Walking on Sunshine

Holy shit! I mean, like, HOLY SHIT! I'm in Pomegranate! Jesus

In celebration, here's a new poem.

Back

When I handled the fine furze
at the back of her fresh-mown head,
sitting on the steps outside our building,
then nodded towards where the sky
had been yellow, then turned rust-red,
then damson, as if any different
from the hundreds of other sundowns
since we met, I couldn’t have imagined
how, weeks later, her eyes would glaze greenly
when I left town for the first time.

When I left town for the first time
we wrote letters like lovers, sent photos,
drafts of poems, postcards, newspaper clippings
as though our removal was only for now
and soon we’d be back in our best get-up
and she’d bubble over and we’d dance
or share a Stella as spring turned around
or sprawl on the grass between lectures
where she’d handle the fine furze at the back
of my head and talk about staying in touch.

Many thanks,
Dave.

Back on the Horse

So portfolio is in and marked and now comes the four-month project I like to call 'write fifteen completely new poems (provided you can find twenty decent old ones)'. Baby steps, people, baby steps. Also thanks to Gwen for being good subject matter.

Day

Some new stars came from dead stars.
Five billion years ago the sun came out,
Ichthyostega grew legs,
Quetzalcoatlus grew wings,
glaciers, rock hungry, moved mountains,
mammoths grew fur and survived.

*

An old dog with its hindquarters hung
in a wheelchair lurches across a field
after a tennis ball and other dogs
like the golden retriever watching his man
do cartwheels, yoga, juggle batons
between the cycle paths and building sites –
a white crane, a red crane – green-brown
grass under the saltire sky, crossed
with white jet fumes, the jet howling like a baby
in a stripy red romper inspecting
the wild round crinkled buds that burst
from every nook and notch of the old oaks.

*

My pretty black-haired friend,
I’m glad you joined me under my tree
even for a few minutes with your green
khaki messenger bag and Yorkshire brogue
to look at the hot spring afternoon with me,
even for a few minutes, and to say ‘it’s nice out’,
‘are you coming to the pub later’, and go,
dodging the joggers who have been here forever.

*

A toddler stamps toward her father
is hoisted to his shoulders and rides away;
swallows swing in the thermals,
jet engines still filtering through the branches,
the evening full of violins.

*

And the moon, half-meteor, half-earth,
rises opposite the middle-aged sun.

Thanks for reading, expect more soon!
Dave.

hello poem how have you been

I've been spending a heckload of time tinkering with an already-completed portfolio and then an enjoyable but time-consuming essay. And I think me and Michael Longley need a bit of time apart. On the other hand, here's my first new poem in a long time, which totally apes him. Woot?

Body Language

Since I will, some day, forget your face
this poem will celebrate your will
to keep talking, your ease in lip-reading
that switched our roles in crowded clubs,
and apologise for the time my hand
hesitated on your hearing aid as my hand
has since hesitated on pierced ears, healed piercings.

Thanks for reading!
Dave.

Poem, news

POSE AS A TEAM, CUZ SHIT JUST GOT REAL

News! My poem "All Souls' Night" is going to be published in the next edition of Pomegranate.
HOT SHIT, SON.
There is also talk abroad of further readings in future, which I'm not going to jinx by giving details. SO! Here's a poem, about this exhibit.

Menashe Kadishman - Shalechet

I

You examined maps and counted
unfamiliar coins,
haggled with hostellers
in respectable German.

Jackdaws flitted on the pavement
pecking at apple cores
and brown horse-chestnut leaves,
retreating at our footsteps.

II

There was silence
in that room,
silent space
and a square
of clarity
three storeys above,
stressing the dust
that settled
on mountains of shoes,
mountains of luggage
chalked with
catalogues of names,
chalk drawing air
from the room
that had space
for more silence.

III

A jackdaw flapped away as we came to the surface,
apple core in its mouth, into peppery clouds.
Traffic droned in the distance. We walked home.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Change We Can Blog About

So on Wednesday some folks from creative writing put together a poetry/prose night upstairs in the Meadow Bar. The guys did awesome, particularly Natalia, Struan and Niki, who were all doing a public reading for the first time (whoo!). The crowd was lapping that shit up. Honorable mention for Aiko's mad performance skills. I opened with some old poems and a couple of new(ish) ones, one of which is here.

Mutant

Taking my arm in the simmering buzz
of the crowd, through the diabolo-spinners
and gyring, half-naked drummers,
she led me under canopies
and curtains that climbed into sundown,
staining the air red and purple, stirred
with the neon bar-lights that awoke hot-
humming, weaving charms in the eyes.

Her mid-Atlantic accent melded
with the calls of rucking bodies,
reflecting soundwaves from London
students and New York sightseers;
she tripped among puddles
and the bedlam of dancers, her skin
highlit and spinning away
from my melding mid-British accent.

Once the band sent the crowd re-singing
the setlist through the streets I found her
hands, found her pallor under the moonlight –
her tawny eyes, cold silver, her Indias of spice –
and exchanged nights, eye-freckled and glowing
in the shifting light of a new year,
til our voices reflected in each other’s ears
and she might have been my twin.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Dang

I was sure I had more material than I actually do. Shucks. Here's a rewrite of my first ever poem.

Giant’s Causeway

Mist crawled upwards from the surface,
the cluttered sky turned grey and we retired
from tectonic sea and gathering smirr
to a pub you knew. Only the birds knew
what the sea had said, what it kept to itself.

Earlier that morning a hundred feet above the basalt,
I caught my breath and followed you
a few steps behind along the machair.
You gave nothing away as you gathered
palm-sized stones from a cairn by the cliff-face.

I named haresfoot, razorbills, chimney-stacks,
causeway-tales. You sent skimmers over
the cliffs as I yammered, disguising
cover-stories in the tide’s howl and skirl.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Greeks

Turns out I'm doing okay! Here's a new one based on the Odyssey. That's Sean Bean in the picture, being a legend.

Anticleia

I

Lacking options, he summons
the weak-necked dead,
hoping for counsel
and direction home
from long-winded Tiresias.

Lacking a spade, Odysseus hollows
out a sump with his sword,
sweetens the soil with honey-wine,
wheat-flour and water.

His mother, Anticleia,
breezes by his elbow
without meeting his eye,
as oblivious to their reunion
as any of the dead.
He reaches out to her
for the first time in years.
His arms pass through her like mist.

Anticleia danders on
among the crowd, still avoiding his gaze
like an embarrassed acquaintance.
With a sacrifice her eyes are opened. Heart
in bloodied mouth, she dithers for words.

II

Her voice barely holds long enough
to tell the whole sorry tale:
Penelope harassed by lechers;
Telemachus herding pigs;
Laertes nothing but skin and bone
in a miserable gardener’s get-up.
She stretches her ghost arms to his flesh
and bones and glides through them like air.

Odysseus gathers his nerves and speaks,
“What evil brought you here?
Some wasting disease? Artemis’ dart?”
“There was no violence about it, son.
I lost heart waiting for you to come home.”

Strong-shouldered Odysseus stumbles
to his knees and reaches for the hems
of his mother’s robe, which vanish like dew.

See you tomorrow,
Dave

Small poems are fun to write

So in two hours' time I'll be going to a supervisor meeting to see how much work these things need before they turn into something awesome. I'm quite fond of a bunch of them, maybe because they remind me of a good time or someone I like. This one does neither of those things, it is about birds, snow, and seeds.

[Rolling back the blind uncovers]

Rolling back the blind uncovers
a courtyard changed by snow

(last night a loft of pigeons
patrolled a continent of seed,

baiting coal tits or blue tits
that hustled round their hindfeathers,

pecking at the scraps), breath melting
in rorschach blots on the cold glass.

Hasta mañana,
Davíd