2015 Poems

Say a rose by any other name could smell as sweet?

As sweet as Sugar-bushes do?

Antirrhinum's alarming -

calm Dragon Snaps with Calf's Snout dew.

Rosy Marie, Campion and Bay:

by names as these, sown words may grow

to garland love and life, and so

a bed of roses round

all thorny problems sow.

© Kevin Stanton McClintock 2003

Drunk on mead most mornings, noons and afters;

stealing from each crimson bell-hung purple

purse, in woolly black and custard kit, you

stumble (you can't flit) from pot to pot to

dip your wick and wipe the amber nectar

from your chops. When you have done and fumbled

backwards, sticky feet and froth-smeared trousers,

you tumble forth and stagger round the leaves,

fall in another dive and guzzle there

for hours. Then swinging from the tap room door,

make off for more; to bang on buds tight shut

that open late. Buzz off to bouncers brave,

to bring the wife her tot, and feed those kids

tight-swaddled in the clubland of their cots.

Here are some bones,

here is some hair

here are some toenails

and there is the stare.

Here is a bud,

there is a shoot

and here is the bird

that gives two hoots.

In youth, inverse voyeur, I watched the world;

aperture, akimbo legs, a hurdy-

gurdy head my camera obscura.

Unpinned, black holes for eyes, the world when flipped

turned out inside, left right. What right word left

for liquid, light-bent quiddity? Observe,

two views I'd spied and both deserved

their parity; so crab wise I alike

would walk beneath the firmament of earth

and down the corridors of tilted trees

hung perpendicular to taunt the sky.

Now, in a narrow window's casement eye,

transported to that transposed plane, my feet

now head for their antipodes so meet.

For Paul Southwood

From out his tardy bed at dawn, he makes

his simple way to walk, night's work undone

by hedgerow-blossomed lanes and daylight's flakes.

He zips along, dog-spooking in the sun;

the spokes of his gaunt iron frame shave light

from off the morning's bright and metalled way.

He hoves to where his bread is buttered: tight

attendance to his post, invites the day

chéz lui; and having so the light addressed

his hours are parcelled-up and franked first-class -

not pigeonholed, just sorted: work/rest -

the best of ways for daily rounds to pass.

But first, his unshined brain from briny sleep,

his feet, his gummy hands, his legs must creep.

A gang of biker slugs have settled round

a campfire of old bread, to chew the fat

and eat the carbohydrate that they've found.

Across the barren plane, three metres that,

in gastropod calligraphy, might just

spell death, two elephantine seals rear up

to taste the air with ink-eyed spots of lust.

One turns its upright torso round to sup

the sound washed up upon its sensate shore,

but ignorant of washing-up, ignores

the flying saucers and returns once more

to map its progress on the sandstone floor.

Refocus, and the corrugated pair

asweat in rubber suits reform; denote

a largo treble clef and bass, then dare

to synchronise an exclamation, quote

unquote. Their testament is really in

the leaves they've scored; their will, upon their skin.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever

For one who from old Lethe's sodal fountain drank

uncouth, to then commend the poison chalice to the lips

and superciliously chortle

at this joyous nous,

proposed in youth

by one so swiftly sifted by the hands of time,

so mortal - from such thimble-rigging cant

I naturally shrink;

yet, for some forgetful souls

for whom 'delight' must conjure only

mirages of reminiscence,

it's already high noon

on the picture postcard

sunset strip horizon,

blue chip high

drunk up, consumed; a memory of tasting.

This squandered bliss - too hard to hold,

to lose, too hard -

floats off on forever feelings

on those those teary torrents

shed by all those unrequited lovers

dearly wishing to be nearly dead,

and meantimes,

we, with unaccustomed clarity

long sightedly percieve

in glasses, darkly, just what it is

forever's hiding

up its cardsharp's sleeve.