LANCASHIRE

This word has just started to look weird 

But then those do too

If I concentrate for more than a minute

Weird, word, just, look

LANCASHIRE

That one should be 

Epic
Yet has always been a working class woman to me

Not being concerned 
With the romantic etymology
Or some loony river castle-bound lady-in-waiting
It was a mothering bosom first

Then later Edith with her besom
Babysitting often, mishearing more
The constant, 'Eh?' and mouthing from the mills
Until she became a post punk teenager
In docs and black leggings
Sharing pints of Guinness
And the chips we shouldered

A lass with occasional sunshine
It is what we do
Embody things
Smother them with personal gravies
But not now
I left it to become a word
I do not understand anymore

ISINGLASS

Say simple things

And resist the urge to shatter

Or talk around it at least

There is the giant of a skeleton

Housed in the college of surgeons

He died young

Yet lives forever

There also are the blooms of unfortunate

Elephantitic males

Kids with two heads

And the insides of several sea slugs

The tools are a panorama

What we do and how we do it

It makes one quite dizzy

With the effort

A quick outside

Have a snort

Beer helps

It is what it’s for

It is not all about you

You know

STILL NO CURE

You wake to fresh dreams and receding dementia

A foot of snow on the pillow

Yet a headstone at your feet

The pile of cones on the window sill are open

And winter comes in like a bear

SEVEN JOYS AND SEVEN SORROWS

MOFONGO

It’s the first day we’ve been able to lie out. The atmosphere has been moody. Here we are though on the loungers and the surf mashes onto the buttery sand behind us. I brought my book with me but am soon distracted by an iguana. It wanders into my vision about twenty feet away on the grass in a clearing ringed with coconut palms. The lizard is big and its tail tapers off to a seemingly infinite point. It is unafraid and its movements are elegant. Then it stops. A smaller one, more colourful, scampers up alongside. This one has a crest. It seems a little skittish. Are you watching?  Yes, I say. Everyone is. The small one climbs on to the scaly spine of the first. They stay like that for ten minutes, maybe more. Some kids from the chalet next door come and take photographs. It looks like a mother giving its baby a ride, as chimps cling to the breast, but I guess they are just having sex. They are not having sex!  I sip a little rum as he gets his spuds in slowly. It is the way of it here in the tropics. They don’t seem to care, there by the hotel bar, a stone skip from the sea, as the waves break and break again. 

THE CHURCHES OF FALMER

AFTER

Her softness melts from my fingers

Long after her touch disappears

Her lips to my skin once wandered free

As forgotten feathers on a warm breeze

My own on her neck and shoulders

No longer for now can linger

Yet

The bruise to my chest appeared

After I left her

She left it 

Her perfume remains for some days

On the blue shirt next to my flesh

All freshness has gone

It’s the way of these things

Sudden and done

Our snapshots

Our memory hallowed

Are the ghosts of us from now on

Her voice will carry over seas

All between us is the ocean