the huntsman

The Huntsman


Today I saw a bushy tailed fox, running rabbits
and a boar in a bush landscape one can so
easily get lost in, I once did and panic stricken
stumbled about till I fell on to the main road.
Today I was looking for words or sentences,
something that would make life easy, all I had
to do was to go home and write down what
I had found. Should I be so lucky!

There were many individual letters, strewn like
pebbles on my path, hanging in tree like leaves
and falling dawn in the wind. Clouds on the sky
too made letters, a B here and an A there, I even
saw a Q near the horizon; BAQ? Means nothing
to me, perhaps it is an Arab word for peace?
I struggled up a hill sun was heating up the day,
for lunch I’m having alphabet soup.

a likely story

A Likely Story

She was a swan the way she tackled the swells whether on
Atlantic Sea or the Pacific Ocean, alas she was old had seen her
best days, but she was nicely painted and for us she was home.
Wouldn’t that be a nice story to tell? The owner didn’t want to
spend money crewing her, what we got were harbour rats, and
her officers had gone all the way down from new ships, to this
last chance saloon. Tired men, no way back, fuck this job up and
there is only the cold sea; so we struggled from one obscure
port to the next often in a mist of rum. Seafarer, of the fairy isle,
close your cabin door, bow your head and cry.

Yes, she was our home which we also shared with five million
cockroaches and no money for insect spray; keep the light on
man, they only crawl over you face and up your nose in the dark;
and then she was sold to the Greeks and we’re made homeless.
On the docks of Piraeus a group of men with quivering hands,
old fashioned suitcases, and suits in need of a dry cleaner, what
now my friends? Never saw them again, but when I opened my
suitcase at the B&B hotel two roaches had followed me ashore,
they were alive and quickly found dark corners, like me they had
voyages the seven oceans and lived to tell a tale.

tanka

Tanka (The Eclipse)

Cycling in Chennai
The day turned into night
And I was fined
Had no light on my bike
And collided with a rickshaw








Tanka (memory)

I saw Jack Dempsey
Outside radio music hall
Year 1957
He looked a true hero
And I loved America

senryu

Senryu

If I saw everything
There would be no mystery
Just endless ennui


Senryu

The August moon
Stole a kiss from cold blue lips
At Necropolis

Senryu

Tango conquest
Pointless subjugation
To bordello music

the gallery owner

The Gallery Owner

He had been to the doctors
nothing could be done, they are
not magicians and he had
a painting exhibition at his
gallery tonight.

Sat in his chair leaning left,
less pain that way, some thought
he had had too much to drink.

In the night he was saved
from further agony,
a sudden heart attack.

Many people came to his
funereal, a lyrical lady singer
sang about love and loss;
there were tears;

...and then the silence began.

asseertiveness

Assertiveness

It is very hot I have switched off the air-condition and
opened up windows, it is supposed to be hot in July.
I hadn’t wanted to buy air- cooling in the first place,
I’m too placid and get swayed to do the wrong things.
I sit on the terrace in a plastic chair that is easy to
move around I used to have had a chair of real wood
before I liked more, but it was given to someone poor;
I think about it and get upset I ought to put my foot
down and say: No! Summers past I sat in my heavy
timber chair and smoked my cigarettes, the burn kept
mosquitoes away, now it is frown upon and I dastardly
quit, but I do have a packet of fags in the desk drawer;
maybe if I get pissed off enough by the virtuous, I’ll lit
up and enjoy my August nights.

senryu

Senryu

Slept all night
Long dreamless hours
I feel cheated


Senryu

For my roses
Mild precipitation
Is liquid love



Senryu

After the cremation
We smoked cigarettes
Smoulder and ash.


Senryu

Uniform orange plants
In a Florida orchard camp
Covet lemon trees

summer night

A Summer Night.


A Bergman movie had an old man running in
the hall senseless, gripped by an irrational fear
of death. I sat by the bed pearls of sweat ran
down my butter coloured body, summer, but
all can hear is the ticking of the kitchen clock,
to witness a day’s passing gave me no pleasure
this insistent march towards timelessness and
there is nothing to hold on, a moment’s respite,
or love to assuage the vortex’s relentless terror.
Dog awakes, hears steps too light for my ears,
a night visitor and I’m alone and without a god.
No, not here, the cur loses interest goes back to
sleep. Night is an enemy; the shift is nearly over,
I walk out on the terrace and wait for the day.

a village in Iberia

A Village in Iberia


Drove to the village where I was born, hadn’t been there
for forty years, the lane was muddy and houses deserted;
this village had been abandoned long time ago; what was
I thinking of coming here? A tree had grown right through
our cottage, roof smashed now walls were tumbling down.
Puny human dwellings, here today and gone in less than
Ten decades, the tree seemed to say. What a nostalgic fool
I’m, this idea of returning, rebuild the old house and live
here in happy retirement.

This was no longer a village but a graveyard, houses were
tombstones of a past that had nothing to offer but poverty,
glassless window resembled crosses of a defunct faith.
I sat on a stone smoking a cigarette the aroma of wafted
through the drab silence, from behind a broken wall a dog
came, young, and it looked eerily like Stella the dog I loved
all those years ago, don’t tell me she has waited for five
dog generations, to return from the wasteland of eternity
just for me?

“I’ll call you Stella”, I said and stroked the dog’s head.
She knitted her brows together as to say, “What else?”
I opened the right hand car door, Stella jumped in like she
had done this a thousand time before, drove off and didn’t
look back once, the only memory I needed of my childhood,
was alive and snoozing in the seat beside me.

the party

The cruise

At a corner, in the inner harbour where unseemly debris
tend to float about, three men- in a rowing boat- sit and
drink beer. It is a lovely summer evening they fall asleep.
In the morning there are only two of them the third must
have gone home. The two agree that their friend was old
so they go ashore with the empty crate of beer and buy
some more beer. Midsummer now and it is good to sit in
boats, with a friend drink beer and talk about old days.

Daybreak, only one man left in the boat, the lone one
shrugs, his friends have no stamina so he lugs the empty
crate of beer for refill to the shop. This summer is endless,
the weather holds and a boy spots a rowing boat with no
one onboard except an empty crate of ale which he takes
to the shop and sell. At the bottom of the sea, in the inner
harbour where unseemly debris tend float, three old men
sway in the sea’s gentle heave in an everlasting summer.

the road

The Road

The road going into a town I don’t know the name of
is only used by people too poor to drive cars and by
those who can afford cars but hate them.

Part of the road was going back to roman time it even
has steps on its verge where the road is steep, and
there are wayside cafes at regular intervals.

Animals to use this road too, mules made homeless,
turkeys that had escaped thanksgiving, ducks and
an emu that used to be a part of a variety act

The animals keep the road verge trimmed when not
begging for stale bread and cake crumbs which are
freely given, it is begging children we dislike.

Yet there is something odd about the road and its
users, it is forever leading into a town but not getting
there and everyone is going in the same direction.

Some walk fast other leisurely, yet no one stops other
for a meal and something to drink, it appears they
have a common destiny whatever that may be.

tanka

Tanka


Wouldn’t it be nice?
If rats looked like squirrels
And squirrels like rats
Hunt squirrels to extinction
And have a house full of rats

ten euro

Ten Euro Note

The old road into town is only used by walkers
now, weird people, who would look out of place
anywhere else and Marian Hyde, who writes
about alternative lifestyles, in the Guardian.

I had found a wallet with a twenty euro note,
photos of a posing nude woman, it belonged to
someone named Carol. I asked around, they all
knew her, a pro who often walked this way.

A handmade and of real leather and on and
impulse I added a ten euro note and wondered
if when I caught up with her she would notice,
or was my motive more self serving?

I met up with Carol at a road side pub gave her
the purse, she opened it counted the money,
said nothing, but she was talking to a footballer
who wanted to be tennis professional.

I walked where I was accosted by a Liverpool
comedian who couldn’t stop telling jokes,
I soon stopped laughing, smiling and listening,
but my disinterest didn’t matter anyway.

Carol came out, joined us, she had bought me
a beer and was in a good mood, the comedian
had fallen asleep, she knew the why of my ten
euro note and I knew of her nude pictures.

the war never forgotten

The War never forgotten

It has been on my mind all day, eighteen years old
soldier died in Afghanistan, I know he loved going
there and they had giving him the spiel about making
the world safe and at his age you do not understand
death. Shouldn’t those responsible sent him to a safer
place or the British army so stretched that they have
to send boy soldiers to the front? Of course he was
working class they are the ones who do all the dying
and it is only when the sons of the upper classes die.
and poets write about it, that monuments are erected.
So many wars, so much suffering so many deaths of
the common man, the Afghan war will be forgotten
too those who died were not famous, and more books
will be written about the First World War when sons
of the aristocracy also died.

harvey's brother

Harvey’s Brother.

I paused in, the shade of a carob oak, to smoke a cigarette,
when a rabbit crossed the track, stopped sat on its haunches
and sniffed the air. Do not come nearer, my furry friend
the temptation will be too great and I’ll shoot you. It didn’t,
but I shot it any way, gutted and skinned on the spot, hoped
no one heard the bang the hunting season had yet to start.
At home I cut it into nice pieces added, onion, garlic, parsley
and with butter gently fried it in an iron pan, then I let it
simmer with red wine for some time. I went into my study to
read the papers, the rabbit sat on top of my desk eating
yesterday’s poetry, nice animal grey and blue, with silky fur,
and I thought of a movie called “Harvey.” Back in the kitchen
I put the stew in a dish and gave it to the neighbour’s dog.
Harvey has gone now he doesn’t even appear in my dreams.

no title

No title

Man fell into
a vat of
hot chocolate
and drowned.
His widow
looked
sweet in
her creamy
rich and
smooth
black dress.
The boss,
at the plant,
sent a wreath,
but didn’t
send, as he
usually does,
the widow a box
of chocolate.

the south American Way

Vacation Time


In a field alone a carob tree has grown wide and tall
it preens a bit, but I sense its loneliness. In the next
field trees jostle for space, roots entwined happy
poverty? Yet In the noon heat it’s under the big tree
sheep come to seek shade, I joined them sat on
a stone smoked a cigarette, a ewe sneezed pointed
to a sign on the tree: “No smoking, bad for the wool.”
I spat on my cigarette, can’t risk a bushfire, opened
my lunch box, gave an apple to the ewe, and since
my coffee was black I milked it. I told my flock that
the sheep in Honduras, which give the whitest wool,
has taken the best grazing land, and no one seems to
care. They chewed and chewed, some even burped,
but no one made a comment.

the omen

The Omen

I heard the sound of a plane looked up
a big carrier going north, it was white
and had an orange tail.

In one of its portholes my brother sat
looking out he had a serious face and
I think he was day-dreaming.

I waved he took his glasses off polished,
put them back on and politely waved
too, but I don’t think he saw me clearly.

The plane vanished into a cloud of fine
woven air, I listened to its silence till a
crowing crow in a tree broke the hush.

Paraphrase

Paraphrase

Translation, easy I thought and set about
putting my English poems into Nordic suits.
Pale verses I got like watery coffee and
stale croissant, till I change the setting to
the street I grew up in where our parents
worked in fish factories, smoking herrings
or putting sardines into little tins.

Laud and healthily vulgar, my verses were
reborn, red cheeked and strong; no one
speaks like that anymore in a world where
everyone has gone middleclass, yes, even
the bloke who sleeps in a cardboard box in
the doorway of the town’s toyshop, mind
his language when told to move on.

Jyly rhapsody

July Thoughts

The summer morning’s breeze is cooling and the sun
warms my face later in the day it will be the enemy
and fiercely burn to the landscape wilts and gasps.
The air is clear I can see forever or to where the last
mountain is fuzzy blue and the abstract world begins,
a place I can construct from my own thoughts

A friend sent me an email from Bombay where the city
waits for the monsoon, it is late this year, he says but
walks around with a big black umbrella just in case.
I stood on the fuzzy mountain will I see another fuzzy
one and another till I come back to the beginning which
is not where I was born, but long before.

Not even in the momentary glare of joined up humanity
in the heat of a night hotter than Bombay before rain,
and mournful and gloomy as October rain.
A startled rabbits jumps, flees along a field, escape is
its only defence; the origin of the species, what do I know,
so I let my own speculation escape.

How naive I’m the rabbit didn’t flee because of me, I look
up and see a beautiful eagle soar among silk thin clouds
that looks like shrouds for the rich and trendy to die in.
And by the sunny wall old women dressed in black sit and
knit they come alive and thrive when someone dies, when
the devil walk past them he carefully hides his limp.

And so do I, tuck my cane under my arm, like a parade
officer, jolly wish them a good morning and lift my feet
well above ground; wingless carrions, be gone.

city Jungle

City Jungle


Barcelona has been invaded by wild boars,
(I do not mean footballs fans, but the real
thing) the woods are too hazardous for them,
full of men with guns. If you feed them well
they will grunt for you and let you stroke
their coarse neck hair and you will feel as one
with nature, till they crap on your doorstep.

Wild animals are now moving into towns for
safety and for food, the sparrow hawk knows
that the park’s trees are full of pray and on top
of skyscrapers the eagle nests and catch doves
and spy on the fox that hunts rabbits. Rats, cats
and dog have long known the safest place to
be is in the midst of humanity.

the last journey

The last Journey


Summer day, Fred at the old folks home, made
a couple of sandwiches put them in a plastic
bag and sat out on his lives journey on an electric
wheel chair. On the hard shoulder rolled didn’t
care where as long as it was out of town and far
away from the home. He travelled till the battery
fell flat, just before a steep downhill. Fred ate his
sandwiches and drank booze from a flask he had
hidden from the nurses, released the brakes and
the journey began. Faster and faster cars swerved
drivers cursed and Fred sang a bawdy song; eighty
he must have done, as old as himself, a bump in
the road, above traffic, into the hills, into the sky
and into a haze of disbelieve old Fred flew.

on a day like this

On A day Like This

The track I followed this morning in a landscape that
once was Eden but, since the gardeners were fired
had gone to seed, was dry and exuded unrelieved ire.
Leaves on bushes were rusty shaving blades, tried to
cut me up and drink my blood; neglected olive trees
tried to trip me up with sudden exposed roots wanting
to absorb my body so they, full of revulsion, could live
for hundred more years. Dead rabbits in the glade they
had been stabbed by blades of grass sharp as a mafia
assassin’s stiletto; furred creatures shivered in their
burrows. Bloodied I made it to the main road where
a red-cross lady waited, plaster, and a soft bosom that
had the aroma of motherhood, she was my friend and
lover, but, alas, as virtual as my friends in the facebook.

the brook of reflection

The Brook Of Reflection

A thought, striking as a rare butterfly, sat on a twig
tried to catch it but in my hand it turned into fluff,
and I can no longer remember which colour it had.

The thought was a river I cupped my hands tried to
catch some wisdom, stem its flow and turn it into
a poem that flies like a butterfly

The rich are seen as successful and say banal things,
newspapers print their moth eaten views, we read
and thoughtlessly nod; so find me a new river then.

I wait for another thought, one that floats, like leaf of
fall in a brook, and tells of eternal truths that are as
beautiful as rare butterflies

strand of time

Strand of Time

Went to the beach sat in the sun, cooling sea breeze;
but it got too hot I tried to get up could not and sank
deep into the sand; up to the neck and left to die as
mad eyed seagulls circled near.

Three bikini clad girls helped me up, brushed sand off
my back and found my cane. They didn’t giggle before
I had left, tinkling silver bells. When they are old they
will remember me.

execution

Execution

Ann had killed two men, for that she was fated to
die, there had been many appeals, they were in
vain; the governor too, not a man of much emotion,
had turned his manicured thumbs down.

Ann had been in our prison, five years now and had
become a friend and it was us, her keepers, whose
task it was to end her life, this woman who felt safe
in our jail, but she had brutally killed two men.

She asked us to be in the death room with her and
we spoke to her as she was injected with lethal drugs
and slipped away. A murderess that had killed her
father and brother, but refused to tell anyone why.

I was alone in the office when the phone rang,
the governor himself on the line, it was his birthday
and if it wasn’t too late her life could be spared.
“Too late? Ok! A killer, guess she deserved to die.”

ententainers

Entertainment


Where I grew up the landscape was flat, the sky wide
and Christianity, demanding. The nearest village didn’t
have a cinema but sometimes a travelling preacher
came along and the meeting hall was full.

They were good the old preachers, spoke about sin,
forgiveness and the saving of the soul. Many cried
came up to the podium spoke of their many sins and
was forgiven, many came it was a good meeting.

Our neighbour was there being saved, the farmer
told me that he was always saved but it didn’t last
long, he tended to look embarrassed for a few days,
then he was back being his old sinful self.

The farmer’s wife, Alice, stirred restless in her seat,
her eyes shone she wanted to get up there and
confess her sins; I still wonder what sins that might
have been? But the farmer, Torvald, held her back.

Back at the farm Torvald had a dram his wife sat near
him, and at milking time next morning she was half
an hour late, said she hadn’t heard the alarm clock;
the farmer didn’t get up before breakfast at eight

Yes, they had warm, caressing voices the preachers
of old, and sometimes they thundered about sin till
we deliciously shivered, and when the collection box
went around we kindly gave more than old buttons.

the death of peter pan

The Death of Peter Pan

Peter Pan used to be black, he could sing and dance
and make jazz hands. He was so good that it made
sense to make him white, the world embraced him.
Everyone had a stake in him as he was transformed
into a pale ghost with a plastic nose, no one laughed
too much money at stake. Peter Pan liked children
too much for normal society to tolerate, but money
smoothed the way, but do not do it again.

Peter Pan was fragile doctors were always at hand to
give him injections that lifted his spirit and made him
feel good, and he needed more of it now that he was
middle aged, yet trying to look fourteen. His handlers
thought there was more money to wring out of his
tortured body. One, two, three, Peter couldn’t breath
collapsed in heap, and that’s a pity now that USA has
a black president and he could be himself again.