Barry Tebb

I Living in a land Where only the dying correspond I am borne on the wings of love II I cannot join in a poem The interstices of clouds I watched a lapwing Hover

Sorry, Neil Oram (with an orange in my pocket) I can’t make, your loch-side commune by bonny Drummadrochit. Sorry Brenda Williams, I can’t share your park bench protest near the Royal Free At sixty

When my mam had to go Up north to look after gran, Margaret’s mam said I could Stop with them; while they were Sorting it out Margaret looked Away, pretending to go all shy

Even the charity shops boast of the surveillance Mr Average is caught on camera a hundred times a day To provide unending footage for reality TV But in a decade where will we all

Empty chocolate boxes, a pillowcase with an orange at the bottom, Nuts and tinsel with its idiosyncratic rustle and brilliant sheen And the reflection in it of paper-chains hand-made and stuck with Flour-paste stretching

Sitting in outpatients With my own minor ills Dawn’s depression lifts To the lilt of amitryptilene, A double dose for a day’s journey To a distant ward. The word was out that Simmons Had

Richard Chessick, John Gedo, James Grotstein and Vamik Voltan What darknesses have you lit up for me What depths of infinite space plumbed With your finely honed probes What days of unending distress lightened

We had a new house And split the decorating. You took the piled rolls of paper, While I stacked the cans of gloss, One to each corner-white-what else? And when we began our slow

THE LANDS OF MY CHILDHOOD 1 I am leaving the holy city of Leeds For the last time for the first time Leaded domes of minarets in Kirkgate Market, the onion-dome of Ellerby Lane

Someone has been tearing up the autumn, Its ripped leaves ripple across the road Flip liked hinged cards in the moist grass. The rain-varnished houses vanish in smoke, Drift on the air like blown-out

They have my own fear of the dark, Tupapau – spirits of the dead they call it; Returning late with oil I found fear of it Had spread my vabine naked on the bed.

Any poets about or bored muses fancying a day out? Rainy, windy, cold Leeds City Station Half-way through its slow chaotic transformation Contractors’ morning break, overalls, hard hats and harness Flood McDonalds where I

Lavender musk rose from the volume I was reading through, The college crest impressed in gold, tooled gold lettering on the spine. It was not mine but my son’s, jammed in the corner of

It brings to mind Swift leaving a fortune to Dublin ВЂ˜For the founding of a lunatic asylum – no place needs it more’. The breathing beauty of the moors and cheap accommodation Drew me

STANDING IN EDEN 1 Poetry claimed me young on Skegness beach Before I was born I answered her cry For a lost child still in the womb still As the seawave journeying green upon

Arriving for a reading an hour too early: Ruefully, the general manager stopped putting out the chairs. “You don’t get any help these days. I have To sort out everything from furniture to faxes.

I have no camera but imagination’s tinted glass I cannot pass this crumbling dry stone wall Without a break to catch the vistas of the chain of Pennine hills That splash their shades of

Eamer o’ Keefe with your tinge of brogue And Irish warmth, Daisy and Debjani With your karma and cool verse, I salute you. ( III ) “Ecoutez la voix du vent” – listen to

Alone in Sutton with Fynbos my orange cat A long weekend of wind and rain drowning The tumultuous flurry of mid-February blossom A surfeit of letters to work through, a mountain Of files to

The women are all wearing imitation silk scarves, Blackpool or Biarritz, sipping Woman, masticating The morning’s post, new babies and bathrooms, going To file, snip, fiddle and smile through fish-eyes, Crinkly green gloss, store

I sit inside the train of tears The station mellow in shade Unoriginal phrases air-brush the canvas. Puzzling minds I wonder If all are like my own Closed to stillness. From girders hang the

for Daniel Weissbort Some poems meant only for my eyes About a grief I can’t let go But I want to, want to throw It away like an old worn-out cloak Or screw up

Here is a silence I had not hoped for This side of paradise, I am an old believer In nature’s bounty as God’s grace To us poor mortals, fretting and fuming At frustrated lust

It was Karl Shapiro who wrote in his ‘Defence of Ignorance’ how many poets Go mad or seem to be so and the majority think we should all be in jail Or mental hospital

I drowse and dream in this sleeping house Fynbos the cat purring by the curtain Suriya the sun god sharing the garden Where joss sticks burn and my nostrils quiver At the echo of

Let us, this December night, leave the ring Of heat, the lapping flames around the fire’s heart, Move with bodies tensed against the light Towards the moon’s pull and the cloud’s hand. Arms of

Give me life at its most garish Friday night in the Square, pink sequins dazzle And dance on clubbers bare to the midriff Young men in crisp shirts and pressed pants ‘Dress code smart’

( I ) For ‘JC’ of the TLS Nightmare of metropolitan amalgam Grand Hotel and myself as a guest there Lost with my room rifled, my belongings scattered, Purse, diary and vital list of

How I love the working-class girls of Leeds, Their mile-wide smiles, eyes bright as beads, Their young breasts bobbing as they run, Hands quick as darting fish, lithe legs Bare as they scramble over

The grain of the exposed boards Speaks through the wall of the years We are back in our cottage On the wind-swathed hills Watching late winter dawns Gather like kindled flame. We are back

I Through my bedroom window The coal carts jolted over the cobbles A slow heavy rhythm full, Light and fast returning empty. The coal office manager was a dwarf With sixty year old skin

Pulled from a life some leaves in evergreen Or dressed like fragrant crinoline draped Over shadows by di Chirico, stolen From a station where trains never run And set up in a tableau in

I had a father once, the records say. He has gone away down the long avenue Of death, on the hand-held minor no mist Of his breath, his firm signature no more. No more

Rivers, tow paths, caravan parks From Kirkstall to Keighley The track’s ribbon flaps Like Margaret’s whirling and twirling At ten with her pink-tied hair And blue-check patterned frock O my lost beloved Mills fall

In sleep I dream the gratitude I know I cannot say Now you are in a latitude where palm trees hold the sway There are always things between us that keep getting in the

It was like chucking-out time In a rough Victorian pub Cherubic Dylan was first to go Lachrymose but with a show Of strength, yelling “Buggerall, Buggerall, this is my boat-house In Laugherne, these are

Just a family get-together in a terrace house in Bradford High tea with a few stuffy aunts I hadn’t seen for years Their husbands in tow like lost dogs sniffing round for food But

I never did fit in – at six or sixty one – I stand out in a crowd, too young or old And gather pity like a shroud. “Is that real silk?” A teenager

I want a true history of my city FUCK THE DE LACY FAMILY AND DOUBLE FUCK JOHN OF GAUNT ESPECIALLY And all his descendants With their particular vilenesses – I met one in the

To Thushari Williams Dear Thushie, the six months you spent with us Will never be forgotten, the long days you laboured In the care home, your care-worn comings home To sit with Brenda Williams,

MOORING POSTS 1 The mooring posts marked on the South Leeds map Of 1908 still line the Aire’s side, huge, red With rust, they stand by the Council’s Transpennine Trail opposite the bricked and

For Penny Abraham I wish I had Auden’s penchant For going about in carpet slippers Or the late HRH Margaret’s panache- A chauffered Rolls with six outriders- This late December day with its sparkle

As soon as we crossed into Yorkshire Hughes’ voice assailed me, unmistakable Gravel and honey, a raw celebration of rain Like a tattered lacework window; Black glisten on roof slates, Tarmac turned to shining

(or ‘Huddersfield the Second Poetry Capital of England Re-visited’) What was it Janice Simmons said to me as James lay dying in Ireland? “Phone Peter Pegnall in Leeds, an ex-pupil of Jimmy’s. He’s organising

I struggled through streets of Bricked-up, boarded-up houses, Mostly burned-out, keeping To the middle of the road, Watching the abandoned gardens With here and there a house Still lived in, curtained Against the daylight

for Brenda Williams The dawn cracked with ice, with fire grumbling in the grate, With ire in the homes we had left, but still somehow We made a nook in the crooked corner of

Dawn’s my Mr Right, already Cocks have crowed, birds flown from nests, The neon lights of Leeds last night still Sovereign in my sights, limousines and Pink baloons, tee shirts with green stencilled Dates

Desks are straining on all fours, flanks Heaving to hurl the hunched riders Down crack and cranny, buck Finger-snapping lids, consume Scrap and scribble between tongue and teeth. The blackboard is cleaning itself behind

To Simon Jenner NO ARMITAGE (I’d like to see his rage) NO DUHIG (one dig long overdue) NO GREENLAW (M & S might sue) NO IMLAH (ditto the TLS) NO CRICHTON SMITH or JAMIE

A thousand visits to the supermarket A thousand acts of sexual intimacy Spread over forty years. Your essence was quite other A smile of absolute connection Repeated a thousand times. Your daily visits to