Brian Young – Bindweed Magazine

Brian Young – 5 poems

THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD

Four abreast the Harleys swarm,

buzzing into genteel Poole

alias Deadwood, South Dakota.

Latter-day cowboys ride into town

low in the saddle, gunfire crackling

from every exhaust.

They dismount outside J D Wetherspoon

(their Hickok Saloon)

and peel back bandannas to reveal

long, grey locks.

In the Seniors’ StayTrim Center

SupaSlim grannies with china-doll faces

pedal to heaven

on stationary steeds.

They’ll never embroider of an evening,

nor will the bikers build Fort Laramie

from toothpicks.

Old Sitting Bull was right:

you can hold back the cavalry.

They’ve knocked back the liquor of limitless youth,

traded the harmless for the audacious

and shot Old Age stone dead.

HEALTH WARNING

A little poetry is a dangerous thing;

certain verses can race your pulse

and worm into your mind,

never to be prised out.

They suddenly twitch into consciousness

like the reminder of an old wound

and cause your lips to move,

to the consternation of others.

You can reveal your malady to close companions

knowing they may contract your fever,

but those verses will be part of you to the end,

truer than your epitaph.

CROSSROADS

We’re flung forward by the brake.

Another feral dog, heat-drowsed, slow,

missed by a whisker? No –

Snake! Six-foot snake!

Out of deference we let her pass,

over shimmering tarmac, gliding

like mercury over glass.

Earth-mother like Shakti the consort of Shiva,

on her headlong errand she ignores

us totally; out of reverence we leave her

to reach her distant, ever-secret lair.

Our universe halts right there,

all movement, all progress paused.

We do not even think “We spared

your life”. Her fissured features, if aware

of such hubris, would spit back “I gave you yours!”

Four seconds, then men and women bearing burdens

among grinding trucks and cycles glittering in the heat

trudge again along the dust-blown street

past walls enclosing watered hotel gardens.

We weave between them to the Holiday Inn,

where a motionless lizard, tail curled,

head tilted, curious, uncertain,

forms an intricate impression of another world.

SPACE-TIME

The last time I was you

you worked at Primark

not Marks and Sparks

and the time before that

you married our local copper

not me

so the kids were different.

You did knitting not speedway

but died impaled on your needles.

The last time you were me

you won’t remember but

I was born twice in one week

because of a snag in space-time.

Then we were my mother

you and me.

We’ve been hundreds of dentists

and a Bengal tiger

not yet born.

SWEET NOTHINGS

The Floyd-Marshall algorithm solves the all-pairs path problem

I love the way you say that

And Smith-Waterman’s process finds local sequence alignment

I’ve often thought that myself

Nonblocking minimal spanning switch!

Not many men say that to me

Merge, with elements on the output not repeated

Look… perhaps we should hold our horses

Tarjan’s components are strongly connected

I’ve missed you terribly

Dynamic time warping measures the similarity between two sequences

When you left, the bottom fell out of my world

Heap’s permutation interchanges elements

You mean the world fell out of your bottom?

Bloom filter!

Steady now. Look, you could stay the night…

Fuzziness determines if strings are approximately equal

I’ll put you a camp-bed in the front room

A beam-stack search integrates an initial node

We could talk long into the night, couldn’t we?

A Soundex refinement allows matching of Slavic and Germanic surnames

Or we could cuddle, couldn’t we?

Couldn’t we?

Damn.

Power cut.

Brian Young is a retired languages teacher living in Hertfordshire, England. He has a degree from London University in Spanish and French, and for many years taught languages in secondary schools and at the University of Hertfordshire. He is an active member of Ver Poets in St Albans, helps to run a University of the Third age poetry group, and regularly reads his work at the Poetry Society in London. He has won several prizes in national competitions, including second prize in the Southport Writers’ Circle open competition. He has gained certificates of merit from the Mere Literary Festival, Wiltshire and has had poems published in several anthologies. He enjoys writing slightly quirky poetry where he tries to emphasize the precise and heightened use of language.

ALL IN THE MIND

When it all gets a bit much
I sneak up to my attic
for a leisurely, delicious
rummage.

There are photos of people and places:
I puzzle over names and years
then dust off plans and projects
and ponder how they might progress.

There are novels half-begun
whose development will be stunning
and hilarious jokes
whose punch-lines I try to recall.

There are pictures of people
who need to be put in their place:
I think up suitably sharp rebukes
and practise withering looks.

Someone’s yelling at me downstairs,
an inch from my nose.
How the hell can I answer,
up here in my attic.

BLIND FROM BIRTH

When the bandages came off
light did not surprise me
but colours moved, merged, mesmerised.
A voice said “Well?”
so I knew there was a face
– and whose.
Following and focusing
were many months’ work,
still unaccomplished.

Today I shaved my nose
until my reflected hand
revealed the vastness of my face
and the suds were white, not brown.
I tried not to close my eyes.

Things change as I walk round them –
is this an apple, a pear?
Touch and smell will tell me.
I must not close my eyes.

On the windows are fields and trees.
Twigs I know, buds I know,
but I cannot feel a tree.
Walking between them
I try not to trip over their shadows
as they sidle past.

At night the moon is a broken fingernail
tangled in the tops
as I am tangled in this world of sight.

Let me go where I do not feel crippled,
back to my safe, familiar,
dark
world of touch.

QUESTIONS

The silliest questions are always the best:
“Why is the sky dark at night?”
The obvious answer doesn’t work,
and “Because it is” won’t do.
Some people sink their teeth into questions
like a dog at a postman’s trousers
until he delivers an answer –
for someone else.

High-octane questions burn out the brain:
“How can we prove we exist?”
Distinguishing the me-ness of me
from the you-ness of you
is like knitting cobwebs.

Knowledge blunders laboriously forward
with lucky finds crouching
round blind bends.

Thank goodness some light will be thrown
on that dark-sky conundrum
by someone determined to know
why flies
have four hundred eyes.

REGRET

Did you take a biscuit from the display tin?
No, Dad.

Did you put the lid back loose? They all went soft…
No, Dad, I didn’t.

But I did. And he knew.

And I knew how he loved the polished wooden counters
And the burnished coffee grinder
And the wire cheese-cutter
And the sugar scoops and butter pats
And the proud pyramids of tins

And how he so nearly wept
At the slow realisation that the shop wasn’t paying.

More punishment than enough.

FIRE GAZING

The hunters sit gazing
into the embers.

Blind to the spark-dusted sky
deaf to the chatter from the huts
they relive the chase
recall lost companions
plan tomorrow’s kill
bond tight
without movement
without a word.

THE PEBBLE

On my thirtieth birthday I found a green pebble
outside number 16 Drury Lane.

I dribbled it all the way to Euston –
through the traffic and the people.

If someone else kicked it I retrieved it
and continued from the previous location.

It went into the grass beside Russell Square
and under a café table on Woburn Place

so I placed it two feet from the kerb
and started again.

If it had been lost in a drain or similar orifice
I’d have kicked another pebble from the beginning.

Outside Euston Station I picked it up
and placed it in my right-hand trouser pocket.

It had taken 44 minutes
not counting stoppage time.

The pebble is safe in my bedside cabinet
at the back of the second drawer down –

I’ve kept it carefully all these years
because without doubt
it was most satisfactory.

Brian Young is a retired languages teacher living in Hertfordshire, England. He has a degree from London University in Spanish and French, and for many years taught languages in secondary schools and at the University of Hertfordshire. He is an active member of Ver Poets in St Albans, helps to run a University of the Third age poetry group, and regularly reads his work at the Poetry Society in London. He has won several prizes in national competitions, including second prize in the Southport Writers’ Circle open competition. He has gained Certificates of Merit from the Mere Literary Festival, Wiltshire, and has had poems published in several anthologies. He enjoys writing slightly quirky poetry where he tries to emphasize the precise and heightened use of language.