David Selzer

A RIGHT CHARIVARI!

By David Selzer April 23, 2020 In Poetry 1 adagio, Big Issue

All seemed particularly dystopian

as I walked out one morning down the high street,

towards MacDonald’s and KFC,

Café Nero, Costa and Starbucks,

boarded-up shops and charity shops,

and two young men selling the Big Issue.

Maybe it was the noise: the traffic’s grind,

an elderly busker’s cacophonous chords,

the fire engine howling – outside the KFC!

I approached the forming crowd, and overheard,

from customers smelling of smoke, rumours:

that one of the Kentucky Colonel’s

deep fat fryers had exploded into flame,

BANK HOLIDAY

By David Selzer April 23, 2020 In Poetry 3 Llandudno, Mostyn Street

The heavy shower drilled on the frosted glass.

We sheltered under one of the high street’s

open arcades with sloping glazed-roofs –

a Victorian refinement to the resort:

shopping sheltered from seaside weathers.

We were, by chance, in front of Poundland:

one window displayed Pepsi Max, the other

Cadbury’s Highlights, both cut-price sugar.

The Bank Holiday crowd sheltering with us

seemed disproportionately stricken, impaired,

overwhelmingly loud or utterly

silent, with austerity’s complexion.

As the rain began to clear a man,

BILLY GOATS GRUFF

By David Selzer April 23, 2020 In Poetry 1 Billy Goats Gruff, Ecclesiastes

After dark, down the steep lanes of the Great Orme –

a two mile long limestone promontory,

named by Norsemen for a dragon’s head –

past the synagogue and the funicular,

avoiding the temptations of the Pier,

into the lamp-lit, locked-down thoroughfare,

came the Kashmiri billy goats, white as snow,

as clouds, as sea spume. Runaways or outcasts

from a flock imported for their wool,

occasional mascots for the Royal Welsh,

those noisome foragers with their prophets’ beards

and trophy horns capered to the churchyard

and its privet hedges,

APOCALYPSE

By David Selzer April 23, 2020 In Poetry 0 Adriatic, Ancient Rome

Via Del Corso, Rome, March 2020.

The boutiques had been closed by decree, even

Calvin Klein Underwear and Brooks Brothers.

The only pedestrians were the Pope,

in his white robes, and his bodyguard,

in bulging suits – on a pilgrimage

to the ancient church of San Marcello

set back from the street. Beneath a crucifix,

used to assuage a 15th century plague,

Pope Francis prayed to God to stop the virus.

The street, in Roman times, was Via Lata –

DANCING ON AIR

By David Selzer March 26, 2020April 1, 2020 In Poetry 5 barricades, Civil War

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare.

Meditations In Time Of Civil War, W.B. Yeats

There are barricades at both ends of the street.

They have been building for a couple of days –

a skip, a burned-out pick-up, rotten timber.

Someone appears at our door at dusk or dawn,

claiming to be from one side or the other,

begging, asking, demanding contributions –

that folding chair, this old garden bench,

SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND

By David Selzer March 26, 2020 In Poetry 1 April, rabbit hole

Under an April moon the tussocky field

abounds in rabbits. Its hedgerows are sprinkled

with blackthorn blossom creamy in moonlight.

Dark green poplars border the canal

beside the field. Daylight exposes,

behind a hedge, discarded technology:

a wheel-less tractor propped up on breeze blocks.

A troika of Russians on a narrow boat

sings plangently of the motherland.

Sudden rain sweeps across the poplars.

It turns to hail on the rusted tractor;

silences the song; shreds white petals;

All Posts By David Selzer

David Selzer

A RIGHT CHARIVARI!

BANK HOLIDAY

BILLY GOATS GRUFF

APOCALYPSE

DANCING ON AIR

SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND

David Selzer

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