David Robison

Author: David

  • Poetry hurts

    Poetry hurts,
    like an upskirt.
    Not like, “It hurts because it’s true, oh!”
    No.

    When verse violates,
    It’s not, “I didn’t mean to, so I haven’t.”
    Forgive yourself later.

    If you write about the first time, 
    learn this: 
    when you press it, “romantic poet,” 
    you are the snap-happy passenger.

    You can fictionalise it —
    the invasion,
    and use the best adverbs.
    Describe what her beauty did, 
    how you were feeling.

    It may come from the heart 
    and have empathy enough
    for the place from which you start.

    I’ll be short, 
    because you can be both thick and verbose.
    Read it and learn it:
    Poetry hurts.

    Written by

    David

  • The bilberries are out

    I don’t get along with myself.
    Never fully have.
    I wear it like a badge of honour now, I guess.
    I wouldn’t answer my name to the register
    and cried when my mum forgot to wave.

    Seeing me alone at the wrong side of the ground,
    Mrs Rhodes said, and not kindly, “You always were a bit different, David.”
    Not sufficiently, just having an American dad, or being summer-born,
    unready.

    Not the worst at being bullied,
    I shouldn’t complain.
    I’ve not been raped, but the trombone teacher
    put his hand down my trousers once,
    to show
    how I should push air.

    I could probably take it up again,
    but I don’t get along with myself,
    so I’m not sure I’d want to.

    There are other things I’d hoped to do:
    Write poetry or stories, but instead,
    I’m always moping or sad about something –
    something small or something big, out there in the world.
    I still think I’m right, which makes it worse,
    and it’s not pleasant to be around.
    I’m always worrying about it.
    I don’t smile properly in photos.

    When I punched Mark Teamby in the nose,
    he ran crying to his mum, dripping blood.
    It wasn’t good, but the council house kids made me,
    and Ivan who was older and supposed to be my friend,
    shoved me in as they chanted, encircled, so I had to fight back.

    I think about these things too much,
    I can’t just let them go.

    And I don’t like the adults here,
    with their stupid big cars.
    They blame the wrong person and say,
    “It’s just what we used to call summer,” and it’s not fun to be around.
    Maybe they should work on that.

    And then I thought, what if I don’t love you either?

    But there is sing-song in your voice.
    You’re just on the sofa.
    Your dog is with you.
    You’ve been on the moors, collected bilberries, seen the sun set –
    It was lovely. Did I see it?

    Written by

    David

  • Full stop

    “It would be lovely if you were not a stepping stone but my full stop.”
    And if the end can be a beginning,
    but not like death (beginning decay) for that comes anyway.

    “If a person became your home.”
    As if the self were stabilised, like a place, 
    and seeing these possibilities as a prism.
    A person you leave but know you’ll return to – 
    and somehow not a prison.

    “I feel safe with you.”
    And of the tugs at my being?
    The cursed reeds which pull and wind as desire-looms, 
    underpinning, stronger for not saying and
    fully below the seeing?
    Will these then be unimportant or just accepted
    as real, like all the things we momentarily feel?

    Is this comfort, love, something chosen not given?
    Are you my full stop?
    And that to this end, from this end, 
    is this stop our beginning?

    Written by

    David
    Full stop - image by Leo Reynolds on Flickr.

  • A rainbow is black

    Bottom limbs may be enough,
    but painting by foot
    sounds pretty rough,
    once the door rattles shut.

    Still, paint your red umbrella, cartoonish red dress,
    raining the hearts, in Valentine’s pattern,
    painting by foot.
    This cloudburst of hope, I hope it’s enough.

    With her boots on the ground,
    black hair blowing out back.
    Some things we have
    and some things we lack.

    In a forest, a clearing,
    by a lake in The Lakes.
    All around nowhere,
    the sounds of the dead,
    – a warplane blasts over –
    all around us, they wake.

    By the barracks, thunder cracks,
    the algorithmic missile attacks.
    There’s a school round the back,
    and some things we lack.

    Safety-wise, miles away, closing the files,
    Pete smiles wryly at the broken tiles.
    The focus shifts programmatically
    to IDF from a PDF.
    Peter files, Peter files, Peter files files.
    O is for orange, but filed under E.
    Peter files, Peter files, Peter files, see?

    Some things we have
    and some things redact.

    Ballerina in boots,
    painted tutu as red as the rear lights reversing,
    traversing,
    rearranging the flights.

    Were they hearts in the sky,
    or footprints in blood,
    down this lane by a street,
    where the pupils once trod?

    With a foot for a hand,
    down the track at the back,
    where once was a school,
    a rainbow is black.

    From a dead olive branch,
    a nightingale’s hack.
    Where once was a school.
    a rainbow is black.

    Some things we have
    and some things we lack.
    Where once was a school,
    a rainbow is black.

    With a foot for a hand,
    and a sack at the back.
    Where once was a school,
    a rainbow is black.

    Where once was the girl,
    black hair blown out back,
    where once was a school,
    a rainbow is black.



    [Picture by Izzy, aged 10]

    Written by

    David

  • The hardest thing

    Letting you go seemed the hardest thing:
    hard, because you haven’t been here –
    seemed, a mix of what fleeted then haunted 
    when fixated, with dreams that appear.

    That mixture of what was here 
    and what had gone before,
    poised us 
    perfectly wrong.

    The reverberation and the mis-lip read well. 
    It drew the most exquisite pain.
    ‘Could have’ hurts so much more than ‘did’.
    Half a century had already flung off its lid,
    and I yet with artistry and verse to burgle and gain.

    And in the indulgence of reworking, I built a great mythology –
    a romance, barely, produced a whole anthology.

    And so the kindest thing to do, for both of us,
    even just in song –
    “You have to let it go.”
    “I’ve met someone I like, so…”

    It seemed the hardest thing.
    It’s why crows croak in the field instead of sing.
    Tears choke up their beaks and then
    the wet page is torn through by the chimera pen.

    I still fear your face,
    but at last, it would not hurt
    to acknowledge other touch.
    Not our beeswax, all along,
    but what’s appropriate or fair
    is not what rhymes or makes the song.

    So see you, maybe, if you’ve a use,
    in spring and summer of another life,
    where, with minds free from fear and childhood’s abuse,
    I am your man, and you are my wife.

    Written by

    David

  • My heart is not free

    Gratitude first I must show, Universe.
    She was tall, top-notch, with a feather in her hair.
    Silk gloves and feathered earrings.

    The way loose, gingery-blonde hair poured down her forehead
    was all this luckiest man could hope it to be.
    Too churlish to mention then: my heart is not free.

    The curve of her nose, her brows framed such eyes.
    We danced in a way I have never relaxed,
    arms softly draped around snug fitting backs.
    Big smiles on show for all to see,
    I knew the DJ, he smiled back to me. 
    As she pulled me gently for kiss after kiss,
    drunk with the happy, let the revellers see –
    I barely do feel it: my heart isn’t free.

    With long strides to mine, 
    she held the beauty I’d long thought,
    would never (save once) be accorded to me.
    Hand in hand, we leaned and bounded as the youngest lovers.
    Had I overlooked myself, it would be jealously.
    When she lay on my bed, on top of the rug
    “Don’t put on a shirt,” she said, “come down to me.”

    And so what if my heart is not free?
    A bird that is born for joy, 
    can yet sit in a cage and sing.
    Bright and happy – the bars are just staves for the melody.

    I listened to her heart beat in the morning,
    my ear against her breast.
    Ah d-dum, d-d-dum, ah d-dum, d-d-dum.
    And tea in bed, then coffee and
    the pastries, warmed through, were Lidl’s finest. 
    The void banished, death and aging but a dream,
    in the sweet present.  Nothing to resent. 

    And as she left, 
    I did not feel bereft.
    The leisurely day remains spread out in front of me.
    Make some jam, pet the pets, sip more tea.
    It was all this luckiest man could hope it to be.

    The notification says you’ve re-friended me.

    After closing the windows
    and closing the doors,
    only then do I pause, only then do I see:

    Till they scatter my ashes round that bench by the sea.
    My heart is still yours, my heart is not free.

    Written by

    David

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