, Mr Tran,
when the call comes for you.
It will come, won’t it?
You perch there, Mr Tran, buried in the sackcloth and folds passion
of a thrift-shop coat triumph of convenience over fashion.
It ill-fits you Mr Tran, can you not see? Does it not BOTHER you?
The first owner had more beef to him Mr Tran, more bulk of good
things eaten too well and he never had to scroll up the cuffs.
But then he never stooped against a knotted cane, Mr Tran,
nor did he peer quite so close at the headlines of yesterday’s hastily
reassembled newspaper which he did not have to hunt
fluttering along the streets
amongst the wrappings of candy-treats, Mr Tran,
he just pitched it into the trash can
ready for the wind to pull it out, sheet by sheet for you.
He has not yet had his careless plans come to…nought,
or see blue-sky ideas get drowned behind the gathering rainclouds
of the winter of his life, Mr Tran.
I’ll bet he whistles as he showers, not a bad..thought
entering his fully-crowned head on his unbowed, undowned
shoulders. No arthritic back for him Mr Tran.
No uncorrected vision, squinting at what the world
has become.
He wears tailored blue shirts and has a magical phone
which can display the weather in seventeen different languages,
only one of which he can read.
Blue shirts, Mr Tran, neat.
SEVENTEEN DIFFERENT languages, Mr Tran.
He has a future. He is going to BE somebody.
He is going to change the world, Mr Tran.
He is never going to sit with deck-shoes
hanging from Irish jig legs.
He is never going to be a nobody, Mr Tran.
Or is it the other way around?

Rider
Rider comes in.
STRIDES in.
Not a swagger.
Not a shoulders back front out puff up bowl down the bus.
A grit of teeth, sure,
a won’t blink look right ahead.
Down the bus.
Down the middle of the wrong bus boy.
The wrong color bus.

And he settles in a seat and grips the bar in front a little too tight.
Riding.
In his neat suit.
A proper suit.
With neat hair,
a little blond flick
at the regulation length.
And at some stage he says he’ll get off first when the bus stops.
And at some stage he wins the half-hearted argument.

So when the bus pulls up,
he’s there,
at the door,
and steps into the
swing of a hate-swung baseball bat,
and a motorcycle chain…
and a metal bar…
and a painful dinosaur bone of a table leg
which is studded with nails
that rip into wrong color skin
that steps off the wrong color bus.

As it swoops
to mix spittle with blood
they whoop
“betrayed your own kind boy”
even though he can only grunt yelps like a kicked puppy in return.

But they don’t see the legendary camera flashes.

They don’t see that sodium white
bouncing boy’s jelly-blood dripping face into history:
the day the buzz-cut white boy
rode the colored bus.

He said “I just prayed I’d survive“.
“But why did you do it?”
“Because…because it was the right thing to do“.

Sometimes when you ride the bus
you don’t ride it for you…
you ride it for freedom.

And through the cold coat of
Winter wear, a greener bud
begins on branch that dares
to hope for warmth and better light.
Here, here and here
there lifts a brave blade of
grass, defies threats of frost
and skies overcast by monochrome bright
Sun shaded from sight.

Then tumbles flake into warm drip
of life and wakens and washes
the dust from daffodil eyes
who poke a cautious tip through
earthy blankets
first one there, then there, now
here and here and here and here.

And then a yellow strikes upon the
V of beating wings, and kisses
the sleeping bark awake on trees
who unwrap their groggy arms
and stretch towards the rays
with greening finger leaves
and catkins and stickybuds
and squirrels who agitate
and chatter
and bees who sing a welcome again
to tulips who rush to the surface
to greet them
and rabbits and foxes who chase
and soon we two join too like lost peoples
returned from long dark adventures, emerged,
to add to the business bustlings of
Spring.

Just a quick reminder to those who are unsure or, on
reading this believe I write from experience: my poetry
comes from imagined fiction – I make stuff up – I am
not planning on buying a motorbike or having fights with
my wife (although I am surely ripe for a mid-life crisis)

On a hotel room
An unsteady squint strains at these reeking walls,
Tar-stained from the puffing of road-warrior nightjars
Who drank deep on drams of their superior’s wishes
And tormented their second-best wives
With lies that they both sensed the taste of
On tongues which waggled a tarantella dance around
The sharp bull horns of cheating, his bright fighter’s
Cape of platitudes furling around him as her doubts, fears
Of betrayal stamped the ground and snorted a steamy
Spittle that shook the doors of their marriage.

Another night death-gripping the bedcovers with her
Suspicions. Another knocking his rocks against
Bell-ringing glass and sucking the brown burn
Of bitterness drowning as it washed resentment
From teeth electrified by edge against edge grinding.
He has no reserve of desire to drag
Doing The Right Thing along with him. There are
True selves to find in motorbike trips and
Many destinies thwarted by coming home on
Time and painting the bedroom walls white.

He claims, by example, better use for tomorrow can be made by
Hung-over vikings who arrive red-eyed amongst
The enslaved and clocked and desk-bound.
His warrior clothes strewn with a confetti of
A fixed agenda torn to shreds stuck on
With cock-sure machismo spirit. The gaunt evidence
Written for posterity across the deepening creases
Of his buffalo-tongue face betrays the wear and
Fraying as his identity and purpose bounce away from him
Into the tragic pile of Things He Could Have Done.