Owenesque

(An exercise in non-plagiarism).

Feelings return with a shudder
and with consciousness, blurred sight clears
buttery sun becomes bedside flowers
the blinds scrape the glossed sill.
Nurses' voices, measured, hidden,
roll like gentle waves across the polished linoleum
insects skirt a water glass
help me!


© Graham Sherwood 11/2014

Colourless

(Justice isn't always black and white).

Struck blind under a brilliant gold spotlight,
an ivory-coloured justice, cowering, shields her plaintive blue eyes
from the jaundiced, septic yellowing cowardice
bowed above her.
There is no black cap for this white star
as crimson garnet stains now dried ochre from brick-red brown
fade grey as a memory
and the avaricious green capital is quenched by a young rose’s life.


© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Faith

(Placing myself firmly as doubting Thomas).

What if it's all a fiddle,
you know
Jesus and all the other guys,
and I've spent all this time
being good for fear of what might happen
if I were not.
I know the cosmos was a gigantic fib,
the animals too,
man and woman
and the miracles can all be explained away,
but why oh why, after all this time
Is there still a word called faith?



© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Marsden

(Feeling abroad,even in one's own country).

Wedged like cheese
in the scissors of the Coln,
smeared up the sides like a butty
smoke and stone, music, different tongues
catch my ear
tease my eye
wet my lips.

Bank Bottom’s broke
and cloth is cut more carefully,
spring long gone
the chance of a cuckoo, to
catch my ear
tease my eye
wet my lips.

Black Standedge tunnel burrows the
glorious autumnal moors,
hiding darker secrets still,
I’m mind to cower as voices
catch my ear
tease my eye
wet my lips.


© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Astrolabe

(A picture from A Sunday Newspaper Magazine).

Fresh coffee and stale bedclothes,
outside, wet earth from new rain and
the click of a spunky robin,
even before I open my eyes
tell me it’s morning.
The sheet slips on purpose
as you’re already fixing me a stare,
both erect
we know that waking sex
is on the horizon.
But not before I unfurl you
like a chart, a mariner’s map
where I study the perilous shallows and
mark the safety of warmer, deeper waters
before deftly sliding into safe haven.



© Graham Sherwood 10/2014

Seaside 4x4

(Typical seaside observation, that's all).

Gulls wheel and squeal and spin
like dirty handkerchiefs in the wash,
one settles to rape a discarded bag of sodden chips
before the inevitable vicious pecking war begins.


Circling cleverly around this dawning scene
an urban wind unfolds the day,
unwrapping the present before
purchasing the future.


Beachside, a traffic cone King Canute
unsteadily enthroned, straddles an errant deckchair,
his inebriated subjects having long departed
do not witness the repeating failure.


Between two stubborn weedy groynes
the chisk and rinse of pebbles fall,
like sarcastic waves of applause
slapping the seawall’s bitter cheeks.



© Graham Sherwood 09/2014

Cortege

(An idea of how others might see us).

Your considered indignation
drives the hearse
carrying the corpse
of my sorry, spent infatuation
towards its unmarked grave.
As I see it interred,
from a discreet distance
my wizzened frame, hollowed out
falls like a paper bag
spilling crumbs of pathetic prose.
These littering skerricks,
tumbling unheard
you deftly sweep with bare toes
into the vacant tomb
together with your departing naivety.


©Graham Sherwood 08/2014