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Mark Pithie
From Aberdeen, my poetry is influenced by my work in the 'legal profession', by my background (obviously), by music (particularly blues and jazz), and by my favourite writers (too numerous to name here).
Poems
WINTER, 1974
Winter sprays its frosty swirls,
Twists and turns on single glazing.
Icy kingdom: our back garden,
Downy flakes on dying rosebeds.
Creative and created patterns.
Small handprints on ice-glazed windscreen,
Icy kingdom, winter school run,
Endless hum of engine running.
Baking trays as makeshift sledges,
Contravening parents' laws.
Making slides on muddy grasslands,
Carefree, crossing golden ponds.
Knitted mittens, flecked with snow,
Linked by elastic, dried by the fire.
Kids sip scalding soup, red faced,
Glowing with the winter's heat.
Through the melting icy patterns,
Life at large through single glazing,
Snowman stands on front lawn guarding,
Traffic tentatively trickling.
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HUNTERS AND COLLECTORS
Peacock proud and dressed to thrill,
Strutting night streets, bold as brass.
Trip through light on heels fantastic,
Tiredly queuing – all clubbed out.
Sun tattooed on small backs arching
Golden shaded models catwalk.
Careless howls in winter's traffic,
Claws concealed in sleeveless furs.
Displaying multi-styles and hues,
Crows and magpies, raccoon tails.
Pouting, posing, would be wannabes
Auditionees for news film footage.
Raking at prospective rivals,
Potential spouses stunned look on.
Catfights on the cobbles' icing,
Falling short of falling apart.
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SHOPPING TO EXCESS
Sunday, almost Advent,
They descend upon the city:
urban urchins, denizens of darkness,
rural idlers, proliferate proles.
From tenements, dark tower blocks,
rural idylls and ancestral piles – to shop.
Fists full of credit cards,
Christmas cowboys heft heavy bags
of prospective presents on a Wild West
main drag, rolling with sweat.
A thrashing throng of thrusting limbs
swims amid the thrum of swarming
shoppers fighting for attention
from seemingly numb checkout girls.
Yuletide cheer from carol singing
Sally Army – brassy jazz, distant Andean
pan pipes all drowned out by ringing
and kerchinging of a thousand cash tills.
Commercial Christmas, spelt with an "X",
a time for greed – to spend to excess.
Money's an object – a card made of plastic,
limits stretched – straining – elastic.
Debts building up? – then sequestrate!
Is this what we've come to celebrate?
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ONE HALF OF A LIFE
Am I bitter at Forty-Three?
Am I sad that "I" am not "We"?
Am I loveless and alone?
Who knows where the time has gone?
It seems like only yesterday
I acted up in our school play
The audience applause was wild
I wish that I was still a child.
Things were simpler for us then,
No stresses, worries, lots of friends,
No bills to pay, no low paid jobs,
We sat in school and shut our gobs!
Am I bitter when I think of chances
I've missed, of girls at teenage dances?
My excuse was always shyness, I
Say this with no touch of wryness.
Think how it was, way back when,
When we were just young women and men.
Eyeing up talent, drinking, smoking,
The chat up lines, the nerves, the joking!
Now they're divorced, selective or single,
Alcopop aunties, unwilling to mingle,
Where are the lonely hearts, am I bereft?
I've still got one half of my life left!
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CITY STANZAS – A SEQUENCE
Image Conscious
Walnut skinned in Sunbed City
Career consumerists all fake-tan
Celebrity locals famous for shopping
spending dosh as fast as they can.
Salaried sluggards all besuited
young professionals punch the clock,
drink the city's latest nightspots
designer beers and 'Aftershock'.
Malled Alive
Shopping malling texting calling
tracking mates at every move
on the street or in the bus
mobile phones are what they love.
Must look good folk, malling misfits
Sprawling shellsuit wearing yobs
Crank their creditcards to limits
vacant looking, open gobbed.
No Talent Necessary
Budding Britneys Beyonces Kylies
bulging bellies pierced tattooed.
Think they live the life of Riley,
lifestyles financed by the Broo.
Hanging loosely in Macdonalds
McFlurrys Big Macs lots of chips
Guzzlers gorging grease and salad
fragments fall from greasy lips.
Sadness Fills the Bars
Six pack loners poets of penury
Scribbled dispatches beermats bars
empty glasses fag-ends lighters
bloodshot eyes behold the stars.
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AGEING
Spirit flickers behind blurry eyes
Skin slack – features sharp
You gesture with arthritic hands,
blessing the air – a saint long gone.
For seconds we are familiar faces
You address us using wrong names
You drift in tangled wires of mind –
a confusion of the present and past.
Memories freed from the confines of time –
For seconds – we are familiar again.
(i.m. Louisa Milligan 1908-2003)
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ABERDEEN BEACH 1971
(a sequence )
Kids On The Beach
they play away
scattering sand
building castles
buckets
spades
adults buried up
to their necks
beachballs bounce
unaided by hands
Fathers at Lunch
shirt-sleeved
ties awry
men join families
respite from
the daily grind
wince at the heat
eat soggy sandwiches
sip scalding tea
from plastic cups
The Ice Cream Run
kids push to the queues front
barely grasping their cones
with hands too small
barefoot
awkwardly
stepping on warm stone
return rushing to
watchful parents
tongues taste
ice
cold vanilla
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EGRESS
You said I looked "extinguished"
with my grey hair and goatee
You had done with playing your
cruel mind games with me
Unpacked emotional baggage
awakened ghosts long gone
we'd descended into parody
bit part players in a song
Van burbled on in the background
about underlying depression
as I sat there, hands clasped
awaiting a confession
When the horns came in, you had left.
Happiness oozed from bitter words
as I gazed out the window
watching your tail-lights fading
as the track ended.
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