POETRY

What is it that creates poetry? The writer's craft, of course, but it that all? Most poets would agree that there are moments when they become aware that a mysterious external force contributes something to the alchemy.
Ultimately, there's the reader, bringing to the published poem the "beholder's share" that's necessary to render the poem complete.

WHITE SOIL, BLACK SEED

White soil, black seed, I sow in lines,

an alphabet of words in rows:

stark characters that germinate

as, slowly, boldly, I compose

a field of verses, two or three,

approximating poetry.

Reader, a season later, you

will harvest crops that I have sown

then bind in sheaves and subtly add

an indefinable unknown.

Only when poetry is read

is it as nourishing as bread.

DOG BLOG

National Dog Day is an annual event celebrated on 26th August.

Established in 2004, its aim is to raise awareness about the number of dogs that are currently in rescue centres and encourage their adoption. 

Check out the links below then read the short poem that I wrote back in 2013.

https://www.nationaldogday.com

https://themayhew.org

HOLLY

Waking, my hand falls on warm fur:

a small ribcage rising, falling,

as breath goes on doing its work.

We are connected, she to me,

by synchronous breathing; by love,

on my part; on hers, obedience.

Now fifteen years, I hold her close,

gently as when she was a pup,

skin-and-bones, promising nothing.

A good dog, demanding only

a clean, warm bed; small kindnesses.

Fortune, grant her sleep, untroubled.

THE BANALITY OF EVIL

Assuming the existence of evil, that is, the manifestation of profound wickedness, some would claim that genocide is its embodiment and that those who engage in genocide are inherently evil. 
How strange then that many of these ‘evil’ men, once removed from the scene of their crimes, appear indistinguishable from you or me.

MEN SUCH AS WE

An old man, professorial:

he had that look, aesthetic, dry,

walked with a stick, as I recall.

I see him now in my mind’s eye

Who would have guessed

how he’d transgressed?

Since his arrest, we learned his crime

was murder on a massive scale:

in war in Kosovo that time

of ethnic cleansing. Now in gaol

he’ll end his days,

the TV says.

The thing is that as neighbours go

you couldn’t fault him. He appeared

so ordinary. Who could know

that in Kosovo he was feared?

He butchered men

and boys back then.

His house stands vacant now. The grass

gone wild, grown knee-high, needing mown.

The dead lie cold in graves en masse

like long, white seeds carelessly sown

so needlessly

by such as we.

OPEN SECRET

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Robert Frost

Post-lockdown in Guernsey, Open Mic poetry sessions have recommenced. 
Each month those who choose to participate have the option to read poems on an agreed theme. 

This month’s theme is ‘Secrets’ and promises to reveal more than a few.
I decided to indulge my inner surrealist with the poem below.

The event takes place at The Fermain Tavern on the outskirts of St Peter Port on Thursday 20th August at 8pm. 

SECRET BUS-STOP

There is a secret bus-stop where secret buses stop.

The buses carry secrets and on and off they hop.

While skeletons, escaped from cupboards, rattle-shake their bones,

question marks, round-shouldered, whisper low on mobile phones.

Wild theories of conspiracy just sit there getting bigger,

we’re told the name of who’s been shot but not who pulled the trigger.

At secret bus-stops, under wraps, the secrecy’s maintained:

all on the QT, undisclosed, no mystery explained.

There’s no divulgence, all’s hush-hush, mysteriously hid:

whatever happened, didn’t happen, happened off the grid.

It’s confidential, under wraps, redacted, sealed away.

The less one knows, the less one crows, the less one has to pay.

At secret bus-stops, secretly, the secret buses stop.

The buses carry secrets and on and off they hop.

Encripted, esoteric, Kabbalistic and arcane,

the darkest secrets can withstand a whispering campaign.

The buses come, the buses go, all surreptitiously, 

the drivers smile complacently, the truth won’t set them free:

Omerta baby, zip the lip, for pity’s sake keep shtum,

just look away, say nothing, if someone asks, play dumb.

No one took part, no one’s to blame and, even if they were,

bland looks look like the blanks in an abandoned questionnaire.

The buses leave, buses arrive, disgorge and then reload.

Somewhere is stashed a time-table that’s written down in code. 

The routes the secret buses take are always ill-defined:

there is no way to check on them and not one cheque is signed.

At secret bus-stops secrets hide, like creatures of the deep,

appearing, momentarily, out at the edge of sleep.

We call them nightmares, thresh around, in panic scream and wake

convinced their coils encircle us but everything is fake.

Each secret is an octopus, evasive and covert.

Best turn a blind eye, step away, avoid potential hurt.

With suffocating tentacles that crush the living breath,

it is a tale, unreadable, whose letters may spell death.

The plot is labyrinthine, far, far darker than you think.
Both octopus and writer conceal themselves with ink.

THREE STATIONS

BRIEF ENCOUNTER

Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film, directed by David Lean based on a one-act play by Noel Coward. The protagonist is Laura, a married woman whose life becomes increasingly complicated following a chance meeting at a railway station with a stranger, Alec Harvey, with whom she subsequently falls in love. 
The memorable film prominently features the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

GARE DU MIDI  W H Auden

A nondescript express in from the South,

Crowds round the ticket barrier, a face

To welcome which the mayor has not contrived

Bugles or braid: something about the mouth

Distracts the stray look with alarm and pity.

Snow is falling, Clutching a little case,

He walks out briskly to infect a city

Whose terrible future may have just arrived.

BRIEFCASE ENCOUNTER   

Eurostar disgorged its passengers like a pod expelling seeds. 

Harvey, clutching his briefcase, allowed himself to be carried forward slowly, legs still stiff from the journey.

Security checks were in progress but Harvey moved forward confidently, certain his bland exterior would ensure only cursory attention.

Waved through, Harvey waited by the railing close to Betjeman’s statue, briefcase resting at his feet. 

He saw the woman approach; her stride confident.  She gave him a quick, cold smile and set down her briefcase, departing with his. Harvey picked up her case, identical to his own, and hurried to board the returning Eurostar to Paris.

He wanted to be far away from London when Pandora released the deadly spores in Oxford Street.

Safely aboard the speeding train, Harvey cradled the briefcase, itching to handle the stacks of hundred-euro notes he knew lay inside. He thought of Pandora preparing to text him with the combination to open the case: his portal to a new life. 

Of the devastation awaiting London’s population, he thought very little. Who said life was fair? 

Mid-way through the Tunnel, Harvey was on his third cognac when the text came through. He fumbled with the lock, suddenly remembering Pandora’s icy smile, and felt terror engulf him as he opened the lid.

Flash Fiction by Richard Fleming

IN STONE WITNESS

It’s 35 years since the death of my favourite English poet, Philip Larkin.

Larkin's public persona was that of a lugubrious and mirthless Englishman who disliked fame and had no patience for the trappings of literary life, yet in 1986, a year after Larkin’s death, Peter Levi, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, wrote of him:

His life was led privately and in the provinces, the job into which he drifted was obscure, and those who did not know him thought him a recluse. Yet no one was more loved, no poet I have ever met was so entertaining, so generously witty, or such an enhancer of life to his friends, who formed rather a wide series of intersecting circles.

A memorial stone dedicated to Philip Larkin was installed at Poets' Corner in 2016 between those of Anthony Trollope and Ted Hughes and adjacent to the tomb of Chaucer.

Poets' Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey because of the high number of poets, playwrights, and writers buried and commemorated there. 

Larkin is arguably the most widely quoted poet of modern times and his best-known poems, An Arundel Tomb, Aubade and This Be The Verse are as fine a monument to him as any commemorative stone could ever be.
  
Horace, the father of poetry, writing in the first century BC, considered a poet's work to be 'a monument more lasting than bronze/And loftier than the pyramids of kings'.

I wrote this affectionate poem in 2016 and it appears in my 2017 Stone Witness collection.

Philip Larkin was born on 9th August 1922.

THIS BE THE OTHER VERSE

They carve in stone, engravers do,
Your name with start and finish dates
Then hand it to some cleric who
Abuses boys and masturbates,

Who then invites a bunch of craps
Up to the Abbey in best suits,
For lengthy speeches and back slaps,
Daft eulogies and organ toots.

It fucks you up, this being dead:
But I was fucked up long before.
I left behind so much unsaid
And, still unwritten, poems galore.

But now, turns up a stone that’s like
A library book long overdue.
I sit on my celestial bike
And, gazing down, applaud the view.

As always, clicking on the coloured text above takes you to a valuable link providing additional information.