Dull Days Indeed



  DULL DAYS INDEED

  David Denny

  Collected Works

  2016

 

  DULL DAYS INDEED is a compilation of work from

  THE SIEGE OF BEACON HILL

  The Siege of Beacon Hill is a collection, in the loosest sense, of poems written by me in the early 1990s. There are romantic poems, naturalistic poems, metaphysical poems and other philosophical stuff. There is the constant theme of time and its nature, threaded through this is an exploration of my own struggle with the concept of my mortality, amongst other things. Most poems where inspired by real events, or by odd thoughts and graphic dreams.

  The vast majority of these poems were penned when I was a student at Staffs University. During the first year I studied English Literature so Heaney and Plath had a big influence alongside the Beckett and Joyce in the main.

  Adjacent to the Stafford University site is Beacon Hill, the place which inspired the title poem about an isolated wood besieged by.arable land and the seemingly remorseless tractors and ploughs. It’s obviously a very ancient place and, for those who know, holds its place on a ley line stretching West through Stafford churches, Stafford castle and out to the old Iron Age fort at Berry Hill and possibly further to the West and the Welsh borders. It is a place of magic and power and mystery. I am still drawn to it and places like it.

  When I edited the poems in this collection, many of which were written years ago, it displayed to me the magic of poetry in that emotions and feelings, felt at the time, flooded back.

  From Incident at Congleton

  This is a small selection of simplistic poems penned on a mobile phone and texted as an apology for late arrival at work, the number paints a dim picture of train punctuality on the Stoke to Manchester line!”

  All that is Solid melts into Air’

  (Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto)

 

  The Siege of Beacon Hill

  The wild edge of the ancient forest,

  Thrusting vanguard fern

  At surrendered furrows,

  Sighs in alliance with the autumn wind,

  Drawing breath and demarcation lines,

  In bloody ochre hues.

  Breathing deep,

  Poised high an ominous fortress

  Above an arable patchwork sea,

  It spins contempt From sycamores

  and mines Margins with oak egg acorns.

  It is relentless like the seasons,

  Mocking the ploughs dulling edge,

  Tracing its annual retreat,

  Creeping inch outward

  With fern ands skirmishing briar,

  Securing slender bastions

  For sapling wood,

  And testing,

  Always testing,

  The human gall,

  At its patient limits.

  Milking the Void

  At times like this,

  When my visions of the world

  Are obscured

  By a million crawling tears around me,

  My only company,

  The tattoo of a rhythmic rain,

  I feel hopelessly at one with my self,

  Unsatisfied and Unstriving, Enlarging the gulf within,

  Knowing that I can be no less than I am.

  But now,

  At this empty moment,

  Even the faintest spark of light In this cavern is hope,

  Un-subdued it will flare,

  Fuelled on hopelessness,

  And I would flow behind

  Trailing blue irrational inks,

  My footfalls silent in Nothingness.

  For here in this lonely place

  I could be

  And am;

  Inspired.

  The Whirlpool

  Trees like tall ushers

  There’s shadow here

  A place of myth

  A place of fear

  Children are warned

  Of those before

  Clutched in the shade

  On the Valley floor.

  Mist swirls like wraiths

  On Summery nights

  Sucked through the silence

  A small noise is Fright

  And the trees take shapes As they stare on

  The flower wreathed slopes

  The light slips from.

  Here lurking deep Is a lurer of fools

  A clutcher of braves

  Warned of their fate In this watery grave

  So sneak through the coppice

  That is laden with fear

  And brag to your friends

  That you’ve been here.

  So you threw in a log,

  And watched it swirl,

  Then ran home screaming

  Little Boy Little Girl,

  Now as your memories fade,

  I return again

  Seeking your story

  With a poet’s pen.

  The Greenhouse Effect

  The flowers annoyed me,

  So I threw them out,

  The earths rank smell

  Drew me from my Torpor,

  So I laid a floor

  Of cold, cruel concrete.

  Now it is the light

  That hurts my eyes,

  And imprints upon

  My perceptions of

  What lies beyond.

  So I painted my greenhouse black,

  With long bold strokes

  Of a senseless brush,

  But it did no good at all.

  So I sat on a stool in the darkness,

  Meditating upon my blind existence.

  Yet still the birds sang beyond The shadow glass,

  As I sweated an ocean In the still heat Of a Summer sun.

  So I plugged my ears with wax

  And stripped to create

  An imperfect silence,

  In which my heart Tolled like a funeral bell,

  And I felt my flesh crawl with meat flies.

  This was the best I could do,

  Short of fatal act

  And all this accursed time

  The world rolled within my head,

  Each dark wave topped

  With a white horse of hope; Anthansor, Shadowfax bridges built Back from where I retreat.

  I am defeated; there is inside of me

  This bright pool of hope,

  Where the lost they dance,

  On emerald banks amongst the Summer Forget-Me-Nots.

  The Snare

  An inexplicable awakening,

  The slow glide to a window

  To view a perfect picture painting,

  Of crisp clean frozen clarity

  Motionless strokes of reality,

  Now coherent in residues

  Of the tortured night.

  The dawn chorus has failed

  Its daily detonation,

  The velvet beast of the night,

  Retreating from its toils,

  Casts a backward glance Into no mans land,

  Paralyzing this godless place of halfway light

  Where time has stalled

  In the absence of the predawn overture,

  That would herald the arrival of the Sun Coiled and ready,

  Beneath the aastern horizon.

  The day is dammed.

  At this moment failing,

  Leaving hammers cocked,

  Trapdoors untriggered,

  Pens poised, letters unwritten,

  Plans enfolded, cauldrons unboiled,

  Malignancies set to mutate;

  In this thin slice of the day,

  Where roads fork wreathed in infinite possibilities

  Here I fin
d myself writhing in ecstasy,

  In the Snare

  At the Edge of the day.

  Crunch

  Life’s a drag isn’t it?

  Who is the patron saint

  Of snails anyway?

  Tell me,

  Have you seen out Shells?

  Spirals forever inward,

  An Irish design

  To be Sure,

  To be Sure!

  Crawling out for sustenance,

  We reach and grab,

  Then retreat back

  Inside, Bleak, Slimy and Drab.

  Where we ponder existence

  And fondle our dreams

  Hoping our skulls

  Don’t split at the seams.

  Slick, shiny trails

  Shells evolved for defence?

  But this giant snail

  Could never climb a fence.

  On bright Autumn mornings,

  You can seen where we’ve been,

  Yet if you seek us out - nowhere to be seen!

  Only heard,

  When crunched,

  Underfoot.

  Harvesters of the Night

  Blind purses of leather Hung from oak rafters In warm roof spaces, Above shattered shells And discarded wing cases, Clutched in the senseless, Summer Night,

  By sorting invalids, In finger-like flight.

  With no scented touch Nor sighted line

  They reap nights bounty So

  Crunchingly fine.

  Growing Pains

  No harsh landscapes of

  Speaking stone nor

  Pregnant sectarian bog,

  Only fading images

  Suck me back searching.

  My memories ride

  The outermost ripple

  In a temporal pool,

  Always essentially outwards,

  Escaping my flailing grasp.

  Disfigured in concrete,

  Trapped in tarmac tombs,

  Rolled into the obscure,

  That sought is concealed

  Beneath cold patchworks.

  Under these tumorous estates

  Lies my lost light,

  Distorted in a change consuming,

  There a child growing

  But lost in the here and now,

  An adult deformed and disconnected.

  Yearly I travel further From the centre of

  This spreading malignancy,

  Yearning for lost clarity, connection,

  Which deprives and conceals my vitality.

  Only green pools at extremities

  Offer sustenance,

  Lure and seduce with sights and smells.

  Yet here others memories mingle,

  Become confused and compressed,

  Maddening Kaleidoscopes,

  Which drive be back and inward, Inward toward brick centres

  Where wellheads bulge and groan

  With tortured links,

  Lost beneath my feet.

  Midnight Windows

  Like the Digger and the Crowman,

  I sit at a window,

  But no Squat pen,

  Aside for now,

  Seeking what lies

  Beyond the glass.

  Yet there is Nothing

  Except my refection,

  In the inky well of the night;

  Just me and him.

  And he mocks me, Imitates my every move,

  Our eyes forever locked,

  I move closer my vaporous breath

  Obscuring all but his eyes.

  I stare back defiant and am hypnotised,

  Then we become as One;

  Then we cross.

  Now I am ethereal, Outside looking in.

  We laugh and our bridal veil dissolves, He shakes his head,

  A soundless laughter ripples Across his ruddy features.

  Our eyes now part

  And his gaze reverts to paper, The pen rolls.

  I laugh and elude the light,

  Looking in from the Night,

  Outside In,

  Inside Out.

  The Assassin

  The word ricocheted like a bullet,

  Around the stagnant room,

  A door flew open,

  The sweet, fragrant waft Of distant enchantments

  Lightened her drab cell,

  Forcing free the coils of Her own oppression,

  Releasing the restrictions of a love.

  She crossed her arms

  And raised her knees

  To her warming breast,

  Protecting the suckling child

  Fostered for so long

  In a forbidden world.

  Rebellion sparkled bravely In her eyes,

  Subordination, the beast, retreated.

  Images flew to her,

  Released to an inner light,

  Whilst he slept oblivious,

  Wrapped in his own Dream,

  In which, she played, no part.

  I felt uneasy,

  The blind assassin

  Misfiring that Bullet Into a fragile union.

  ‘Do call again’ she smiled absently. I did,

  But she was gone,

  And he torn and alone,

  A burning shadow

  Surveying the ruins of his Kingdom,

  Wrecked by a fairy tale, fantasy magic,

  Contained in a word, a bullet,

  Ambition.

  17

  Judgment Day?

  Standing unsuspecting and innocent,

  Upon a hillock thrown between roads Old and New,

  I confronted an Apricot Sun,

  Sinking slowly in a Summer Sky.

  Upon this earth tumulus,

  Cast aside by mechanical man

  In the turning of tons

  Of cold and sterile soil,

  I stood astride a futile womb.

  But under the fertile Mother Sun,

  The Earth turned and warmed,

  Now green, fertile,

  Studded with a million

  Pale anemic faces,

  Smiling in reverence.

  Then something somewhere,

  Deep inside, turned and twisted,

  Then turned again.

  A dark, sinister disc

  Scraped the Sun,

  Which groaned hemorrhaging

  Into toweling clouds.

  Bloody darkness crept Across that vital disc,

  Earth became bruised and swollen.

  A distant bitch howled like a beaten child To a silent unhearing world.

  I stood gaping as the Earth contracted

  And the shifting clouds congealed,

  Now exposed, where the roads spat and flowed,

  In the shadow I shivered, eclipsed.

  The Day After Forever

  I hate the wheel,

  The red eyed metal Locusts Race before me.

  I hate the wheel,

  Trapped in this coffin Of blood welded steel

  This cold metal Pampered like a child,

  Praised a ruling demi-god.

  All praise to the Wheel!

  It has hurled us to this point

  And surely rolls forever;

  Or the Day After;

  When Dis shall rise

  To poisoned worlds, Where men in Oil will burn

  Yet even He,

  Will spurn

  The Ruins of Paradise.

  All praise for the gift of the Wheel.

 

  In His Wake

  I would cry,

  But it would release me,

  Weep for an innocent Sleek and black,

  Our shadow cast upon her.

  I traced your funeral march,

  Confused and without hope,

  To a cleft in the rocks;

  An oil lined crypt.

  No more proud flight,

  A weakened crawl,

  Your world destroyed No provocation

 
; No threat;

  No defence,

  Dependant on human blinkered, Conscience.

  Poison man,

  Unconscious of his inky footfalls

  That crush you underfoot,

  Soon forgotten,

  Beneath the plumes of war

  And the warped lens.

  But I shall never forget

  Your final flutters,

  Because

  Human corpses

  Mean nothing to me.

  Imperial Pleasures

  There is a beast at work in our world,

  Who withers the young and old,