some new poems march2007

THE LAST TRUE MAN

The last true man looks out over the plain,
The thick hair on his brow ridge
Keeps the sleet out of his eyes
As a squall blows over.
Its cold wind is as sharp as a flint flake,
But he sits as still as a brother to the boulders
That he sits among.
His gaze goes out level with the eagles, hawks and vultures
Drifting round on the thermals
Coming up from the flat lands below.
Sometimes the birds cluster
And one or two drop down at first,
Then more and more follow
Like a slow feathered tornado forming.
He knows that here will be fresh meat down there
and remembers the days when he dared to go down to get it
with his fathers and brothers and sisters and mothers
but now he fears that arrows will meet him
as so many met so many of them
swarming like stinging bees from cover
stinging bees that sting forever
so he sits up on the mountain
his family now
are only the boulders that he sits among.

THE SALMON OF GOWER STREET

Rushing like salmon maddened by a need to spawn upstream
Each lone individual calculates
Without thinking
which piece of pavement to move to next,
Who to overtake, who to brush past,
who can almost be pushed aside,
When to swerve, when to accelerate,
even when to stop momentarily,
Step off the kerb into the gutter
Or seeing a gap in the traffic
To dash across the road.

Collectively, or each alone,
I doubt if they’d care
If a gargantuan grizzly bear
Standing on top of the hotels and universities of Gower Street
Swiped down with a massive paw
Impaled some poor commuter on its claw
And lifted the screaming wretch
Up into the sky
I reckon one or two might look up
Shrug and rush on
For their work awaits
And debts must be fed.

THE 5 ODES OF THE BORED BARMAN

1
I can’t think of anything but
How much my feet hurt
They feel like they’re being
Simultaneously squashed, sandpapered and grilled
As I slave for the minimum wage
By leaning on the wrong side of the bar waiting for someone to ask
For another fucking cappuccino

2
If that bloody woman
Comes on the video jukebox again
Yowling, screaming twitching and howling
It’ll be the fifth time that I’ve seen and heard
Her damn video today .
I have no idea what her lyrics are saying
or failing to say
But it is undoubtedly inane
And I hate her more and more
With each slowly passing second of each
slowly passing minute of each
slowly passing hour of each
five year long working day.

3
I got the job as barman,
Just after the bar had been refurbished
The first customers blew in that very day
They flew in on slight, barely visible gossamer wings
Little black moving air borne things
That did not go away
When you stopped rubbing your eyes
Yes, the regulars were already here
Ready to die for a drink
Prepared to drown in fine blond Cuban rum
Or even the brown slops of Bombardier bitter
And every day since that I’ve worked here
I’ve served them politely whether I wanted to or not
Because the customers are always right
Even if they are barflies.




4
This job only appears to be unskilled, you know
It actually involves the cutting edge of intellectual effort
Like deciding exactly when
To fill up the paper cup on the bar in front of the coffee machine
With wooden stirrers.
This action has to be precisely timed
And performed with a view to possible management surveillance
So as to signify
A productive and eager operative
Able to act on his/her own initiative
Then there is the related question of
Gauging precisely the right amount
Of wooden stirrers to put in the paper cup.
Personally, I do this with a kind of instinctive Zen feel
Hand feels, but eye does not see
As I grope in the wooden stirrer box in the dark barside cupboard
Hand almost always emerging clutching
The right amount of wooden stirrers
It is a skill that I will carry with me to my grave.

5
Green leatherette chairs, stools and sofas
Now featuring a cigarette burn here and there
Beige angular tables
Like parts of a Stonehenge made of shiny laminated wood.
A billiard able that seldom works
A quiz machine beloved of a coterie of librarians
Four plasma video screens
Strategically positioned and constantly on
So that no-one can escape from fun
Clear glass Bulgarian ashtrays
Sensibly and centrally placed on each table at the start of trading each day
Then chaotically rearranged by an anarchic and unstable clientele
These are the barman’s horizons
Which sometimes extend
To pigeons perched outside the window
These birds seem smug to the barman
Since they know that they can fly away to
Horizons that he cannot see.