Poems
A Bobby Dazzler for Alan Brownjohn
Although I won’t be there for your party it makes me feel good to think of those times your turned up in a suit which was always magnificently classy.
You were the poet who dazzled and shone. In fact there wasn’t anyone who ever managed to look so cool and arty.
It’s your ninetieth birthday party. I’d like to sing an old-fashioned song. I’ve brought my lyre and i’ve brought my lute.
Here’s hoping you have umpteen more occasions to be a tad dissolute.
We can’t wait to see you in your birthday suit.
Published in Please Don’t Bomb the Ghost of My Brother– Salt (2023)
Trolley Man
When someone asks, Could I have a sandwich with some cheese in it? I will say No sandwiches today!
And if anyone should ask for coffee I will say, Hot water not working. Shocking, isn’t it?
I will wheel my trolley from one end of the train to the other, smiling magnificently at everyone.
And when a lady asks, I don’t suppose you’ve got a piece of shortbread some lovely, lovely shortbread?
I will say, No my dear all the lovely shortbread has gone.
Published in Heat Wave – Salt (2020)
Hips and Haws
I’m in a garden in north London, the wind is blowing. It’s full of trees and weeds and Sweet Willams.
A single butterfly comes and goes. There’s a shaft of sunlight too, breaking through.
Don’t make me go to the end of the garden. The trees are full of poets, whispering behind the leaves.
Stanley Kunitz smiles and rakes the grass.
How did you get here Stanley? Blown over by a westerly, he says. He wipes a hand and shrugs. Death is cruel and death is beautiful. It’s part of the story. We always knew it would happen. Now it’s happening.
Don’t over think it. See it as a curtain call, the crowning encore. You should congratulate yourself you didn’t take your own life. Plenty of good people have, he says.
Those who live for years, whose minds unravel, as they will – their words are seed-hoards which burst and scatter fetching up in gardens both imaginary and real – like hiipsters, hobos, freight hoppers, hips and haws.
He takes a cooking apple from the tree and lobs it to me.
Published in Please Don’t Bomb the Ghost of My Brother– Salt (2023)
Buttocks (Excerpt)
In the autumn of 1967 a cloud in the shape of
human buttocks appeared over Krakow
Nina FitzPatrick
A pair of buttocks forging along Shirley High Street
without feet, legs, arms, without anything –
Only when Adeline tried to sit down
did she realise something was wrong.
Too late now.
She shouldn’t have spent so much time
on TikTok. She shouldn’t have abandoned
Russian literature.
Cut me some slack, the buttocks said
and made a dash for it.
A magnificently large pair of buttocks
with no little swag.
They were going for Egalité, Fraternité, and Liberté.
They wanted to sing La Marseillaise.
They couldn’t remember the words.
The full poem is published in Please Don’t Bomb the Ghost of My Brother– Salt (2023)
Saint Anna’s Funicular
When I go down to hell
I will take Saint Anna’s Funicular.
It will be waiting for me
in the nearly dark of
a velvet-skied Genoese evening.
I will be the only passenger
and the doors will slide shut
with a sublime finality.
It will be quite an occasion,
the journey into eternity.
And in that narrow steep descent
I will be given my last vision
of the city against the sea
and I will pass lighted windows
full of comfort and chandeliers.
Published in Rina’s War – Peterloo Poets (2001)
Rina’s War
Lombardy ’43. Fog lingers with fog
and the quiet progress of bicycles
has swallowed the wail of sirens.
Rina cannot see the Germans
and the Germans cannot see Rina.
All lost in the perfection of fog.
Just as the blind can hear the light
Rina cycles through the rice fields
aware of the butcher, the baker,
the priest, the collaborator, their
silent vehicles swishing past
under the shadow of their breath.
At the end of the fog more fog
and a landscape of ghostly bicycles
all ducking and weaving, all hoping.
Published in Rina’s War – Peterloo Poets (2001)
The Red Zone
I need to get back to the Red Zone
because I left something in the apartment
ten, twenty, thirty years ago.
And this row of pants lining the alleyway
handwashed, sparkling.
I need to climb these slate stairs.
Has anyone bothered with the locks?
I thought the city so quiet
until helicopters drifted over my shoulder.
I need to get into that apartment
with its high ceilings, its whorey curtains,
the bat still flapping in the wardrobe,
a baby on the table.
Did someone leave a baby on the table?
Published in The Red Zone – Peterloo Poets (2007)
Burlington Arcade
I’m being carried down
the Burlington Arcade
by beadles in top hats,
jewellers on both sides
holding out their hands
and wrapped in cashmere.
When people speak of
near-death experiences
they’re always going through
tunnels, they’re happy.
They’re never going through
the Burlington Arcade.
Eric says, It’s good
to see you wearing clothes
and I have to admit he’s
wearing the most beautiful
trousers and I say, Eric
you’re not supposed to be
in this poem. Get back
into your shop! I can see
a light at the end of the tunnel.
The Head Beadle’s saying
‘Burlington Gardens!’
Should I tip him?
Am I dead?
What happens next?
Published in What Were You Thinking? – CB Editions (2016)
Bruno Cuts my Hair in a Place Called Ether
Never to walk in Piazza Marsala
or cut through the Mercato Orientale
buying fillet steaks for little Jack.
Never to make a dish out of Zucchini flowers.
Never to walk down Salita Santa Caterina
or pass through the Galleria Mazzini.
Never to stand on the quayside of Genoa
with a suitcase full of straps and strings.
Never to take out a map of the world and say
I was there and there and there and there.
Never to tell the joke about the hot lemons.
Never to walk to Lavalu and see the dead
or take part in the great Ligurian lamentation
which is lupine recreation and catharsis.
Never to walk in The Street of Perfect Love
or rub Rina’s back under dim-lit chandeliers.
Never to open the fridge and find a robin.
Never to hear the sirens, never to cook a rabbit.
Never to curse God, Porco Dio! Porco Dio!
Shave me Bruno, caress me with scissors.
Magnificent masseur, pull out thy electric hand.
Published in The Parrots of Villa Gruber Discover Lapus Lazuli Salmon Poetry (2011)
Not a City But a Beautiful Catastrophe
Nice sitting in Bar Barracuda in the Sottoripa
under the porticos, watching the city
come to life: the fish stalls, the hum
of the sopraelevata, the early-rising priests,
the cupola of Santa Maria delle Vigne
floating in vapour, the addicts, the hustlers,
the pimps, the street sellers, the matelots,
the fish-fryers, an endless unveiling
of gestures, and the Irishman
standing on his tower in Caricamento.
By eight o’clock the sun’s broken through.
It’s going to be a long, long day.
Published in Please Don’t Bomb the Ghost of My Brother – Salt (2023)
Julian Stannard 