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

Twelfth Night

(a particularly dreary day following Christmas 2008. The day seemed worn out and not bothered).


Like a blot set in a subdued grainy haze,
the afternoon’s later sullen moonlight
deems to throw a silver burnish on the remnants
of a day of disappointing gloom.
Through the grimy weather-beaten windowpane.
distant winks from house lights shimmer
in pulsating snowflake shapes.
Higher still, the day’s last cackle of cantankerous rooks,
mute on stamped and trampled leafless, bony roosts.
Below the swirling palls of matted, long dead autumn leaves,
skit from shrub to shrub, as if to hide and seek,
within brittle, lifeless twigs.
A broken terracotta pot lolls to and forth alone,
a seesaw ride, arcing the riven path.
Inside the warming hearth’s aglow,
with breathy, licking flames that fight,
a canon of booming gusts, thrown down the flue,
hissing dissent, within their arsenal of sappy logs.
Tilted, forlorn, undressed, a ravaged yuletide tree,
shivers, discarded and hastily forgotten,
but yet, bathed serenely in this night’s argent beams,
and quiet, presents its own sublime epiphany.

© Graham Sherwood 12/2009