Photocells
The stars only show up
When we open up our eyes,
With our pupils set on f-2
To maximise the skies.
With focus to infinity
To catch the light-years light
And fast-films for retinas
To turn the blackness bright.
Our long-exposure eyelids
Are timed to lift their veil –
Thirty seconds is enough,
Or else the stars will trail.
And then our nerves develop it
With not a blur nor wrinkle –
It’s just a little grainy
As the pinpoints gently twinkle.
All Aboard !
Trudy Trusses loves the buses
Which she rides to town –
Urban-trekkers, double-deckers,
Ones that bend around.
Some are old and brightly bold,
And red or green in colour –
Some are new and grey right through,
And others even duller.
Trudy Trusses makes such fusses
Over diff’rent routes –
The stops and times, the sprints and climbs,
The stats and attributes.
She watches who is in the queue,
And who is getting off –
The chef, the nun, the doctor’s son,
The teacher and the toff.
Trudy Trusses swiftly susses
Someone has to drive –
The 12, the 3, the 7B,
The weekdays 55.
When she grows big, she wants that gig !,
She wants to sit in front –
To swoosh the doors of 24s
And make their engines grunt !
Trudy Trusses sees the plusses
In a job that moves.
There’s folks to meet on ev’ry street,
From pensioners to youths.
You need a ride ? Then come inside !
There’s plenty room up top.
Then home again through wind and rain,
Just ring the bell to stop.
This poem isn’t necessarily set in Bournemouth, but I thought they deserved praise for one of the few places outside of London which still insist on the colour of their fleet.
Jacks-of-the-Green
Green men – as grey as stone,
All talking with their mouths full,
Look in any ancient church
And you may find a houseful.
Part of the grotesque gallery
To keep watch on us mortals –
Lurking round the capitals,
And hanging from the corbels.
Green men, as Pagan as they sound,
As yews and birches,
As nature-sprites whose temples got rebuilt
As parish churches.
Or are they jolly demons, greening Hell
And sprouting lies ?
They don’t look very evil, though –
But rather rustic-wise.
Green men, as vigorous as weeds
Where priests don’t mow –
Though Jesus doesn’t mind, it seems,
Content to let them grow.
So are they harvest gods of yore,
Or mistletoes in larches ?
Or are they merely hunkypunks,
To decorate the arches ?
Black Fives
Puffing into Rugby,
But this loco’s not a pipe,
Shunting on to Inverness,
With giant apples, ripe.
Rolling out of Derby
When the trees are like a fern,
Let’s open up the fire-box,
And watch the tubas burn.
Pulling into Euston,
Where the bowler-hatted rain –
Then chuffing-up at Templecombe,
A spiral-peel of train.
She’s right on time, in weathered-black,
But never bright cerise –
The workhorse of the LMS,
From Crewe to mantlepiece.
Underlings
We work in warrens, underground,
We’re basement-bound, beneath fluorescents.
Not much there that changes round –
The carpet-tiles are omnipresent.
There we shelter from the rat race,
Keep out of the sun’s harsh glare –
Jobs for life, because in that place
Ev’ryone forgets we’re there.
All the year is blurred together
In our air-conditioned limbo –
All the year is shirt-sleeve weather
Spent without a single window.
Coats and brollies shield us, though,
Between the entrance and the train –
Up there it could be fog or snow,
Down here, it’s overcast again.
It’s only once the clocks have changed
That we emerge before the dusk
To find the world has rearranged,
And we discard our woollen husks.
And then we notice how the Winter’s gone
And how the Spring has come.
How long have daffodils been on ?
Looks like we’ve missed cherry plum…
Traps & Loops
I’ve got a sampler at my feet,
I’ve got a long synthetic beat
I’m strumming my guitar,
But there’s no-one on the stage but me…
It backs me up just fine,
And it always keeps in time
When I’m strumming my guitar,
But it never lets me change the key
I’m a one-man band
With my digital friends,
Just playing a solo that never ends.
And I can’t speed up,
And I can’t slow down,
So see me next week in Camden Town.
I’d love to sing a duet with someone
Who’s backing me up in analogue.
Could you syncopate me, someone,
To put some roll in my rock ?
I’d love to thrash about the stage,
I’d love to whip you to a rage,
But I’m strumming my guitar
To a hundred-and-twenty beats, inspite.
I’d love a ballad to unroll,
I’d love an easy slice of soul,
But I’m strumming my guitar
To a hundred-and-twenty beats, all night.
I’m a one-man band,
And it takes too long
To set up the backing for every song.
So I can’t slow down,
And I can’t speed up,
So see me next week in Lower Sidcup.
I’d love to sing a duet with someone,
Without the need of a metronome.
Could you be my freestyle, someone,
And let my tempo roam ?
Conspiracy of Habit
The Illiminati is very real,
But it won’t be found in smoke-filled rooms.
It lurks in the back of every mind –
Subconsciously, it roots and blooms.
It inducts us before we can even speak,
And follows us into our tombs.
There is no central authority,
But the ghost of Tradition silently looms.
All of us, yes, ev’ry single one of us,
Carries a cabal at the back of their thoughts –
We feel at home with People Like Us,
We all do, like we’re cheering-on sports.
But maybe, if we can recognise this,
Then we needn’t feel so vaguely frightened –
With a little patience, we’ll muddle through together,
And finally be Enlightened.
Incidentally, the original Bavarian Illuminati’s goals were (according to Wikipedia) “to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power” No word on how they would ‘conspire’ to achieve this, but if by open persuasion then they sound like my kind of guys ! Unfortunately, the Catholic Church saw them as the Red Scare, and suppressed them.
But I freely admit to continuing the colloquial slander here.
Roses are…um…
My love is like my writer’s block
It sneaks up from behind,
It twists me like a weathersock,
It leaves me deaf and blind,
My confidences sharply fade,
My workings have resigned,
As all at once, my serenades
Have quite escaped my mind.
Rockabye Lullabye
Sleep now,
I’ll wake you
If something should happen.
Best grab it
As it grabs you,
And blow your light out.
Breathe now
Like beach waves,
Let deltas come lapping,
Enjoy it
While you’ve got it,
There’s some go without.
Sleep now,
I’ll wake you,
But not till the morning.
Best welcome
The dreaming,
And dream one for me.
Breathe now,
Like purring,
Until the new dawning.
Enjoy it,
You’ve earned it,
And it all comes for free.
Music of the Ancients
All of the best tunes are already written, I swear,
Before I was even born.
I spent my teens so acutely aware
I was out of my time and the world didn’t care.
So all the best tunes have already bitten me,
Hooked me, then left me forlorn,
Changed the planet, and now they are history,
Un-recreatable, storied in mystery,
Came and then went and it’s not even fair –
Each time that I sing them I mourn.
It’s not my aloofness, it’s not of my choosing,
It’s downright confusing why I cannot bear
Whatever my peergroup is eager to share –
I call theirs noise and they call mine corn,
Abusing the ears of the other, with no tune to spare.
But that’s just me, ignore my scorn,
I guess we each tootle a different horn.
So set it to music, and that is my essence –
An unrequited adolescence,
Only enlivened by songs from the dead and the square.
But throw in the Trident piano, and baby I’m there !
Rhyming Couplets 