Entangled in you
your eyes your
head entangled
in you

Entangled in you
your arms your legs
your mind your
bed
entangled in you.

Every Road.

Every road

inclined

as weighted

days and

weighted limbs

collide.

Children

scurry through

his minds as bright

as the morning

sun.

Eyes of piercing

certainty

truth and grace

embrace these

last scenes

and hold them in his

mind like

luke warm

wine.

The Cement Garden.

A warm incestuous writhe

of bramble and honeysuckle,

the sweet decay a funeral cologne.

I taste your marzipan breath

yet suffocate waiting for your eyes

that stall and never reach me.

In your garden the rain sounds a

discord of our coupling – a gentle

trespass playing summer’s saddest

symphony.

Promises

We promised each other the little
things – for tomorrow.
Prayed for lottery wins
when first steps passed us by.
Baby laughs and chuckles from
some other room.

Days slipped by with death
around the corner – thoughts
that death was for the old
not for the young.

Waiting for the next pay
cheque - the next weekend -
anxiety scurrying through
minds like starlings trapped
in the loft.

We promised each other the little
things for tomorrow
while birds sang in other
trees - in other skies.

The sun and sky, brutally quiet -

another industrial morning where

corrugated friendships gather

and sleep is wiped out the corner

of sad red eyes.

Hulks of corroded metal

hug the earth, while the

harshness of another day

is softened by comradely

joshing.

Shared crusts of bread are

washed down with ice

cold water, floaters rise

in the glass, like moths.

We grow with each other

aching arms - aching minds

and push into another shift

like mice, like men.

The Boulevard.

It was streetlight that
shone in their bedroom -
streetlight.

No stars or moon no
sunshine - the room
ached in its dull thudding.

The children slept three
to a bed, they slept in -
threes.

They wove stories
and dreams huddled
against the naked cold.

In the dark,
panelled light plays
on the nested innocence
of their eyes.


An arrowhead of
promise whipped
circularly over
their heads.

The granite of
tomorrow
still
in the ground.

Aberfan

I didn’t lose God from

theological argument

or scientific dialectics.

I lost him in Aberfan

in Vietnam in

empty cupboards

childhood hunger

bread and jam.

Here are my feet.

Here is my clitoris

you need to know

what makes me tick

own me from

head to toe

here is my clit.

And here is my heart,

I wear it upon my

sleeve its so easy

to see raw - pink

and throbbing,

here is my heart.

Here is my mind so -

so grey - see through

almost translucent

fertile - a newly ploughed

field words fizzing out

of the furrows -

here is my head.

And here – here are my

feet,

I stay - I remain -

paint them up

red just for

you -

my feet –

here are

my feet.

Aunty Pat

The weather weighted down on all of us -

the corporate suits, December tans –

indifferent others.

Her funeral just fifteen minutes,

this the very limit of her allocation.

The Vicar, his hollow voice, electronic

echo - somewhere buried beneath his pulpit

that mucky mag’ - one eye on the clock,

false tight lips.

Only half her family there - some dispute.

Just ten people present, this then, her throng.

Sixty years ago she worked those twelve hour

night-shifts making ammunition for the War effort.

Fifty years ago she laboured in childbirth pushing

new life into an uncertain, fractured world.

I had visited her in the home she was already cold

the radio still switched on, she of the wireless

generation.

And as I walked away from the ‘Crowd’ I realised

they didn’t know me and they didn’t even know her.

She lives.

She lives in a room next
to a room she lives
in a room next to a room she may
live in

An annexe she lives in an attic she lives in an
image she made she lives it for others
she lives? In a glasshouse an out-
house she lives in her mind

She lives in an idea of what she maybe
what she could be what he wants her to be
what others want her to be a mother a
daughter a lover some saint a lady
a whore a goddess - a shadow of
A fu*k - a suck - a hole

She lives in a space inside a void
below a hole under some rubbish they
piled up she lives in a bonfire in a cardboard
fu*king box under a bridge like a fu*king
troll. She lives - She lives? She lives?

She exists in every street every neighbourhood
every avenue every boulevard every where
She goes on and she lives behind the mask
she wears for him for you for them
But not for me She lives in me – in
my mind in my soul I know her I love her
and I’m fu*king angry for her!

Only coffee.

It was only a coffee -

she entered with a quiet grace,

a touch of tiredness in her eyes

a smile so young – so very young.

Wisps of blond hair on her

neck as I removed her coat

something moved within me.

Quickly added mascara on

eyes that yearn for love

somehow – somehow

I can taste her lips yet

only kiss her pale angelic

cheek, time as fragile as those

wisps of hair

sadly.....

it was only a coffee.

One Night Stanzas....

Whoops.....................................

Well they actually did it! Yep - they Feature my poems here:

http://www.readthismagazine.co.uk/onenightstanzas/?tag=featured-poet-roger-cornish


.....................and I thought they had changed their minds!

Enjoy.

Voices in the trees.

You can hear them, hear them

in the fossils underfoot

beneath us, underneath us,

in the rich carboniferous seams

trapped with the ferns, the brackens

of prehistoric times. Hear them in

village names, Silverdale,

Calverton, Bilsthorpe, their souls

remain, listen to them, listen

to their voices - the wind in the trees

you can hear them, calling, calling.

Tenner.

Her days were too long, nights

even longer, as she turned in his

empty space, felt the damp pillow

on her pale cheek.

She had put all the photographs

away, wrapped in newspaper,

in envelopes, deep in drawers,

she put them in a tin, hid them

in the attic.

She couldn’t have him smiling

down from shaded walls, sat

shrouded in an old grey cardigan,

in the quiet violence of her afternoon.

Tall chimneys.

Pulling chalk out of dirt my little

sister draws on cold pavements-

a cottage - tie back curtains -

smoke pouring from tall

chimneys - a roaring

fire in the hearth.

Even in childhood there’s agony

in bare walls, a naked light bulb

and empty cupboards.

Published!!!

I'm really pleased to anounce some advancement in the publication of my work...
I have recently been published on the poetry web site 'Gloom Cupboard'

http://www.gloomcupboard.com/

The title is 'Aunty Pat' and is in issue #73. Please take a look.

In addition, I am to be featured poet on the 'One Night Stanza' web site around March 16th. This article will contain an interview and at least 3 of my poems.

http://www.readthismagazine.co.uk/onenightstanzas/

Thanks everyone for continuing to read and support my work.

Roger. X.

A simple truth.

She sleeps at my side
her breath caresses my
face.

Our years of laughter -
mini disasters –
the little tragedies -
have left the slightest
lines on her face,
at the edges of her eyes,
around her lips.

I search her calm face,
her eyes move in morning
dreams, her chest
rises and falls – rises and falls.

“You don’t even know
me” -

she had said last night –

“you don’t even know
…me”

words that lacerate
and break -
waves on shores of
anxiety.

For all our time,
all our seasons,
it’s a simple truth.

The Lamp Cabin.

A first job - just
fifteen
amongst men
freed from a
crushed existence in
coalmines.

Old miners - now
cleaning lamps
filling Davy’s
with kerosene wiping
off the dust and clay.

Jack - with his toothless
smile and deformed
creased head -
some things you just
don’t ask.

Dusting
down the shelf’s,
burning the lamps
of men not
turned in
today -
for what ever
reason.

It was Dixie I overheard
saying:
“The roofs bad on 101’s
Jack – real bad”
and violently spits
a plume of dark
tobacco juice onto the
hard floor.

Me - just fifteen
years old
wide eyed
a
voyeur
to all their trepidations
and fears.

(A bit indulgent.....

Me bottom row third from left.
Around 1995 Asfordby Colliery
Leicestershire. Now closed)

The Ramones.

A young man

struts past

burgundy hair,

Ray-ban’s perched

on his head

wearing that

Ramone’s

T-shirt.

Attitude in his

walk

maybe a Saab 900

convertible

parked

around some corner

it makes me

angry

and

I’m shocked at this

feeling.

Last night I

dreamt about my

friend who’s dying-

waiting for a new

heart he

won’t

get.

He wanted to sell

me some

turf - in this

dream -

and he walked me

into his garden.

A flood was

washing all

his turf

away –

this torrent

the

ground

collapsing

washing all his

turf

away.

And

you know what…..

I can’t get that

shirt

outta my

head

that

fuc**ng

shirt.

No such thing as society.

The mines have long
gone the empty
church bells
chime
against another
lonely sky-
still.

Wet empty streets
dormant
but for the old man
stick and flat cap
heavily leaning
on a pedestrian
barrier.

The local -
boarded up
windows -
a shell - a lost
community.

No children’s song
lifting
in the breeze no
smiling
mothers leaning
into
prams
and push chairs,

nothing only
bullet grey
sky and memories
of the old days
full of stories
when people had

people - had
hope.