Getting into your pantry

The following sonnet was written while attending a Faber Academy Workshop session facilitated by Jo Shapcott ("Of Mutability," Costa Book of the Year 2010) in London, England.

Getting into your pantry

I hold my breath and count to ten
to string the moment out; I get
only as far as six before
easing the door and slipping inside.
Each packet, jar and Tupperware pot
tingles at my touch and sings
through my fingers. The saffron sparkles
at the back of a dark jostling shelf.

The cardamoms, cloves and cinnamon sticks
spring from the jars, the basmati
rice shimmies to the shushing of breakers
fingering shingle on a Goan beach.
The ingredients line themselves up like a recipe
they know will induce you to stay the night.

(c) 2012 Poetrivia

In the mix

The following poem was written while attending a Faber Academy Workshop session facilitated by Jo Shapcott ("Of Mutability," Costa Book of the Year 2010) in London, England.

In the Mix

Crank the cold handle
and watch the silvered blades refract
halogen white and mixing-bowl blue
in their scalpel-clean steel.

Crank the cold handle
and the whispering gears prattle
as the blades slash and slither
up to the neck in batter.

Crank the cold handle
if only to feel at one
with a mechanical joy modernity
has consigned to the bottom drawer.

(c) 2012 Poetrivia

The Geordie Crossing

From just outside Jarrow
 there came an seafarer
 who set out to sea
in a rusting wheelbarrow;
leaving naught to chance,
 with his Michelin guide
 and a sextant in hand
he set sail for France.

Upon reaching land
 the mayor of Dunkirk
 turned out to greet him
with a military band
and I’ve heard it said
 he was held shoulder high
 and hailed as a hero
despite being dead.

Now I feel inclined
 to attest for the record
 that there’s none so stout
as men raised by the Tyne
for when it occurred
 that the sea took it’s toll
 he expired in silence
not saying a word.

(c) 2012 Poetrivia

Your Instruments and Calculations

Your instruments and calculations

do not fix the start of time
   before storytellers had tales to tell;

nor upon cosmic scales assay
   the universe’s weight in bushels of wheat,

or sound its depth in fathoms
   like a hand-fed knotted line;

those dotted ink-blot images should not be mistaken
   for the weft and warp this day is woven from;

and the night sky’s colour says more about
   stirrings of new life than death of all existence.

Your instruments and calculations,
   your infinite extrapolations.

Isn’t it more likely
   that if the mass of our ignorance

and its unknown
   but nonetheless definite location and momentum

were fed into your finest
   instruments and calculations,

we would be aliens in the world they revealed to us?

(c) 2012 Poetrivia

After the fifth day

After the fifth day of days
God in man's image put on
the kettle and rested a while,

for inspiration;

he must have shut his eyes
and nodded off, for when
he woke his tea had cooled

and his creation,

still unfinished, too
had cooled and set rock hard.
'It's spoiled! It's spoiled!'

the Lord told Satan.

'And what's it meant to be?'
Satan asked, smirking,
‘Is looks too unstable to rest

your feet on.’

Then Beelzebub raised the globe
and span it on one finger
wherefore God drew forth

baring his teeth.

‘Hey, put that down!’ he snarled,
‘Or wash your hands at least.’
The Devil wiped it with his

handkerchief.

‘Oh I give up with you,’
God said. ‘Be you banished
to a fiery realm, and call me

when supper’s done.’

And he tossed the tainted globe
carelessly out in the yard
ninety-three million miles from

the closest sun.

The Devil served liver for tea
as a placating treat for the Lord,
but God just pushed it around

his plate with a fork,

and while God sulked the Devil’s
grimy smudges and spittle
spread over the earth and multiplied;

in short,

they discovered evolution.
Then on the seventh day
one assemblage of slime spoke

the first word.

And that word was our beginning:
history at last could evolve,
and soon stories of monsters

and heroes were told.

© 2012 Poetrivia

In the woods

Though forty years may muddle and confuse
I still recall that day, far from our grey estate
roaming mottled lanes through hushing woods
which screened the ringing sun and wrung it on
the ground like salt upon a cabbage patch.

We'd ventured far that summer’s day, crept
down nettley paths past caravans of charcoal
burners whom we fantasized were gypsy
witches, scrumped our lunch in orchards, scaled
rubbish tips for pram-wheels to build carts.

The man stood astride in a roadside glade,
his fisted hands on his hips, as naked as the hidden
sky was blue, and those who saw this spectre
ran to tell the others down the lane,
but when we came again the man had gone.

(c) 2012 Poetrivia

Republica

Tread lightly through this pitted field dear friend
do not pretend ambivalence to beauty
its preservation is your only duty
as you march towards your worthy godless end

Do not pretend ambivalence to beauty
when holy covenants lie in scattered shards
and idols fuel the bonfires of the communards
its preservation is your only duty

When holy covenants lie in scattered shards
shall we dance beneath the stars in burned out kirks
while cardinals wait in line to see their works
and idols fuel the bonfires of the communards?
Tread lightly through this pitted field dear friend
you march towards a worthy godless end

(c) 2012 Poetrivia