Pals

(Sad images brought to mind during the two minutes silence on Armistice Day).

Those muddy boys,
pressed as moulds
into the grey-blue stench,
lie quietly now,
the terrifying cacophony
still rages through their skies,
though silently
before their chilling lifeless eyes,
that stare a fruitless search,
for England, mother, home.

© Graham Sherwood 11/2010

Come Ghosts

(Having read a book recently that involved several characters looking back upon their lives, I was inspired to write this).

Thus they loom toward my mortal precipice,
arranged around my bedside, the spectres of a life,
whose auras fade or flare as with my faltering mentality
as I consider the who, the where, the what
and how they made me smile or cry or frown or not.


Some are angels, perfect beauteous girls, nubile in youth
that flit amongst my other ghosts as if to tease.
Whilst others beneath a darker hue of worried looks and woeful mouths
hold tarnished scales that hang askew,
my life’s account laid bare, all spent and nothing due.


Side by side the velvet kisses and sharp daggers find their mark,
virgins’ tears bedfellow with wicked hateful scowls,
and I, a poor man’s Jesus figurine accepting both with equal grace,
begin to feel an icy breath surround my fingers, ears and toes,
my ghosts like unfulfilled disciples turn and go.


©Graham Sherwood 10/2010

Loss

(How easy it is for inanimate objects to become part of one's family).

We have modernised.
Gone, dining table and faded velour chairs.
We turn away hesitantly, guiltily from the porch
so as not to watch
the battered rusty recycling van,
eagerly carry away our beloved.
The bearer of our family’s growth
our happiness, our joy and tears,
those thirty-five Christmas meals
two special weddings
one hideous wake.
Untouched, the gouged evidence of Rosie’s claws,
sweet pup,
and time arrested when John slumped forward
slipping underneath, mouth still full of food
a seizure said Dr McBride.
A thousand happy winey nights
each anniversary chalked up,
and her,
each time rewarded with a brand new coat
of beeswax polish and elbow grease,
like this one last time
face aglow, and sent out
into drizzle like our children were
on their first days at school.
Peering around the door
and there, the modern oak imposter
yet, with no stories to tell
and eight conspiratorial leather accomplices.
What have we done?

© Graham Sherwood 10/2010

Starlet

(One of the most beautiful young women that I have ever met).

I will remember that I met you
and that you made me special tea,
the badly washed-up mug unnoticed.

You were wearing thin pyjamas,
and eating pancakes with a fork
when I arrived, stopping in my tracks.

From the tiny balcony
we smiled across the dowdy roofscape
toward the lights and music that beguile you.

Such fragile open beauty
an innocent beacon facing west,
in search of your tomorrows.

I shall tell other friends how we had met
before the world knew who you were,
and all your many faces.

© Graham Sherwood 8/2010

Succubus

(What an absolutely superb word).

With eyelids closed, I briefly notice,
for only one second,
the slender-limbed diaphanous wraith,
she standing watch, from the open window.
My dumbfound hypnosis, lifeless,
her touch becomes a peach bloom cheek
upon my thigh,
tumultuous tresses surround my sex.
Then saffron mists swirl like a crown,
she is at once astride and I am drawn up
as if a well, juices rise
like fleeting lifeblood.
My palms are held in prayer,
those pitch-dark eyes, fix me like a stake
and I am warmly damp, resigned,
but oh! such malevolent beauty.

© Graham Sherwood 8/2010

Melancholium

(A daydream really and not a lot more, brought to life in sporadic images).

A creased and discarded tarot card,
the litter swirling through the museum of my life,
of unfulfilled hopes, failed wishes and whimsy dreams,
lain heavy, sodden, undisturbed as silt in the depths of memory,
await the callous prod of apathy’s endless benign ache
that, like the phantom of matters past,
serves to churn old thoughts and memories.
The hazy characters, some on brittle plinths,
more in dusty sheets or smeared glass frames,
offer me one further glance of meagre recognition,
then fade as swiftly as they came,
each with their shared ambivalent frown,
If only………

© Graham Sherwood 7/2010

Cotswolds Tale

(The epitome of the English idyll, but sadly full of American tourists).

And I came upon Arcadia, the
burnished mellow honeyed stones,
along the fosse meridian,
where sleepy chippings bid me rest,
amongst the woollen churches shade,
to nibble scones with China tea
and marvel at the charming wolds,
where now, the fleeces wear pink rinses
and bleat in sundry foreign drawls.

© Graham Sherwood 7/2010

Memories

Creeping like a rumour
from cold room and colder still,
no need to keep the lifeless silence
that hangs, as if some assassin’s chord
has deftly strangled last year’s
incarcerated air.
The comfortable dust is wary too
lest I might break its reverie,
but no, I float through space
with vaporous eyes as empty as
the cupboard drawers.
Am I the first to return here?
As if to steal a march or careless clue,
before you notice and hurry back
to bid me stay.
But these are memories
that cannot be traded for fresher life.

© Graham Sherwood 6/2010

Eighteen

(Whilst considering the current malaise amongst many of our young
I was brought to remembering my teenage years).

Long half-hearted shadows whittle away the afternoon sun,
as cooling clouds assemble too and bruise a timid sky,
as if a threadbare woven cloak had fallen from its peg,
and with its heavy weave, borne down to stifle summer.
Lust’s passion in the grass thus spent, we also slowly cool,
our backs tattooed with twigs and leaves and dust,
your secret hair smeared damply flat, glistens
as you slide away to search for clothes.

© Graham Sherwood 5/2010

Green Park Eleven

(A particularly warm and sunny April afternoon stroll through Green Park
in London offered too many images to ignore. This observation followed).

The crocus have fled and the daffodils gone,
bereft, just the dandelion gold lingers on,
a tame squirrel tugs at the creased trouser legs
of beautiful girls strewn like discarded pegs,
on tattersall rugs on the damp summer turf
their bleached Sunday newspapers billow like surf
bringing whispered languages foreign to me
from passionate lovers beneath every tree
this afternoon stroll a surreal postcard scene
of picnics and lovers and melting ice cream
under clear silent skies of azure, replete
from a bough the squawk of a lost parakeet
strange, here, amidst the capital’s special place
but there’s hardly surprise on anyone’s face

© Graham Sherwood 4/2010

Otis cries

(Funerals are never very inspiring occasions and the sudden death of a
dear next door neighbour was tremendously stressful for all concerned.
However, from the density of the hushed congregation little baby Otis
spoke for us all).

I have never known so many shades of black,
each stand immobile in uncomfortable resignation
to await the sombre arrival of Norma’s box,
silently gliding by
the preposterously long shiny car, black of course.
Of course there are tears, and tears make more tears,
all sorry sadly for themselves,
strangers who are strangely old friends
here to say goodbye and eat the vol-au-vents
the gujons and the dips,
all served so bloody cold, deathly cold.
Bare three weeks old with music to his name,
Otis calls a plaintive wail to Grandma,
a flimsy chord of life amongst the dead,
we are shamed and dab our tears.

© Graham Sherwood 4/2010

Gaia

Glance idly and drink the drowsy
lilac’s heady bloom,
or doze a dream beneath the lilting
banana fronds,
appreciate this idyllic time we share
lest these bounteous gifts disappear,
wasted by drugged ambivalence
abandoned with scant promiscuity, then
raped in doubtful ignorance
minutes to millennia flee
into some cosmic rendezvous
none slow or choose to gift a glance as
Gaia sighs and waves goodbye

© Graham Sherwood 03/2010

Mole

A full sky,
so crammed full it may plummet,
pale grey, dense, delivering polar snow.
The paddock in shining cloudscape,
a brilliant white duvet of silence.
The five oaks sleep
beneath a funereal gauze of morning mist,
as the nauseous silence demands my attention.
Then stirring noiselessly, at my feet
dark wet earth,
an eruption of chocolate crumbs,
morsel by morsel, rudely,
blemished brown cake on white icing
upside down.
A moley leather nose
One sniff and he is gone.

© Graham Sherwood 01/10

Tantric

(I was recently advising someone that D H Lawrence was a good source of erotic description. Afterwards it made me remember his poem "snake" and this piece is some sort of hybrid of both it and erotic verse).

Charm me, like a snake
draw me up,
use your hands to hold me there,
firm but wavering,
my intent unclear
in gentle sway, erect
with piercing concentration,
transcendental
one aching tip,
unable to satisfy my basic urge
to spit and strike
into your soft plum flesh.

© Graham Sherwood 2/2010

Fearless

So I tread on your Lego whilst still in my socks,
and listen when you tell me that I’ve slowed down a lot,
I need a little magic (you say) to keep up,
with your matter of fact honesty, candour and pluck,
then I see the ten years that your parents have aged,
in your three and three quarters of continual rampage,
but sat here with me on our pirate-ship bed
we sail through adventures that swim through your head,
to find buried treasure from wallpaper maps,
then escape from fierce monsters and their fiendish deep traps,
but as danger passes with some biscuits and tea,
I consider our futures and whether we’ll be
still joined at the hip on your wonderful pages,
when your battles are won and this warhorse ages.

© Graham Sherwood 2/2010