Lux

(An observation on the Mandela issue and collective grief)

Can a light be born?
It seems it merely becomes apparent
as we begin to notice, first its light (ness)
then its growth in power, illuminating
both ourselves and those around us.
Light can be dangerous too,
when we need a dark corner in which to hide
yet comforting when we need to shine.
Of course there are occluded days
when light is hidden from our view
and we feel that such a time must last forever,
then the clouds clear and once again it beams
a rainbow through the tears.
How old is light and can it shine for all time?
Perhaps it loses some intensity but gains a golden serenity
a face that makes us stand erect
and proud to feel its glow.
But light can die too
as all things born surely must
leaving us waiting for a new dawn.

© Graham Sherwood 12/2013

Ballet du Jardin

I sit amongst the slow death of autumn,
mourner for the splendid season passed,
still warm, but draped with funereal shades
and the keen astringent tincture of musk.
Like the wily fox
a breeze steals between some broken slats
carefully, but slowly, circling the listless leaves
then with a single bark
stampedes the cackling henflakes into a panicked spin
rising up, now plunging, crashing
like skating claws that scar the garden fence.
Empty flowerpots tack and yaw
Like paper boats atop this maelstrom
Then spin noisily away to safe harbour.
Sated, the zephyr idly slinks away
to leave a magic morsel for my amusement.
Two brittle-slim willow leaves hang impossibly
in plain sight, an illusion, tumbling like gymnasts
or bronzed ballerinas held in time, performing
on the slightest line of spider’s web
puppets in a sallow requiem.

© Graham Sherwood 11/2013

Event

The pain, a stiletto, a scalpel, a betrayal
The fall, an avalanche, a demolition, a house of cards
The cry, white noise, soundless, unheard
The visions, mother, father, family
The sound-scene, measured voices, sirens, wind
The sensations, massage, shock, wrestling limbs
The audience, eyes staring, bright lights, electronica
The wait, first hour crucial, lifeless, Houdini
The outcome?

© Graham Sherwood 11/2013

Sunday Haiku

Dream Shower Toast Tea
Newspaper Leaf-Mould Hail Storm
Walk Five Fish Dinner

© Graham Sherwood 10/2013

Awaiting Erato

(Study of a blank page).

Alone again, what is Muse?
What kind of entity
as light as breath, heavy as guilt, capricious as faith
that holds me in such crushing torpor
of impatient anticipation.
Be she young, or she at all?
who points my gaze, loosens my tongue
and sets ablaze my thoughts,
before, with scant indication
gone.
If a he, Muse is brutal
a fierce prodigal who bears no kindred spirit
no brotherly bond
and will not fight my corner,
who lashes cruelly with barbed whips
that rip the sleeves of my recoiling aspirations.
No, Muse is she
who, tosses tendrilled locks
with a curious, unsure countenance,
the promise of a smile, the treason of a frown,
the blink of embrace, the furnaces of loss,
why else would I wait here?

© Graham Sherwood 10/2013

Going Back

(A reflective thought on a planned reunion).

Later over dinner we re-assemble
like old knights with their ladies,
to study surreptitiously one another’s lifelines
and to hear what japes have come and gone
throughout these last fifty years or so.
The weight of our armour is now replaced
by the fat of too few battles fought.
Of course what we really want to know
we are all too afraid to ask,
of how a lifetime drifted by unseen

© Graham Sherwood 10/2013

There and back again

(On the subject of travel)

On any journey worth its salt
take an invisible knapsack
fill it with the weight of places,
peoples and other nouns
This burden tugs your progress
packed in different pockets
folded emotions, pristine like maps
faces moulded like sculptures
and essences are bottled fast
West to east become east to west
as it surely will
and irksome baggage becomes chafed and worn
and tears beneath the rent of homesickness
spilling the journey stones
to leave a boy scout’s coded secret trail
to mark your pathway home


© Graham Sherwood 09/2013

Ebb and Flow

What do you intend to do?
The enquiry delivered like a helpful slap
is designed to bring me to my senses,
your hand left hanging there
in case more medicine is required.
The bow wave of your breath
like a crashing surf, roars
and then is numbed silence,
I count to seven awaiting the next explosion.
Will you be alright?
More gentler, calmer water now, damaged,
your voice a useless bloodstained sling
offering support but delivering none,
my purposeful stride self-moderates
into a funereal step, pause, step.
Do I go or do I stay?


© Graham Sherwood 09/2013

Redux 2

Twenty years ago we lay on camp beds here,
at midnight on the bumpy grass,
supine, our saucered eyes scanning a star map sky,
fleeting Perseids teased our stare
our friends proclaiming, keeping score
“there’s one”.

Now everyone has gone
and we are back to heal the past,
with apologetic sticking plaster vows,
but they are gone
and will not return to hear confession.

So here we are, an age past,
to offer ourselves up, naked once again,
holding hands, awaiting
cosmic teleportation or redemption,
both afraid neither will come, or worse
only one of us will ascend to the stars.

A bristle of a breeze feathers our bodies
and makes us more afraid
until the balm of mild darkness returns
and we set off to cross the rubicon.


© Graham Sherwood 8/2013

Maison Mere

This house has many visitors who come to pretend,
to stumble through a new tongue
and try to feel comfortable about doing very little.
Undoubtedly there have been liaisons here,
spurious affairs and perhaps conception
and an end to matters too I think.
The landscape is wiry stubble,
the serene corduroy of vines
and the beautiful adolescence of sunflowers.
All watch the goings-on
with idle disdain in their broken tranquillity.
For her part, for the maison is definitely female
she holds all her visitors safely within sturdy walls
in non-judgemental sanctity,
a young capable chatelaine who has aged gracefully
to become a respected and much loved matriarch,
who still keeps secrets, mops tears and feeds her charges
Themselves still believing another life is possible.



© Graham Sherwood 8/2013

Our Perigee

(The point when two objects orbiting each other appear closest).

There was always the feeling that something might happen
This last year, your movements have been gradual but consistent,
your moods like the weather, difficult, capricious and unpredictable.
But when you shine, oh! there is a radiance where clouds are banned
and stars become superfluous for clear sight.
I saw you dance on the solstice, a pagan, gypsy temptress swirl,
moving ever closer, exerting a barely hidden mesmeric draw,
your youth forever beautiful, pert and daring.
My old eyes widen at the possibilities as you settle into view.
So there you are, beguiling me, naked and ripe
a fleeting chance to feast upon your nubile form.
Tomorrow I’ll be older and you younger still.


© Graham Sherwood 6/2013

Southwold

(Very old pearl of the East Coast).

My mother would have liked Southwold.
Seaside how it used to be, gentile, old money,
apart from the Aston Martins and the Bentleys
squeezed cheek-by-jowl in the off-prom terraced streets.
On the bank holiday, sun cracking the flag
she is breathless, wheezing under the strain
of yummy mummies, energetic Rafas and Jocastas
who picnic on her greens.
Come Tuesday, she is alone again,
a widow, abandoned, bereft and peering from empty windows
until the next weekend visit, with tea on the pier
carefully ignoring the Sizewell glitter ball
that fades into the approaching fret.

© Graham Sherwood 6/2013

Buzz

(A study in listening)

A numbing, soft, uncomfortable crush,
the white noise of night’s silence
that the brain tricks into an urgent wind,
a balmy tinnitus, a mausoleum
from whence escape is futile,
other than to further hostile desolations.
Alone in my shrinking room,
where even the reassuring monotone tock
is lost amongst this velvet hiss,
or thrust in the heft of the commuting faceless,
still the lumbering drone of spectral noise.
There is no such state as solace, silence, sanctuary,
just the near imperceptible swish of consciousness
from which we writhe, but none can abscond.


© Graham Sherwood 6/2013

Knights

(Little boys will be boys).

Such then is your magic world
of wooden staves and special powers,
for bravery, chivalry and derring-do,
each tree stump a task
each bridge enchanted,
so too the stepping-stones
crooked in the fathomless trickling brook.
You ride with knights
their shirts tugged out,
fresh bloodied knees
ripe ruddy cheeks,
who follow you
through direst scrapes
to Avalon’s halcyon throne
and feasts of biscuits, milk and rest.

© Graham Sherwood 5/2013

Serial Cereal

(The Sunday Papers).

Excitedly you await my arrival,
a child shopping with her mother,
to purchase this week’s packet of cereals.
The toy inside invariably disappoints
the stories and puzzles on the box,
whilst colourful are often similarly so.
We masticate the news of recent events,
amongst the tasteless flakes
of other people’s goings-on
which float like oil upon our own biographies
leaving recent dramas untold.
Is this the way we list our life?
Bargain basement cornflakes,
or should we display our issues
with the more expensive meusli
on the higher shelves.
Wherever we stand, we both know
when all that’s left is chaff,
there’ll be another box next week.

© Graham Sherwood 4/2013

The Topic of Cancer

(On the death of a friend).

Dark mahogany, tackiness,
the beguiling patina of old warm beer
lingers at our table like yesterday’s news,
it now appears we all heard simultaneously.
That ghoulish section, obituaries
we always head-to first, fearing the worst
sometimes relieved, more often saddened.
Fuck! John’s gone, fuck, fuck!
So now we’ve come together as we do
sat bowed like Trappists
in some badly rehearsed party game,
occasionally looking up
to throw unwanted questions with our eyes
before apologizing for the effort,
as they fall like John’s ashes to the floor.
Eventually our hooded eyes meet,
another one gone then,
with his japes and memories
still warm but filed away.
Those fucking manikins!

© Graham Sherwood 4/2013

Body Politic

(How power and position can destroy love).

This is miser’s meat, and
no banquet for a lusty soul,
when all along, with payment from a willing heart
better fare, shared
could have made a stronger love.
Once we both ate at Cupid’s table,
greedily pushing in the ruby berries
and seductive figs,
unashamed of our bloodied skins
writhing there, in such gluttonous ecstasy
we fell, sated, spent and gasping.
Now with fortunes changed
our insipid intellects intact,
breathing slowly, measured,
we crouch together face to face,
and watch our mutual grim-faced demise,
amongst the dwindling, starving rations of a love.

© Graham Sherwood 3/2013

Nuga

(A strange insomnia word)

The word nuga is offered to me
in exchange for sleep
and I rise to write it down,
only to be left mesmerized
by the cursor’s blink.
The word door being closed
I wait like a beggar, meek
foolish and goose-pimpled,
shivering,
asked out to play, but last to be picked
and still wondering,
Nuga?

© Graham Sherwood 2/2013

Pontification

(A papa resigns)

Aged opulence,
global recognition,
such crippling, aching tiredness of the soul,
life’s daily cilicio punctures every wavering prayer,
faith the burden of the addled mind
unfaithful to the faithful

© Graham Sherwood 02/2013

Submission

(Just a particularly disturbing thought and its consequence).

News of your death will hasten my demise.
We always thought that stress would be the problem
and tried to keep our feelings on an even plane,
each helping the other until contention came knocking,
knowing when to back down to let the ripples quietly disperse,
sharing our triumphs like a chocolate biscuit
and facing the challenges like mountaineers,
one each end of the fraying rope, trusting the other.
But now I’m told that you have gone,
swiftly, with no warning
leaving but your fading whispered echo
“I’m sorry”.
Yes, news of your death brings such desolation
and it will kill me.

© Graham Sherwood 1/2013

No Echo

(Commentary on fallen idols and discraced heroes).

I can no longer recognize my gods from demons,
and heroes too, now sadly hang askew
their bowing heads from dusty peeling frames,
like sepia outlaws of the wildest west
glare passively over my confusion.
Memories depart like broken friendships,
fractured and unrecognisable, vague as strangers
who cannot look me in the eye,
or offer simple kindnesses unbidden
but steer wide passage by my perplexed stare.


© Graham Sherwood 1/2013

The Man and the Willow

(Fine thoughts whilst coppicing a willow).

The boy climbed warily amongst the branches of the tree
She, his mother asked him what he was doing
I must cut a stick, for all boys need a stick
And what will you do with it, she enquired
I will slay the bears that live in the forest.

The young man climbed swiftly, ape-like into the tree
She, his wife asked him why he was up the tree
I must cut two sticks, for my son and I
Why do you each need a stick, she laughed
We are going to hunt the bears that live in the forest

The man perched the ladder carefully between the branches of the tree
His wife shouted, be careful, you’re not as young as you were
I must cut five sticks for my grandsons and me
Why do you need so many sticks, she frowned
There are many bears in the forest to hunt

The old man sat in the chair and watched his small boys scale the tree
He shouted to cut only the strongest straightest sticks
You must cut four, one for each of you
What about a stick for you too Grandfather, they called
We still need you to show us where the bears hide in the forest.

The four young men sat in the tree, motionless as crows,
Each with a freshly cut, strong, straight, stick
The eldest holding an extra stave
None looked out toward the forest and its bears
All stared glumly at the empty garden chair

© Graham Sherwood 01/2013