David Robison

Category: Poems

  • Speak to me of peace

    {Hear me read this here}

    1 – At Craster

    New seaweed sparkles as the rascal tide unveils
    the dastardly rocky ridge.

    But do not speak to me of what has gone before.
    The castle ruins, gold and black on the flattering horizon left,
    perpendicular to the shore.

    I’ll hold the light, but I do not care who built it 
    and nothing for their war.

    Don’t resurge the hands of the women, raw,
    gutting the struggling catch,
    with hours to go in salted rain,
    hefting coal for the evening watch.

    Be still, be still, it makes me ill.
    I do not know, I say, 
    I will not see what came before.

    I don’t recall the monstrous trucks
    that crush our deepest sleep, 
    the concrete churned eternally, 
    to reinforce once-pristine shores.

    Be still, be still, it makes me ill,
    and that lass that flew before.

    The golden and the green go stretched,
    the gorse true-yellow with coconut spell,
    they, and smoking kippers tell.
    The gulls and crows speak very well.

    No dirges though about the storms
    and dear boys lost at sea.

    Speak to me of peace, 
    both first and last, and then
    just let me be.

    2 – Alnmouth

    The matriarch who moved and loved this town,
    as smaller men around her frowned,
    I do not know of her.

    The cross marks something on the mound.
    I don’t know why or who was drowned.

    She may have marked this hill one day
    as the estuary ferryman pulled his way 
    across the mouth of Alnmouth bay.

    I was set a task in the recent past
    to sit upon her bench.
    I do not recall her blessèd name,
    or her husband’s on the plaque.

    In dunes below are concrete blocks,
    the kind that only giants drop
    to muddle the enemy’s tanks.

    I do not care for what has gone.
    Today, and not before.

    In the present, peace is pressing,
    either side, a call to war.

    3 – Rest

    What sequence though of gentle steps
    creates this moment’s sea defence; 
    this pleasant ledge on which to set
    a teapot and two cups of tea?

    We warm our hands
    still crisp with sand, and gaze towards the sea.

    The swallows churn
    they’ll soon adorn the sky both South and West.

    Must it always be a brutal fight 
    to reach such gently rippling light?

    For a mind that will not rest, love, 
    speak to me of peace.

    Written by

    David

  • Careless, I have been

    Last evening, 
    as I went to hang my imaginary coat,
    it fell forlornly to the floor,
    because the coat stand 
    wasn’t there anymore. 

    As I bent to retrieve the well worn thing,
    I felt a tender weight; 
    a locket inlaid with a gentle dream
    of you, in the heart-side pocket.

    So careless I have been, love.
    So careful now, I’ll be.

    Written by

    David
    A long coat on the carpet floor

  • The Collected Letters 

    She won’t find them exuding from lightly dusted files:
    how life lessons, hard taught, were pyrite,  
    and the intracted problems of existence fraught.

    She may find a scrap,
    the paper still rippled from break-up sobs,
    in a shoe box with obsolete key fobs.

    Somehow the brittling of this page,
    with crossed-out phrasing,
    the redrafting stage,
    instills its words with intrigue, until
    the archaeologist, enlivened – 
    with much to uncover – folds out the HP machine,
    and the Inbox makes her ill.

    Behold my craft, so furiously typed.
    See how I put these fools to rights.
    Gaze upon my collected works.
    As if endlessly, I replied to all those jerks.

    I fear,
    although I struggled to be neat,
    she’ll press Control and All Delete.

    Written by

    David
    Box of cards and letters suggesting the author wanted his works read.

  • Am I shit?

    Why is it I give (I mean get) so little on here?
    I post, I share my rage.
    I care about what’s happening to the world, what I’m saying.
    It’s not a joke.

    The way you don’t talk about it, what’s happening:
    I do.  
    I study it, I declare it.

    Nothing comes back.
    Not a nod, not a wink.
    All the things I think:
    Why does nobody click?

    I texted British Transport Police.
    “See it, say it, sort it,” they said,
    and yet when I explain microplastics, they just make eyes like, 
    “Fuck off.”

    Is it the algorithm or is it me?  

    Is it the way I talk, how I sit or 
    am I just shit?

    If you comment on an issue of the day,
    friends in double-digits add nuance, affirming you.

    Not me.
    At best, a former pupil snots up to disagree.

    Sure, I’ve everything on the outside, if I toss the mouse a moment –
    smiling kids – a house with food.
    All of it.

    There’s a woman who dotes on me.
    Bank accounts are green. I’m bounding over fields
    if I step away with my two good legs,
    I appreciate Ethiopian coffee.

    But here, 
    as I share what’s most oppressing,
    I am depressing.

    I’m so tiresome to people.
    I don’t know why.

    At school I never got picked,
    because I was shit.

    I’ve tried to share the cuteness of a pet, 
    a crafted dish with oxide slips, splashing kids in water.
    I got three likes, and a US cousin said,
    “What a lovely daughter!”

    My mum, 
    unhappily drunk, 
    once asked me, “Do you think I’m shit David?  
    Am I shit?”
    I shook my head 
    and looked back down at the floor.

    Written by

    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

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