Southampton poet Alan Gilbert.: 2011

Friday 30 December 2011

The Saturday Kid

I was the Saturday kid

Who lived for the movies,

That magic arena

Where fantasies play.

I rode on the prairie

And dived in the ocean,

Then stayed in a rapture

The rest of the day.

I swung through the trees

When I heard Tarzan calling,

Those ivory hunters

Were landing their plane.

But with moments to spare

All the elephants joined us,

And the baddies slunk off

Empty handed again.

I was out on the prairie

With the posse behind me,

Those outlaws were running

From robbing the mail.

I rode up behind them

And fired my pistol,

To a man they surrendered

Then I locked them in jail.

And as the house lights came on

We all rushed for the exit,

Still riding my stallion

I was out on my own.

I flew with the hawk man

And sailed after pirates,

A kid went to the movies

But a hero went home.

Thursday 29 December 2011

The Silence was Bliss

Tami and Jason were born to be lovers

Met in the park in games with the others,

When he first saw her smile

Their story began

That night in his bedroom

The images ran.

All heat and confusion

No sense to all this.

His thoughts were exciting

The silence was bliss.

As Tami saw him her heart started falling

Romantic by mature her future was calling,

As she wrote in her diary

Alone in her room,

She drew at the bottom

A bride with a groom.

Then she drifted to sleep

Still thinking of this,

Her dreams were of loving

The silence was bliss.

Love is a flower that grows in the sun

One Friday in May the two became one,

They spent time by the ocean

Their first time away,

To the rhythm of breakers

Two bodies at play.

When sleep came upon them

In one final kiss,

As night closed around them

The silence was bliss.

Now in the rooms they rented from others

Furniture given by fathers and mothers.

The world closes upon them

Soon making demands

There is industry round them

But none wanting hands.

Stung by every refusal

He would rage about this,

When he slept from the drinking

The silence was bliss.

Whisper

Amid the urban turmoil

Of a rush hour city street

A cacophony of diesels

Joins a mass of stomping feet.

Mix the rattling departure

Of the elevated train,

As the local band convention

Starts out marching once again.

There's the rolling of the thunder

Country music from the stores,

Heavy hammers of the builders

Who are laying office floors.

Overhead the jets are flying

Leaving vapour in the sky

And a chapter of the Angels

Ride a hundred Harleys by

As you shelter in a doorway

From the racket and the rain,

I can hear across an ocean

You are whispering my name.

Where Are They Now

Where are they now the brave men

The strong men that built the world,

The gruff and seldom shave men

When industry was first unfurled.

What happened to the real men

The steel men who toiled hard,

The boiler men and riveters

Who built the liners in the yard.

Where did they go those fine men

The mine men from underground,

Those stoic never whine men

Who tunnelled where the coal was found.

Did you know the navvy men

Who laboured long for little pay,

To etch the lines across the map

For rails we travel on today.

They have all gone those old men

And cold men to early graves,

Those cheaply bought and sold men

Who lived as little more than slaves.

Now who is left to hail them?

Bewail them in chronicle,

Those hero’s from the old days

Whose monument should never fall.

From my book:

Love Is A Dreamer.

Alice in the Afternoon

Alice in the morning

Was a foil for the sunrise,

Her eyes were filled with splinters

Of another sleepers dream.

She looks down on a city

And is tired of her future,

Knowing she is drowning

In the overwhelming stream.

Alice in the afternoon

Found wrinkles in a mirror,

She brushed her hair with tortoiseshell

And felt the sun go down.

Sometime in the evening

She started into cleaning,

With dusters she kept tearing

From her virgin wedding gown.

Alice in her rocking chair

Winnowing her memories,

She's finding pain and gemstones

In grains that she has panned.

Somewhere in the long age

A moments playing over,

Then fading with the music

Alice reached to take his hand.