Hometown by Steve Rudd

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT-OhRyonXc

Sentry Duty by Steve Rudd

Halt! who goes there?

Maybe it’s just the darkness coming up the garden

Between and through the trees

Like Birnam wood, en route to Dunsinane.

I’ll take first watch, I thought,

And here I am again, the lone sentry,

Just me and my little bayonet,

Holding back the dark

By staring into it, defiantly.

These nights, this time of year,

A feeble glimmer around

About four-thirty heralds dawn;

I must not sleep on guard, on duty,

But once the light washes greyly up the sky

Behind the branches

I can sleep then, relieved at last.

Until then, I issue peremptory challenges,

And hope to deter; doors all bolted, locked,

But still the dark seeps in, and  

My enemies, my responsibilities

Sit heavy on my head as a steel helmet

Scarred by life’s shrapnel.

This dark trench I find myself confined in

Through a waste of mud that used to sustain life

Leads all the way to the ocean,

And escape means only barbs that tear

Or tears that barb, desertion, or disgrace.

Stand to, up on the firestep! Here flies

Yet more shit your way!

Hush, here comes a whizzbang!

And it’s heading straight for you -

Fix bayonets, five rounds rapid,

Then pull through.  

Somehow, pull through.

My Dad would have understood all this

In his sojourn under the summer orchard trees

Listening for the Luftwaffe’s engines

Rerr-rerring their way across the Channel

Bearing destruction, bearing fire, and

Shrapnel that hummed like hot hornets;

My Grandad, looking through his periscope

Into no-man’s land, would have known

My coiled and tangled wire,

My weariness of body, and of heart.

And, these days, I feel more and more like them

Now I, too, am become sepia and faded,

Slightly out of focus, and tattered at the edges;

Like them, I never volunteered for this;

Oh no, despite my frequent objections of conscience,

And the fact that I am scared shitless,

I too was conscripted, enlisted, just like them,

by the grim recruiting sergeant, Death

NEW POETRY TITLE FROM THE KING'S ENGLAND PRESS

HAUNTINGS: Poems and Stories by Steve Rudd
(August 2014) ISBN 978 1 909548 37 4
9" x 6", 152pp, paperback £7.95

Skiddaw, Easter Sunday

http://youtu.be/PJ_knVdjruY

To An Old Ex, On Her Birthday

Why do I do this, why torture myself
With these visions of summer hedgerows
Laden heavy with fragrant blossoms;
And Chichester harbour, the masts of yachts
At the bottom of opulent lawned gardens,
Roman palaces once found underneath;
Mosaics we once paid a pound to see?

Why do I do this, why do I even allow
You in my dreams and musings?
Even though I know you’re now
Fifty-six years old, wherever you are.

Uncharitable, but true. So,
Why do I do this; why does my mind’s gunsight always zero in
On 1986? Now, in my cold monastic cell, my wizened hovel?
How did I ever once go, down those green lanes
Leading to sea; pull up outside your flat
In a spray of gravel, twenty-seven years ago?

And here’s this damaged Polaroid, its
emulsion gaudy and dateless as a memorial window,
Of you tending the barbie – Oh, summer days,
Down at that railway carriage in the sands
That served as changing room and chalet. Surely

Somewhere, it must always be that seaside summer;
Witterings Beach, with ‘Uptown Girl’ on the stereo,
While the sun was always warm and westering
And we in our brown skins were both blessed with salt.

Anyway, I’m sorry.

I seem to say that, more and more, these days,
To a range of disappointed girls, some historical,
Some even dead: the rest are photographs.
And some days, hot remorse
Courses through my veins like mercury
I’ve not done very well; it must be said.

I hope you’re still OK, and doing fine;
Much as I miss your face, your hair, the candleight, the wine,
Perhaps you’re better off a haunting dream -
I wouldn’t wish you shared this shrivelled life of mine.