Four Poems by David Crystal

The Outing, Part Two

On the bus to Prestbury Park
I took a photo of my Dad’s right ear.
The ear looked like Yasser Arafat’s lips.
He didn’t like the likeness and drank harder
from the half-full hip flask; horses picked
in a list he kept to himself, the wrong grey
in the wrong ground, too old and ring weary
for the Irish banker, 6 lengths too good
in a weak race for favourite backers.
Talisker, Lagavulin, Highland Park
Yasser's lips hearing all the wrong whispers
in the silver ring, the sun and rain man on Cleeve Hill
fading with the light and our horse’s chance
pulled up lame before the second last.


After The Penalty Shoot Out

I watched a parakeet dart over the elder
heavy with flower and feeding pigeons
my feet in a carrier bag of crushed Stella cans.

You’ll never catch a trout in an oxbow lake
and a ptarmigan is far prettier in real life
than the much loved photogenic grouse.

The Swede has the eyes of a jackdaw and the breath of a carrion crow.
Let’s puts the bird on the barbecue, and drink until twilight.
At midnight a three legged fox will prowl for scraps.


The Man in the White Suit

staggers out of Café Pacifico, wind catching his hat
one hand high like a rodeo cowboy. Masks, shells, feathers,

stones, now without the travellers tall tale
faces in a blue smoke language, vodka till birdsong.

All a blur at Christmas drinks puddings first and fuck the soup.
Still drinking with the dead Mexican Rico?


The Merlot Mix
im Barry MacSweeney


I

Lapwing, curlew

poets of the moor
poets of the lonely song


A hen harrier swoops
catching nothing
but wind
ghost songs
notes
only the swift
understands


II

Stone skimming at Wylam
one just inches short
startling egg hungry stoat
stalking a moorhen nest

Bunting, Bewick, not a whisper
on home ground just a Burberry lad
cider daft bashing an eel to bits

I BEAT THAT BITCH
sprayed on a home made flag
staked outside his home made tent


III

Arrested for killing and roasting a swan in Henley-on-Thames
A boy from Crow Wood is detained for psychiatric assessment.


IV

The man in black on suicide bridge
owl feather for cider punk with pet fox
off to Camden, snout hot for Dylan bootlegs
no kingfisher or rare blue moth
just words for the notebook Odes
work in progress left
and found again in The Dublin Castle
a poem written in air on Primrose Hill
for workers, lovers, for grass arena ghosts
for anyone walking the line.



David Crystal was born in Prudhoe, Northumberland in 1963. He has worked as literary editor of DOG, a magazine of new writing and had his work featured in the Body and Soul exhibition at the ICA. Just Like Frank, his second collection is available from Two Rivers Press, brilliantly illustrated by Ian Pollock.