David Robison

Category: Poems

  • A rainbow is black

    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,
    an algorithmic missile attack.
    There’s a school round the back,
    and some things we lack.

    Safety-wise, miles away, closing the files,
    Pete just smiles at the broken tiles.
    The focus shifts suddenly from IDF as 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,
    hark! A nightingale’s cack.
    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]

  • The hardest thing

    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 long before,
    poised us 
    perfectly wrong.

    The reverberation and the mis-lip read well. 
    It drew the most exquisite pain.
    We let ‘could have’ hurt 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 this 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 –
    “If you love something,
    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.

    Your good looks, I still fear,
    but at last, it would not hurt
    to know you know another’s touch.
    And though none of my business, all along,
    what’s appropriate or fair
    is not what rhymes or makes the song.

    So see you, maybe, if you’ve a use.
    Or 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.

  • My heart is not free

    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.

  • For the bonfire

    For the bonfire

    If I write the poem that remains unwritten,
    include the thoughts I dare not share,
    and screw it up into a ball.
    This could sit at the centre of it all.

    Of all the things I might have said,
    and probably won’t before I’m dead,
    doused with every note un-played,
    arranged for each love that was never laid.

    What if I took every conversation I’d ever had
    with somebody that was there, but only in my head
    and used that with the layer of twigs,
    would that make the tinder catch the wood?

    Place every place I’ve been but never stayed:
    the bench on which we sat, above the bay,
    when you held my arm that way.

    – a moment that haunts but was never grasped –
    the distant boat, the bobbing buoy, the air, the call of gulls –
    our bikes leaned up behind the bench,
    the water was impossibly clear that day.

    Stack them up, against one another,
    the driftwood words we didn’t say to one another
    And all the secrets I wish I’d asked of mother
    before she was gone.

    The evening draws in – it’s wet, but the air is mild.
    It grows in the field you played in as a child,
    and if you could’ve stayed a while,
    you’d see this most ridiculous pile
    of everything that exists that much more in the mind.

    And after chucking on all this stuff?
    It’s getting big, but not big enough!

    So toss on all the times, despite the rain,
    we dared not sneak into the lane.

    Rack the self-generated torments – the arguments I never had with a doorman.
    The “what ifs” – if Iraq had not been invaded.
    A smile un-smiled, the streams in which we never waded.

    Then there’s the neighbours to whom I should have said hello.
    and all the unexplained feelings from “down below”.
    Pile ’em up and watch it grow!


    I can’t strike the match, love.
    The box is wet and the evening damp.

    I give up too easily and bugger off.
    It wasn’t a real bonfire anyway.

    But up on the valley’s other side
    a firework explodes
    like a bomb above a town.

    The next day,
    either here or far away,
    I find myself up again that way.

    I pass, by chance, the field
    in which I played as a child,
    and oh – the pile is thatched and painted!
    A wreath is placed upon the door.
    A hedgehog lives there with a mouse.
    It’s not a bonfire, it’s a house.

  • Hazel, there’s a window

    Hazel, there’s a window

    Hazel, there’s a window
    I’ve kept open, just a crack.
    It’s just in case that wayward cat
    should make its own way back.

    Why should we so miss that cat,
    that rubbed the house’s corner?
    Because I wrote it into verse
    I’ve clearly made it that much worse.

    It went away in summer
    And it still hasn’t come back.
    I’ve imagined dainty pawprints but
    the message space retracts.

    And for now I leave the window up
    as always, just a crack
    and just inside, on the chest
    next to the sewing machine, is a snack.

    Maybe I would mend something, learn to sew.
    It could rub against my leg and mew.
    Oh, I think of the cat often, now it’s gone.
    Do you?

    Would it have grown old and happy by the stove,
    or would it always be in fright?

    The previous owners had kicked and blamed it,
    so it preferred to take its chances over fields
    and through the cars.
    We thought we might forget it by scrolling profiles
    and meeting dates in bars.

    Hazel, there’s a picture
    You’re smiling on your bike.
    It was downhill and easy for a moment,
    your hair could do as it liked.

    I know where it was taken
    I rode with just one hand
    I held up the frame and froze it.
    I think of this as often, as the waves there meet the sand.

    Hazel, there’s a window
    open, just a crack.
    The nights are getting colder,
    It lets in a fucking draft!

    Another’s hand might close it,
    but what if it came back?
    The woman might peer out, into the night,
    but she wouldn’t know about our cat.

    She might not see two emeralds,
    the shadow rub the house.
    The window would be closed,
    and away would slip our cat.

    But if I heard the miaowing,
    in earnest in the night,
    I would grab a brick and smash it though.
    Damn the neighbours and their fright.

    In the cat would pad again
    and rub against my leg
    And the glass might cut the woman’s feet
    as she found her own way out.

  • Just after

    Just after

    Loneliness bites like the autumn’s chill,
    mornings and evenings,
    stale smells and damp.

    A chance at beauty was given once,
    as joy anticipates pain,
    loss outweighs promise.