Excerpts

Excerpts

from "The Love Songs Of J. Arthur Rank"

Twenty Shades Of Grey:

London fog is twenty shades of grey, thirty shades of blue,
forty shades of yellow, plus a tincture of pure silver.
London is a City in a shroud, each soot-wreathed avenue
forms a funeral cortege, to the graveyard of its River.

The Filament:

Embankment lights lend an air of celebration,
like off-season seaside illuminations,
to streets afraid of their own dark.
Filaments coiled into question marks...

Under Zero

Frost ferns bloom in gaslit windows:
store fronts gold and warm as butter,
while urchins play tag in the gutter,
then scurry home through rat-black shadows.

Waves Slap The Shore

The confectioner slaps slabs of salt toffee on his worn wooden counter.
Waves thick as treacle coat the chocolate brown shore.
It's tuppence a quarter for bars of jawbreaker
and a tanner a throw for drowned gentry's shoes.

Anchored To This Spot

I sweat amidst the stink of spice, of unripe fruit
and exotic vegetables. Sometimes, I find a spider
curled - fat and hairy as my fist - and spin
a yarn about it down the pub. My thirst unquenchable.

A Toast To Absent Fiends

Raise your clouded glasses to the Devil and his minions.
Drink a dram in common with the workers in their millions.
Drain the bottles dry and damn the bosses' dry opinions.
With each sip, spit the feathers from an angel's clipped wing pinions.