I never intended to be on this stage

getting into a such a rage,

no, not at my age

I haven’t got the courage

I’m a writer, a sage

a poet of the page

better off backstage

and I’m no longer teenage,

or on a minimum wage

moaning about my baggage

going out on a rampage

causing lots of damage

ending up in a police cage

You see I’m nearing old age

sorting out my dotage

looking for a cottage

in a sleepy village

paying off the mortgage

clearing out my birdcage

moaning about postage

play the odd game of cribbage

down at the vicarage

sprucing up my image

a man of serious vintage

but I followed all the signage

now I’m being held hostage

here on this pub’s stage

spouting out this garbage

it’s a bloody outrage!

 

© Graham Sherwood 08/2018

 

Beware strange men in lycra

who colonize our path

riding carbon fibre horses

(quatre de front)

to escalate our wrath

 

They’re easily identified

in their peletonic host

bright highly-sponsored torsos

(cuisses de gammon)

seeing who can sweat the most

 

They swoop in slick formation

a multi-coloured snake

in search of hapless cyclists

(velos a l’ancienne)

left in their reckless wake

 

A supersonic phalanx

of helmets, gloves and cleats

measuring their pulse-rates

(qu’est-ce que c’est merde Strava?)

on infinitesimally small seats

 

With narrow skinny arses

arms and legs of knotted string

they breeze up hills like they’re not there

(hors categorie)

descending on the wing

 

So beware strange men in lycra

especially if they’re chubby

they sure as hell aren’t Geraint Thomas

(lanterne rouge)

just someone’s obese hubby!

 

© Graham Sherwood 08/2018

 

Spinnaker set to west

my paper galleon of a life

lurches towards the storm clouds

that must surely carry rain

 

Grumbling and groaning

the once carefully folded timbers

tossed over six decades and six

begin to let water.

 

I lie to myself for reassurance

but secretly wonder if the sheets

would make a serviceable lifeboat

or merely a half-decent shroud.

 

Time’s impatient waves slather at my keel

baying dogs licking and clawing

determined to drag down their prey

as ink bleeds freely off the figurehead.

 

In this tormented reverie

reminiscences of shipmates

safely coloured in the past

whistle through the rigging ropes.

 

Those proud shanty cameos

of yesteryear’s daring adventures

crystalize the salinity of the main

and wet my eyes.

 

I bid departing ships

fair weather.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood  08/2018

 

I had the “After the Goldrush” jeans”

patches on the arse, leather flared inserts

a railway coat over a Levi shirt,

your father, Polish, called me a tramp.

I can still feel the reassuring weight

of your finger hooked in a beltloop

warm arm around my waist,

God we were so young, so brave.

To my star-crossed eyes

you were Jean Shrimpton

a potato sack would have shone on you

legs that stretched to heaven

hair brushing your hips.

I took you home on a Sunday morning

wearing Saturday night’s decadence

now out of place

wrinkled and bed-worn,

your mother asking where you’d slept

me choking on my tea,

as you nodded in my direction

everything was cool,

and I knew there and then that it would work.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 07/2018

The high stools closest to the window

were the most highly-prized

perched teetering on the end of the physics lab bench

I often felt like a condemned pirate awaiting the drop.

Bad enough to be stifling hot

school blazers had to stay on, ties too

and the intricate secrets of

the coefficient of thermal expansion

persistently avoided my half-hearted grasp.

But at half past two, every Wednesday,

on the netball court outside room 10

there she was

Lesley, the school goddess

first one out the changing rooms as usual,

spray-on shorts half the size of anyone else’s

two or three bounces nearer

and then a pause,

now no more than ten feet away

ball between her knees

pin between pursed lips

capturing some errant wisps of hair

midriff bare

an unobtainable beauty

a fourth-year, me a pitiable second.

Amid the daydream of her pert breasts

those long perfectly shapely legs

angelic face and knowing smile

it dawned on me

there and then

locked in for eternity,

how the size of an object changes

with a change in temperature,

measuring the fractional change in size

per degree change in temperature

at a constant pressure.

 

Thank you Leslie!

 

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 07/2018

 

I shredded another box of your stuff today,

just papers, business, statements and the like,

nothing personal.

Your affairs, amongst an angry whirring drone

fall like snowflakes into a bucket,

a cross-cut life.

Its going in a trench, beneath manure

and this season’s runner beans,

chaff and horseshit turned into veg.

Saved from this cutting fate,

a neatly-folded fire insurance certificate

from the Prudential dated 1949,

priced 4s 6d.

It wouldn’t buy a box of matches today.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 4/2012

I remember we met, almost colliding

in a doorway,

too close to be gallant,

your glance initially defensive

was framed with embarrassed irritation

washing over me like spilt wine,

at best inconvenient,

or worse

messy enough to navigate around with care.

 

Those young earnest eyes

orbiting in front of mine for days after,

morphing chameleon-like

cautiously adventurous,

then daringly fearful,

sometimes optimistic whilst expecting

nothing but trust from the echo.

 

Were it possible

for us to meet again

in fifty years or so, those eyes

would still be bright, tinged

with a schoolgirl naiveté, and

bristling with a knowing

that I’ve never forgotten

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 08/2017

The milk blue swell

topped with silver crowns

breathes long a heavy sigh,

nudging the reef at Varley Head,

beer foam swamps the Shillingstones

roaring into its craggy gugs.

Three skiffs lie beached on dog leash chains

whilst unleashed dogs, seek

piddle smells to sniff,

bored grockles peer in tiny trinket shops

and follow pasty smells through the lanes.

These silent streets keep echoes warm

The Bark House nets, the Dolphin’s ale

and ghosts of shanties whispered low

swirl around old salted stones

like chimney smoke.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 5/2011

 

Crumpled beneath troubled cumulus

the island

a badly shaken tablecloth

lies carelessly thrown,

its frayed edge chines

dip their hems into the sea.

 

This wight,

a diamond crumb

harshly torn,

ripped from Hampshire’s

fractured skirts,

crouches wind-blown-wild

as witches knickers like spinnakers

flap loudly in the trees.

 

To quench this tempest

dragon’s teeth needles

slather in wild surf

and flippantly percolate the spume

skyward

in frittered foam cloth

 

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 03/2017

 

she is river child

bathing naked

in the current of life

 

writhing, meandering,

her languid unclothed dance

lazily brushes bank to bank

 

inundating soft boundaries

over-spilling, foundering, re-shaping

before returning to her course

 

in this tortuous foment

naïve, exposed, laid bare

she is river child

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 07/2018