Just another day

(The dichotomy of have and have-not).

Leafless tree branches seem to grab,
eagerly at the pinpricks of white light
once strung haphazardly, now buffeted
by an godless December squall.
Reflected in the slate pathways,
they are fallen stars,
smearing around our feet.
Through smoked glass,
brighter lights, colour, music,
it’s Christmas in there
but out here in the rain
it's just another day.



© Graham Sherwood 12/2014

Buffer

(The dying days of my long term relationship with TalkTalk).

I sit mesmerized
a white cog, spinning
on grey space
so I stare gormless, vacant.
I am surprised
it’s all I can do
with a million-and-one
other jobs queuing impatiently.
I wait,
the anticipation of roulette
cacophony of lottery balls
but I wait, holding breath.
My LAN is flashing
my dark-eyed LINK, lost
my world offline.
Jilted, disconnected.


© Graham Sherwood 12/2014

Reve-Elation

(Actual dream content).

There are people here,
I recognize them
but how I arrived I cannot explain.
Small birds skeet, wheel and soar around me
and for some reason, known to others,
I am holding two fishes,
that I have been asked to bring.
I become aware of pastoral music
changing pitch and rhythm,
breathing, a background atmosphere,
oppressive but gentle.
Young and beautiful,
a student passes by,
I ask her, “From where is your learning given”.
She indicates that she doesn’t know
but appears not to worry.
I notice that knowledge exudes from everywhere
In waves of curiosity, learning and warmth
and I need to understand it,
have to learn the code somehow.
A half-smiling man, a sensei
who will not shake my hand
directs me to a lift over which I have total command,
each floor a level of understanding,
encyclopaedic, with tableaux, lessons
and pamphlets that are also maps.
Spectral communications are delivered by the merest touch
I am filled with questions
but there is no one to answer
leaving me immersed.



© Graham Sherwood 12/2014

That Summer

(A rite of passage sort of thing).

O remember that rolling sunflower sea,
we saw each morning on waking
from the pigeonnier,
a golden ocean breaking on the timid lawn,
the black–faced waves expertly
frozen by the sunrise,
the crashing silence, deafening.


O remember that dawn you swam out
naked, amongst those golden waves,
pert breasts floating serenely
as you waved, hands aloft, then,
occasionally lost to view,
re-appearing here, then there
to tease my keening eyes.


O remember me, left forlorn on that shore,
the day you drifted further out
washed across that burnished horizon,
your final salute to maidenhood
leaving me to wait and pace
until the brilliant gold turned to green
and you were there no more.


© Graham Sherwood 12/2014

Spotlight

(The art of performance).

You take to this sparse stage
confidently,
a salmon leaping for its life,
flimsy worn paper notes
the bait that trapped you
into bearing your soul,
now held nonchalantly low,
a frown, a tremble, a gag,
as you unveil the inner you
to curious ears.
Will they get it?
What if you screw-up,
worse still corpse?
But you know the words are good,
they pull, they knick, they push, they lick, they kiss
the upturned dimmed faces below.
Wry smiles, agreeable nods, tears perhaps
and then unsure applause,
pops like the first splashes of a shower
meandering forwards row by row.
So back you go sated,
bus ticket in hand


© Graham Sherwood 12/2014

Koan on Eyes

(Zen and eye contact).

Across a scrubbed table
we surreptitiously appraise each other,
me with nutmeg wrinkled eyes
you, the most perfect blue in alabaster,
we shine
consider both our futures,
I envying your beautiful youth,
you, only my experience
we shine.


© Graham Sherwood 12/2014

Who knew?

(An observation on the Real people).

I'm going on a journey OMG
to a land of make believe -celebrity,
where tits are taut as tightropes
and bums rebound pound coins,
where pubic hair's a no-no, and
they Photoshop their loins,
where lips curve like bananas
and are painted vampire red,
so they leave a vivid tidemark
when the boys are getting head,
yes I'm going on a journey OMG.


Yes I'm going on this journey LOL
and I know that you're all feeling Well Jell,
but to be famous just like me
you must trend stupidity,
pout at cameras with your lip
right hand glued against your hip,
Iphone welded to your hand
Facebook about your gastric band,
get pissed without compunction
or pop a wardrobe malfunction
yes I'm going on this journey LOL.


I’m going on this journey FYI
and I have admit to feeling real sky-high,
I turned down celeb Big Brother
because they also asked my mother,
so I’m off to jungle capers
I’ve tweeted all the papers,
I’m cool with rats and ants
I’ve had worse inside my pants,
and my tits will get an airing
knowing you lot will be staring,
yes I’m going on this journey FYI.


I’ve been away on this long journey WTF
and met someone who’s now my BFF,
she’s famous for doing stuff
where she shows her bit of fluff,
and her idea of working, is
with her arsecheeks, it's called twerking,
I’m really pretty pissed, about
this craze I seem to’have missed
and now feel quite alone
back to being quite unknown
shit I shouldn’t have done that journey WTF



© Graham Sherwood 12/2014

A friend of a friend of a friend

(The recent comments of a random selection of Facebook friends)


After our morning paddle
and a thumbs up from Alfie
we played with cut-out paper dolls.
This is what makes me very British,
me too,
bah humbug!
it’s only taken two years.


© Graham Sherwood 11/2014

Koan on Water

(Zen on rain and tears).

the copper bark shines
driving rain and moonlight
slick rivulets
confuse my eyes
helix to puddles below
I think of someone weeping
in a storm


© Graham Sherwood 11/2014

Ice and Dust

(Comet landings).

An obelisk and a stone
a tiny island on the Nile,
the need for understanding
and clarity of times long gone,
unfathomable, undecipherable.
Then we learn
and keep on learning
knowledge, sense, distance, time
but still the hazy cloak
and that ever-present question
where are we from?
Now men think in googled numbers
four and a half billion years
four billion miles
two billion euros
one billion heartbeats
Philae and Rosetta
all spent for 67p.



© Graham Sherwood 11/2014

Far South One2Five

(absolutely no idea where this came from whilst driving).


I suddenly feel the chill

On the moonlit landing, blue
light through the frosted pane.

And then I notice the penguins,
two, standing close to me
like bookends, waist-height, forlorn

I glance down to my shoeless feet,
the large egg balanced on my toes
which I subconsciously sock juggle
left to right to left.

Looking up, my arms have embraced the birds,
as little brothers under my wing,
neither appear very keen,
hotch and begin to chortle, in unison,
also in penguin.


© Graham Sherwood 11/2014

Owenesque

(An exercise in non-plagiarism).

Feelings return with a shudder
and with consciousness, blurred sight clears
buttery sun becomes bedside flowers
the blinds scrape the glossed sill.
Nurses' voices, measured, hidden,
roll like gentle waves across the polished linoleum
insects skirt a water glass
help me!


© Graham Sherwood 11/2014

Encity

(A recent trip to the metropolis, the city seen as an entity).

Sticking out my tongue
as if an upturned palm
testing for rain,
I taste the cinder-like city air
candle warm and fetid,
fast-food smears, are
vivid pavement art
inspected closely by critical pigeons.
The incessant traffic clank
squealing, caterpillaring slowly,
microbes inching through concrete arteries
depositing a toxic cholesterol
upon the ancient stones.
Here everyone is struck dumb
faceless, incognito, bowed and busy,
no friendly bobbies,
just their wailing warnings,
new sirens that proclaim the threat
now comes from within and not above.


© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Colourless

(Justice isn't always black and white).

Struck blind under a brilliant gold spotlight,
an ivory-coloured justice, cowering, shields her plaintive blue eyes
from the jaundiced, septic yellowing cowardice
bowed above her.
There is no black cap for this white star
as crimson garnet stains now dried ochre from brick-red brown
fade grey as a memory
and the avaricious green capital is quenched by a young rose’s life.


© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Faith

(Placing myself firmly as doubting Thomas).

What if it's all a fiddle,
you know
Jesus and all the other guys,
and I've spent all this time
being good for fear of what might happen
if I were not.
I know the cosmos was a gigantic fib,
the animals too,
man and woman
and the miracles can all be explained away,
but why oh why, after all this time
Is there still a word called faith?



© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Marsden

(Feeling abroad,even in one's own country).

Wedged like cheese
in the scissors of the Coln,
smeared up the sides like a butty
smoke and stone, music, different tongues
catch my ear
tease my eye
wet my lips.

Bank Bottom’s broke
and cloth is cut more carefully,
spring long gone
the chance of a cuckoo, to
catch my ear
tease my eye
wet my lips.

Black Standedge tunnel burrows the
glorious autumnal moors,
hiding darker secrets still,
I’m mind to cower as voices
catch my ear
tease my eye
wet my lips.


© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Astrolabe

(A picture from A Sunday Newspaper Magazine).

Fresh coffee and stale bedclothes,
outside, wet earth from new rain and
the click of a spunky robin,
even before I open my eyes
tell me it’s morning.
The sheet slips on purpose
as you’re already fixing me a stare,
both erect
we know that waking sex
is on the horizon.
But not before I unfurl you
like a chart, a mariner’s map
where I study the perilous shallows and
mark the safety of warmer, deeper waters
before deftly sliding into safe haven.



© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Seaside 4x4

(Typical seaside observation, that's all).

Gulls wheel and squeal and spin
like dirty handkerchiefs in the wash,
one settles to rape a discarded bag of sodden chips
before the inevitable vicious pecking war begins.


Circling cleverly around this dawning scene
an urban wind unfolds the day,
unwrapping the present before
purchasing the future.


Beachside, a traffic cone King Canute
unsteadily enthroned, straddles an errant deckchair,
his inebriated subjects having long departed
do not witness the repeating failure.


Between two stubborn weedy groynes
the chisk and rinse of pebbles fall,
like sarcastic waves of applause
slapping the seawall’s bitter cheeks.



© Graham Sherwood 09/2014

Cortege

(An idea of how others might see us).

Your considered indignation
drives the hearse
carrying the corpse
of my sorry, spent infatuation
towards its unmarked grave.
As I see it interred,
from a discreet distance
my wizzened frame, hollowed out
falls like a paper bag
spilling crumbs of pathetic prose.
These littering skerricks,
tumbling unheard
you deftly sweep with bare toes
into the vacant tomb
together with your departing naivety.


©Graham Sherwood 08/2014

Le P

Le P stands foursquare,
and keeps a steady eye
on sunflower, vineyard and the bristling corn
that lap its humble foundation blocks.
On the departure of Orion
and the scream of midnight’s owls,
before the hullabaloo seduction of dawn’s doves
the chiselled stone changes,
and so, infused with the flush of morning,
lizards stir to adorn the aged stones
like dun tattoos.

Would Le P had castors
it may seamlessly rotate to follow the progress of the day,
beckoning deer and the fickle oh so wary hare
to prance and lope amongst the stubble tracks,
enticing bees from their idyll in the copse,
and scorning the raucous discord between crow and buzzard,
proud cornerstones drawn up to corset
this most humble of bastides.



© GrahamSherwood8/2014

Beauty

You curse me with your limpid smile
and I, wishing you a statue,
desire to move about your perfect alabaster form
from nape to heel,
chin to toe,
fashioning with closed eyes
the stolen long departed days
when youth meant nought,
and beauty lay meaningless
with our discarded clothes.


© Graham Sherwood 8/2014

Age Old

We drink fine wines, kissed by the craft of many ages
and without words tell each other of their riches.
Our eyes, themselves having matured through much-troubled times,
now surrender helplessly to this potent chemistry,
a knowing look replacing a thousand care-worn words.

Thus when our prophets are unmasked as mere charlatans
and our dreamtime chaos of smoke and mirrors clears,
the golden age of our aspirations completes,
and like fine wines we will lie together
silently, to gather the dust of a thousand perfect reveries.


© Graham Sherwood 8/2014

Passages

With all birth, life, firstly there is pain.
Not yet a river, she is a spring,
for she is she,
a tiny eruption through pebble earth and moss
from dank brittle stone to the bracing alpine air,
born and life’s journey begins.

Tumbling, falling, careering, spinning, bruising,
scraping against wiser smoothed stones
that whisper sage advice, slow
you have a lot to learn,
but this is life, surely, fast and furious, noise not music,
I’ll meet you at the bottom she says.

With age comes strength, currents, eddies, whirlpools,
eventually a meeting of other youthful waters,
romance, flirting and intercourse
when some become one, responsible, a beautiful adolescence
of stunning curves, thrusting loins, deepening emotions
flashing colours, licking foam, her damp breath spray.

So comes a confident serenity of the beautiful age, as
emerald blues fade to silver greys, and
she has time to pause, wave, beckon and carry her young,
we call her mother, bathe and frolic amongst her skirts
and at sunset lie to sleep close by her side,
there is a peace, a low parental hum, then slumber.


Slow, unsure, meandering her wits are now dimming
her life’s journey nears its end, reflections abound
in sedentary, shallow memory pools,
the salinity, a taste of death, a portent, nearly spent,
just one look back, one long last laboured, delirious sigh
then gone, carried on her final tidal pyre.

© Graham Sherwood 07/2014

82-All Out

We bade farewell to a man today.
He, in a sea grass box that will burn well,
us doleful and dressed to the nines,
unsure of etiquette, embarrassed,
surreptitiously seeking out old faces long unseen.

His children, in their forties, dutifully calm
try hard to grow up in thirty minutes.
A witty cricket poem that deserved a clap
but no one dared,
the worried looking funeral DJ
tasked to manage the three chosen tunes,
the pause before Glenn Miller a tad too long.

Fine words, done and dusted
and the rosemary sprigs are sniffed,
then gently laid upon the dead man’s chest,
his freshly minted widow sobs,
flushed and flustered in her grief,
a broken husk, hunched in her pew
obliged to greet us one by one
our condolences cutting welts
like forty lashes of the cat.

Then to our man’s favourite pub
a sausage roll, samosas, chips,
such curious grub.
Old men stare, glazed and ponderous into space
to wonder where the short straw will flutter next.



© Graham Sherwood 6/2014

Fortnight

I stole your perfect halo
and those pretty silver wings,
tarnishing them with a darker love,
a barbed lust
that I knew would be my undoing.

As you tried to clean me,
with velvet, silken oils and chocolate,
my eyes, fired by brilliant pokers
and bristling like icicles,
stared at your vacant heaven.


© Graham Sherwood 6/2014

Future Past

Alabaster wrists
lost on pure white cotton
garnet penknife runes
your anguish, mapped,
etched, left for me to decipher,
these are the hands I hold, I kiss,
conduit for all emotions,
so why was I not to know of this,
this butchery,
your final act of supplication?
My guilt now hangs heavy,
separating hope from harsher eventualities,
a Libran scale that teeters
precariously between oblivion
and loss.

© Graham Sherwood 5/2014

Seirene

Lured here and lost,
I hit the craggy rocks
and spill into the foaming waters,
transfixed,
your pure beguiling beauty
still busy in its song.

I scan for paths around me,
footprints fade in sodden sand
return implausible
if ever I have the will,
seduced,
amongst the foment's revelry

You hold a bloodied mirror shard
to show a sorry broken man
unrecognisable, unkempt, undone
who's wide eyes,
milky as dead fish
stare panting at your ivory feet


Graham Sherwood 05/2014

Outlines

If I peer hard enough
I can still see the impression of your body
a ghost amid the tumbled cushions,
and in the woven pattern of a table lamp
I imagine your shadowy features in profile.
An empty wine glass waits patiently,
I leave it there on purpose
and the shapeless knitting bag
wedged between the legs of the table,
like Bagpuss I used to say.
Your clothes and your scent
still hang and linger in the bedroom,
but it is here on this sofa
that your image rests.
I can see you, I make myself see you,
but I cannot hear the bells.


© Graham Sherwood 4/2014

H

One hesitates tentatively at each corner
for fear of what may loom into view,
the plethora of signs provide the clues
Surgical, Renal, Haematology, even Bereavement
are listed as we scurry past,
giving the impression that we are confident
of our eventual destination.

Then a powdery grey ghost appears
dragging sorry bones into view,
followed by her apologetic spouse
pallid, hopeless, similarly grey.
Mentally recoiling we improve our gait
but just in time to evade obesity,
an over-flushed apple of a man
sitting, nay wearing a mobility scooter,
still puffing as he whirrs toward the exit
and a much earned cigarette.

There is death here and we know it,
though carefully hidden
amongst the corners and recesses,
it waits to pounce upon the frail.
Passing groups stay huddled tight
none wish to bring up the rear,
always the one to be picked off first.


Then safety at last,
the grubby sanctuary of a service lift,
scuffed and battered stainless steel,
safe from the zomboidal claws.
We ascend to level two heaven,
bright lights, laughter,
Maternity, new life cries out
here among the dead and dying,
fresh hope within Pandora’s woes.
We search for Bea and feel ourselves re-born

© Graham Sherwood 2/2014

Lovebird

I threw you sweet words
as if feeding crumbs to wild birds,
from broad, square hands
their beautiful biographies etched and hewn.
Now your cackling howls of sarcasm
swirl around my ears,
like ravenous crows
dive-bombing my ego
intent on devastation.
I cower on one bloodied knee
rifling each pocket
for the mirror that will repel you,
if this is your love, you should see it,
in reflection
my passion, ripped carrion
under your fierce talons

© Graham Sherwood 2/2014

Valentino

Today is the day
Do you really love me then?
So say it damn you!

© Graham Sherwood 2/2014

Harrowden Lane

Local russet coloured stone tops our bridge
It crumbles freely as we poke the aging mortar
with the lethal jagged spears
of our chewed biros,
the blue/grey patina on the capstones
smudged with generations of penknife graffiti,
set out like family trees.

I’d forgotten the boredom between trains,
although I’m sure it never ever rained then
and how often we’d stare back along the lines
the perfect perspective
to the other bridge,
the village station
where our innocent mischief
would not be ignored,
“what you buggers up to”?
hence, we, all four,
preferred our bridge a mile away.

Those long hot, sticky summer days
We’d ring our eyes with cupped fingers
like curled leaf
binoculars, and stare like Jack Hawkins
into the distant shimmering heat haze
that we imagined to be fog,
sure as shit the Bismark would come
rolling spectre-like beneath our feet.

Bang on time,
if we’d had a clock we’d have known
a distant grey shadow filling the down arch of the station bridge.
Train, yes! train, bloody train
Steam? Yes bloody steam!
action stations!
Who’s turn?
take mine as well
and four pennies lying flat
like chocolate buttons,
tremble on the bristling line.
Up, and our heads dangle over the rough-hewn parapet,
first one to move is chicken.
A Brit, 70012
And John of Gaunt thunders through.

Derek is the chicken,
says he slipped
whilst our hot faces stink of steam and grease.
Sod it,
already got it,
underlined here in ink.
There’s no squash left
and only crusts with the faintest blush of jam.
“I’m off after the next one”.
And we three secretly conspire
to hold Derek above the parapet
a cruel forfeit to repay his dare.

© Graham Sherwood 2/2014

Precipice

With the slightest flicker of cold eyes
my seppuku is complete, and I fall,
honour restored, my salvation intact.
But what really kills me
really twists the knife
are the wet slate tears
that you allow to come, witness
for my prosecution.
We eagerly devoured ourselves,
gorged,
any ration being useless
until our bowl of desire, once brimming,
was left only with pallid dregs
flecked in the cracked shallows.
Our pathetic disbelief
that this banquet could endure,
is scorned upon by our jurors
and I am the one to notice first.
My love has staled,
yours still blooms
and I can no longer satisfy,
this tragic appetite.

© Graham Sherwood 01/2014