Idea store's Poetry Night, Bethnal Green library;

3rd July, 2025

 

This is the poem that I read out at The Idea Store's Poetry Night. 

The Girl on the Green Hill

Green, the colour green, the green of vegetation, the green of the grass. This colour reminds me of a strange, semi mystical vision. A mystery that, if I sit quietly, I can conjure up, like stage scenery, revealed by the drawing of a blue velvet curtain, drawn back in a dramatic silence as the audience of one, myself, seated in the theatre of the memory stares at in amazed wonder.

I was in the South of France, 1975, grape picking. I’d spend all day, sunrise to sunset, walking down one row of grape vines and back down another, filling large plastic baskets with the black bunches of Beaujolais grapes. They had to be picked at a certain time of year which was the job of the farmer to decide upon with absolute precision. Too early and they would not be ripe, too late and they would be damaged by the arrival of winter. I had finished for the day. It was twilight, a deepening, darkening sky began to fill the valleys, dark and sweet like the evening. I had eaten in the farm house at the long table that the farm hands sat around, the farmer’s wife went round the table dishing out the food, reaching over the shoulder and emptying the big ladle of stew onto each ones each plate. Large bowls of greens drenched in oil sat up and down the hefty wooden table in the dining room where we were fed generously, not forgetting the bottles of grape juice that filled our glasses like a river.

One day I then went out for a walk, down the valley and looking up at the big green hill that rose above the ground like a green moon rising above the horizon and there on the slope of the overwhelming greenery sat the girl, lost in her thoughts; lost in herself; lost in her journey from Canada to France. Alone, lonely, surrounding herself with the ghosts of her past; with a tangible emotional loss that she seemed to be lost in. Had she received an unhappy letter; had she lost a friend, or a boyfriend; had life cut her off from her roots out here in St. Laurent, France. The green hill surrounded her, bled into her until she became as green as the hill and then she seemed to disappear from sight. And now I am sitting here wondering still, who was she? What was she doing there? Who was she?

After completing a creative writing course at Bow Idea Store I was invited to read something at their yearly event that took place at Bethnal Green library; on the 3rd July 2025. I had a very good time and enjoyed the event which included singers and a jazz band.

Time stops

 

Time stops

When you want it to

Like a porcelain bull

Broken into pieces

 

Time stops

When you want it to stop

Sinking into the lake of bitumen

Like a steam engine

 

12 o’clock

Is a number

That floats backwards

Into the trees

It is a number

That sits on top

Of a shadow

 

Time stops

Like it was made to

Nothing ever fits

Into equal parts

Everything

Makes its own time

2008

He looked Spanish

 

He looked Spanish

But he was more Indian

He looked carnival

But he was more gypsy

 

In a white shirt

And a beautifully

Embroidered shoulder bag

 

The way he slips by

Un-noticed

A man too exotic

For our eyes

2008

Dream Friend

 

The heart favours

A flat landscape

High up on the plain

The edges are blurred

Cloudy, like cotton wool

And in the centre

Water from someone’s eyes

 In the water

A memory

I have not yet collected

 

And what the heart favours

Appears later in a dream

At first you will see no-one

Night after night

This new landscape is without people

Then out of the blue

You ask a question

And a dream friend appears

With a mouth full of sunflowers

2008

I am prone to accidents

 

I am prone to accidents

Of all kinds

Broken windows

Electrical fires

Near death experiences

 

If my arms

Could bend backwards

And my eyes

Could see behind me

 

The broken trail

The hoof prints in the mud

The sunflowers burning fields

 

The brothers and sisters

Ceramic structures

Stamps from Barbados

Of melting plastic queens

 

My legs caught in iron dreams

My head rolling on the beach

 

My hands carrying a black moon

Carefully, like a servant of the sky

2008

The world has produced us

 

The world

has produced us

for work

 

but it does not work

not entirely

 

some of us are glass animals

that melt in the reins

 

I have worked

I have worked at dreams

 

I have worked

At catching dragons

 

What is life

Outside

It is the clouds

In our heads

Turned into rain

2008

There is mist on the ground

 

There is mist on the ground

The sun says rise up and vanish

I will walk through the mist as if in a dream

And look for a vision to show me the way

 

There is ice in the morning air

The sun slides across the sky

My skin will dry in the ice of its eye

And I will hide my dreams from its spies

 

The mist is in a wavelength not seen on TV

On the radio it crackles with laughter

It carries off planes into obscurity

It carries away ships thereafter

 

Into this mist I will walk now

Looking for a compass to show the way

And the sun tells the mist to vanish

To remove the dust from light of its day

2008

You chased the scaredy cat

 

You chased the scaredy cat around.  Quite a funny sight

But it was hard to see you in the thickness of the night

 The animal was a dream thing it would appear out of the blue

And vanish like a frozen wish leaving not a clue

 

You searched beneath the bamboo you ran around the shrubs

Your smiling face was glowing near the flower tubs

Another great performance lost to history

Performed without a spotlight but acted out for free

2008

On a sea of blood

 

On a sea of blood there is a black throne where Satan sits

Worshipped by his state religions, carving up countries with his political wars

 

His character is etched in all his society in lives and deaths, in crimes and laws

And no one blames him for our troubles and no dares to blame him for our sores

2008

I am backtracking

 

I am backtracking through my mistakes

To my days of innocence

I am backtracking thru the darkness

To my days of naivety

 

What a great forest I find myself in

How lost I am in my own mistakes

 

I want those days of innocence

When normal life was possible

When my heart was whole

When love was just one day away

 

Those six-sided days of childhood

That became twisted out of shape

Like a rubric cube

2008

The fern unrolls a new frond

 

The fern unrolls a new frond

In response to the lengthening daylight

Or the warming air, or the blackbird’s song

Or the end of dreaming sleep

 

The new frond unrolls its first new feeler

Like a growing new sense in a man’s fingers

Bad leaves fall, new territory expands

I am watered, my soul is renewed

 

The fern springs to life in the morning

In its little curled fists, it grabs at life

That is far away but getting nearer

My tongue stretches out from my mouth to catch the raindrops

 

The words of the sun, the kisses of the moonlight

The distant cries of a cold planet

Filter down through the green fronds

Into my ears and then into my heart

2008

It was the iron curtain in you

 

It was the iron curtain - in you:

A memory of another part of your heart

Encircled by stone and barbed wire

Lost to the outside world.

 

It was the iron curtain - in you:

On a bruised land sobbing with tears

Of blood and thunder and prayer

Where an army streamed through the streets of innocence

 

It was the iron curtain in you:

A dreaming fortress brought to rubble

But enough stone to be built across the land

Severing memory and emotions from the sun

 

And you saw the wall brought down

You hacked away a brick as the guns melted away

And into a cave in your own soul

A pin of light darted - for the first time in ages

2008