The Jeer (2025) - Poetry Collection
The following poems were written over the course of 2025 for an unpublished poetry chapbook.
The Jeer
Oh I hate you and love you and see so unclear,
Because you are the life and I’m simply the jeer
Of the reaper who meets you breathing your last breath,
You have a long way to go yet, I’ve not got long left.
Bluff King Hal
Black bloat the blow-boat our Bluff King Hal,
His handsome potentate high heaven ere seen;
So sightly his slight seams of silk auburn hair,
Held fair Francoise barbered, effete-faced & graced;
For Arthur replacing, enough his endowments,
Crowned-cranium kingly his high hymnody;
Believe without caution: ‘fore phantasm felt him,
Our august King Henry rivaled the round world.
But frank was the fortune & frank was our man,
Foot slipped a black slipper off catgut hap’stance,
As courtiers caught caution & copied the crown,
The black hat- & white plume-surmounted clowns;
& frank was the fortune & frank was the frown,
Father infecund, foul seamstress he found–
Then off with the cradle & crash the man down–
A humour befallen, fall foal to the ground;
& pony & gelding & charger & mare–
But fillies aplenty remained in our care–
As black bruises bolded on shapeliest calf,
The Church would last see it now bloodied ablast.
Sanguine ten days passed with sharp suffering sore,
Sometime without speaking, scored senseless & white;
Sweat doctrines of fever & laws in his languish,
A leg all-indicted, the leg of napes’ anguish;
But still goes the blow-boat & buttress the shore,
Master sergeant-surgeon of England for sure.
Carry on the carriage & cry we no more,
For Marian Seymour a Master has born;
Yet sacrificed Christ-like her life for the child,
The tears of old England come back for the while,
Like traitors returning to York tykes & tell:
Of some jolly stirring on turning our child.
Vengeful in spirit & physic combined,
So: ‘Off With Their Heads!’ in this kingdom sublime;
A country where cut be corrupt noble airs,
Which tumble & mumble, then stare their last stares;
& frank was the hour & frank was the sigh,
But still to a marvel did Coppernose dine;
The black bloat of no hope stopped no boat ‘fore time,
& only when ready did the octad die.
Bartholomew beckons by humourless gates,
Remitting, forgiving, this great potentate:
So mourn mighty masses & ‘member our pal,
His majesty’s spirit,
God knows that he did it,
And all he could give it,
Our Bluff King Hal.
The Struggle
You did not live your life in vain
No, comrade, not in vain,
Though vanity remains the same
And struggling the name.
No freedom from your dying lips
No whispers won the day,
But I know I can tell you this:
You did not live in vain.
The spiders still will build their webs
To catch the witless why,
The lions will still eat tonight
The bison will still die,
The greetings will be fleeting
And we’ll try to say goodbyes,
I’ll still be heading off to work
I still will grow more tired,
The poets will still write their verse,
Musicians strum the lyre,
The lovers will still kiss beneath
The glimmer of the fire,
The children will still giggle
When read stories in their rooms,
The doctors will still treat us
And the patients will still loom,
We will drink at their parties
And at times like now we’ll grieve,
The faithful will still go to church
And struggle ‘gainst their dreams.
The struggle was for love my friend;
And love is still the same,
The struggle was well-fought my friend,
You did not live in vain.
*The Battle of Severndroog *
Here are the bars of a cage that were open
Pitched ‘round the castle, ‘round castle we saved.
O what were you dreaming you charity woman,
You volunteer woman, when councillors caved?
To clean you, young woman, whose youth has gown old,
Renew and improve you, all painted and shaved:
A campaign successful, the people set free,
Who fought to correct you - community-made,
Community-paid, trade your Lord for a million,
Your shackles are open for public display.
O what are you dreaming, what greater expense?
You cost nearly all the small funds that we raised!
No cracks in your walls now, we’ll fill them back up –
We’ll cover this age and we’ll cover the rage
Of a lady still dreaming ‘bout what she would dream,
Dreaming what she'd dream if she were not a cage.
Het Meest Ware Lied
bayed a boat upturned on grass
by empty barns and broken glass
deep ditch a pit dug in a field
‘midst peat and pitter-patter feet,
pitter-patter, one by three,
and youngest of the three is she:
the loudest, lord, ‘zu laute, Taube’,
meeker mother, brothers lead.
louder Taube decks the dinghy
dug within the dewey ditch,
shouts with all her freckled fury
tunes from playground singing skips,
numerating newer words,
still yet to learn this younger tongue,
she plucked from out the sacred streams
of private peepers,
whispering teachers,
poorly-mannered passer by’s,
and lettered signs on motorways,
assorted singing syllables,
a babble to her untrained ear
but newsense spoken loud and clear
‘neath heavy skies, ’top heavy deeps,
as mist that drapes the rolling scene,
the echoes of a babble-cry
that’s known to only angels’ eyes;
to brothers’: opportune to teach
to mother’s: innocent and sweet
to strangers’: entertaining laughs
but here, just in the earshot of
the silence first to speak to her
in gusts and wafts of untapped fuel,
now set alight by simple seed:
the proudly sung meest ware lied.
The Translator
A room filled with skeletons,
And she’d made it,
She was one of them,
She’d done it, for mum and dad,
She told them over the phone,
1,812 miles away.
And her compatriot spoke the same language.
And she cried on her shoulder in the same language.
But she was a skeleton now,
She could help her now.
And the skeletons smiled,
And reassured her that they understood her language.
But they wouldn’t speak a word of it.
So her mouth hurt.
Like it was burning.
But she kept it shut, drank some coffee.
Something could be done.
Funeral Poem
When I consider where my light was spent
In those days whence I learnt to colour-see,
Those days I still return to when I need
To find myself, when lost in life’s descents,
A stubbornness prevails that can’t be bent,
A figure guiding me from street to street,
An outstretched hand to hold to as we speak,
Grandma to whom I owe a joyful rent.
Where sunlight flashed like fairies through the trees,
And gold-creased lapis danced in marbled jade;
Where ruby bricks, splashed wet, had cooled my toes,
A-toddle round pond lilies and bronze leaves;
Her little dog beside me in the shade;
For this I owe: her love I know as home.
O, counterfeit sight matriarch
I: Answers
Will flickering rain e’er wash the sores,
E’er wash the sores, e’er wash the sores,
Will flickering rain e’er wash the sores
Before it turns to wine?
O, counterfeit sight matriarch
Reduced now to a silty stream
Of fine black ash, from last hurrah
All-burned-out as a distant star,
Have you no answer for me?
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
Your hand in mine, and mine in yours,
Took me to joys I’ve long forgot
But live on, in my visions stored.
I asked you then so many times,
Back then, grandma, a searching lot,
‘Til one day we ran out of time.
I started asking bigger questions,
Started seeking bigger answers.
Losing all the language that you gave me in those years;
You made me smile and laugh–
Though don’t remember how you did–
Still my heart smiles wide for it, but mouths-out only tears.
O, did I love you, then;
O, tell me, was I gracious, then?
Won’t you answer one last time,
And lend your hand again?
Can you tell me where and when?
II: Precenting the Liner
Flicker drip to beads that creep slyly down damsel-neck;
Cold to touch, the ballast-bound bar by the rocking deck.
And clang and bang her footsteps rang, a giggle through the mist,
Daddy on the other side, all-veiled by steam and hiss.
Course was set to anywhere away from British rain,
Escape the muddle, rubble, dust; escape the London chains;
From shattered glass on roads which ripped up children as they skipped,
And mothers cried down streets to get tea down their little lips.
Crickle-crack of fire snap, up chimney, plumes of smoke,
And sepia she’d laughed with him at wartime tales and jokes,
And mother sat in silence, eyelids warm, shut by the flames,
‘Til kettle-whistle steamed and filled the room with vapour ghosts.
I see this from another liner, faint through thickest smog,
And cold, wanting to head inside, to warmth beyond the fog,
And seagulls swooped and stole my chips, I ran, I ran away,
And never would I see again that girl behind the rain.
III: The Maighdean na Tuinne
To Britain, turn, resume their stations,
Merry mother, father, maiden
Pretty as a jimsonweed,
Pretty as could be.
Water lodged deep in the ear,
And church bells called, but no one hears;
Sails blindly in her daydreams
Past the hedgehogs and the Robbins.
Steamer, steamer, nearly there,
A puffing bruiser without care
To fragile girl alighting with
The rain streamed down her face.
Distracted crash, crack, cramp and fold
Of metal crossing, so we’re told,
A car, an iceberg, kicked her down:
With clang and bang it rang, O
Bloodied, blown, and nearly dead,
Her eye dyed deep a paisley red,
Survived, but could not see with depth
From that point, glass and metal kept.
And all a tale, a fair young tale,
Told trouble by a sister high
Upon tides of adventures never sailed,
’Twas just a nasty boy
Whose fingers pricked and poked the eye
The little eye from sight to blind,
And fell over the bulkhead
Into roaring, salty seas,
Transfigured into Maighdean mhara;
Anarch swims; husbands; fights;
She raised her weapons, pulled on hair
And clambered down–’til anger-drowned–
Her liner somewhere wrecked and sinked
Where silence reigned and childhoods winked.
Help me, Maighdean.
Maighdean now, the spirit wet,
Wash, sea foam fills the marble steps,
In cracks the parish priest neglects,
And few miles north the Maighdean hopes.
Her nails caught flesh; washed-up in ropes,
Where silence reigns and children cope.
(She spent the rest of earthly life with marble for an eye,
And maybe could not see the things that she had left behind.
Her daughter won’t be at her funeral.
Dare I sing about that eye,
That marbled sights, though I am blind?)
IV: Song of the Marble Eye
O, counterfeit sight matriarch
Embedded in the silty streams
Of fine black ash, from last hurrah
All-burned-out as a distant star,
Come to me with triple gaze
So I may search my ancient days
And breathe the incense of the seas;
Sing tunes caught on the ocean breeze:
‘Soak, slip-stream of silver shiver,
Still her on her smoke-stack stay,
Stowaway in shipyard, sticker,
Stinger in the steelwork bay.
Buried blaze bemoans and bellows,
Breathless, blots the breastless breast,
Breach-burst burrow, broke-down, blown,
And backslid up the backwash, deft.
Damned deathwatch, drat, dwindle, dying,
Dragnet down and daughter drawn,
Drawhook dangles, drifting, drying,
Dreamboat dead in drizzled dawn.’
‘So, down with this deceitful dream!
Yes drown it!’ Grandma shouts at me,
A mermaid, shipwrecked, trying to teach,
Moored, startled, struck, and out of reach.
What can she see, who can she meet,
When, shimm’ring at shore’s milky sheets,
None come to greet the boy whose tears
Soak soft his empty weeks?
One only needs to track the stars,
And wash in this shy silver stream,
Thy bloody gills and scratches shrill
To find him, standing still.
Retrace the trail and sail on back,
Hold on to peace and drink it, black,
Engulf your soul, forgiveness waits,
For this I pray, O, pray and pray,
Dare I say, O, dare I say,
O, dare I say I love you?
‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?
My hour has not yet come.’
Hassle
He wouldn’t stop tinkering with the damned thing,
And thought somehow he’d get it to work,
But it was ancient technology,
It wasn’t worth the hassle.