BIRDBRAIN

In winter,

The interlaced, Interlocking, leafless,

Limbs and branches and twigs

Of two plum trees

Look to me

Like the nerve connections

In a vast wet wooden brain,

As I sit and stare air up at them,

In a thin cold December rain.

After I have loaded

The feeders  with seeds and suet,

Many small birds begin to fly in.

Landing in in the treetops

Then dropping, hopping and

Fluttering down

Coal tits, blue tits, great tits

Dunnocks, robins and goldfinches

Make indirect, differing routes

From perch to perch 

Nearer and nearer to the food.

Bobbing and turning their heads,

At every stage along the way.

Checking all around for predators:

Because there must be a catch.

As even little birds know

That free lunches are fictitious.

So, they work their ways,

Round and down the trees

Until they're placed

To make rapid dashes in, 

Quickly pick and grab,

Then immediately escape

To eat elsewhere  

The price that they pay for suet and seeds

Is that I watch them 

And compare them

With the starting sparks of ideas

Or initial perceptions

That somehow stick and then begin

Hopping and moving in impulses,

And by intuition,

From neuron to neuron,

Building metaphors,

Shaping ideas,

And then, maybe making

Something like

This poem.

 

for Paul McGrane

 Compere without compare,

Presiding, always with equanimity,

Over the sublime, the beautiful and

Many, many rhymed lines,

Of unparalleled inanity.

You introduced and listened to

Rappers, ranters,

Jokers and croakers,

Sonnets, ballads and even haiku,

But nothing ever seemed to

Phaze you.

What will all those poets do now?

Well, they’ll just carry on and on and on,

Without you,

But you helped them say

What they wanted to say.

Thank you .

OCTOBER ENGLISH FROG

 Oi mate, you'd better hibernate

Winter’s on its way,

And it won’t hesitate.

So, get yourself secure,

And do deep deep sleep.

Just crash right out,

Until springtime brings relief.

Crawl underneath a stone,

Or creep under a log.

A nasty English winter

Is no place for a frog.

Snuggling below

A tasteful garden feature

Would make a warm winter hotel

For a cold-blooded creature.

I've got to stay awake

For six months,

A shivering man,

So, I envy the slumber

Of an amphibian.

You can dream

Of the sun

While you hunker down and wait.

You can’t fly like a swallow

You’re unable to migrate,

So, take decisive inaction,

And proceed to hibernate.

autumnal

 the wind makes the trees speak

as it strips them down to their wooden skeletons

‘Why did summer die?’ they cry’

weeping leaves that rattle along

tarmac and pavement

clouds ride a growing gale

crows try to fly into it

and fail

blown off straight flightpaths

like black rags

Scrawl crawls

Scrawl crawls across this white page

like a trail left by a drunken ant

that's been dipped in ink

outside the window in October

parakeets screech at each other

and I screech at my hand

that can no longer control a pen

once I could right fine script

wield an italic nib

to do calligraphy almost

then I tripped headfirst

into some dustbins

breaking the arm

held out to break my fall

now my days of fine script are over

I must use a machine

that does not understand my words

or failing that

I'll have to employ

a drunken ant

endless carp

 "|"And instead of this endless carping saying it's difficult to get them, we should be celebrating this phenomenal success of the British nation ..." j.rees-mogg

I am an endless carp

I live at the bottom of the pond

i neither know nor like nor understand

what goes on Beyond

I swim around in the mud

eating bugs and worms and scraps

I have on endless appetite

and magnificent shiny scales

I'll eat more and more and more and more

until I'm as big as a whale

 And, I know that I am endless

because I've never seen my tail

TROUSERS

By Folkestone’s coastal beaches,

Where waves lap at the cliff's foot

And desperate people arrive by dinghy

Lives a poet who is selfless

And not stingy

This poet packed a package

Then boarded a northbound train

He was going to go to London

And then return again

He passes orchards and hop fields

As he rides along the rails

He speeds through lush valleys

Past wooded Wealden Hills

He Stops at Ashford station

Yet he does not disembark

It is not his destination

He must travel onward

Through tunnels deep and dark  

He must ride through concrete wasteland

Right into the capital’s entrails

And Change his mode of movement

To a metal worm running

On iron Lines of underground rails 

The tube bores under London

Like a maggot through rotten fruit

Until in the northern suburbs

Out into daylight it shoots

Here the poet and his parcel

Do both board an omnibus

And ride it until the end of its route

At its terminus

Which is Barnet hospital

Where the poet’s friend

Lies recovering in a bed

But the poet cannot visit

He must leave his parcel instead

With the door people there

Since coronavirus is rife

Pandemic is everywhere

Thus, the poet’s friend’s trousers                         

Have been carried up from the seaside

By the poet’s generous journey

By this bard's day long ride.

I commemorate his trouser mission,

I honour his selflessness,

To travel so far

To bring a friend

An end to leg nakedness

Garden Tiger

Garden Tiger flying into human house,

From a soft black autumn night

Black and white patterns over orange underwing

A nonstop midnight moth

Addicted to light

Circles round the room

A tiny kamikaze plane

Dives headlong at the table lamp

Again, and again

Drawn to its own destruction

Headbutting a hot bulb

Flops back exhausted

Fluttering wings, waving limbs

Compelled by incandescence

It can’t stop itself

Drunk on this false sun

It rises up once more

And makes another flight to doom

I was happy to see its beauty

In this lonely room

But I’ve no wish to be

Witness to suicide

So, I catch it in a beer glass

Bless it and throw it

Out of my window

Back home to the night.

INTENSIVE CARE

I have been sedated, opiated, and constipated

Laid on my back here in Intensive care where

The nurses are wonderful ‘

The nurses are incredible,

And the food is edible

The lights are bright

The machines are frightening

But there is codeine and morphine and paracetamol

And the pain Is bearable

For a stretch if I don't move around too much

I piss through a catheter

Have Strange dreams

Wake and remember where I am

I think that I know what it all means

I'm on my back in a hospital,

Re knitting a broken bone, I hope,

Trying to think straight through clouds of dope

We can’t all do that

Laid down In beds like plants

Or sat in sticky plastic hospital armchairs

Some believe their wives are with them

When there's nobody else there

And one man is sure that he is falling downstairs

If I had a faith

I might pray

But for whatever reason the pain ebbs away

And I start to hope for the chance

To ride home in an ambulance

But for now, I’m

Laid on my back here in Intensive care where

The nurses are wonderful ‘

The nurses are incredible,

And the food is edible

The lights are bright

The machines are frightening

But what am I whingeing about?

I'm in Barnet, not Beirut,

When the windows were blown out

And some of the wonderful, incredible nurses died

I could have been wheeled out into the car park

Through corridors carpeted with broken glass

Left to snivel on my drip

As the casualty's came in

So, I lay in my bed in Barnet

Dreaming of going home,

Free from fear off death and debt

And thanking socialism for the NHS.

feathered friends,

Sitting home alone,

Isolated, locked-down, shielded,

Your only human contact,

Via the computer or the phone.

Sitting home alone, nor knowing what to do,

But look out of your window,

So, let the birds come and comfort you.

Summon, the finches, the starlings, the sparrows.

Put out some bird seed and,

They’ll fly in like arrows.

Watch the blue tits and coal tits,

Hanging upside from feeders.

Even a few stale breadcrumbs

Will bring you feathered friends,

Strutting robins, hopping blackbirds,

Elegant doves and portly pigeons,

And even, rarer migrants,

Flying here from far off regions,

May come swooping in

To enliven your day,

And drop you some droppings,

Before they go away.

Yes, brighten your life,

With avian shitters.

And your steadily growing

Ornithological fascination

Will add lots of birdlime

To your situation.

So, keep it up and, you never know,

You could get guano,

All over your patio.

Dig

Dig, dig, dig for victory.

Dig, dig, dig for your sanity.

Conducting a suburban backyard excavation,

Is a deep, deep way to cope with isolation.

With each stroke of the hoe,

With each shovel of the shovel

I’m starting to build

My own escape tunnel.

I tell myself I’m digging to fill a raised bed,

Or to make a new pond;

But, I have profound reasons

For my mining operations,

As I delve beneath the surface

For the answer in the soil

I’ll disinter the truth

As the outcome of my toil

I will dig it all out, sooner or later,

Even if my garden

Becomes one vast crater.

Dig, dig, dig for victory.

Dig, dig, dig for your sanity.

Conducting a suburban backyard excavation,

Is a deep, deep way to cope with isolation.

So, if you’ve got a back yard,

Don’t sit inside and mope,

Or do virtual meetings,

Or do drink or dope,

Get digging and keep digging

It’s the only hope.

Dig, dig, dig for victory.

Dig, dig, dig for your sanity.

Conducting a suburban backyard excavation,

Is a deep, deep way to cope with isolation.

The birds of London are my friends,

The birds of London are my friends,

Or I like to imagine that that’s the case,

But, I do not warmly greet pavement pigeons,

For fear they won’t reciprocate.

Yet when I proceed antlike, along

The floors of cold canyon streets

a single seagull riding the wind

can lift my heart with its white wings.

Even a black crow against grey cloud,

above a bleak bus garage

is a spark of life, which makes me look up,

from the rubbish and puddles around my feet.

When I drag a bag home up a suburban hill,

Along street like millions more,

Magpies rattle and hop around

Rooftops and trees above my head.

Behind my house I pay small birds with food

Hung in feeders from my garden tree,

They fly in for the food that I provide

And I love to believe that they’re visiting me

But the tree is not really mine,

nor the garden where it chose to grow

I have a paper which says I own

But it’s mad to say that land  belongs to a man,

As mad as saying that birds are my friends

rubbish love

Do I love rubbish?

Or does  rubbish love me?

We attract each other mutually.

I sit at home and this what I see:

A small stone statue of a squid,

A street map of Ostend,

Two carpenter’s rules

A selection of stickers for long lost causes,

Harmonicas and parcel tape,

Manuals for programs that I never run,

Wires for computers that have long since gone,

A selection of DVD’s that I never watch,

A cardboard container for a bottle of scotch,

I was going to store something in it,

But I don’t know if I did,

So it sits on the shelf,

Until I replace it with something else,

Like a shoebox full of letters

Or a hat that doesn’t fit.

So perhaps I should move out

Taking all of this

And live with my love forever

On the street in a skip.

thick knees

Some people call me ‘thick knees’,

But, the middle joints of my long yellow legs

Are not excessively large, in my opinion.

My legs match my unblinking yellow eye

And compliment my camouflage plumage.

Some people call me ‘stone curlew’,

But I’m no sort of curlew at all.

I have no long curved beak

To probe mud for tiny crustaceans,

And I sing no plaintive song,

When I do aviation.

My call is like a hinge squeaking in the wind,

Or two rusty knives scraping together.

Few people ever see me

As I sit low among scrub and stones’

They have to seek me out

With high powered telescopes.

Then through a lens you can look at me

And I’ll look right back at you,

With my yellow unblinking eye.

Call me all the names you want

Even use Latin too,

I’ll just give you a yellow-eyed stare,

Because that’s what  I do.