Month: January 2016

Blues

Blue may differ in hue,
lightness or chroma
so to say you feel blue
is a miscoloured misnomer.

You may be the blue
of pantone two ninety-two
but perhaps another blueness
may give a better trueness
of your inner youness.

Like Sky or some shade
of Cerulean,
Pale OR Bright OR Frosted
to use logic
that’s Boolean.

You may prefer to sit
and contemplate your Navy
and other forms of Aquamarine power,
or pluck a blue from nature,
like Duck-egg or Cornflower.

For those that remain loyal
to the monarchy
you may feel Royal,
but if you’re a skeptic
or have tastes more ecletic,
like Bob, you might want
to go Electric.

Then there is Spanish, Prussian,
Egyptian and Persian;
that’s a lot of nationalities
in which to be a blue person.

Which blue hue is the true you
is not for me to tell.
Just do do the blue hue
that you do so well.

And if you’re not sure,
then there’s always Azure.

But there’s no blue
that seeps right through
more than the mournful
Monday Morning Blue.

The Ice Cream Vans

It has been warm this winter
so it was not until today

that I saw the vans begin
their slow rumble south –

startled into movement
by the early January frost

which had gathered softly
upon their windscreens

before waking them suddenly
as if from a night sweat.

I watch this strange procession
as it passes, a curious sight

suggestive of fun and funerals –
an ice-creamed cavalcade,

a cornettoed cortege
of lollies and ninety-nines,

all pinks and whites
and Mr Whippy markings –

bound for North Africa.
Not all will make it.

And, as they pass by,
I hear the wayward chimes

of Greensleeves, O Sole Mio,
Half a Pound of Treacle,

for these are the songs
they sing to each other

as they start their journey
and I feel myself charmed

even though they do not
chime for me.

Pretty Things

They spent the day swapping
stardust-sprinkled stories

of classroom rebel rebels
and rescued car journeys,

eye-shadowed evenings
of first gigs and girlfriends,

best gigs and boyfriends,
fan letters insanely penned,

awkward teenage oddities,
faces and phases and changes,

moon landings, all-time lows,
serendipity in far-off places,

the loneliness of Lazarus,
and the golden years of families,

fame, fashion, fancies, dances,
all the fanatically-vinyled panoplies,

tall, true tales of we-can-be-heroes,
for Planet Earth was blue

and there was nothing else
they could do.