Black

(It wasn't the fact that Amy Winehouse died today
but more that so many talented people squander their gifts).

Today is black,
and deathly quiet
the music lies under a veil of black.
A tormented life has now turned black,
and talent stifled, in vague outline
is coloured in black.
Notes and words on vellum
of beauteous youth
now play starkly black,
charred and burnt.

© Graham Sherwood 7/2011

Retrospect

(An observation on the irrelevance of things
that were once both important and beautiful).

Cold bedclothes strewn, abandoned parachutes
occasionally billow in rhythm to
this winter chill in summer’s sun.
I drift back to the reality of a day
from the smoking tallow of a night
blinking quickly, thinking slowly.
There the door awaits, open for me to fall through
once again bringing all my uncollected baggage
to stack neatly on your mat.
We were all beautiful once but didn’t know,
then, unhindered by regrets and
without the knowledge of the life to come.
Behind our banal conversations
we hear those old songs that
were the wallpaper of our past,
now abused in advertisements for goods
we’ll never need or want.
Now sadness for those wondrous never-ending days,
when touching flesh, hearing words and seeing love
rebounding from your lovely eyes
was all that mattered.


© Graham Sherwood 7/2011

Eyelight

(Pure idle melancholy and nothing more).

Today’s Tuesday sun is butterscotch
a creamy brightness, eager
to rinse away the dew soaked dawn.
Here we sit like executioners preparing to lynch
the only thing hanging, the silence
perfectly executed by us both.
This suspense, determined as we watch our lives expire
holding loving hands,
our wishes stuffed into manilla envelopes
bribes to our inheritance.

© Graham Sherwood 7/2011

Gothick?

(This fellow was real, an out of place, alien in his home town).

Sallow turned milk cheeks
beneath an impossibly large funeral director’s top hat,
its satin coal-black band smudged with sugared fingerprints.
Maniacal mascara fronts resigned satisfaction
from sunken, gaunt poached egg eyes,
an undertaker safe in the perfect knowledge
that another corpse will soon arrive.
This washed out charcoal drawing, mute
propped on awkward spindle stalks, that
disappear to laceless boots, sits low
astride an empty doughnut box.

© Graham Sherwood 5/2010

Port Isaac

The milk blue swell with silver crowns
breathes a heavy sigh, to
nudge the reef of Varley Head,
beer foam swamps the Shillingstones
and roars into its craggy gugs.

Three skiffs lie beached on dog leash chains
whilst unleashed dogs, seek
piddle smells to sniff,
bored grockles peer in tiny trinket shops
and follow pasty smells around the lanes.

These silent streets keep echoes warm
The Bark House nets, the Dolphin’s ale
and ghosts of shanties whispered low
swirl around old salted stones
like chimney smoke,

© Graham Sherwood 5/2011

School Sports 1966

We young boys wait for our events,
and let our nostrils flare to breathe
the herbaceous tang of fresh mown grass.
Our hormones in an altogether different race
watch beautiful Rosemary lounging there,
her endless limbs lead to a neat seersucker hem
drawn right up to torment our cocks;
we are keen spectators for that flash of blue.
Along the lane lines powder white in distant parallel
our eyes are fixed on Susan’s perfect breasts,
soft cotton curves in tantalizing aertex rhythms
they rise and fall serenely as she hurdles by.
Then for a moment Leslie flies upon the Tuesday breeze
and plummets to the sand, her perfect bottom dusted brown,
her bottle knickers having disappeared somewhere,
we boys gasp as one and roll onto our stomachs.

© Graham Sherwood 4/2011

Goodwill

As you bathe in this infectious faux adulation,
the city streets awash with cheering faces,
remember mother.
Sold into the royalty trade, like some gentry slave,
a frightened rabbit set with the hounds,
always destined to be quarry.
But you have snared a fox, a wily spirit too,
whose diamond eyes are chiselled stones
that yearn for what?
And do you truly love her?

© Graham Sherwood 4/2011