Poetry

I often think of you Now that you have gone I see you in many places that I never saw you before I see your face reflected in The water when I look down and in the sky when I look up Your reflection lapping up against the concrete 0r sculptured in the clouds I […]

How, when the long road’s unwinding,
And the wind whistles as you drive,
Your eyes are free to wander, wider
Than the road ahead, and your mind

I, who claim to need nothing, need you, within myself, to share this silence From: In the Palm of my Soul (SNAILPRESS 1995)

(for Clive 1959-68)

We thought we were all James Dean then,
Teenage rebels in tight blue jeans.
Rehearsing roles of nonchalance,
We slung life low across our hips,
Strutted to conclusions.

(In memory of Deborah

Aubrey-Smith 1950-70)

Have I become you:
– walking naked from the sea,
to roll in beach sand:
the feel of it, gritty,
sandpaper skin at sunrise,
sodden in the fresh, orange,
sweaty, humid tinge of a new day.
Drenched by the touch of it.

You play upon my thoughts with the incessant beat
of a tribal drum pounded by a warrior to the rhythm of rain:
I am saturated by your smile.

Within the rhythmic throb and thrust
of your warm and perfect heart,
the blood I have claimed as mine,
smiles as it conspires to pump
my love through your veins:

And tingle beneath your skin.
From: In the Palm of my Soul (SNAILPRESS 1995)

Wale Street, 12.01 am, the old flag hangs
above the toyi-toyi crowd, pegged four-square
by bullet-vest cops who quiver like antennae,
tense for the dull, thud, thwomp of detonation.