TYNESIDE POETS!

TYNESIDE POETS!

Tuesday 18 May 2010

Two poems from the archives of The Tyneside Poets

The Drinkers


“Booze and booze again.

Along this beach, Mastodon traces still
in sand.

A single cloud, one bruise I can feel
swelling behind my brows.

The denim-blue Ocean gives up its garbage,
white as a blind man’s eye; cratewood, flint beads and khaki weed,
a dead seal buffeted by the tide, like a
lost kid suitcase.

Time waits, bottle-wise for every man, it
finds us here drunk and windswept, the
daylight itching like sand-mites in each
other’s eyes.

The distinctive canvas of that racing
yacht is not so now;
becoming one with the Danish coastline,
or is it Germany, that transparent blue-
skin of rock?

Seals are gutted and their pelts salted and
keel-hauled:

the sun cooks blisters on my thighs and
back wine slops from my flask,
blood from a gash.”

                                        Vincent Morrison

Aubade

Day breaks with the resonant clatter
of dustbins being emptied;
the unintelligible chatter of milk bottles
and the tuneless solo of a vacuum cleaner.
There is the breaking and revving,
the coming and going,
the greeting and objecting,
of delivery vans.
The vague orchestra of traffic
unfolds, gathering momentum,
as the non-winners of the football pools
seethe into the non-enthusiasm
of a new day.

                                       O.M. Canning