Category: Poetry

Two Poems by Chris Hardy

Growing pains

We’d been in France for a week,
complaining of the food,
bored by Caen.
On the last day you said,

Let’s visit
the field I landed in
on D Day night,
it won’t take long.

You’d spoken of
the war sometimes –
jumping from racing lorries,
learning to fall,

legs bent, shoulder, roll
when you hit the ground.
But now you told us how
you first left home

by dropping in the dark
through clouds
to arrive in France.
Eyes shut,

tears streaming up
between the shrouds,
boots, ammunition, helmet
shooting you down

into black fields
and rivers on
the landing zone.
Your friends

silently visible
in the sky,
like white confetti
at a midnight wedding,

consummated by drowning soldiers
in the glow of burning gliders.
For a moment
you must have felt safe

after leaping from the door,
suddenly floating,
only one way to go.
Of course we said, No.

……….

His other half

As we drove towards
the crater and
volcano she explained

that if the driver,
next to her, had not
got a ring onto her finger,

before he left
for Normandy,
she’d have married some

other man, maybe
a Destroyer Captain
whom she met.

So I’d have never
been born,
or only half of me

perhaps and that half
not knowing where
his other half was,

and all the while
my father held the wheel
and steered us

safely north.
I could not see
his face

from the rear seat
as he looked ahead
into the past.

…..

Chris Hardy explains that his Dad was a paratrooper in WW2, dropped the night before D-Day into France. Growing pains recalls a family holiday in France many years later, when Chris and his sister were teenagers. The poem was first published in The Frogmore Papers and will also be included in Chris’s fourth collection, due for publication in 2017.  His other half records a surprising revelation in East Africa by Chris’s mother, about what might have happened when his father was away in WW2.  The poem was published in Wasafiri, and also in Chris’s last collection Write Me A Few Of Your Lines, (Graft publications, 2012).

…..

Chris’s poems have appeared in Poetry Review, Stand, The Dark Horse, The Moth, the North, The Interpreter’s House, The Rialto and many other magazines, anthologies and on-line magazines e.g. London Grip, Ink Sweat and Teams, The Compass Magazine.  His poems have also won prizes in National Poetry Society and other competitions. Chris is in LiTTLe MACHiNe, performing settings of poetry at literary events around the country, currently working with Roger McGough with whom they have recently made an album.  Carol Ann Duffy has described LiTTLe MACHiNe as The best music and poetry band in the world.  http://www.little-machine.com

Three poems by Jayne Stanton

…………..

Suave and debonair

your wisecrack
on the hallway mirror’s viewpoint.

Brylcreem-slick, that wayward quiff
has aspirations – think Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis.
Weathered jaw line, razor-tame, Old Spiced.
Laundered shirt, worn
open-necked with the signature cravat,
always paisley, burgundy on gold.

Daddy’s girl, my angle’s blind
to a thinning crown, the comb-over;
a weak heart under peacock swagger – and
you’re taller, somehow, out of overalls
in slacks with knife-edge creases down
to spit and polish; hands in pockets
weighing small change possibilities.
You shrug your shoulders
into a houndstooth blazer, square
the broken checks of green and cream;
leather buttons left undone, token casual.

My formative years in toughened hands:
our lifelines grafted, till you learn the art of letting go.


20 Park Drive

Not a classy street address
but those budget smokes he switched
from cardboard box to nickel case

on Thursday nights. He’d posture
at the bar, cash-rich, effusive,
handing round his pay day fags.

By Monday, he’d be hard up, down
to dog end roll-ups from those saffron strands
recycled in a Rizla by his nicotine fingers.

He kicked the habit, in between
the crafty puffs at work, his sly ones
en route to the library, the corner shop,

returning on a cloud of Extra Strong
that barely masked his tell-tale breath.
The tittle-tattle matches dropped him in it.

 

Flown

Jukebox pumped for hits, I plump for oldies,
inhale the bar fug, wheedle seats for two;
take in the sepia stains on anaglypta walls that reek
of Snug and Ladies’ Lounge and matriarchs in hairnets
eking out their milk stout halves behind etched screens.

Elbows on the glass-ringed counter, proud,
you claim your patch, avoid the spilt beer; light up
an uncensored cigarette, relish its nicotine rush;
order cola, a pint of Best and a whisky chaser.
Easy company: the daughter on a flying visit, father
plied with refills till he’s whisky-winged.

Oiled, you sing On the Street Where You Live
for all the world as if you’re Vic Damone,
I have often walked on this street before
but the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before.

Heading south, I tune to pirate radio, drown out
all that stereo babble from the fledged nest.

………………….

Jayne Stanton, originally from Lincolnshire, now lives, works and writes in Leicestershire. Her poems are published in various print magazines and e-zines. She blogs at jaynestantonpoetry.wordpress.com and @stantonjayne is her window on the world of poetry (where she intermittently tweets from its sill). She has written several poems about her late father (natty dresser, secret smoker, crooner, grafter), including those published here, in her pamphlet, Beyond the Tune (Soundswrite Press: 2014).

A Poem by Laura McKee

 

((how things work))

I remember you explaining
about centrifugal force
when we saw Elvis on his motorbike
going round and round The Wall of Death
in Roustabout
his quiff still intact.

You asked me if I understood
and I said, “Oh yeah,
but I don’t really believe in it”.
Which made you laugh
and we were always each other’s
best comedy audience.

Near the end you broke your pelvis
and when you were no longer at home to gravity
I leant back against the wall
and felt the ground disappear
trying to believe in something invisible
holding me tight.

((how things work)) was first published in Aireings, Winter, 2009

………….

Laura McKee lives in Kent. She first started writing poems in 2009, inside her head, while pushing her fourth child in the pushchair, to and from playgroup. Aireings magazine was the first to publish her work, including this poem about her father who she had recently lost. Her poems have since appeared in Under the Radar, Butcher’s Dog, The Rialto, and anthologies including Mildly Erotic Verse (Emma Press). She was a winner of the Guernsey International Poetry Competition.

……………..
In the photograph: Laura’s Dad, Robert James Leach, in the RAF, WW2

301712_4297198226950_143921764_n

A Poem by Jeff Phelps

Note of caution for a son going off to university

Of midnight encounters with the law,
of pubs that lock the inner door,
of too much detergent in the washing machine drawer
be careful.

Of women who say ‘I’ll call you back’,
of botulism, Little Chef, Big Mac,
of dandruff, pyorrhoea, plaque,
be careful.

Of the condom borrowed from a well-meaning friend,
of accelerating into an unlit bend,
of staying at the party till the bitter end,
please, be careful.

When mixing metaphors, mixing drinks,
avenging pranks, creating stinks,
studying all night or unblocking sinks,
at least try to be careful.

Of being self-righteous, intolerant of vice,
of being impatient, of being too ‘nice’,
and regarding poems spiked with advice,
son, be careful.

 

Note of Caution appears in the pamphlet, Wolverhampton Madonna (Offa’s Press).

 

Jeff Phelps’s poems have appeared in Stand, The Rialto, London Magazine and elsewhere. In 2001 he was second prize winner in the Stand open poetry competition with River Passage, a poem about the river Severn. His pamphlet Wolverhampton Madonna was published by Offa’s Press in October 2016. River Passage with piano music by Dan Phelps is available on CD and the app is available from the i-tunes store.  jeffphelps.co.uk

My Father’s Hat – by Jennie Farley

 

Oriental Panama, Size 6 (redolent
with Bay Rum hair tonic and Craven A).
It features in the family snapshot album.

Outside the Grand Hotel, Scarborough, circa 1936.
My father, hat on head, playing the giddy goat,
balanced on one leg in an ornamental urn.

It could be a Scott Fitzgerald beach party,
striped canvas hut, cloche hats and panamas –
except it’s Filey, where the wind blows chill

A few years later. Our garden on a sunny day,
Clutching a small shawled bundle beneath
his arm, the tipped hat shows his jaunty pride.

School Speech Day. Playing cricket for
the parents’ team, white flannels secured
by a striped silk tie, and panama. My hero.

My wedding. Dad in morning suit
escorts me down the aisle, but he’s
not my Dad without the hat.

The final snapshot. Forty winks
in a deck chair beside the sweet peas,
his bald head shaded by the hat.

To keep me safe I keep my father’s hat
on the back shelf of my car, as he did
in his old Ford V8 on family outings.

 

Jennie Farley is a published poet, teacher and workshop leader. Her poems have featured in numerous magazines, her latest collection My Grandmother Skating (Indigo Dreams Publishing) came out in 2016. ‘An only child I was treated by my father as a boy, his chum, accompanying him to cricket and football matches, on country rambles, playing tennis, singing old music hall songs, doing crosswords. He taught me independence, perseverance, curiosity, how to drive, and Latin. He was the perfect Dad.’

Two Poems by Matthew Paul

Sunday at The Oval with Dad

We hear it coming. A hullabaloo
at the Vauxhall End hoorays into view
as a Mexican wave, and where we’re sat,
in the Pavilion’s top tier, the tuts
of the panamas morph into bathos
as the wave surfs anti-clockwise across
the West Stand. I can almost touch the qualm
becoming sweat that Dad exhales from
intrinsic dread at the thought of joining
in. But he mustn’t do disappointing.
Tanned to teak, he tips his sun-hat aslant,
drops the pencil, and for just that moment
mercurially resolves to live ad hoc:
we throw our arms right up to twelve o’clock.

Trigger Finger

When an oncoming wagon
hides in a passing place
and cedes right of way,

my father acknowledges
the driver’s politeness
not by showing a palm,

nor by giving a thumbs-up,
but by lifting his finger
an inch from the wheel,

like a Sunday-outing farmer
in a brand-new Mercedes
on the Causeway Coast,

who craves the spleen
of Country and Western
to snuff his lifelong ennui.

 

Matthew Paul lives and works on the outskirts of London. His first collection of poems, The Evening Entertainment, will be published by Eyewear Publishing in 2017. He is the author of two collections of haiku – The Regulars (2006) and The Lammas Lands (2015) – and co-writer/editor (with John Barlow) of Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku (2008), all published by Snapshot Press. He co-edits Presence haiku journal and has contributed to the Guardian’s ‘Country Diary’ column.

Dad’s Black Eye by Helen Burke

Dad’s black eye was fantastic.
A thing of beauty. Wondrous.
How it was acquired … another matter.
And that he and the foreman were now best friends …
Even stranger.
When he came into the pub, conversation stopped and then he told the story.
And drinks were bought on the strength of it.
And the blackness of the eye seemed to swell with pride.
Yellow and purple and a rich maroon.
Like a Vermeer – but without the pearl earring.
And then the foreman coming in to a hushed silence …
And them shaking hands and laughing and people
Breathing a sigh of relief that was also yellow and purple.
And a camel walking in to the bar and being ignored
And walking out again.
And the eye becoming a story, a drinker in its own right
With its own allocated seat by the fire.
And Christmas just two days away – this Dad’s present to us.
And myself – so proud.
But Mam … maybe … less so.

Helen Burke has been writing poetry for over 40 years, and has been widely published in magazines, including Rialto, New Welsh Review, Northwords, Dreamcatcher, and in numerous anthologies. Her competition successes include The Manchester International Competition, The Suffolk Poetry Prize, and The Ilkley Literature Performance Poetry Prize. She has two full collections published by Valley Press – The Ruby SlIppers (2011) and Here’s Looking at You Kid (2014) – and a hardback, illustrated, annotated collected edition – Today the Birds Will Sing (2017) – which includes all her poetry published since the 1970s.

Three Poems by Frances March

 

Grandad

For Alexander

You crafted two shields,
heraldic moments
of armoured knights.

A jewelled broadsword,
argent crosslet
on azure and sable field.

Immersed in castles,
medieval weaponry,
heroic stories

with Grandad,
up to his elbows in arms,
nobles, chivalric foibles.

You journeyed together,
reliving your shared past,
pilgrims on rusty steeds.

Frances March © 2015

Dad’s Cello

For A and B

She stands in the corner
spruced and maple-shined,
waiting for your touch,

light on her strings,
your bow strokes
resonating in her belly.

Melody rises as yesterday’s
dissonance is massaged
to harmony.

Frances March © 2015

The Table

For Dad, 1907-1998

Three ship’s oak panels
re-worked by your patient hands –
our dining table.

Ingrained with our lives’ imprints,
polished over and over.
Sometimes they’d seep out

into tantrums,
sighs, laughs, fears,
solemn looks, goodbyes.

Your place is still here
for smiles and fair comment.
You, Dad, at the head of the table.

Frances March © 2017

……..

Frances is a poet and performer with the Cheltenham Festival Players. Published work includes Poetry Among the Paintings, 2015. She has been commended by The Broadsheet and the Poetry School and currently has a poem published on their blog. A recent poem is also appearing on The Wilson Museum exhibition website. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from The University of Gloucestershire after a career in teaching English.

A Poem by Bob Woodroofe

Hoarder

You could only just edge round the door,
lose yourself in the maze,
the accumulation of ages piled head high,
with narrow corridors between.

Wreaths of blue smoke hung
under the anglepoise lamp
that hovered over the workbench.
In its shaft of light they wafted
with the cough that punched
a hole through the haze.

He was hunched over the workbench
engrossed in his latest creation,
I call it that, creation, because
they weren’t conventional
but they always did the job.

From pieces of metal, wood, plastic
he would fashion whatever was required.
No drawing, he just created it.

In his warren he knew where everything was,
could lay his hands on it, given time for thought.
All those things that lay undisturbed for years
after they disappeared into the maw of his cave
with the words “ Don’t throw that away,
it’ll come in useful sometime”.

The room is empty now, bare boards
rise up, freed from the weight they carried,
contents spread around families,
passed on to future generations.

In front of where the workbench used to be
there is a worn patch on the floorboards
and somewhere hanging in the air
a hint of woodbine.

………….

Born and bred and still living in the Vale of Evesham Bob is scientifically trained and has worked in the engineering, computing and environmental fields. His poems have appeared in many poetry magazines and are performed at various local venues. He is self-published by the Greenwood Press. Inspired by the natural world, the landscape and its ancient mysteries he is intrigued by the crossover between art and science and attempts to bring the magic of nature and its restorative and healing qualities to a wider audience. For further details please go to http://www.greenwoodpress.co.uk

Two poems by Roger Turner

I could close the book now . . .

I could close the book now,
but little hands hold tightly to the pages,
fair hair falls forward, grey-blue eyes
pore over the pictures, and nestling
closely into Dad she listens, wanting
to know what happened to the rabbit.
Soon the reassurance of the good-night kiss,
and tucking up. Then, the dimming of the light
and, please Dad, leave the door half open. 

I could fold the map now,
but on this windswept stile two teenage boots
fidget impatiently while we decide
which route will be the most rewarding.
Bending the brambles back we take a path
that will avoid, I hope, cliffs that need not
be climbed and caves no one need enter.
We notice flowers, rocks and views.
And by the way, Dad, are there any more biscuits? 

I could close the album now,
but at my side she sits, deep in
comparisons and reminiscences
of this one at that age, how that one’s altered,
of places, people, houses, holidays:-
the smiles are all preserved, the sun shone,
and the rest was censored. So we go on:
another mile, another photograph, another story.

  

In the twilight

I came home on a winter’s evening
and saw in the golden light,
between the sprays of myrtle
and dark-green fingers of Choisya
which half hid the window,
my son seated at the table
my two daughters and my wife.

Behind them, the piano,
above, the silvery lamp,
before them, food and fellowship,
faces innocent and bright,
and I so admired the picture
that I ran in, thinking,
I want to be part of that scene,
that special circle, as if
I had never been there before.

But it was just as usual.
A few laughs, a few smiles
a few bickerings and arguments.
Take your elbows off the table.
Tales of the classroom.
Someone she met in town.
Stories told to distract small people
as the last few mouthfuls were spooned in.
And I quite forgot the picture:
it didn’t seem special after all.

…………. 

Roger Turner’s poems have appeared in four volumes: The Summer Palace, Six Partitas, An Italian Notebook and Landscape with Flowers, and eighty of his poems have been published in magazines from Cadenza to Weyfarers. He is an architect, a garden designer, the author of five books on garden history, garden design and plants, and gives talks to local societies on related subjects. In his spare time he gardens, plays the piano and takes photographs.  Roger is a former Chairman of Cheltenham Poetry Society.