Poetry by Les Wicks

MY BRONTE BEACH

is the loudmouth in the waves singing Summertime.
It's actors, politicians
pensioners & the kids - minus all trappings -
no status beyond "animal with soul".

It is the dominance of birds
politely ignored by undercover dogs.

Someone known - just out of hospital -
totters back to the sea
like a great old turtle.
Cedars of lebanese legs copse around BBQs, 5 o'clock shadow.
A bum's washing dries on the memorial quartz beside
buffed girls laughing like lawn sprinklers.

Over the years it's become a community of friends,
the accretion of small tragedy that attends every understood life.
It's my wife, on a salt encrusted
wafer of towel, spiced
by utter quiet. The sun disinfects.

I write the words,
then a photographer captures me:
grey, round and affixed as the fence posts.
We don't own ourselves
but each one,
we all have separate Brontes.

The sand takes the shape of our need.


- Les Wicks 2006


OPPOSABLE THUMBS

Once I sang
I cool blueline
drenched in wonder.

But gave it away to the fingers, they
touched the bleak edge
of an unmoneyed future
& I saw it
like some untethered boat
react with a fingertip nudge
just float away
to the open sea of a stranger's way.
That was so simple.
What else?
Fingers wash
stroke
they fight, fuck up & fix.
We wait
as their batons rule the beat.

It's them who work the guns,
take us down from trees
to their shitty little thatch
on a beige savannah plain.

Glum
under the thumbcommute between fingerfoods
& a hand signed repossession order.
Our minds sit locked
in boxes made of muscle.



- Les Wicks 2006




LES WICKS' 7th book is "Stories of the Feet" (Five Islands, 2004).