Stanley
Peter Merer,
Architect, sailor, spitfire
Survivor.
Zoom up –
SWERVE, the tropics
And dales, war to peace:
Air to sea.
He ruled
New colours and
Shapes that could tame breezing light
Like the best
Sails and wings.
life
After all the poems I wrote about you
Wherever you are
There is love,
Wherever I am
There is love,
If we meet,
There is love,
If we don’t,
There is love,
If you meet another,
There is love,
If we meet again,
There is love,
All loves lead home.
Ballad of Will Killingsworth
He used to hoard his poems in a plastic bag –
They were heavy but the burglars threw them on their
Backs with the rest of his life – fill the cracks in theirs
With more crack.
Later, he came home and found it
Gone and worse, his poems taken, and he knew that
Somewhere, soon, they would decompose in the stink
Of rotting food.
Nothing was left, he had no insurance, he had
No chip that housed anything good he’d ever said
With dread the sink dripped and he thought how stupid
He had been to put his poems in a plastic bag that felt like money.
[To be continued]
It’s called Spring because it lifts us up to Summer before Winter lets us down
The heaviness has
Gone
Whatever made the beach sand pound has
Gone
And is now ebb and flow
In softer
Dapples to the livelier light.
Then the grey torpor
Heaps
Sifted through Day’s warm mesh,it
Sits
On the bottom of the sea waiting
To be ground
Again by Winter’s deepest tide.
Last bad SAD poem before Spring, I hope
I am done with this day
Put it back on the shelf
Or in my bag, that way
I can read it on the
Bus, if I change my mind
For one that wants to be
Reading something new.
Now is old, blank and clean,
That extra page preserved
For silent doodling, no-
One watching or listening
Now that ‘The End’ has passed.
SAD, never mind, anticipate Spring.
This is the time of year when
Music needs to dig deep
To find us, rap a rope
Around our waists and wind
Us up to the light.
This is the time of year
When summer sounds are
Hollow and clatter round
Like flies scanning for jam
Round an empty jar.
This is the time of year
When Love’s warmth is
Set in relief against the
Grey, when any ray is welcomed
Like a hero from the war.
This is the time of year
When something as tiny as a
Crocus bud is all the hope
We need to prove again that
Life springs from mud.
Beggars all
The culture floats
In and out of
Any tiny
Fibre we call ‘I’
As it repeats,
Relish spills us-
Darkly we tap
The floor for new sights
Other people’s
Trash comes at us
With scraps of Right,
Written in Life
Tramp steels herself
To approach us
For a tenner
To loose the cold.
We give over,
Forget the gap,
‘I love you miss!’
Not a bad lie.
What made us think?
We looked at the world.
We took it all in
In colours and smells and
Thorns in our toes.
We smoothed down
The bark, carpeted
The mud, wove over
The stark panic
Or stole skin
From creatures better
Equipped for a trip
To this planet.
We woke up
Morn after morn and
Wondered what had swung
The orb lights round,
Seeming kinned
To the glints in the
Rock; mine it, let it
Wink at its clan.
Danger prints
On the track brim with
Odour, boding blood-
For it or us,
Suddenly
We revved our heads and
Span a thought sharper
Than a sabre’s tooth.
15th of August is my new birthday
Today Bart’s hospital
Opened its doors
To my head at 7:30 am
To usher in a new
Gamma Life for me.
My scorched brain
Lives again, disarmed
Nose breathes
Teeth sing
Tongue taps
Its roof with pink.
Tonight my soul will
Shake its head till
Every hair winks
Wildly at the moon.
Thank you dear universe.
Lunch with William Killingsworth
Homeless in New York
2:10 was late but
He waited, knowing
I’d said ‘If I don’t show,
Consider me dead’.
In a bistro we
Drank wine next tabled
To secure couples,
Tangible assets
Hanging from cool ears
He misfortunes told,
His grandness thinned to
A grey T with black
Cotton rough-rimmed to
His dry throat and wrists.
Fading from his eyes
Down; stolen, buried
And forgotten, left
Drop bruise scratched, kicked up
By a fox or wolf .
I finished quickly,
He sipped his slowly,
Kept it real, fitting
Calm along lines of
A life that is thin ruled.
