SONGS OF YOU

This is more a song lyric than a poem.

Songs of you come easy

The words and music make me cry

Songs of you come easy

It’s been so long I wonder why

The years still cast a haunting shadow

Showing you in silhouettes

Still without you where would I

Have found he time to have regrets

For every moment looking back

Two lie wasted on the floor

And though I see your face at times

I can’t pin my hopes on closing doors

Songs of you come easy 

the words and music make me cry

Songs of you come easy 

it’s been so long I wonder why

It all comes down to loving arms

That hold the past and won’t let go

There’s not a lover in the world

Who doesn’t know the way it goes

I’ll hold the pen and let it write

‘Til I run out of things to say

Then I’ll close the book and try

To put all my thoughts of you away

8 x POP MUSIC HAIKUS

PROCOL HARUM
Dancing salty dog
skipping a light fandango
wearing a homburg


ELVIS COSTELLO
Hire the detectives,
man in specs is watching you,
his aim may be true


PAUL SIMON
Boy in a bubble,
rhymin', hearts, bones, Graceland, saints
and water trouble


LITTLE RICHARD
The guy can't help it,
Lucille, Molly shake his room
with a wop bam boom


REM
Nightswimmers in tune,
sleeping sidewinders tonight
dream of man on moon


HOT CHOCOLATE
Sex thing, little miss,
she could have been a lady,
started with a kiss


THE HOLLIES
Pigtails and freckles,
Carrie-Anne at bus stop with 
Jennifer Eccles


RINGO STARR
It don't come easy,
beaucoups of blues, boogaloo,
Thomas goes woo-woo

ON SUICIDE

He seemed so happy, content,
a "together guy" his friends would say,
life and soul, he'd light up a room,
laugh and joke, give you the time of day.


Nice wife, nice kids, nice home,
great job going well, no sign
that something was troubling him,
something that made him cross a line.


Sometimes we can have it all,
physical, emotional and material stuff,
but sometimes something's missing
and having it all is not enough.

BREATH OF A NATURALIST

This is another poem attributed to my creation Hamish Sheaney, possibly spoofing the rural notions of a poet with a similiar name.......

Between his purple lips, a piece of straw,

chewed and sucked, a mulch of tasty-tangs,

in his molars, remnants of a cabbage dinner,

green specks against his yellowed-enamel fangs.

His scrumpy-filmed tongue laps saliva,

ready for the next gob-spit on the dirt,

he aims for a dragonfly sunbathing

and zaps it with a hiss of deadly spurt.

His lunch is cheese and scallions in a bap,

strong pickles and a string of sausage links,

two jugs of rocket-fuel, four-star hooch

and an afternoon collapsed in forty-winks.

He rouses from his nap and yawns with gusto,

belching out a cloud of rancid breath,

all animals overpowered by halitosis

stagger round on the brink-edge-ledge of death.

Between his purple lips, a piece of straw

wilts from the rank aftershock of every breath he’ll draw.

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.