LOST

Shapes and shadows slide
across my eyes in the darkness,
and I yearn for an unhidden moon
to light the path ahead.


I look for clarity in the distortion,
clench my fists for confidence
and shout a warning to the evils
not to mess with sense.

THE HEE-HAW LANTERN

Seamus Heaney wrote a poem called "The Haw Lantern". My creation Hamish Sheaney wrote this poem called "The Hee-Haw Lantern".

In the gloom of the grey, stone cottage

he observes the naked candle flame

burning away, prone to the faintest breeze,

liable to a quick wick snuff-out sneeze.

He needed cover to protect the light,

to avoid the getting-up and relighting chore,

He sat awhile and pondered hard

then headed out the kitchen door.

He looked at his donkey and had a thought,

his old, knackered ass on its backside,

he looked at the head, what an image it made,

a blueprint skull for a lantern shade.

How the donkey died is another tale,

but its spirit lives on in a different guise

now the cottage lighting is a bit more stable

with his hee-haw lantern on the bedside table.

MY BROTHER'S FINGER

My younger brother was playing with a penknife,
an old rusty blade he found on a building site,
when the bastard thing snapped shut, slicing his finger deep,
prompting a panic-scream, tears and a look of sheer fright.


From the site, across the school playground, over the Glen Road,
even a bad detective could have followed his trail of red,
through the bus shelter, down steps, under the pylon,
up the path that led to our back door and Mummy's first-aid.


The finger end was bloody red-raw and dangling,
oddly pointing both straight ahead and downwards, his white
wet face shaking from frequent involuntary sob-sucks
while mother calmed him saying it would be alright.


Today the finger is years older, well-healed but slightly bent,
a  souvenir from a time we played, tumbled and gallivanted.
He does not refer to it. No one seems to notice or care about
the finger's funny shape - like childhood perhaps, taken for granted.

8 SAN FRANCISCO HAIKUS

1
TransAmerica
spike hidden by lowish mist 
- a softer skyline


2
artists exhibit
in the buzz of Union Square
- still life, unstill life


3
people gazing down
from Macy's cheesecake cafe
like eighth floor snipers


4
at John's Grill chophouse
we share Dashiel Hammett's
and Sam Spades dinner


5
City Lights bookstore
quieter now than the howling
of the sixties beat


6 
beggar's cardboard sign -
"I will be honest today,
I just need a beer"


7
Latino band plays
on a cold city morning
- warm tunes and hot licks


8
"Alcatraz never
did nothin' for nobody"
- con reminisces

MEG MARIGOLDS

Old Meg she was a cleaner

washing walls and floors

like her mop she was old and ragged

from a million scrubbing chores.

Her arsenal was a bucket,

a chamois, a duster, a broom

her aroma was disinfectant,

her B.O. could clear a room.

She sang as she washed the tiles

with a frog lodged in her throat

She whistled a piercing tune

with no danger of hitting a note.

Her breakfast was a fag and coffee

her lunch was a coffee and fag

She was skinny as an HB pencil

with her flesh heading south in a sag.

But the work years took their toll

there was no way she could duck it,

old Meg slipped on a skiddy floor

and finally kicked the bucket.

NED THE STORYTELLER

We would go to the old man,
children in awe, to ask him questions
and off he'd go with a story,
true or false, we didn't care.

He had his way with words,
inflections and drama,
whispers and facial expressions,
measured blinks, scary stare.

The bottom step was our place,
where five or six kids sat,
he perched on the top step,
smelly pipe and floppy hat.

Stories of childhood, of school, of war,
told by the man we knew as Ned,
but reality hit us hard one summer,
when we heard our storyteller was dead.

We would go to the steps, children in grief,
and picture the man alert but frail,
he left us suddenly but he left us a gift
a love of language, a love of a tale.

MORNING HAZE

The gauze of dawn

mists my eyes to semi-blindness,

the fine rain drizzle

dims my fading vision,

the window’s condensation

obscures nature’s outlines,

the rough-edged world out there

is blurred and hazy.

I rub my face to no avail

for all before me is vague,

distant, dreek and dim,

hopeless,  desperate and grim.

I should have gone to Specsavers.