faces at an airport

Barcelona

short tables away

In departing lounges

Speaking musical

with language requiring

gesture

She sits

Just 2 minutes

Just time to consume coffee

  Laughter lines

  Pools of warmth

  Smiles that could melt the hardest heart

  A fleck of auburn

  (or a trick of the light)

The briefest time

enough

enough to want

  more

  to know more

  to be a part of a passing life

  a name

  at least

enough to regret

this passing

  elapsed

no announcement

no dramatic conclusion

an empty cup

and a sigh

Maya Angelou

One of the most inspirational writers I've known, and so joyful; Maya Angelou has died this week.

But rather than write an obituary, it's much better to use this short post to try and introduce someone new to this wonderful poet.

Here's a clip of her reciting,
"Still I Rise".


Enjoy...

...and there's loads more. One of my favourites is called' "Life Doesn't Frighten Me" if you want another good one to start with.

Rest in Peace Maya, you deserve to.

Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc

This is an old recording of Halaire Belloc reciting/sining one of my most favourite pieces of his work, Tarantella.

Tarantella

Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark veranda)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the din?
And the hip! hop! hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the swirl and the twirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of the clapper to the spin
Out and in--
And the ting, tong, tang of the guitar!
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?

Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar;
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground,
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far waterfall like doom.

Beasley Street by John Cooper Clarke

John Cooper Clarke reciting a version of his classic, Beasley Street. For comparison, the original is reproduced below.

Beasley Street

Far from crazy pavements

The taste of silver spoons

A clinical arrangement

On a dirty afternoon

Where the feacal germs of Mr Freud

Are rendered obsolete

The legal term is null and void

In the case of Beasley Street

In the cheap seats where murder breeds

Somebody is out of breath

Sleep is a luxury they don't need

A sneak preview of death

Belladonna is your flower

Manslaughter your meat

Spend a year in a couple of hours

On the edge of Beasley Street

Where the action isn't

That's where it is

State your position

Vacancies exist

In an X-certificate exercise

Ex-servicemen excrete

Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies

In a box on Beasley Street

From the boarding houses and the bedsits

Full of accidents and fleas

Somebody gets it

Where the missing persons freeze

Wearing dead men's overcoats

You can't see their feet

A riff joint shuts opens up

Right down on Beasley Street

Cars collide, colours clash

Disaster movie stuff

For a man with a Fu Manchu moustache

Revenge is not enough

There's a dead canary on a swivel seat

There's a rainbow in the road

Meanwhile on Beasley Street

Silence is the code

Hot beneath the collar

An inspector calls

Where the perishing stink of squalor

Impregnates the walls

The rats have all got rickets

They spit through broken teeth

The name of the game is not cricket

Caught out on Beasley Street

The hipster and his hired hat

Drive a borrowed car

Yellow socks and a pink cravat

Nothing la-di-dah

OAP, mother to be

Watch the three-piece suite

When shit-stoppered drains

And crocodile skis

Are seen on Beasley Street

The kingdom of the blind

A one-eyed man is king

Beauty problems are redefined

The doorbells do not ring

A light bulb bursts like a blister

The only form of heat

Here a fellow sells his sister

Down the river on Beasley Street

The boys are on the wagon

The girls are on the shelf

Their common problem is

That they're not someone else

The dirt blows out

The dust blows in

You can't keep it neat

It's a fully furnished dustbin

Sixteen Beasley Street

Vince the aging savage

Betrays no kind of life

But the smell of yesterday's cabbage

And the ghost of last year's wife

Through a constant haze

Of deodorant sprays

He says retreat

Alsatians dog the dirty days

Down the middle of Beasley Street

People turn to poison

Quick as lager turns to piss

Sweethearts are physically sick

Every time they kiss

It's a sociologist's paradise

Each day repeats

On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy

Beastly Beasley Street

Eyes dead as vicious fish

Look around for laughs

If I could have just one wish

I would be a photograph

On a permanent Monday morning

Get lost or fall asleep

When the yellow cats are yawning

Around the back of Beasley Street

The Country by Billy Collins

Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America's best-selling poets, reads his poem "The Country" with animation by Brady Baltezor of Radium.


The Country 

I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time -

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country?

plague

in the playground
waiting for the second bell to ring
i waited
to hear her sing

"ring-o-ring of roses,
a pocket full of poses..."

and
i can't speak for the others
but i fell

...down

timing

small table in paris
were we sat
together
chatting while we waited
to become artists
to become writers
  drinking coffee from bowls by the gallon
  smoking gitanes
like would be film noir film stars
like would be
people

I remember you'd chosen to be
anais nin and I
unfortunately
as you would have seen it had chosen
bukowski

it's funny now
  the only difference was
  that our fucks didn't match

but it was everything
then

after the love's been made

when we're bored
by bodies
  once drenched in passion
now
  only damp in sweaty clasping and
  grasping fat
as the laughter lines become hysteric
and after the love's been made
what next

when we blame each other
blame
muffled
behind newspaper fences
at silent breakfasts
  while deep in the foreground
  the tv game show host smiles on

while we hate
those bodies
  once folded in warmth
now
  merely vacant carriages for this
  marriages death
as the game show now becomes mesmeric
and after the love's been made
what's left

growing pains

tubes of metal gleaming
  in conical design
  welded steel sunk
  in concrete squat
against the playground
                        ground
                        reaching skyward
                        soaring
looking helpless
             lifeless
now

hard to remember
  those endless trips to Mars
  held in her warm embrace

losing touch

she was
the uniform girl
of his uniform dream

with sex
late each night
rose an audible scream
  faked

metamorphosis

there the child
the toddler
amusing the patrons

warm smiles
observe the driver
in the imagined car

a chuckle
a proud
parental gaze

the smiles
remain
the shapes
change

driving fingers
contort into barrel
as the gun is
formed

a trace of mirth
as the child
the toddler
aims

the father buckles

amusement arcade

flashing light assaults the eye
in this garish neon
captivity

amidst the eccentric electronic roar
dropped coins
synthesised war

witness amongst the cigarette smog
silent on the ashtray floor
of a
dirty
dark
tuesday lunch time

pale faced youths
  that blend absurd
in sullen masks of nonchalance

too bored to hate
  just dead stares
  transfixed to receive but not to share
frantic fingers displacing dreams


saddened I head to the exit
only to find myself
turning back

drawn toward that flashing phrase
inviting me with neon deceit

two words
one hopelessly misplaced

dawn trivia

lifting over me

under the leafless
unbreakfasted
morning

she rises
and speaks

I picture heaven
heavens
cascading before us
cylindrical patterns
dancing between
  flesh and hair


* * *


feeling faintly ridiculous
I choose
between
over easy and sunny side up

victim

and then he laughed
  incredulous
  by fate or design
  that he should be the one
the chosen one

chosen
  from all those names more fluent than his
  passport photographs more gorgeous than his
plucked
from this crowd
  of passengers
  of crew
to be chosen

he
  the competition non-winner
  the optimistic entrant
  the nondescript nine hundred and ninety nine thousandth
  in a million
  the supporter of dreams unfulfilled
  the face you'd always forget
finally remembered
CHOSEN
for one fleeting moment
                            elite

and so
  like a winning ticket holder
  prize winner
he laughed
as they lead him to the door
  to the world's camera
  press
  tv
at last famous
    BLACKNESS
and then he laughed
no more

poems on the underground

on the tube to Leicester Square
(Northern Line)
sat a happy young man
reading lines
from the "poems on the underground" series
  Patrick Kavanagh recording melancholy
  in five or six lines
smiling

she would be waiting there          he knew
  looking angelic as always
  opposite the Odeon listening to the buskers
                                  rain or shine
and she'd always do the latter

then he was (as they say) in love
and pedestalled her higher
than Nelson
and all those "poems on the underground"
made him smile          even sad ones
because he was registering bliss



* * *



on the tube to Leicester Square
(Piccadilly Line)
sat a maudlin young woman
reading lines
from the "poems on the underground" series
  Roger McGough wanting to lead her
  from melancholy
weeping

he'd soon be hating her          she knew
  with that angry man stance
  when she spoke of the truth
                            of her life
                            of her work
and how neither should matter

then she was (as they say) in love
and of course it did matter
so she cried
and all those "poems on the underground"
made her cry          even happy ones
because prostitutes don't fall in love

because prostitutes don't fall in love
             prostitutes don't fall in love
                              don't fall in love
                                       fall in love
                                             in love
                                                 love

requiem

ten green bottles
smashed across the crazy paving
spelled out her name
substantiating the miracle

an unquenchable spring of miracles
followed
each growing more
SPECTACULAR

now
from a distance

that crazy paving appears
absently untouched
yet shards of glass invade me

only scars remain
from days
when even walking on air seemed possible.

daddy was a bank robber

after waiting hours
came visiting hours
that never seemed plural
then
after fleeting moments of you
return
to a house grown dusty
in a town grown colder
through waiting hours

yet sadder still
after waiting hours
as hours became significant
tumbled through time
when hours forgot
nappies and prams
when hours forgot
short trousers
puberty
adolescence
fights
and inevitably romance

when hours condemned my childhood
through your eyes
through waiting hours
to those seventy-eight photographs
taped to your locker door

misplaced trust

I
trusted
you
in
everything...

that's
exactly
what
you
took.

Too Late in the Day

It was Sunday
The day to feed the ducks
And they put on their scarves, hats, coats, as usual
He'd made up the flask
And she'd got together the bread flakes
And they'd waited in the cold
For their usual bus
To take them to the park

It was all done in silence
All but the instructions
The coughs
The checks that the routine
Was intact
But he thought she'd been a little
Skittish
If an eighty-five year old woman with a bad back could be such a thing.

They had their usual bench
And all the ducks had names
Even the other duck feeders
Had their own schedules
Agendas for the sustenance of wild fowl

They'd met as children
And grown up together
Married and shared their lives
Together
Their children together
And the vacancy of their departure

He'd always loved her everything
The way she folded a handkerchief
And the endless chatter
And the unfortunate culinary skills
And the curl of her hair, blonde to grey to white

And now this Sunday
On their usual bench
As he poured the soup
She said
"I don't love you, don't think I ever did."
And he passed her the soup
It was tomato

Central Park in Autumn, 2002

As a child
She watched a video
Her dad's favourite singers
Playing here

Simon and Garfunkel
(sounded more like a coffee shop than a band)
playing here
she'd seen it on a tv
in manchester
and now 
like an illusion
she was here
in a flash that took twenty years
she'd arrived
and what a time it was
it was a time
a time of innocence

she still remembered the words…
(that was the curly haired one
who sung about the rabbits)

he'd gone now
(and the short one with the guitar)
now
there were a few joggers
hot-dog stands
grass
and a few kids
playing here

As a child
She never realised
Daddy came all this way
To sit in an office
In a tall tower
He was just working

Of course
Later she'd understood
But rather than loiter with the tourists at ground zero
She preferred to remember him
Here
And what a time it was