Looking For Sticks

Let’s go looking for sticks!

Let’s go looking.

For sticks!

If anyone asks we’ll pretend that we’re kids

We’ll say, “We’re just nine year olds, 

To whom nothing is barred, and

I think you’ll find, that’s what 

We’re doing in your garden.”

We kids can go anywhere

That’s one of the rules

And… he’s calling the cops….

He’s not so easily fooled

There’s no joy for us here

He’s seen through our disguise

He knows that we’re really two middle aged guys

Our quest for some sticks must continue elsewhere

And it’s odd, when you’re older

How people will stare

As you crawl on the ground, examining twigs

Discarding them, mostly, for not being so big

I want one that’s special, and bendy, and strange

I just want to hold it, I just want to play

With a branch that could work as a gun or a sword

A stick that I can, for no reason, adore

Let’s run through the fields and the snickets and yards

Let’s get dirt on our faces

And stay out ‘til it’s dark

Let’s go looking for sticks

And lose track of the day

And then, when it’s hometime

Let’s throw them away

There’ll be more sticks tomorrow

It’s the searching that’s good

Let’s keep looking, forever

For those beautiful fragments of wood

Lopsided

I have, of late, become uneven

Physically, I think

There’s disparity in the way I move

My arms, the way I 

Smile, the way I blink

I’m lopsided, 

Non-perpendicular

An asymmetrical reponse

To matters regular and peculiar

I peer into mirrors

Pestering them to reveal

The nature of the imbalance I perceive

And they would know, 

Mirrors

Being, by nature, creatures of

Exacting synchronicity

But when I twist 

And flux 

And stretch

Hoping to catch 

A vagary in performance

In the version of myself the glass reflects

The mirror fails to report

Any such infraction

Right is left

And left is right

If there’s a difference,
I can’t catch one

Except, perhaps

A growing schism

Between the fractured lines 

Of the old man’s face reflected

And the younger looks

And brighter eyes

My foolish, naive heart

Expected

Unexplored Continents

Colours on my fingernails

Juniper blue and Christmas red

Painted by you, as the fire mutters and cracks

And the Winter sky holds the promise of snow

The lights on the tree blossom

As the room grows dark around us

My fingers spread, my hands still

The varnish glistens

Settles and holds me

I am transformed and wonder

At these tiny, fingertip maps of different worlds

Flame and fairy lights reflected in my nails

Here on this December night

Days later

At home

The paint is chipped

And scuffed and worn

The smooth cartography of your work fragmented

To reveal rough shapes

Unexplored continents

Diminishing fragments that I pick slowly apart

Soon the crimson fire and indigo night skies are gone

Leaving the clear, empty canvas

Of my unvarnished nails

Of this new year

Does She Still Think of Me?

Does she still think of me?

If she does, well that’s weird

But since we’re already here

Could I make a request?

That the man in her thoughts

Is a man who was sort of like me

But substantially less of a mess

Not the rampaging idiot, far from his best

Who would go on to cause her a world of distress

Often too drunk and always too proud

And obsessed with the sound

Of his voice and the parts of her body he wasn’t allowed

Let the manifestation of me in her mind

Be a better, more sensitive, much taller guy

A man who tried harder than I did to please her

A man with some patience, less easily riled

I know we’re talking some kind of selective amnesia

But could the man she considers

Cut a worthier figure

Than that shallow, impetuous, arrogant child

Let the flickering fragments of me in her head

Be devoid of the idiot things that I said

Stick some nostalgic music on a black and white montage

Of the handful of moments

That the wheel span to ‘romance’

And I managed emotions

That I didn’t treat cheaply, or see as a weakness

Or sacrifice to my genius for sabotage

If she still thinks of me let it be without pain

Let there be tucked away in the folds of her brain

A man who’s not sulking or cheating or worse

May she think of my face as it was when we first started

Smiling together, when we started to click

Of a time when I acted much less of a dick

Of a time, pretty brief

When she was all I could see

And I wondered and hoped

She was thinking of me

Unlikely

A poem for my friend and colleague Tony Baker, who passed away just before Christmas.

Tony Baker should be here by now

Something has interrupted his walk to work

He has most likely become enchanted

By an unusual conglomeration of clouds

Or a pleasing juxtaposition of traffic lights and trees

Or a particularly shiny pebble

I receive a text. He will be here at 10.17 precisely. 

I find this unlikely

Tony Baker is at the front of the stage

His arms a kaleidoscope, his face ecstatic wonder

The band behind him are playing a song but that’s just a sideshow

To this whirlwind at the front, in his suit, the Tasmanian devil

An impressionist painting, all swirls and shapes

I play guitar, standing in his mad sprawling shadow

I wonder if he’ll start singing in the right place

I find it unlikely

Tony Baker is interviewing me

Or at least he should be - he is not here yet

I am waiting in a room, in a suit, rehearsing my facts about the history of cinema

A door opens and he swings in, loping sideways through the doorframe

He looks surprised and delighted to see me, 

He’s either forgotten I was coming or he’s just surprised and delighted about everything

He interviews me. It goes thus:

“Can you start on Wednesday?”

I nod. 

He is thrilled. He leaves.

I sit for a second, full of unused thoughts about cinematography and the Hollywood studio system

He bursts back in for a second. He’s thought of another question.

“Can you teach?”

I nod. I can. 

“Bonus!”

The whirlwind departs. 

I wonder if he makes more sense once you know him

I find it unlikely

Tony Baker moves through the office like time lapse photography

A series of images caught in light, 

Staccato moments, too fast and strange to capture

Like a young boy in an older man’s frame, 

Startled and excited at the length of his gangly limbs

Or an old man revisiting his youth,

Enjoying the warmth and the joy and knowing that

The things around are there to be seen, and enjoyed, 

and looked at, and loved

Tony Baker should be here by now

Paint fades

Songs end,

Buildings are torn down

Cups of hot water get cold

Sometimes memories drift apart

Maybe these will

I find it unlikely