Kenwood on a Sunny October Afternoon

The home of John Lennon 1964-1968.

Then a trip from the Golf Course to the gate.

Old Things

Englisher Garten, Munich '94

Delicate, vision blurred.
Lovers, hand-in-hand.
Conversation overheard.
"Onematipia,
That's my favourite word"
"Tweet, tweet" says girl.
"Tweet, tweet" says bird.
Dehydrated
Recaffinated,
In a burger bar.
Skinhead, drinks milk.
Reads book about the stars.
Astral Movement for beginners
Or - How to Read You Chart.
"Go easy on the fries dad,
You only have one heart"
Gay guy flecks muscles,
Supermarket aisle.
"Put it away !" partner says.
Checkout girl smiles.
"He's a flirt, a tart.
Not unlike his mum."
A band of flesh shows
Between shirt and 501's.
Two girls stare each other up and down
Smile as they get off the bus
Saunter into town
Hang around the precinct
Smoke a cigarette
Making eyes at shop boys
Who kiss them for a bet.

School

I wait for you my child thirty years on.
A thousand former pupils with me gaze
Down ancient corridors of my schools days;
The year of each success is scrawled upon
The footballs at our feet. Those summers long
And lost in the long grass with antique plays;
Our innocence trapped behind dusty glaze.
That same school bell screams out its siren song

To dreamers watching clocks; and then I see
My father at the gate, his distant eyes,
Betray through time the bad news soon to be
Broken. Then youth spills out to chorus cries
The dam is breached; the present flows. Past me
They stream in a scene of endless reprise.


Somewhere upon this long forgotten wall
Of half-remembered friends, a smile less sure;
A portent of that troubled Summer's store.
The cloudless June collapsing into Fall.
The reasuring words; I still recall
My loneliness in this same corridoor.
Then all the childish things that went before,
Postponed 'till Winter's reluctant withdrawl.

A ball is kicked against the leaden skies.
Upon the pitch, school colours ebb and flow.
Past glories resonate in parents' cries.
They form a distant, rowdy shadow show.
Unseen, unheard; the present burns your eyes.
Lost in your age with friends I do not know.

Out on the Pantiles

Dehydrated, Saturday morning. Kids dropped off at Gym, shopping centres, parties. Two hours free, I headed for rehydration at any confortable coffee shop in the Pantiles. I imagined newspaper, coffee, watching. The Farmers' Market looked interesting but not so much. Swedish Jams was looking like slow business. That bookshop on the corner - walked past it for 8 years and never gone in. Two hours later and I walk out with the above books. Never understood Ted Hughes, Joe Orton but anthing is possible - isn't it ?. Didn't make it to HMV - and I was late for the kids.