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

Friendsbook

What strangely distant friends we are?
having never seen each others face,
heard a voice, touched the hand, shared a kiss.
Is your name real?
or just a clever camouflage, to hide your sex,
your home, your spouse, your life.
What is it that you wish to hide?
Then little pieces of your self slip through
in comments, questions, quips and thoughts
that slowly pull away the painted veil
to let me see the friend unmasked
by clever words, those very clever words

© Graham Sherwood 4/2011

Face to Face

My cheeks hang uncomfortably, side by side,
the uninvited guests who didn’t ring ahead
and now stand on the doorstep
with teetering embarrassment.
Under his impassive, gentle patient stare.
I gently grate my teeth,
the bottom lip pushed right up tight,
to a winsome grimace, my father’s face
with crooked lines of cobblers’ tacks, dangling there.
Am I unwittingly becoming him?
In sorrow, with a tear about to seep,
a buried sob-sigh draws it back
to the safety of the duct unseen.
His unsatisfactory, saddened, helpless gape.
And with the helpless concentration of next doors’ cat
himself transfixed by the staccato baton
of a squirrel’s tail,
I find myself remembering him,
Amongst the pink white gauze of hawthorn bloom

© Graham Sherwood 3/2011

Harbour Wave

You birthed me, fed me, warmed me.
For years I held your hand and you guided me.
As I grew you let me go, to walk alone,
to forget your voice, to change my clothes,
become a man.
I began to gouge, to rape and burn,
in avaricious oblivion, shrugging
at the weary grimace on your face,
passive, pained and desolate.
So back you turned,
without warning and in magnificent retaliation
to chide me, as an irritating flea,
shaken from the wet dog’s tail
to teach me once again, humility
respect and sense of place.

© Graham Sherwood 3/2011