HE DREAMT OF SNOW

The banner reads culture is constructed not consumed! Wise words. Two poems this post that I wrote in Catalunya. The first was a dream. The winter of 1962/63 was the worst I have ever experienced. I remember seeing dead birds frozen on top of the snow drifts.

He dreamt of snow

light powdery stuff

that settled on his coat

amazed at how it stuck

like 1963 all over again

and him full grown this time

walking through chest high drifts

that held no chill

as if the months of sun endured

had burned out of him

the ability to feel the cold

he would wake to the same blue sky

the same heat as yesterday

I assume it was the extreme heat that prompted my dream memory. This second poem was written as I watched the last evening of the festival.

VIC, LAST DAY OF THE MUSIC FESTIVAL 2026

Impatient to relive his youth

he walks quickly to the square

to find the place rammed

by like the minded

come to reprise their glory days

he stands on the periphery

until hooked by that song

the one that sound tracked his 19^th year

and is lost in the rip tide of the past

until the music stops

By the way Vic is pronounced Bic in Catalan. The swell of emotion for the last act, local boy made good, Quimi Portet was something to behold.

I leave you with Quimi.

Until next time.

PEOPLE TUMBLED FROM THE SKY

I recently spent a month in Catalunya catching up with people. During that time I wrote this poem. It was based on a conversation I had with an old friend in Barcelona.

TUMBLING

It was too hot to sit in the sun

and the shade slowly disappeared

all that afternoon we drank and talked

as people tumbled from the sky

fast or slow they fell earthward

You can’t believe what it’s like

to live through 64 days of extreme heat

your mind shuts down there is no relief

the system is crashing but I am secure

there will be change but I shall be dead

Somewhere above our heads

in the thin air a bright fabric blossoms

then another and another

dreamlike their descent slows

It is my children who trouble me

they are the ones who will have to adapt

they must live all their lives with this chaos

I fear they will be overwhelmed

There is no let up

the plane has taken off again

people jump into empty sky

the ground flickers in the heat

I'm not sure the title works. The poem is an amalgam of two different events, my conversation in Barcelona and an afternoon in Empuriabrava talking and watching skydivers. Thanks to the Secrets for their thoughts.

While I was there I went to the Vic music festival and caught a set by Clara Mann. Excellent music, I can't recommend her enough.

Until next time. 

JIGSAW DAYS

This poem arose from a conversation with someone I vaguely knew. They had, they informed me, stopped drinking sometime before and how they described their situation led me to write this poem.

POEM FOR C

Given the economies

of supermarket squash

and the cheapest of vodkas,

it had always been

how much could he drink,

in the shortest amount of time,

to keep ahead of blacking out,

to avoid the grey dawns

when monochromatic migraine

immobilised him in a space

where he could do nothing

but relive it all over again.

I met him in the fragile truce of sobriety

he called his jigsaw days.

He placed his pieces

into shapes that just might work,

into patterns that had eluded him on the drink.

Some events, he confided, never end,

so you have to find different ways of getting on with it.

It is in my last collection.

Here is Anna Ternheim with an acoustic version of Keep Me In The Dark.

Until next time. 

STAR SMASHERS OF THE UNIVERSE

Here's a very different poem, a long poem. Usually I struggle to write more than twelve lines but this is massive for me. I liked the idea of a character escaping the book she was written into and deciding to live amongst the pages of graphic novels.

STAR SMASHERS OF THE UNIVERSE

She was a character fleeing her book. An afterthought added when the author had read a survey of successful fiction.

He had saddled her with a scientific frame of mind because the survey maintained all female protagonists should have hard science backgrounds and buck the patriarchal norm.

But the device he had lazily sketched to aid his hero and newly female sidekick,

out of the corner he’d written them into on page 61, had far more potential than he could ever comprehend...

By page 83 she had perfected the device, figured out how to make her exit.

The first and only edition of Star Smashers of the Universe was almost pulped when the publishers discovered a migraine inducing pattern of letters on page 84, on reflection they decided the reader would think it cutting edge, the hero having been drugged with a powerful alien hallucinogenic in the previous paragraph. And so the books were shipped across the country to an underwhelmed reading public.

Free of the author’s limited imagination, she set the controls for Cassiopeia, the hero, on the other hand, spent the rest of the story talking to himself, not that anyone commented on it.

I only saw her once, in a graphic I was flicking through, a full page frame of a drinking den on a space habitat, all 70s big NASA engineering, she walked from one side of the bar to the other, winked at me and was lost among the merry makers.

Also unusually for me it is a prose poem. 

I think I should finish with a suitably spacey song. So here's Rocket Man by Pearls Before Swine.

Until next time. 

A LAZY NARRATIVE

I live on the coast of south west England and I often walk along the sea shore. Who would not? The sea is amazing. I often just sit and look at the waves. Once I watched two people search amongst the waves for something, I have no idea what. Out of that observation came this poem.

INCIDENT

it is a lazy narrative to gift water agency

the depths did not desire that thin gold band

the sea did not take the ring of my mother

let me offer this instead

that I had decided on one final dip

as October ran towards winter

the intense cold triggered biological responses

blood retreated to maintain my core

capillaries contracted

and the ring always a loose fit

was gone before I knew it

so that when I searched

the view was murk and weed

my numb fingers read the rocks

sieved the sand

hunted for that familiar

the autumn tide was high and wild

and if I could have ladled it all away

spoon by spoonful I would

I waited it out

returned each day to search the empty beach

I still feel the loss

It is a straight forward narrative. I have no idea what the couple were looking for but the poem wrote itself. 

Here's a very old song. Peter Hammill from 1975 with Shingle Song.

Until next time. 

AN EIGHT YEAR SLEEP

This poem was prompted by the trend of lovers documenting their love by fastening a lock to a bridge. I began to see it on a regular basis. It was obviously a fad, no one does it now I don't think. The story is totally from inside my own head.

HARDLY A RIPPLE

Pinned by an arrow through her heart until it broke,

she had pulled herself off the splintered shaft

then considered the alternatives;

to settle for the less than perfect,

to mend and make do in this little town.

She got herself an education instead,

almost accidentally traced the currents in the confluence of events

that had led her and him to stand on that bridge,

fasten a padlock to the handrail,

and each to cast their key into the sunset water,

for they knew they would never unlock their love.

Council cuts meant that the bridge went unpainted,

the allegedly rustless lock now tainted by atmosphere.

Her levering screwdriver dragged the shackle

screaming from an eight-year sleep,

then it became a weight on her palm.

She turned her wrist.

The broken mechanism rushed towards the water.

There was hardly a ripple.

I liked how the man character just gets on with it and refuses to settle for anything less than what she wants. I also liked the council failing to paint the bridge, as if that would happen in these times of cut backs...

Here's I Jah Man with a classic.

Until next time.

INTO THE RAIN AND TWILIGHT

Travelling is always good inspiration for me, and I am lucky enough to have been able to travel. This is a poem I began on a bus and describes the place I had just left.

ABROAD 

He sat down at the next table,

began editing papers

written in neat long hand.

We were holiday lax,

lippy with the wine.

The freedom of being in another country

had set us talking ten to the dozen.

Suddenly it occurs to me

he could be writing down our every word,

for he’s turned the paper over

and is scribbling hell for leather.

I wonder if we’re worth such an effort.

As we stand to go for the bus,

he packs up and shoulders past,

into the rain and the twilight.

I think I like it because of the memory it describes. It is not a particularly accomplished poem. It does go down well at readings though.

The Womack Sisters have a new album out. It is well worth a listen.

Until next time.