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

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

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