Clash

You stop talking
the conversation ends
with the finality of a guillotine’s drop,
a clean decisive silence
leaving no room for doubt
it’s done.

Like Pontius Pilate
our hand washing commences,
before either of us withdraws
a defiant embarrassed impasse 
heats our faces, and
with perfect synchronicity 
we fade.

As I gingerly rake through the embers
careful not to fan the flames,
I search for reasons, causes, fault
but it’s useless
everything has been consumed
including hope.

© Graham Sherwood 03/2018

In-transit

The old van has a bilious rumble tick-over
and an curdling kerbside breath to match,
a week’s papers litter the dash
which sports its own grimy plum-skin bloom
a week’s pack-up wrappers complete the tableau.
Three grey hoodies sit abreast up front
a coffee, a fag, the Sun
looking and feeling like the day
has callously caught them unawares.
The clean-me cartoon is on its way
to being submerged once again
and only three scratched hub caps match,
the other is in the undergrowth
on the slip at J13.
A paint job, the colour of old snow
Polar White
is caked in that new sticky shit
they put on the roads
to stop them icing over.
It’ll be fully light soon
already the sticky shit burnishes
the radiator in weak sun
and two of the hoodies
shift and rasp a fart.

© Graham Sherwood 03/2018

Beauty-Form-Vision

Each individual piece of a life, is
cut, shaped, coloured, placed
carefully into a beautiful ordered
syncopated pattern, in balance
to please the eye and salve the heart,
life glistens, is healthy, contented, calm.

With the slightest breath
something moves the lens
a merest quarter-turn, less
so the scene fractures, becomes bizarre
disrupted, we are bereft, lifeless.

Life will adjust, re-focus to the new,
angles tuck and fit, colours swirl to merge
form fresh hues, tapestries re-hang
warmth returns, pulses slow.

Hold life’s kaleidoscope carefully
keep it safe.

© Graham Sherwood 03/2018

Collateral Damage

You have such a latent anger
a furnace of swirling bile,
simmering, expectant
an ugly potion disguised by the camouflage
of past injustices,
stoked by a splintering ladle
upon which forgotten battles are etched.
I am too old
and my generation
learned a different tongue,
I bathed in optimistic waters
embraced the ebb and flow of chance,
my scars healed,
yours did not,
but once again
await their chance to spew,
erupting in the fresh air of opinion
darkening the skies, with
charcoal breath and choking
our fresh green shoots with cynicism
and shallow pathos.

© Graham Sherwood 03/2018

Love 2059

We’ll never touch
even if you wish it,
the signals are blurring
the outcomes vague
reality slips to mere perception 
better safe than sorry, we say.

I have become weak, unsure
so distance is my safety net
I have desire, a piercing ache
but safely and sadly quenched
so not to draw attention.

This will be our union
notional, disparate.

I love you.

© Graham Sherwood 03/2018

Thunderflies

In perfect aspect for the sun

the waist-high corn dry grass

crackles as we stealthily wade,

throwing up a firework display

of pale green grasshoppers

that pop into the air

in random arcs.

I’m bothered by thunderflies

drenching on my sweaty neck

and captivated by your lithe white legs

that carefully stalk, dressage fashion

through this wheaten sea,

the hem of your dress

skimming the feathered ears.

At the stream you are soon naked,

I sit next to your discarded clothes

now ignoring the thunderflies’ torture

intrigued by the curves arches and folds

your bathing body contorts into

stroked by the gentle ranunculus.

You bid me come, but

I must only spectate, to capture

this perfect moment that I realise is unique,

we will make love, for

this stream is indeed our rubicon

both realising things will have changed forever

by the time we journey home.

© Graham Sherwood 03/2018

Next Door

Depending on the direction

of the wind,

usually a north-westerly,

a sickly-sweet aroma

of Weetabix would hang on the breeze,

dense and catching in my throat.

Never a favourite of mine

even less so

when our neighbour’s daughter

sporting a year-round candle,

dripping from her nose

succeeded in getting a job there,

putting me off for life.

Ironically, her father, later in life

was hit by a bus

tumbling over whilst recklessly

plucking cigarette dog-ends

from the gutter

near the bus shelter.

As children we would watch him

unfailingly press Button B

each time he passed the phone box

in the hope that some hasty

distracted user had left

four pennies unrecovered.

My sister sliced between two fingers

of my right hand

instead of the cottage loaf

she was holding,

I, first to the knife

unwisely picking it up by the blade.

With me bleeding profusely

we rushed next door for help,

our neighbour promptly fainted

at the sight of my near dismembered finger.

I cannot look at a packet of Weetabix today

without seeing his daughter’s snotty kisser

and his own crumpled body

slumped against the bus shelter

near our garden gate,

no blood.

© Graham Sherwood 03/2018