EMAIL INDIGO DREAMS
TREADING THE HELIX
Then
Winter’s east wind paints
fen and wold in stark purity.
Powdery drifts fold lintel high,
trapping sound,
curving words into forgotten corners.
The world pauses,
farmyard a monochrome island
throwing out crags of house, barn and haystack.
We children help rescue udder swollen cattle,
pilot them through pearlescent fields
to the dairy where their milk is drained
into grey galvanized churns
that are left uncollected in the lane.
Our wet-mittened hands sculpt statues,
smooth and shape contours,
define features with carrot and coal.
That night we peer from the bedroom window
willing our misshapen creations to move,
only to watch them fade in the thaw
that arrives faster than the storm.
Life returns to the long sigh of February,
the milk is collected, lambs are born
and the tedious mud of the garden
is dotted with black and orange memories.
Life Imitating Art
I’m sat at a café table
in the Tate, (modern of course),
surrounded by starving artists
masquerading as waiters,
their aprons hanging half mast,
an ironic post millennium statement;
or so I’m told.
I’m also given to understand
that Klimt’s come to town
and the soup is off.
Well I don’t know a lot about art
but I know what I like
and that would be some food, please.
On the far shore of this Bohemian tide
sits a man, his hair an inept wig maker’s
vision of a mane. He throws his napkin
to the floor and roars,
‘Gustav, I’m starved.’
I suspect he’s the token poet.
To Be Continued
Memory unravels:
aroma of grandmother’s chicken broth,
the brittleness of October
and low chatter of train tracks.
The cadence of laughter,
whir of crematorium curtains
or fingers touching frosted grass.
These are some of the words
that shape my secret poem.
I’ve been writing it for years,
stanzas softly gripping my heart
as my mouth stays silent.
At times nothing is written,
fallow days ebb into weeks,
weight of words heavy
against the granite of a full stop.
Then there are times of plenty,
a surfeit of images thundering,
cascading, colliding,
building and demolishing towers of Babel.
My latest acquisition is a crimson butterfly,
it nestles in a synapse between a shark’s tooth;
and an echo of school dinners.
It seems happy, waiting to take its place
in the unending parade.
I spin endless lines, cut and spin again.
No place to begin, no place to end;
strength comes from silence,
what remains unsaid cannot be wrong.
Stephen Beattie born in Lincolnshire 1957, has had a wide range of experiences from work on a deep sea trawler, factories and public service.
In 2005 he enrolled on a poetry course at his local college and suddenly all those random thoughts floating through his mind began to make sense.
He currently lives on Merseyside and is the secretary of Southport Writer’s Circle.
This is his first collection.
Treading The Helix
Stephen Beattie
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The Taste Of Apples
They were cookers
rather than eaters.
Every autumn dad claimed
the crop; each emerald orb
was wrapped in yesterdays’ news
then placed in scented hibernation
under the marital bed.
One year as winter clawed deep
they perfumed the room
masking the tartness of distance
that crept through the house.
By next harvest he’d left;
the apples slipped from my infant-school
fingers to lie amongst the windfalls,
bruised beyond use.
I tried to eat one. It had the bitter taste
of realization. I left it to rot.
Is Levi Strauss Truly God?
I won a prize at Sunday school
and with the proceeds purchased
my first pair of Levis’.
And being a cliché I sat in the bath
clad only in indigo denim,
hoping the cloth would close tight
around my adolescent legs.
They had twenty-eight inch flares;
the Levis’ that is, not my legs.
Things started to happen;
I developed a liking for linen shirts,
shunned the barbers,
read translations from the Tibetan
Book Of The Dead,
everything could be explained
by saying it was ‘Zen’.
Life has progressed and I’ve had many
gods since then;
but none has provided
me with the price of a pair of jeans.
Maybe there’s something in it after all?
Roger McGough’s Socks
A trainee poet, of no fixed ability,
seeking inspiration, quaffed the night away.
Awakening at dawn, semi naked on the lawn,
he perceived a figure emerging from the mist.
It was Saint Roger McGough,
wearing a Balinese skirt, Scottish Dirk
and oddly florescent socks.
Trainee poet awestruck by this visionary
‘Pontiff Of Pun’ begged and pleaded
to be blessed with what he needed;
awaywithwords.
He grovelled, he groaned, he moaned platitudes
by the dozen. Saint Roger, shell-shocked
from this cannonade of clichés, produced
his latest collection, withdrew a concrete poem
and promptly dropped it on the trainees foot.
It was all very messy.
Syllables cymballed across the grass
crashing into phrases which fractured
and fractalled away. An entire sentence
ricocheted of the shed downing a passing
Pigeon. Then in a haze of imagery
Saint Roger was gone.
Trainee poet was admitted to hospital.
His body having been immersed in verse
now sprouted sonnets, rondels and rhyme;
a condition that could only be alleviated
by severe editing. Couplets were carved
from his spine, the spleen yielded an entire stanza,
whilst commas littered his lungs.
The trainee wrote no more; but often, when ginned,
he would mutter about the poetry he felt within.
Can Stones Ever Love
On the shore waves inhale,
water threads its weave
around tide worn rocks;
I place my hands on hard granite.
It’s cold, yet slick and sensuous.
Has this stone ever felt
the warmth of human skin,
experienced a caress?
Later, in a cottage on the headland,
cocooned in the sloe black night,
we explore deeper waters;
and in the uncertainty of our first kiss
the granite in me cracks.
The Other Side Of The Sky
Every morning she combs the beach
in the company of her dogs;
she loves her dogs.
She scans the horizon
searching for phantom ships,
hoping they’ll crash to the shore,
broken sparred, spilling a treasure of verse.
But all she ever gleans are shards
of words, which she hoards
until she transcribes them
in the end terrace she calls home.
Back in the bitter lemon twist
of memory there was once a man
and a son she chooses not to know.
She has all she needs,
sand, the blank canvas of sky
and weight of fountain-pen,
the familiar conduit between thought
and page. When birthing is done
and infant letters still bear
the damp cowl of India ink, the paper
is placed in a dark cupboard
to suffer the jaundice of self doubt.
Neighbours no longer call.
The word friend was never
in her lexicon. She has her beach,
her words and her dogs;
she loves her dogs:
all of them, except the black one
that constantly claws
from the other side of the sky.
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