Springtime Nighttime

The springtime nighttime
sky has turned a strange
shade of blue, mixed
with a rainy grey.

Now that it's cooled down,
the soft air feels like the
remembrance of a lover's
kiss, so soft upon your brow.

Like a respite from a fever.
A soft, slow kiss, so full of
tenderness, and love it
almost reminds you of the
goodnight kisses bestowed
on you by your mother, when
you were a small child. A kiss
from the woman who you
know will love you for
an eternity, and more if it
was possible.

The orange streetlights
cast down a mystic glow,
upon the pavement,
in which you cause long,
creepy shadows of you
and your dog, as you head
towards home for a night
of sweet talk, and even sweeter wordless understanding with the
woman who you love. 




Mid-Afternoon, mid-March


The sun is showing
weakly in a watery
pale blue sky.
The threat of rain
is never far away.
In England it rarely is.
It's a Tuesday, mid
Afternoon, mid-March,
nothing to make it special,
or extraordinary.
Unless I can make it so
in my mind.
I walk past run down
garages and lock ups,
all rust and corrosion,
and peeling paintwork.
There are two late
middle aged men
tinkering with a car
that will never legally
be on the road again.
In the background
Radio One is blaring
out it's usual banal
bullshit.
DJs that sound like they've
been lobotomized, and
some of the worst music
that you can imagine.
Yes.
It's a normal mid-March
Tuesday, in the middle of the
afternoon.
Nothing to make it special,
or extraordinary.
Except that I wrote this poem
about it.


The Moon And My Mistakes


The moon is
a silver sliver
against the
black velvet
of the sky.
A crescent of
light against
night, the stars
glisten in their
infinity.
What am I ?
A tiny mass
of atoms that
doesn't mean
a thing, and
never will.
I gain some
comfort from
this thought. If
me and my life
have no meaning
then any of the
stupid drunken
mistakes that I
make aren't even
worth worrying
about.
In a hundred years
we'll all be dead,
and none of it will
matter anyway.
In a billion years
the insects will
probably be our
rulers, and no one
will be able to read
this, or make any
kind of sense of it.
I don't know why
but I love this thought.
Me, you our so proud
leaders, all gone.
Buried beneath a
billion years of dust.
Yet there will still be
that silver sliver of
moon, shining down
on the insects and us.

Queues And Covid 19

As I stand in Covid 19
caused queues, waiting
as only one person is
allowed into a shop at
a time. What was once
a five minute trip to the
shops can now take over
an hour. Your hour is
really taken over, too.
With impatient curses,
sheer hatred, implausible,
inexcusable hatred aimed
at the back of the head of
the person who is in front
of you.
I hate the bloody face-
masks too. Within about
30 seconds of putting
one on, my glasses start
to steam up, and I become
almost blind. This causes
serious problems when I
am trying to count my
money in a shop. So I take
my spectacles off, place
them on the counter, then
the odds are even on
whether I remember to
pick them up again, or not.
I've been lucky, most of
the time, and the person
working on the till reminds
me but I have to admit that
there's been more than one
occasion when my wife
has had to drive me back
to each and every shop I
have been in to find them
again.
Of course, this makes me
feel even more useless than
I usually do.
My battered self esteem
doesn't need any more
knocks, but life keeps on
supplying them anyway.