Category: Sample Poems

Dan (for Daniel Marchbank)

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Dan
(for Daniel Marchbank)

You said you liked watching the rain 
running down your window. 
You can’t see why people complain. 
The movies flickered on your screen 
 
in cinematic dreams. You knew all the directors, 
like you knew all the bands. Oasis 
to the Chilli Peppers to the Wu-Tang Clan. 
I used to come round to drink cups of decaf. 
 
We swapped cigarettes, shrugged off regrets, 
had a laugh. We talked about the days 
when you partied in a haze. Clubbed it up 
‘til you went off the rails. The lows and the highs. 
 
The good times and the fails. 
You had a warm heart but you played it cool. 
You had a smile for your friends, no time for fools. 
Ray-Bans hid the sadness in your eyes 
 
the heavy melancholy, the turmoil in your life. 
I wish I could come around and see you now. 
Under electric light, the clouds unloading down. 
Watch the rain from the panes of Somerton House. 
 
That sad morning it all got too much. 
I miss big Dan with his human touch. 
With his reason and his rhymes and the love inside. 
You’d still be here if you didn’t take that dive. 
 
I recall that song you put on, Bat for Lashes: 
“Daniel, when I first saw you, 
I knew that you had a flame in heart” 
At your church service friends and neighbours 
 
lit candles for you. For the memories of Dan 
and the light that flickered in his heart.

Fat Bum Song (for Dylan Grundy)

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Fat Bum Song
(for Dylan Grundy) 

He’s always on the lookout for those 
fat bum chicks. 

He reckons Eve had a fat bum, 
Eve who was tempted by the serpent. 

Her fat-bummed daughters 
swarm the streets of London in the summertime. 

There’s so many they should be given away free, 
a fat bum for you, a fat bum for me. 

He wants to get a T-shirt saying 
“I’m the monk who likes fat bums.” 

Although he isn’t actually a monk, 
just a Christian who studies the teachings of The Buddha. 

He looks like a cheeky little Buddha sitting there. 
A cheeky little Buddha smoking a Marlboro Red. 

A Saint Jude pendant 
hanging round his neck.

Rock Song (for Alan Wass)

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Rock Song 
(for Alan Wass) 

He’s got a great big crack in the screen of his phone. 
He’s got a six-string grin and a council home.   

He crashed through glass 
into my mind. 

He sank a pint and a shot 
and a shot and a pint. 

Feathered 
booted 
wearing a hat. 
  
Don’t give a fuck. 
Don’t give a fuck. 
  
The lights went down 
and the girls lined up 

he loves his Liza 

so he don’t give a fuck.

Morphine

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Morphine

A nurse squirted morphine into my mouth.
Hospital white. Light punches holes in the horizon.

"Shoulder surgery is quite painful I think":
the anaesthetist, before they wheeled me in.

Pills in a little plastic cup.
They look like an offering of Smarties. 
The brown ones are particularly potent.
London is outside, in the vacant night.
Wraiths in green smocks sometimes rise
and shuffle to the loo.
I don’t know if I’m half-asleep or half-awake.
The ward’s quiet traffic across fading hours.
The pain is consistent as a rock formation.

I must have made some kind of moaning sound,
some ghost gesture.

She is small, looks like she’s from the Philippines.
She has soft, kind eyes.
"Open wide!"

It still didn’t make any difference.

Under the Overcast

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Under the Overcast

Subdued, I sit under electric light.
The sky is leaden with rain in the afternoon.

A heaviness tethers me,
the moment disowned
by a vagueness unknown.

I see a sombre city outside the window.
A glow diffused by dour cloud,
blue-grey unloading slowly.

Then my eyes shift to where
rivulets run on glass,
catching brightness under the overcast,
like tiny sharp suns lit.

And it seems that
if hope is focused there is a wakening somehow.

Church Bells

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Church Bells

The lamp throws fuzzy shadows
high on these walls, ceiling.
Lonely, unscrupulous,
the borders of my room.
The duvet that falls across my shoulder
and this crumpled pillow
are like snow that covers roots.

Church bells in the London dark.
They mark gradations until midnight.
Circling quarters recircling.

Earthly prayer
winged mechanism
fragmented
sung blind.