Legerdemain

there’s a subtle difference now
on those rare occasions that our eyes meet.

I feel I give myself away too easily
having lost the skill of camouflage
wearing this faded jester’s cape.

always the jester,
my bag of tricks threadbare
the wrinkled joker card
overused and too easily spotted
in this well-thumbed dog-eared pack.

I now understand
my magic is worthless, misdirected
by your quickening years

© Graham Sherwood 07/2017

Old Soldier's Handbook

I want no talk of poetry, here

your vellum is the shithouse door,

arseholes for inkwells

fingernails for nibs and

never bellyache of what you’ve seen

you don’t have that right?

Do your bit and kept it shut,

pride and pissed pants

make perfect partners, oh!

one last thing, if you get home

never frighten the children

just remember,

that is all!

© Graham Sherwood 07/2017

Collapit

Rabbit holes, narrow as a beggar’s luck
can be deceiving
dangerous to both life and limb.

In the winter they are bare,
tight drainpipes with ragged stone-clad walls
that whisper in a local tongue,
and run red wet
with the skin of travellers past.

Summer, in full camouflage
they conspire and constrict 
with hungry ivy lichen tendrils
that feign soft welcome,
to lure the hapless foreigner, with
tangling-aged signposts
that addle and beguile,
never to be seen again.

© Graham Sherwood 07/2017