Cold, Day 5, 6 a.m.

Friday:
Monoclonal
Antibodies launch
An autumn offensive at
The expense of my limp arms
Heavy as I drag myself up the stairs,
Shuffling, sniffling, spluttering, coughing
In search of yet more tissues and an empty bin
Before shutting down under a blanket in the lounge
Now 7.45 a.m. I sleep for an hour, deep dive into nothing
Somehow it works. My eyes feel more like optical instruments
Not banging balls of pain, engaging in the world of fallen leaves
I put a coat on and venture out, aware that matted hair is not
A wholesome sight. Grunt-conversation at the shop is the
Most I can envisage, politely. The autumn offensive is
Underway but victory is a weekend wish. Milk and
Paracetamol packets in hand I scowl inwardly
At the RNA enemy and nod encouragingly
At my lymphocyte army as they engulf
Titchy coronaviruses before they
Hitch yet more rides on my
Ever-unzipping DNA
10.30. Poem
Tea.

Holy Fire

This year, Anna Chegwith
Took hold of organising
Lower Banford’s Guy Fawkes Night
Beyond the boundary
Opposite the oak tree
Far from the pavilion

Anna, Catholic on a Sunday,
Firefighter by Monday,
Had two loves: order and disorder
White-shirt-buttons-neat-Chegwith
And anarchic-Anna, depatterned,
Chaotic, randomly romantic, Anna

Committee-meeting-Chegwith reigned
Precise distances to the rope
Fire station - informed
Weather reports - updated
Decision timelines – strict
Traffic lights on amber

At home, Anna put the word out:
Invite the blind, the deaf, the crippled
The autistic, anosmians, dysgeusians
And ‘Primary children to bring wood’
Written on a to do list, sat on the loo
Flushed before Chegwith could find it

The parents set to compete as ever

Anna subverting Ghegwith
Chegwith suppressing Anna

November the 5th arrives
Dusk is gathering, damp air cooling
A rope is in place, a matrix of fireworks
50 yards downwind from the pyre
Its wigwam of standard tree trunks
Chegwith’s firm foundation

Pressed into the ground by odd offerings
Old tables, bookcases, broken rocking horses
Uprooted trees, an old brown piano
Rising to meet the stars, trembling and creaking.
The crowd now hushed,
Waiting for Anna to kneel, and

Lit taper in hand to ignite the bonfire
A wild conflagration feeds the night sky
Tasted in the air, its roar heard,
The heat so real it could be held
Red raging flames compensating
The disabled, first behind the rope

Guy Fawkes Night, an enhancer, for all ages
Battling with burgers and dripping ketchup.
Yes, it had a guy, a nod to Parliament
And on Sunday Anna Chegwith,
Smelling sweet from the smoke, still,
Knelt again, as we all do before holy fire

PoW

Like flowing water
Broadcast on our soil of fear
Seeds of courage sown

Written a few days after the Princess of Wales’ broadcast a video update of her post-chemotherapy recovery

Apalachee

When the grey bullets fly
And life ruptured, stilled, and
Stripped from the living
Joins the unbreathing
Caught in unblinking grief
We all die.

Centuries of constitutional
Misadventure, deep-rooted
A torpor state of mind
A dream that spells
Freedom in another’s blood
Red raw, delusional.

Remove the rifle
Silent words in pleading eyes
What anguish sent a message
Brain to finger to pull?
And in our heart-recoil?
Agony. Mourning. A soft reprisal

Too weak to be heard
But exhaustion will have her way
Jericho walls, stiff with pride
Will loosen, will collapse
Second amendment amended
No longer deferred

Leaning on a hoe

The sun, bleary-eyed as I
Barely peering above the horizontal,
Pours down its slow post-dawn light
On a muggy morning, August,
Dew rising, humid and still
The muffled commute underway

Eight men arrayed
In orange jackets and legs
Swap cigarettes and light up
The prelude to an attack
In slow motion on a
Weed-infested dockside kerb

I join the runners old and not so
Immunised against joint pain
With earbuds full of
Marley or Madness
Or, in my case,
Berry, the Black Country poet

The sun rises; the sweat falls
In great drops, my shirt
Monsoon damp, a testimony
To efforts that will not trouble
Or terrify
Any records known to man

The end, and I walk the perimeter
Of Cumberland Basin to cool
At the far end, under the Sun
The same eight in orange
Stand prodding at the enemy
With dedicated timidity

One, leaning on his hoe,
A hoe that mimics
The angle of lazy urination,
Fails to move, fearing defeat,
‘The weeds will win’ it’s
Beneath him to bend

The others shuffle, smoke, and scrape
Towards their first tea break
As I head home
To put the kettle on
And break sweat once again:
Pen in hand

General Synopsis

Wild, wet, and windy
Coke can rattles down the street
Drunk singing God save the King

Cromarty Forth Tyne
Dogger Fisher German Bight
Thames Humber Dover

Low pressure rising
Riot on the Isle of Wight?
Flag flies at half-mast

Fading in the sun
Union Jack red, white and blue
Coke can, still at last

The Emptying

At number 4, grass grew from June to August
The solid oak front door obscuring
Bills unpaid, takeaway vouchers,
And a postcard from the Sun.
The body was well-dressed and mostly absent
A monocle, a mould-infested bow tie
Dark brown shoe polish, can open,
Brush gripped tight in his bent
Rigor mortis fist, bones only.
He’d choked, it would seem

Long-distant family members
Attracted by duty and pecuniary matters
Like flies to the body
Sifted, binned, sold, and removed
Nearly a century of accumulated
Memories needed no more.
Every object passed through
Their executor-digestive system
And eliminated as is the way
Along the legal path

Across the road at number 13
The front lawn is mown regularly
And a new door affixed last week
The old one, also oak, broken up
Stored in the shed,
Ready, one day, to feed the fire-pit
Its red flame energy
To be faced one last time
Its ashes to be taken by the wind
To the wild north

To the wild north

The emptying
A peristalsis of sorrow
An unavoidable appointment
With life in its fulness
A compulsory education
One that Christ knew
Emptying Himself
Of all that got in the way
Of Him touching rotten flesh
Or healing the broken-hearted

Slack Jaw at War

‘Ackney Slack Jaw
That’s my name
Not black no blame
I’m a white rhyming jackdaw
Not wild, not tame

Some rules in East
Don’t look at me in my eyes
Stay lowly, be cool as ice
Not hostile, I don’t smile
Safe with me, not deceased

No conformity, no truce

I flatten my vowels
Let my jaw hang loose
My I, so sly
My words so smooth
No conformity, no truce

I carry a grammar hammer
Your e’s and your a’s
Rebuilt in Slack Jaw ways
Your o’s and your u’s
No stranger to abuse

I carry a grammar hammer

I’m a white rhyming jackdaw
Not wild, not tame
Not black, no blame
‘Ackney Slack Jaw
That’s my name

Friday’s Irregular Poetry Corner: The Song of the Bow

I woke up this morning aware at some point that I didn’t have a poem to share for Friday’s Irregular Poetry Corner. That’s OK as it has always wanted to live up to its name – Irregular.

So, to my breakfast routine: Malted wheats + homemade muesli + cuppa tea, milk no sugar, and a bible reading. This morning’s reading was 2 Samuel chapter 1 which includes David’s lament, The Song of the Bow, a poem, a pouring out of grief over the death of King Saul and his son Jonathan in battle.

I offer selected verses from The Song of the Bow in the form of tercets. The phrase How the Mighty have Fallen is often attributed to Shakespeare or Churchill but borrowed, in fact, from David shortly before he became King David.

The battle has extraordinary resonance today. The Philistines, victorious in this battle with Israel in which their archers wounded Saul and Jonathan, occupied the same region we know today as the Gaza Strip: the ancient rivalry continues.

Maybe let this poem open our ears to hear the laments poured out by Jews and Gazans as the days of suffering continue nearly 10 months after the despicable attack against unarmed Jews by Hamas in October 2023 and the hostages taken.

The Song of the Bow

The beauty of Israel is slain on your high places
How the mighty have fallen
Tell it not in Gath

O mountains of Gilboa
Let there be no dew nor rain upon you
For the shield of the mighty is defiled

Saul and Jonathan were beloved and pleasant in their lives
And in their death they were not divided
They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions

O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul
Who clothed you in scarlet with luxury
Who put ornaments of gold on your apparel

How the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle
I am distressed for you, my brother, Jonathan
Your love to me…surpassing the love of women

How the mighty have fallen
And the weapons of war
Perished!

In some unknown way, a lament can do what victory and/or defeat in battle cannot. There is an unseen limit to suffering, a Stop sign, and a lament is a prelude, I suggest, to the deep cry of Enough! uttered in the final seconds before peace reigns.

Guest poet: Harry Baker - Impossible

Impossible - by Harry Baker

Thank You

Descending from Tryfan
In an early morning autumnal mist
Three nights of hill-bound
Body odour to prove our ordeal
The welcome end in sight
And my joy is eclipsed
By sudden uncalled-for
Patella pain

A decade passes
And I, unable to run
And reduced often to
Less than a child’s pace
A young man no longer young
Stoic I, sad at heart
But head held high
Push on with private prayers

After-dawn rituals continue
There’s cereal, toast, tea
Bible readings, and tie-tying
All with variable success
A pre-work regularity but
Interrupted on this day
By one unbidden word:

‘Run!’

A command from Beyond
Authoritative, inescapable
Unharsh, inaudible
More than a word

So, crippled I
Locate my battered trainers
Old from lack of use
And find a gravel path
And obey, for a quarter of a mile
Then a mile the next day
Half-marathons follow on
Patella pain consigned
To the past

I run now on new fuel
Offerings of thanksgiving
To the One
Who interrupted my prayers
And made me an
Implausible parable
On two legs:

Therefore strengthen the hands
That hang down
And the feeble knees
And make straight paths for your feet
So that what is lame
May not be dislocated
But rather be healed…
…let us run the race

Still small voice

Beer beach. Almost July.
Even with the sun skulking
Behind lumpy grey clouds
And an onshore breeze
To cool the pebbles
It is warm enough

Warm enough to sit,
Read, remove a layer
And later, sandals on
Wander over to the beach café
For a flat white and a brie
And cranberry panini

 Lunch, and to listen
Until time itself disappears
And the world of thoughts
Recedes
And some aural centre
Draws you in

Not gravity, not to-do lists
Not worries, nor plans
Neither angels nor demons
Only the sound of the beach
Filling all, upholding all, as if
One can swim at any depth

Suspended inside sound:
Breaking waves crashing
Like thousands of crisps
Trodden underfoot
Forlorn seagulls crying
Searching for scraps

An irritating Pekinese angry
In its over-stretched skin
Hull grunts of a fishing smack
Hauled over the pebbles
And much silence, the silence
Of an uncrowded beach

Into which I hear
All I need to hear

Summer?

It’s a temporary fixture
Like one-summer ants
Accelerators down
Scampering around on
Sun-scorched paving slabs
All to collect a leaf,
And march triumphant

Before death,
Hoisting their green flags

It’s burning beach sand
Underfeet furnaces
Making flamenco dancers
Of even the most reserved
A staccato dancing
Desperate hunt for cool
Blades of green grass

Before the sand chills
So fast at the sunset hour

It’s inane music
Filling the void
No one permitted to dip,
Or speak of life in the raw,
Or grief-stricken hearts, but
We weep with those whose
Suntans are for next year

Before the sounds of
Our final goodbyes dissipate

It’s for removing shirts
Flouting flesh-covering rules
It’s beach cricket. Intense.
Annual family contests
Fiercely fought, bat and ball,
Battling like warring hippos,
Unto death…well, loss anyway

Before stumps are drawn
Chilled beers are sunk

And we carry one another
Across lengthening shadows

Juggling with water

In a dream as a child,
Creeping downstairs
In the dark, I sat
Composed, adjusting the
Ragged piano stool
And played Rachmaninov’s
2nd piano concerto in C minor
Faultlessly
Each finger and note
Plunging into an infinite pool
Of untrammelled light

It was so vivid
A copy of a reality
Evading this conscious realm
Early in the morning I followed
My dream to the same stool
But my fingers turned to butter
And the notes and chords
Evaporated never to return
Like a juggler whose sticks
Had turned to water
I sighed

And now? Years piled upon years?
Here I am. And there you are.
Do we prefer the dream world
Of realised hopes, like miracles
Grace-gifts from elsewhere?
Or,
Do we reconcile ourselves
To the world of cuts and bruises
Of hoped-for solidity
Slipping through our fingers
Like water into sand?

Jazz-jamming bum notes flow on,
Unashamed stepping stones

On the subject of water,
I stumbled across
An unlooked-for treasure
Tucked away in an ancient psalm
You keep my tears in a bottle
You have recorded each one
In Your book
Now? Now, with eyes closed
Jazz-jamming bum notes flow on,
Unashamed stepping stones
Sounding like spring rain

Jumping from the sea wall

I think I was four
When my tongue wrapped itself
Round a new word:
Subtract
It may, of course, have been
Take away, or minus
But I added it to my arsenal
Of ideas of having less

At four, I knew
I had less height, less strength
Less girth, less stamina
Than the grown-ups
The urge to close the gap
A burning fire: how oddly
We strive for the things
That will overtake us

But even at four, or five, or six
Our secret comparisons
Invisible and inward,
Bristle with life:
Elizabeth is beautiful
Somehow Carol is not
Love, added and subtracted
Rushes in like the tide, and away

My friend, arms raised, yelling
Jumped off the sea wall
Into the waves…I held back
Washington never lied…but I?
Whoever dealt the cards
Gave some to all, not all to one
What we lack others have
That’s the arithmetic

Freely you have received
Freely give
Oh! this somersaulting universe
Under a tutelage of grace!
Having less is a baptism,
A plunging into a vast ocean
I lack courage…but only in me
It comes as a gift…to share

Not Just Mud - a trilogy

Not just mud i

It all started with pulling my

Fingers free from the mud

Abandoned at low-tide

Dark, tacky, sweet-smelling

Mud to sink toes and feet in

But at my age then,

I wanted to be a crab

So, immersing toes and fingers

Side-slipping, I chased the

Outgoing tide until…

…it was the sight of a

Real, live, salty red crab

That stopped me:

Curiosity pulled at my fingers

Until, with a thwook,

Out of the mud they came

I took hold of the hard edges

Of the crab’s crusty shell

And let its flailing legs

Make patterns in the mud-ripples

Before baptising it

In a pool and letting it

Get clean away, then it was back

To plunging my fingers in then out

I wondered even then:

What could I make with mud?

Mud: the impotent left-overs

The detritus of decay

Washed here and there

By forces too strong to resist

Wind, tidal surges, estuary madness

Mud: weak, wet, and worthless

But my fingers went to work

First a handful, squeezed

Until the sea stopped draining free

I looked at the grey-brown sphere

Formed between my palms until

It was a scoop of ice cream…

Next? Something like a cone

Squeezed and rolled, emerged

It all ended with Mother

Picking me up

Mud still in my hands

And between my toes until

I was bath-baptised and got

Clean away…to bed, dreaming

Of mud-men and mud-women

Majestic and mighty

Not just mud ii

The years passed by

And mud had turned to clay

And clay had turned to stone

And the stone had turned

Into sculptures

Of tall men and tall women

Striding across long grass

Leaving behind an evolution

If not an evolution

Then a metamorphosis

My gnarly fingers

And swollen joints testifying

Of a lifetime sculpting

Making a fading dream

Become impervious

A vision taking on solid forms

Of a people, a stone race

Of magnificence rising up

From all that’s unseen

Beneath the soles

Of our shoes. Sixty years it took

Before halted again,

Not by a crab but

At my god-likeness

Not just mud iii

My brother was a doctor

My sister a warrior

In low moments I thought

I had wasted my life-clock

Felt like grey-brown mud

Squeezed dry by the world

Just a scoop of nothing much

A sculptor barely scraping by

It was not a voice I heard

But something

Not an angelic visitation

But each cell of my body

Began to exult - I saw

The loving hand of God

Reaching down into the poor

And broken mud-people we are

And yielding, if we will, to the

Divine finger-moulding-pressing

We rise, like wet clay on a wheel

Into the mud-men, and

The mud-women

Of a four-year-old’s dream

The weak, wet, and worthless

Now tall, mighty, and magnificent

Nazareth, Israel

2022 census
Pop: 78,000
The inhabitants are predominantly Arab citizens of Israel,
of whom 69% are Muslim Arabs and 31% Christian Arabs

Shall I explore Nazareth?
Travel there will bleed £300
From my bank account
But barely nine hours later
And I’d be eating falafels
At Bayat’s, outside, soaking
In the late afternoon sun

But like the two disciples
On the road to Emmaus,
Nine hours elapsing
After the resurrection,
Imagine, if you will,
Sitting across from me, Jesus,
Asking for more hummus

Our meal washed down with
Cups of Baladi, orangey tea
Or a glass of Shafaya
Blood red wine from Galilee
And he asks me:
Can you make wine
Without crushing the grapes?

My eyes meet his
There’s a cool breeze
To alleviate the afternoon heat
But I look at this man
If that is what he is
He stands up, smiles
A tear in his eye, and is gone

I look around with his eyes
My ears growing accustomed
To the poetic cadence
Of Arabic and Hebrew tongues
I wonder if he, so unwelcome
Once, at the synagogue,
Was sitting easily or uneasily?

Are they ready for you in Nazareth?
It seemed his one question
Spawned more questions in me
Rather than answering his with a No.
Are they ready for the wine
Or would they crush you once more?

Is that why you left?
But his smile more than
The tear has not left me
He sat down at my table
And, later when I went to pay
The restaurant owner said
‘Bill paid. By your friend’.
Slowly, I closed my wallet

And left, knowing he is ready
Ready to welcome those
Who are unwelcome
Displaced Palestinians
Ejected from house and home
Post-holocaust Jews
Diasporans in their own land

Can my heart be so hard
To leave him outside myself
Standing in the Bristol rain?
No. Now I understand
It took a crushing, not just
A bill paid by a stranger
To savour the new wine.

______________________________________________________

Luke 4

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown”.

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They drove him out, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Words on hold

It’s revealing what gets stuck
Year on year
In the sluice gate

All that mudded water
Redirected, ruining houses
Built on flood plains

Whilst broken chairs
Like erupted bones
Splinter the angry stream

Or logs and small trees,
Held up, banging themselves
Hard against the grill

No space left
For the flow of words
A heart clogged

With jagged splinters
The grist, you’d think
But not today

Today, whatever
Grain is being milled
Out of sight and sound

Is a quiet day
For picking out the debris
One piece at a time

9pm: My triste:

The back garden slatted bench
Two ice cubes and a
Cut glass swill of American whiskey
In my cold right-hand
And in my other
A warming medium-sized
Henri Winterman’s

Welcome

It’s quiet and best taken in
With eyes closed
A crow with a single squark
Has made his journey from the moon
Hiding behind the wood
And the river of cars
Add to the whisper of the trees

I wonder if hidden Russian or Ukrainian
Or Israeli or Hamas fighters
Are listening also to chattering leaves
It’s too early for cats to squeal
Radiators and fires
In my neighbours’ houses
Prove irresistible

It’s too early also for constellations
Just three pin-point stars
Watching over the Earth
All the skylarks, blackbirds, sparrows
Are down; it’s the time
For bats to break the speed limit
Of the encroaching night

Welcome

I exhale a cloud of sweet-smelling
Incense my conversational
Prayers ascending
Carried into the trees
By the Spirit
To heaven all around us
So close

Pause

Warmed internally as I am
By the golden whiskey
My tongue on fire
I feel the God of the bible is close
God who makes all wars to cease
And I wonder how?
Maybe I should only wonder when?

These sensory minutes
Slowed by thoughts and longings
Lead me to feel
Yes, the hard bench, but far more:
Peace, tangible goodness
Pressing down into us all
If we would stop and look up

Not a typical Friday

An alarm set for 6…ignored
Late now, stumbling, unshaven
Quick scrape with blade
Hot water on the face
Heart rate up, face the day

Walk through woods
Holding trousers up
Away from the mud
Bit sweaty reaching W-o-T
Early now, waiting for lift

Knocking mud from boots
Saying my prayers
Lift late, lift arrives
We speak, she with peppermint tea
I fumbling with mobile and rucksack

I’m unloaded
And find a Costa
Sup a flat white
Try not to get sticky fingers
Breakfast is a blueberry muffin

Was late, then early
Now waiting
Strange how unaccustomed to time
We clock people are
Perhaps more suited to eternity?

Have an hour to kill
Not listening to others’ talk
A man says have a nice day
Maybe too often and to strangers
Maybe waiting a lifetime for a nice day

We all shed clues
Our inner man
Incapable of hiding
A slight frown, or
Eyes full of music

That’s it…
I contend we are all
Musical instruments
Being played by a
Divine hand, different moods

Not a typical Friday
My time register and
Soul duly tuned, will it be
An atonal Shostakovich day
Discordant or…

An exultant symphony
Lifting us up, opening the heart
Believing one can…
At last…
Love one’s neighbour as oneself?