Crossing the Tamar Bridge brings a sense of polite revolution,
a feeling of identity regained, no matter how mixed or diluted
the poetic blood has become, for no-one should ever 100 percent solution
or wrap the flag of choice around cold shoulders when it is suited.
The black background holding the white cross aloft
held high by a Kernow sister dressed in a blue dress
whipped up by an Atlantic wind so soft
is the closest I come to holding up a banner or crest.
As you watch the news night after night,
the small tremble of fear they put in the voice of the ageing reporter
as they present their slant on the events,
that make us read their sister papers in grim earnest over
a badly presented cup of coffee, foaming
at the mouth as the headline is designed to irk, cajole
and inwardly terrify…
That the news, the encompassing truth, run by the moral guardians
who defend their freedom of speech
but who will gladly come knocking
with their size nine hob nail boots,
The British oak may fill my head with images of sturdy reliability,
the sheer strength of will and powerful robustness
to ever bow to the pressure of a thousand muscular gales
or the clambering and kicking of a million children’s feet
as they laugh and swing off branches replete with green lush leaves;
is one that I try to emulate in my soul,
but I know I am more like my innocent favourite
that of the sprawling, myopic, maudlin, mysterious and disapproving
Willow tree.
I fell for the drooping wonder
I find myself dreaming about you every night.
The cruelty of finding you as I sit in fat, tattered Middle age
Rather than in the prime of vigour and resplendent in sight
Only makes me want to be in your harbour and landing stage.
In my youth I fantasised about others, but only one turned
My head as much as you, for that was built upon bright lights
And wild excess that all crackled through the night as passion burned
But inevitably we parted, not staying together, try as we might.
Have you broken yours yet?
Have you misplaced the list of items neatly written out,
first in soft lined pencil, then set in stone in unforgiving ink
and underscored in black lipstick with a faint damned kiss
or with the blood of a passing forethought that strayed too close to the
edge?
This list, did it contain anything that you truly wanted to do or be
or better still, to achieve something in which others
would benefit from without ever knowing it was you
that set them on the road to redemption?
Should I compare you to harridan hag of a winter’s day?
For you are the television screens celebrity whore,
Who people urge others on to detest what you say
Because your mealy brown nosed mouth knows no common decent law.
The papers are full of your tripe, belly pork and pock marked offal
And the stuffing, well best left to the imagination
Of the viewer who glances with excited glee at your high pitch waffle
At your endless diatribes set to cause expected squeal and harmfully stun.
The foliage free trees bowed in your honour as the court dipped their heads,
and the angels wept at your passing and the mourners cried with Humanity’s tears.
The Great Satchmo’s voice strengthening the memory of what
was loved about you and the time you gave others,
yet deep down inside we knew that the Jazz man lied
for we don’t have all the Time in the world,
for far too soon it is all over and an angel greets their new recruit and
she will forever smile upon you.
It’s curious that the one thing that age destroys is memory.
We can reminisce and regale our grandchildren to the point of delight
of delicious and noble deeds done but the temptation
to over embellish, or add a line in for cosmic effect then
perhaps awkwardly becomes the main focus of the story.
As we get older, instead of being sure of the whole story,
We begin to miss things out, they disappear from view, hidden,
shrouded by Time and alienated by a sense of the perverse.
We no longer recognise what we have been,
The art of melancholia should not be dismissed lightly,
nor the sculpture of passionate sentiment
in conveying a different message meaning not seen as unsightly
as one witnesses the beauty of honest lament.
To have the air of melancholia surround you,
might bring others down and cursing your name
but there is more honesty in a reflective sadness true
than in any false smile, revelling in sneering fame.
To go through life and not feel the hunger
of the soul as it bleeds from time to time,
You don’t need words to understand how I feel,
to know how engaged I consider to be involved
in the art of one sided conversation that you employ.
I take it all in and if I should desire I could shut my eyes
gently and let my ears take me to the paradise
you promise, the Heaven in which I desire and lust after
more and more each day.
Many I have loved, and I could recite their closing words to me
when they whisper down my ear with the subtly