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All Posts By David Selzer

WINTER

By Posted on In Poetry 3 ,

Footballers in the park grow younger, play

longer into December nights. In my garden,

leaves decompose. Fogs rise to the window.

I see my father’s features in the glass.

 

Gulls are grave, funereal in their white

seriousness. Bad weather visitors,

fickle as spume-flecks, they flitter from grass

into heavy skies, craftsmen in gravity.

 

Winter is too human for comfort.

Natural we should shudder as darkness

drifts in sooner. Ice seasons carry home

truths on incisive air.

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BY ANY OTHER NAME

By Posted on In Poetry 0 ,

 For Sandra Lewis

 

We were unsure where to put the Christmas Rose,

aka hellebore niger, you brought us

this December gone. We chose, pro tem, the room

where I write, with its two long windows.

The light the north facing one lets in

is unambiguous. The other accepts

occasional sun from late mornings

to early evenings. I write in a corner

by a wall of books. With its much travelled

piano,

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BREAK AN EGG!

By Posted on In Poetry 0 ,

I am reminded of Professor Wallofski’s

Omelette, Prince of Demark, and the rotten egg

the curate ate, watching this particular

‘peasant rogue…tear a passion to tatters’

as if each word were merely a bagatelle

on a stage the size of a tennis court.

‘Oh, what a noble mind…’ But, yoking apart,

who would wander those chill corridors,

discouraged by the guttering torches

in their sconces, where duty and hatred,

love and negligence throng in the smoky

shadows only words discombobulate –

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NO LESS LIQUID

By Posted on In Poetry 1 ,

‘Cats no less liquid than their shadows
Offer no angles to the wind…’
CATS II, A.S.J. Tessimond

 

With your lithe delight, at the refuge for strays

and rejects, you and she chose each other

immediately. She had a white tuft

at her throat but otherwise was truly

sable; with Egyptian eyes – emerald,

unblinking, discerning; a sycophantic

charmer; an aloof dowager; a great

mouser, night or day, bearing carcasses

as reward for those that worshipped her.

 

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THE ABATTOIR AT MAZINGARBE

By Posted on In Poetry 0 ,

The push for Aubers Ridge had been postponed

because of rain. But the Saturday

was dry and sunny. Going up the line

in the early evening, the Munsters

stood easy at the shrine to Our Lady.

‘…in remissionem peccatorum…’

By noon, next day, nearly half were dead,

caught on the German wire Haig’s ill equipped

artillery had, once more, failed to cut.

 

In Mazingarbe, an industrial town

ten miles south, the British commandeered

the abattoir.

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STAPLETON COTTON 1ST VISCOUNT COMBERMERE

By Posted on In Poetry 1 ,

Stapleton Cotton 1st Viscount Combermere’s

equestrian statue, surrounded now

by traffic, would grace any capital.

For more than a hundred and fifty years

set before Chester Castle he rides south

towards Thomas Harrison’s Grosvenor Bridge

– once the longest single-span arch in the world –

opened by Princess Victoria.

The Viscount – soldier, politician,

diplomat – holds his feathered bicorne

at his side as if just removed in salute.

 

Though Combermere’s seat (once an abbey,

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David Selzer

David Selzer - Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction