I remember Jack
he ruled my teenage years
and how I craved the highways
rolled out like three-week teletype
stretched to bedroom youth.
Next to Vonnegut he strode
offering a neckerchief
wailing on with Shearing
pulsing like a bright one
in Jazz firmament.
One minute I was a boy
then I learned of men
exploding like spiders
across stars.
At least he saw dolphins
spooling like silver thread
and they were blue reel wound
like circles of remembering
and this was the thing of things
amongst the coronation waves
a crowd of kings all hailing him
each moment pouring onto one
like urgent gasp of flickers on
with granted rush to saltslap roar
with curve and arc of open heart
he saw dolphins and I saw them too
and diving down our spirits met the bow
then played upon the wake.
No-one knew what was
beneath the sediment
bubbling something
like old grief under skin
Moonraker’s booty perhaps
or rusting truths
now wrestling with reeds
like matadors in mud
like foot trodden fate
like drakes and strutting loons
all telling secrets too.
They fished and fiddle-shook
slid on pondweed toes and turned -
lost waterboatmen,
now scuttling home.
Wisened smirks in tan and spur
on drifting plains where gauchos ride
with measured words of old-world burr
in parchment air the cow-punch calls
to stars and satellites .
Weather shirks and tin men blur,
on nowhere trains in race to find
the long gone herd of ways that were,
descent no more than new-born’s fall
on drifting plains the gauchos ride.
Please, don’t switch your T.V on
tonight.
What a perfect lawn.
Bottle green nourished and sparkling
In the dawn like a King’s blanket,
Carefully thrown across the ground below.
It was here, she thought of him.
Here, where she let children loop their hearts,
Watched ambling lovers rest and sip red wine
Where nervous souls unwound the day
And owls embraced their quiet time.
This barefoot salve for tired steps
A million tiny hands that stroked,
That told of newness in the day
But always reminding her of him.
And she, amidst this memory,
so proud of tender green.
He’d just laid down.
There’s a stone in my shoe
under gavel of tread and stride.
A remembrance that coincides
with stomach-knot reminders
and memento sighs returning
with every step away from days
before today.
Then, we walked barefoot,
it seemed a thousand miles.
Over hot rocks like peppercorn steaks,
Over warm, soft dunes like sifted nutmeg,
Over rutted shale towards seaweed dance.
And there, with grazed ankles, toes and heel,
that was when you taught me how to feel -
to let the soothful waves just brush away
all unkind gravel, stone and sand.
And now, there’s a stone in my shoe.
And it annoys and bothers me so,
I wonder what I should do -
that’s why, I think of you.
All blue in the old Beehive
We’re hearing full moon wail
Wall to wall with twitching men
Holding pints and keys on chains
Their nodding purse of wisened lips
And naive balls of leisured feet
Crane in spectacle of him -
In Sunday’s best and gravel voice;
All hailed might of Watermelon Slim.
I know you miss the rhythm tree,
remembering well the seahorse swim
of play and mystery, through comb of song
that writes itself.
In the pocket of time, you touch, you feel
the roots, the soil of fertile ground.
This is the beat that only entwined souls
can ever know - the rustle of unified selves
together, catching wind and flow.
Let me ask; have you forgotten
the yielding seeds that such joyous boughs
can sow?