Poem: This Cotton Reel

I felt a tug, and then a pull
And like the spider’s good night’s work in the morning wind
The cotton thread on which I hang, is reeled back in.

What I thought was infinite,
Is finite. No more party streamers
Or ensigns on Ocean liners.

I know I am lucky
To have got this far without snag or break.
Yet I can’t help, I can’t help but wonder….

This cotton reel. My life.
If only I could make it run and run,
I have so much more to weave til i am done.

Simon Denegri
1 May 2015

Wordspace mission

I unhand it
To fly through space
And land upon the page.

To go
Where no words
Have gone before.

A soul
Where once flew,
An unmanned phrase.

Without
Purpose nor,
Life-giving punctuation

From mission control
I watch its flight.
Its path is true.

So many missions before
Have foundered,
Failed to return.

But every word slain,
Or laid to rest to date
Was not in vain nor misplaced.

The word is
At work
And the race is over.

For this one,
This one will reach its orbit.

A rocket ship of ambition
Released from its berth

To be spied with wide-eyed
Imagination from earth.

One small word to you
One bold work to me.

I do not remember you as others do

I do not remember you as others do.
By entries past in monogrammed diaries
Or symbols, marks and numbers scored
On the calendar hanging aback the kitchen door.

I do not remember you as I should, some might say.
With framed photographs, or disciplined candles
Well worn toasts over warming wine
Or the recalling of your name to fill the time.

No, it is in the aching passage of the day –
The place setting foolishly laid, and the waiting bed
With white sheets tucked and made –
That I remember you.

Ordinary days
You made extraordinary.
Now emptied and made solitary.

But time will pass and it will be you that remembers me.
In the sun’s rays falling on my shoulders
Or the rain tapping at my window.

You will find me
And your memory will warm me
In the harshest climes.

I am sure of that
For we never did love each other as others do.

Poetry on Friday – ‘Stylus’

Stylus

You fell upon me,
A diamond-tipped stylus
On vinyl

And set me spinning
Inexorably.

You danced and then grooved,
Turning tables and heads.
My heart

Palpitating in
Anticipation.

In those opening bars,
I was sold on you
Only you

And by breakfast you’d gone
Platinum.

But now my jacket is torn
And well worn tracks
Scratched.

So we nuzzle close, and dust
Each other off

Before settling down to
Play our greatest hits again
As if it was

Only yesterday that they were
Freshly laid and pressed.

June 2014

Jubilee

The bunting droops
Like the lower lip of the fallen clown
And the litter froths
From the battered roadside bin.

Teenagers with jeans half-mast
Flag drunkenly for cabs
As neighbours soak up
One-off episodes of TV Soaps.

Gushing rain,
Waves of painters wash
Wiping livelihoods
And summer smiles away.

Subsides then stops
Leaving rivulets
Paths disappearing under sodden leaves,
Like dirty sheets being pulled down below.

Stick-on numbers fall
On headless mannequins
To the shop window floor
In front of crowds

Backs turned, stretching necks
To follow the passing parade
A glorious memory
Of fading ceremony.

March 2014

‘The Shipping Forecast, SE26’ #poetry

Haves over have-nots. Slow-moving 4×4, becoming gentrified for a time, backing west. Occasionally cyclonic. Born and fled, dispossessed. Rough or very rough. Strange voices. Poor.

January 2014

A new poem: ‘Light cast away’

Light cast away by Simon Denegri (Dec 2013)

He stood in the kitchen
The lights dimmed
And the windows shut
Tight.

He stood and wondered
How long it would be
Before someone cared
Enough

To touch him awake
Asking no more of him
Than love,
Love.

But with every singular day that passes
His self shrinks inside skin that feels
Old and cold and hard
Like food left on the side.

Or abandoned, faded toys in a winter garden
Like the old linoleum kitchen floor
Or the encrusted ketchup jar
Long-forgotten at the foot of the fridge door.

In the evenings
And on monochrome days
He senses the walls close in
Around him.

Minutes become hours.
Hours turn to days.
In unremitting, open-ended
Silent, lonely horror.

III

Now,
His only words are those
That churn inside his head

Imagined conversations.
Or written on the page
In isolated rage

Were the phone to ring
Or someone knock at the door
He would not answer, fearing
He could not unlock his tongue.

No second place laid
No bed freshly made
No shirts ironed
Or morning teas-made

One by one
He ticks off the names and faces
Of loved-ones
And those that were simple passes.
IV

This morning in the hallway
The last electric bulb went out
Its filament burnt
Its light cast away.

Hagamus el amor en otro idioma (Let us make love in another language)

Let us make love in another language.

Let me pull at your heart strings with an American twang
Undress and discover you in conquering Portuguese.

Let me caress you lovingly in Latin American
Have designs on you in well-cut Italian.

I will show you I can do what the Cossacks do
On the Russian steppe and bareback at that.

Before tumbling efficiently in German
And cavorting in Croat.
But I might need to lie
In Swedish
On a mat
After that.

We could be perfunctorily Danish
Or make a meal of it in French.

Orientate ourselves in Japanese
Or make eyes in Icelandic.

Be blissfully Belgian
Satisfyingly Swiss
Even phlegmatically Flemish.

All I know
Is that the very thought of
Being taken like tapas in a Spanish bar
Or warmly wrapped in Mexican tortillas
Is enough to bring out the linguist
In me.

Just as long as it is you.

Mi amor.

By Simon Denegri
November 2013

Look Up, Not Down

So this is a poem I wrote a few years ago and have touched-up here and there since. I did post it on another blog I started called ‘London Tails’ which never got going really. Anyway, this was the beginning of a difficult time in my work life if I recall, and one day I realised I did nothing but walk with my head down. The poem is me talking to myself as much as anything else, searching for optimism in everything around. And finding it to be honest.

Look Up, Not Down

Look up Not down.

Beyond the curls and crown of the treetop canopy

And the flat-roofed buses shuffling busily.

Look up,

Not ahead I say.

At the old clock of rusted iron

Its hands undone at a twenty-to-one.

To balustrades lovingly made

And statuettes, imploring to be saved.

At mid-riff cut-aways

At windows dancing.

To the chair on its back, compliant

And a terrace of the young defiant.

At heads and shoulders nodding

Through open windows.

To glove puppet birds, perched beside

A torn plastic bag, cut to size.

At gap-toothed chminey pots

And shivering aerials

To slingshot cranes

And a suspended window-cleaner.

Where once tower blocks climbed high

Now we can see, light and sky.

Where once we saw, light and sky

Now rise new shadows and mixed blessings.

So now that the sun is dusking

And the high contrails reddening.

Look up, not down,

For me if for no one else.

Before it is gone.

Before your very eyes.

SD November 2010

That research poem….

I wrote this on the train on my way to do a talk in Nottingham about public involvement in research. It was early morning, I was looking for something different to do and say and I realised it was World Poetry Day. I read it out at the end of my talk under the guise of ‘anon’ (such a coward). Worked on it a bit more on the way home and posted it on my work blog.
If we work together

We can do it better

This thing called research.

This endeavour.

So here I am

Neither subject nor guinea pig

With no letters after my name.

But I know a thing or two.

About what it’s like.

About what it’s really like.

And all I ask

Is that you let me ask

Why, when, who and what for?

I’ll work with you on a cure

Although I’ll be long dead by then I’m sure

(But who knows we might get lucky).

If you’ll also help me with the pain

And making the day

Worth waking for.

For when dusk does night betray

I want to be able to say

I made a difference for me, for you, for us.

Now that we are working together

Wouldn’t you say

it’s better?

This thing called life.

April 2013