The Parable of the Talents

'England is mine, and it owes me a living,'

-The Smiths

Joe totted up his net worth on

A dog-eared restaurant napkin.

His date was twenty minutes late

And he was hardly happy.

Joe totted up what he could give

To a vast indifferent world.

To woo uncaring multitudes

He totted up his worth.

And writing on the napkin’s right

In a cramped and nervous scrawl:

His virtues, talents, modest skills.

On the left his faults and flaws.

He started with the positive;

The things that he could do;

Like mediocre portraiture.

He used to play the flute.

But he quit karate needlessly

In a fit of childish rage.

The novel he was born to write

Never stretched beyond a page.

His French: no more than a bald Bonjour.

His verse was pretty bad.

He felt like the man who must multiply gold

But instead hid his charge in the sand.

His heart kept time in a sickly thump.

The sweat sprang from his skin

And left damp marks on the feeble start

Of his feeble offering.

He crunched the list in his clammy hand.

‘This isn’t all of me!’

‘But,’ said the absent place of his absent date,

‘This is all that I can see.’

Palm Sunday

Sunday.

The trees swallowed me up

And cogitated me softly,

With the leaves falling down in a vertical march,

Like the weeping of trees, a procession of palms.

They were not gold

But pale and brown,

Though far away

They shone like stones.

So as you were sinless you cast them at me

To bloody my body with loss of belief.

Now nothing remains of the lies that I weaved,

But I don't want to see.

So I shed my skin with muffled cracks

A constant, gentle breaking

And shift this flaking, wasting corpse

In one painful act of waking.

Now turn your eyes away from me

For I don't want to see.

And take your tongue and bury it

My covered ears still bleed.

And take this light away from me

For I don't want to see.

For I don't want to see.

Consall

When you’re alone the wind takes on a character,

Mingled with the road that could almost be wind too.

And birds.

One a blunted pinprick,

The next a creaking door,

And then a whining nasal choke

Pleads that they chirp no more.

The stream chuckles quickly and softly

Censored by a sharp avian tut.

Across the stream, the light is green

Amidst the trees, at awkward angles

Aloofly offering leaves for gifts.

But not the vine: high-diving,

Hitting the absent water with even gestures of green.

Climb higher. A tree is felled:

Its fallen branches parallel.

Too straight somehow.

Another bows its mossy arm

To wish the ramblers well.

The ivied storybook oak

Looks perfect in the damp.

Its smooth and well-considered curves

Stand proud in a kingdom of dishevelled ferns.

When you’re alone the wind takes on a character,

Mingled with the rain that could almost be wind too.

Wetley Common

Canned chorus of barks

Rattle to a crescendo.

Behind the trees

The kennel echoes.

The howls subside.

A cockerel crows.

Static of tyres

On slipping stones.

The air exhales

A distant gushing breeze.

A hammer cries

In dull metallic shrieks.

The road beyond

Sighs a swelling, nasal groan.

Half formed words

Of children dance below.

In the relative calm

A cow clears its throat

Turns to the horizon

And boldly lows.

Stranger on a Train

You drink the world

Like old men sip their beers,

Heads bowed in

Surreptitious swigs.

Those deep-set eyes

That widen through the years

Sit proud in

Caves of vigilance,

Shadowed with purpled

Folds of sallow skin;

Bags for life

Filled to the brim.

So did your cool, unsparing glance

See callousness and arrogance?

Armistice

‘Tis better to have loved and lost/ Than never to have loved at all’ 

Alfred Lord Tennyson

5am and I can feel

Your weight around my neck;

And every step was torture,

Thoughts a bullet to the head;

Hurt signposted for miles around,

I loathed the dusty track;

And tears squirmed out of every pore,

I dreamt of turning back;

We were drowning in our feelings

And we’d lost where we began;

You said, ‘We’ll go our separate ways’.

It felt like a release;

But when it came to letting go

I only felt defeat;

A precious flower, yet to bloom,

Was wilting in the heat;

The weed of resignation

Would surely prove too much.

If you’d consent to strangle me

I’d shiver at your touch.

Your fingers laced around my neck

Could only make me blush.

Better far to love our hurt

Than hurt for want of you.

And we will hurt each other

Yet we need each other too.

I’m gentlest when I’m with you

But our minds are black and blue.

I will not risk a rupture

Though an end may find us soon.

So I will end this armistice

Though we bare our hearts to wreck.

5am and I can feel

Your weight around my neck.

Coffee

‘Maybe you should just drink a lot less coffee

And never ever watch the Ten O’Clock News’ –Regina Spektor

Leaning like italics;

Heading God knows where.

A fizzling core demanding more

And crumpling with its care.

A sizzling shiver in my hands

And thighs like fireworks.

These limbs are spitting sparklers

So you best be wearing gloves.

Now I'm composed of dominoes;

Disaster’s in my lines.

My structural integrity

Could snap at any time.

And with one push I’d feel the rush

Of swift impending doom.

Just one more breath and little death,

Emerging something new.

Another sip and I am filled

With all that I could be;

Like love without the nasty bits.

All possibilities

Drift down like sparks in autumn parks

When the rocket’s had its day.

It kills me with its climax

As the caffeine melts away.