Do you ever think back to the days when days had no end?

Please wait to be seated

The sea-front café had seen many a rendezvous
Couples kissing, sharing a ‘knickerbockerglory’
Holiday families feeding their children

Whose keen eyes scour the sun splashed
Walls lined with black and whites
Trams, beach chairs and bathing ‘costumes.’

Used to love to sit and try to decipher
Which houses are still standing, a familiar
Street corner, the Woolworths sign.

Scones and hot cakes, tea for two
Battered cod and chips for the kids
Real Cornish ice cream perched

In real Cornish cornets that stick
To the tongue and taste of nothing -
Rum and raisin for the dads, strawberry

For mothers wiping small faces
Tying shoe laces, some even on leashes
Sun hats and bonnets, old men with

Hankies knotted at the corners
dozing soundly in the shade
Seagulls eyeing your fish supper.

Holidays were all about consumption
Tea at the sea-front café
Letting your stick-of-rock go gooey

And soft so it splintered into glorious
Candy shards to suck and savour
Running sticky fingers through sun

Ripened hair the colour of Retrievers
Standing at the high counters
Unaware holidays have an end

How sad I was to see the old Café closed
Buckets and spades have given way
To a Help The Aged.

PCW 2005


Reverie

After Dylan Thomas

The moon sweeps her soapy gaze across the dawning lands as workers are stirring, dragging tired sleep weakened limbs from cot and cradle, kettles steaming, babies deep in milky sleep. The postman starts his rounds as last night’s drinkers fumble with keys and latches, trying not to be discovered. Beneath the city trams and morning buses leave their depots, and venture first into the virgin lands to bring man and boy to work. The tides turn, the schools open, another day begins.

The butcher takes his delivery, counting pork backs and mutton shanks into his window shop window, the school teacher counting heads and handkerchiefs, making notes of grubby knees and sickly children. Factory workers stamp their feet and fall in behind machines, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, high above them the saw tooth slate steaming rooftops begin to breathe.

The children are at their books now, rubber balls and raspberry creams calling from the pocket, the sun warmed chapel walls begin to steam as the carpenter, freshly shaven, sharpens a chisel upon the whetstone. Two lazy lovers roll away from the dawn, two heads upon a pillow dreaming, subtle hands reading bodies beneath the coverlet.

The mayor’s wife, rollered, shakes out her bed smiling at her best antique linen, breast swelling, takes her graces out of tissue paper and sets her hair for the shops. The single mother, the lunches made, her boy away to school, falls to a chair and savours a Woodbine before the cleaning. Somewhere, somebody is crying.

Soon it will be lunch, the school bells will ring, foremen will make their signals, shopkeepers turn their signs, an ancient tradition will live again. The mason and apprentice drop dustily to the scaffold, gripping hot mugs of homely loving tea by the handle, with homemade pasties wrapped in rags. Cafes brace themselves as offices empty. Oiled and suited they come in their gaggles all squawking, demanding lattes, French toast and buttered bagels. School sees the boys, outraged by bananas, swapping fruit for Cadburys swirls and teasing the girls for kisses and a glimpse at their knickers.

Then it’s back to business as the sun makes her move, the dial turns smoothly to welcome a languid afternoon. Stockbrokers and foundry workers, swaddled in their darkly lit caverns, know nothing of day and night, the widow morning passes from memory. Down at the shelter they are feeding the elders, the homeless and toothless, another sap without his dentures, ‘don’t know how he loses them?’ Hot tomato, bread rolls and a whisper of butter to help it go, the tea urn gurgling behind the fat behind of a camomile Christian, who smiling dispenses the rusty brown liquid to the old broken boys grinning their gummy grin to all that can bear it.

And then evening calls children home from school, waiting for their fathers, buses running late again, supper brimming, eggs bouncing in the pan with their dog collared fractures, the ruffled, rubber necked whites slippery and smooth to the touch, slippers warming in the sun, the tabby asleep on the wall. Kitchen smells rise over England, flowery fingers, fish and chips sweating in the bag, families reunited at end of day, their covers worn and slightly broken. Two lazy lovers go back to bed and last night’s drinkers gather at the Hope and Anchor as the moon begins her vigil over those who turn to sleep.

PCW 2005

Parma Ham

Capman Bootman

It would always be a wet-dog morning
As we set out to gather mushrooms
Pulling on old clothes, hands still half asleep
Wellington boots and out to the country
For a morning spent scouring the fields -
A forensic team checking the crime scene

Keeping to the hedge so not to be seen
A strange way to spend a Sunday morning
Creeping like thieves through farmer’s fields
Our quarry the unsuspecting mushrooms
Silently grazing in the open country
While giant puffballs quietly drown in sleep

Amongst the cow pats and droppings of sheep
Whose woolly bodies warm the morning scene
Their stale breath flavouring the country
As carrier bag goblins steal the morning
Choosing only the ripest of mushrooms
Tracking father’s footsteps across the fields

His keen ‘mushrooming’ sense knows the best fields
Dreams of country home cooking in his sleep
Monday will see his chicken and mushroom
Pie the likes of which you’ve never seen
A slice for lunch the following morning
After our day in mushrooming country

For centuries man has tamed this country
Hedging his boundaries and planting fields
But we take something back on these mornings
A wild crop for our plate as farmers sleep
Bags bulging as we exit the rural scene
Having found our own wild chestnut mushrooms

To those that know there is magic mushrooms
The pagans learned to worship the country
As teens we realised the mushroom scene
searching beneath the troughs in corner fields
Looking for a different kind of sleep
Which with any luck would keep us ‘til morning

But those mornings were made for the country
Hunting mushrooms with dad in secret fields
Where the fungi sleep and are seldom seen


'found' poem

Someone has taken off – and lost
The label on the can
Two glassy lines of glue
Trace the lines of stripped paper
Where the label was attached

batch number – RG2JD 19547
Is embossed on one of the ends
No one can tell what’s up
And what’s down
The metal isn’t very old

They do not like to throw it out
Might be salmon – not cheap
Or tuna steaks in brine
Pineapple rings in sucrose
Guava halves, Lychees, leek soup

Ought to open up the can
Have a look inside, have a taste
Plan a meal around the reveal
Must be something they like, or liked
After all they bought it – didn’t they?

Shake it; tip it up to an ear
Compare it to the other cans
Find a match in size and shape
Could it be beans or fruit or fish?
An unopened birthday gift

Contents a macabre description
Baby flesh, sliced fingers, ravioli
Maybe that’s why there’s no label
A cuckoo’s egg in the larder
Something for the homeless shelter

One night, when the wine is gone
They put the can under candle light
Play the drunken guessing game
An aphrodisiac perhaps, glace cherries
Canned music from another era

It’s tempting just to stab it
Wound it, see how it bleeds
We all should have a can like this
Let it rust, a cupboard conundrum
To wound or never touch again

(cf Jim Crace The Devil's Larder)

Midnight feasting - more selections from the portfolio

Grimoire

Gently poaching in the rank cook fat humidity
Of her cardboard kitchen,

the mother, the universal mother,
stirs a tin pot with a paint stick,

her shame more painful than poverty,
(there would be no prayer)

For regardless of what was about to be received
you would eat every last morsel

fearful to leave even a hint of gravy
there is no love quite like a mother’s hunger

meat was her privilege, her dignity
a starveling chicken

Put aside cigarettes and think a month
on stale bread, the cheapest kind of butter,

all to afford an ill piece of fowl for a foreign palate
sat smiling and nodding without really knowing,

dumb by the sound of cutting figure eight wounds
into a stew where thickness became a virtue

knowing what you spend on shoes
could have bought food for a year,

meat and fish and cheese enough
to see this family fed with cupboard bottoms bulging

Seventeen and to know this is criminal
Knowing you didn’t want to take me home with you,

to see the place withheld beneath a copperplate disguise
Joking about the ‘trouble with mothers’

The Englishman and the station garden gypsy
You who smiled and turned down offers of chocolate,

Said she’d only be offended, was proud and had her self respect,
that it’s not heroic to eat someone’s food out of charity

better to eat like you would at home, dipping rye
Talking with your mouth full; thankful it wasn’t fish

PCW 2005

Arbeit macht frei

Dachau was a mystery to me
Tucked away from the town
With just one bus a day

An old converted yellow
American school bus
An old Charlie Brown

Only the sign read ‘Dachau’
Instead of ‘school’
Quite misleading really

Would hardly have known
It was there at all
Save reassurances

From the guide book
So we took the bus
And while some felt

It was a moral responsibility
And others more a morbid
Curiosity to see

The little wooden huts
The tall wire fences
Restored by the Jewish

Community
So people could get
A sense of perspective

I didn’t even realise
I was crying
Until a blonde German woman

Offered me a tissue
Before the main attraction
The shower rooms and ‘ovens’

Not for baking
Where an American couple
Posed for photographs

In years since Dachau
What remains
Is the ghost of memory

Haunting when I pass
The abattoir in the bad
Part of town

Where you can hear the cattle screaming
Beneath the shit and ammonia
While outside the people

Oblivious to their suffering
Stumble in conversation
And hurry past in silence

PCW 2005

selections from the portfolio

Möbius strip

We’re having some friends around for tea
I’m not sure whose friends she means
(Their certainly not mine)
But I’m handed a vacuum cleaner and duster
And bustled off upstairs like a naught schoolboy
With instructions clear the stairs and put
A new toilet roll under the toilet roll cosy
So our guests will be impressed

The house is home with the smell of roast
Filling the air as it wafts in from the kitchen
And I notice she’s making angel delight
Perhaps it’s intended to be ironic
Some kind of nostalgia trip for our guests
But looking down at the pink fluffy mixture
That has set to a level in the best Pyrex dishes
I find myself thinking back to a distant

Summer, when the ambulance was waiting
When I got home late from school
And I had to go and stay with our neighbour
Who let me watch anything I liked on TV.
That summer Dad had to do all the cooking
And we had angel delight for tea almost every
Night, and sometimes he’d be too tired,
And I’d be sent next door for casserole

Or pie and peas; It was all the same to me.
Finally one evening Gran came to stay,
Dad was away from home most nights it seemed,
And this old woman was brought to look after me,
But she didn’t know anything about little boys
And I kept wishing mum would come home
From that place, and although I enjoyed the presents,
I knew something was wrong by the way Dad

Would sometimes just sit and watch me eat
While his own plate remained empty.

PCW 2005

Breakfast Therapy

Saturday mornings were always the best
Fried egg sandwiches, bacon and black pudding
Sometimes a fried slice and beans on the side
Better than Prozac on those cold winter mornings

With the prospect of football that kept you clinging
To the sheets pleading for that extra ten minutes
A cure-all for hangovers, break ups and make ups
It seems everyone you meet has their preferences

For me it all comes down to the ketchup
The cheap stuff just won’t cut it in my book
And I don’t go in for brown unless I’m feeling exotic
Or I’ve been to the shops and forgot it

And even though you can now buy it in a can
Complete with little squares of soggy hash brown
Nothing can quite compare to the smell and the
Sound of bacon spitting and egg whites flapping

In the pan, or the simple pleasure of mopping up
The gravy with gluttonous, buttery love
The soul purpose for the thick end of the loaf
Nothing can touch you, nothing can invade this

Space of breakfast therapy, you even remembered
The recipe for once and managed to get the bacon
Just right and didn’t burn the beans, or burn yourself
And now, fat and happy you look across to the sink

Knowing it’s Saturday and the washing will keep
Until tomorrow when the milkman won’t wake you
And the children are sleeping sound in their beds
Dreaming of Frosties and chocolate spread sandwiches.

PCW 2005

Poetry Inspired by Toast

Some thoughts on SPAM

Nothing quite prepares you
For your first taste of SPAM

From a coffin pot can
A plump quivering mass

Of old porkpie jelly
Looks up from the sandwich

Naked and smiling through
A grim half inch of pink

Flaccid processed meat
Without its coat on:

Nothing quite prepares you
For your first taste of SPAM

Epilogue:

And after a childhood of oppressive
Packed lunches
And those God awful Salads
even wasps wouldn’t touch

I thought I’d seen the last of you
But SPAM, it seems
Had other plans for me
And has embraced the technological age

PCW 2005

Easter Cake

It is Easter and mum is busy with the Easter cake; her badly
Made bed cake, although we all know the only difference
Will be the colour of the icing sugar, since by virtue of some
Ancient veiled secret passed down from mother to
Daughter, through the long lines of history, Easter
Cake must be yellow in our house, while Christmas
Remains white and shiny and birthdays always seem

A veritable free-for-all, and after lectures
About Christ’s great sacrifice and how the meaning
Has been lost, she’ll let me choose the decorations
Retrieving them like old friends from the margarine
Containers that she cleans and keeps for such purposes
As batteries, jam making equipment and the
Stuff she uses to clean out the goldfish bowl

Eagerly I rummage through the sacred assortment
Of toys not to be played with, like the little yellow
Chick with the wire feet; the fat Santa and plastic
Holly leaves, all of which get buried up to their
Knees in the soft sugary expanse of icing
Looking like some kind of surreal battle field
Where soon enough the fallen will gather in the

Dish, figurine plucked from their slice, so gallantly
Defended, which when cut reveals the inner
Layers of the mantle like the jam line Jurassic
Or heavenly butterscotch crust that tastes like love
It is Easter and mum is making the Easter
Cake, and although we all know it will dry out long
Before its time and is destined to become food

For birds, cast out on the lawn for those that scavenge,
It’s hard to think of an Easter without these strange
Little rituals of hers, as if the Last Supper
Saw Jesus offering lemon drizzle cake around
To the disciples, each jostling the other with
Plate in hand, while gentle, motherly Jesus proclaims

“Please don’t get any on the carpet”

PCW 2005

Jacobs

A British obsession

Cheese
on
biscuits

Every Christmas the milkman
Would deliver the Jacobs crackers
(Knackers)
Along with the pop
Each the size of a beer mat
And about as flavorsome

Lest we forget the farm house cheddar
‘None of that foreign muck’
As my father used to say
while he and my Mother perused
Our Christmas shopping list
Which hung menacingly

Like a giant flypaper
Behind the larder door
These days the delicatessen stretches
The length of our local shop
With foreign names I still struggle to pronounce
Lost are the days of strange treats

Now available all year round
But you only ever used to see at Christmas
And which you’d forget in the months
In between until you saw the first tangerines
And boxes of figs with their exotic cardboard lids
Dominating the nut bowl

PCW 2005

I don't speak too much. Lord give me a woman who sings.

Leaving season

Come back to me
My garden
My love
The empty plates
Gather flies like memories
The guitar stands watching
My old cowboy boots
With envy
Come back to me
My sweet sick suffering
You yellow melancholy
mixed with seaside stones
unwashed and well meaning

PCW 2005


Marx was right

the more I think about it
the more I think Marx was right
about religion being an opiate
although I always thought opiates
were the real opiates
and we take ours by the pint

and maybe Pavlov had a point
when he said religion is a defense
against the feelings of insecurity
that have plagued humanity since the first
sunrise, when Neolithic man looked up
to the skies and wondered

what it was all about
and standing on line for cigarettes
I sense the experiment has failed,
that God has taken his eye
off the ball, like a builder
who has got another job on

PCW 2005

Don’t make rain today

they call it a listening session
people whisper behind their drinks
talking about other people
who I don’t know
but who might someday
cross my path and say

my how you’ve grown thin
this evening, drinking your
tall drinks with tired eyes
and yet you still find time to please
me with a smile hotly contested
and coveted by the other boys

who play personality games
across the wet table tops
trying to not to stare
at the figures of beauty
who tempt us with promises
and a strange unfamiliar music

while mayflies hover like old men
looking well placed and well pleased
like the girl in the horn rims
who looks soft and whistles a tune
to her neighbour who puts his ear to water
and listens to what is about to begin

PCW 2005