Poems Written on Seaside Postcards (collaboration with Casted_Runes)

Miss Wales, 1982

Oh dear, the palpable fear
News splashed like seagull shit.
The Fingering Wall beside the Fair -
Miss Wales, what did you do?

Giving head to a judge
Swallowed your pride
Senile, semen of bile,
Dethroned to whirl of waltzers.
Stiff sea breeze roughed her candy-floss hair.

Sauce for the Chips

Greetings from sunny Clacton!
This long weekend is on its way:
we met these swingers on the pier
and had our tea with them.
They’re down at the holiday camp, near
where your Becky used to work.
The wife’s a solid girl, you’d say,
the chap not far behind, both
demolishing their fish
as if the cod war’s on again.
He went to see about a car
and left me and my husband with
the wife to sort out where we’d meet.
My Terry likes ‘em big, of course.
That’s all well and good, I said, when
she left to dispense with her chip frittata.
But careful she don’t take your chip
and make it a chipolota.

Voices from the Sea

Listen carefully
You can hear the echo of shingled tide,
Ægean aulos lisp human suffering
Shelled the thoughts of Socrates.

The Sun Centre is now a theatre.
‘Waves in the big pool’ last voice heard
By the boy who drowned under water slide,
Lifeguards distracted by girls
Wearing lipstick for the first time.

Dark Promenade

sonnet on the back of a postcard

Visiting friends in Clacton-on-Sea,
though it’s the front I’ve come to see.
The purple Ferris wheel juts out
between the branches of the trees
this night in my hometown, about
on its dark promenade to freeze,
amidst the cheap hotels and ships
that stud the horizontal edge.
What is there to eat but chips
and memories of summer sedge
groping like hands through iron bars?
The night is void of moon and stars.
The hotels lean like ageing wives,
protecting all of what survives.

Closing Time at the End of the Pier

Landladies sweep streets
Of the boarded-up world,
Ghost tourists wave from smashed windows
Sea’mstress sews heirlooms on empty suitcases.

Punch lost Judy in Hall of Mirrors
Sunset shards blunted by needles,
Child in time fallen thru Promenade crack.
‘Wish You Were Here’ beyond postcards -
Still, we wish you were here.

Frinton Ghost Story

(found on back of discarded postcard showing seafront)

I saw you once on Frinton beach.
It was high summer and I’d cycled
all the way from Clacton town.
The sun was blazing down and yet
I felt a chill just sitting there,
my feet pushed in the sand,
my bike tied to a lamppost on
the promenade. I’m writing you
this postcard now although
I’ve nowhere to send it of course,
and there’s too little space to discuss
the breadth and width of what I’d like
to say. So I’ll say this, and let things be:
I’ve missed you, darling, like a limb,
since you walked into the sea.