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last update: 19th Nov20

 

 

Poems from the Mind Shop                      The Masters

 

Threshold                      At “The Bell and Gavel”

 

Poems from the Mind Shop

          1.  
Early morning in the hottest July for years
but not steamy in The Mind Shop
with the streetdoor wedged ajar
and the fan spinning to my cool jazz.
It sucks the punters in
to browse among the floral blouses
ice-clear glassware
holiday paperbacks jolly as deckchairs.
I’m standing tall to their attention
courgette-cool in my crisp laundered shirt
tapping fingers on the counter
in time to the clarinet
and longing for Marcia with her melon-wide smile
to breeze in
and buy up all the Outsize.
 
 
                     2.
 
           Yesterday
           in the rapeseed fields
           a thousand white butterflies
           splintering across the eyes
           changing shape and direction,
           a noontide discotheque.
 
           Today in The Mind Shop
           gaudy figures
           flick across my sightline.
           In midday blue,
           crimson-rose,
           pea-pod green,
           white only on their wingtips,
           they settle momentarily,
           antennae twitching,
           on shelved shoes,
           cushions, albums,
           cuddly toys,
           making the shop a wildflower meadow,
           and they exotic creatures of high summer,
           sprung from shaded seed,
           who fluttered in when I
           flung wide the door
           to fill the shop with sunlight’s pollen.
 

David Ashbee

in collection Poems from the Mind Shop, 2020, Dempsey & Windle,
ISBN 978-1-913329-30-3


 
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The Masters

Their gowns were smudged with chalk;
teapot and ashtray taints
leaked from their folds.
 
One or two were seen about town,
cycling puffily up Wooton Pitch
or meekly carrying a stout lady’s shopping.
 
But their proper place was here –
these corridors, staircases,
the cut behind the Fives courts.
 
Some wore overalls, not gowns,
stained and holed by lab or lathe,
but the artist wore old tweed.
 
Yellow-fingered, unconcerned by appearance,
he sat for hours before his most enduring work –
a two-lb jamjar almost full of ash.
 
Popeye, with grey marbles in his skull,
and said to be a Mormon,
coughed ironically when peeved.
 
Sinker talked of “men with woolly hair”
to demonstrate why a corollary
was not always true.
 
A new, untrained one
stomped in unannounced
and threw around detentions like confetti,
 
spotted his features in bikeshed graffiti,
got fireworks through his letterbox,
and left.
 
The Head loved chuffer trains,
preached in chapels of a Sunday,
brayed like a donkey.
 
When The Gas Board rejected me
he retorted with a hoot:
“They don’t know what they’re missing !”
 
Several played rugger.
One had taught Pinter.
All left handprints on my soul.
 

David Ashbee

in collection Poems from the Mind Shop, 2020, Dempsey & Windle,
ISBN 978-1-913329-30-3


 
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Threshold

When darkness is filling the streets
apart from the lamps
with their haloes of mist
smouldering orange or a ghostly blue
 
a door may open
blessing a doorstep with light
and a shadow’s voice call softly
the name of a cat or child
 
as if this threshold
were a harbour wall
and all beyond a black sea
with no boats coming in
 
Stand here a while
as a can or paper skitters
and a small wind rustles
the skirts of the trees
 
and before turning back
to the sham death of sleep,
sip and savour the night air,
lose count of those elusive stars.
 

David Ashbee

in collection Poems from the Mind Shop, 2020, Dempsey & Windle,
ISBN 978-1-913329-30-3


 
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At “The Bell and Gavel”

I’d never considered there was a technique
or any sort of knack. But it seems there was.
I heard three blokes describing it last week
in The Salutation, and I was riveted, because
a tight-wrapped wire of memory suddenly unravelled
and there I was with the chained ball in my hand
thirty years ago at The Bell and Gavel.
I remembered how, to topple the last man standing,
you had to stoop, squint and let the missile go
in an apparently wrong direction
so that it swung like a skater in a slow
graceful arc, and you stretched up in satisfaction
as you watched it swerve in like googlie, whack,
then with a hollow wooden clattering sound
the Last of The Mohicans was sprawling on his back,
spinning over the ledge, and rolling round and round,
while every bloke was clapping, or sorting out change
to buy you a Black and Tan or a Mild and Bitter,
whatever took your fancy, because you, a stranger,
had taught them what it takes to be The Killer.
 
 
Note: Table skittles of the sort described was once a popular game at pubs
such as the one in the title, named after the local cattle market.
Black and Tan and Mild and Bitter were popular beer mixes.

David Ashbee

in collection Poems from the Mind Shop, 2020, Dempsey & Windle,
ISBN 978-1-913329-30-3


 
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