Five Poems by Stephen Kingsnorth

 

Photograph of Bowie Wall, Brixton London featuring mural by James Cochran

Heroes’ Odyssey

 

Now Bowie, ten, a Bromley lad,

just as was I, but up the street,

a crow’s fly mile at most I’d say.

My class desk in a row beside

his Burnt Ash School; like Brixton’s fires,

the riots of a bile unjust,

piles pillars, bricks from racist wiles.

 

Graffiti there, the poet’s tool,

and walls, illumined manuscripts

bloom words and storeys of new ways;

a due home for once aliens,

‘no dogs, blacks, Irish’ labels gone.

In inner city, outer strife

gives way to carnival of life.

 

They, Wolf Cubs, his gyrations thought

were from another planet moves;

from group to band, encore, again,

most missing, songs of early years;

would Bowie sheath or flick that knife,

in search from Iggy, Ziggy flame

with paranoia of his genes?

 

Space oddity, an odyssey,

to find his hunky dory name,

androgyny to mask within

his clouded eye from fist of friend.

Cracked actor, music of the spheres,

too many balls hang in the air,

sheer stardust coming in to land.

 

Published by The Ekphrastic Review, September 2023

 

 

After Bubble-Wrap

 

My life was spawned from underneath

in bubble wrap, clump globule place,

beside the strings of weed and toad,

where boatmen search amongst gnat rafts,

transporting death as ferry, Styx,

on cauldron mix, like witch’s brew.

Full ramshorn snails, newts, slimy things,

their fins, fine crests, fly caddis sticks,

shrimps, sucking leech, elodea,

and rotting leaves which feed the fuel,

stir gene spread thrive in stagnant pool.

Brief spell, metamorphosis trail,

like Ovid’s tales set by the sea,

this fluid state within, without

from dot to frog by withered tail,

and legs erupting in their turn,

encapsulates transforming stew.

This underworld where gangsters thrive

with dragons, nymphs and beetle dives,

slaters, skaters, sticklebacks

is threatened by so much above -

a starling beak like scuba stab,

before its murmuration cloud,

drag fishing net, jar ringed with twine,

by muddy knees, excited shriek,

and Eden’s asp, snake in the grass -

all dippers launched from outer space.

And airy, rising from the deep,

stream bubbles, photosynthesis;

when all seems well in mirrored glass,

from sediment, in clouded view,

that all-consuming teeth-bared pike.

 

Published by Garfield Lake Review April 2021

 

 

Pickings

 

The dipper, rocking on his bolder watch,

alert, in crowded camouflage, discreet,

magnetic hands at ten to two, scarf smoothed

with charm, the smile and words to reassure,

observed by none, a gesture, token, trove

to join the piling posts in fencing shed.

 

Grandfather’s own from Normandy,

the wallet slipped, worn-leather shine,

is soon binned skip, of no account,

what worth that life-held photo snap?

It sandwiched with paninis, wraps

pork chops and pȃté, jumbled food.

 

Surveying bins for easy trash,

amongst pre-packed day-before date,

she saw pigskin beneath the tripe,

patina pointing to her Dad -

before the crush about her life -

and needed it before the scraps.

 

Her whorled prints scraped the bacon fat,

and there the image, pipe in mouth,

for grandparent she never knew

became the pin-up she withdrew.

Between the paper sheets and card,

it tucked, her corrugated love.

 

Published by Sparks of Calliope October 2019

 

 

Flushed

after ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ by John Keats

 

Ah, bitter chill it was, by script,

when publisher first saw the text.

Saint’s patronage of chastity,

of rapists’ prey and the betrothed,

was not engaged, dreams Madeline,

with Porphyro as flesh enflamed,

by purple prose in poetry.

Too risqué for a printer’s risk,

but not schoolboys’ naivety,

who, numbly dumb in icy blue,

saw narrative but not the stews.

Why I cast, lech Iachimo,

school-staged amongst mute convent girls -

stage schooled in knowing female wiles?

We played as studied Keats withal,

and Spenser’s Faerie stanza scene,

for co-ed quite unknown back then,

and single sex our manual

from grammar through to tertiary.

So had I seen director’s cut,

uncensored version of first draft,

would I have learnt some craft or guile

but also, more so, of myself -

unless, class library, empty shelved?

Yet me, I loved those words as wrought,

the diamond panes of quaint device,

of stains and splendid dyes suffused,

just as my cheeks, if blushed by such.

 

 

Father Wept

After “Michael” by William Wordsworth

 

My rural, say, bucolic life,

was soon to end by leaving home,

for adolescent city brights,

yet knowing homework ill prepared

for hostel, training, underground,

and scenes unknown before that strife.

My peers were bored, Devonian,

for cider and the speedway track,

while I knew terrors of the night

would soon seduce and tempt, though wrack.

 

But parting gift that haunted, teared,

was Wordsworth’s ‘Michael’, for my year,

and which, alone, alerted ears

and sense, uncommon pedagogue;

a sheepfold that I dreamed back there,

some granite for my shifting sands,

and parents waiting prodigal.

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including Lothlorien Poetry Journal.  His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com