Dan the Poet

07/03/2026

The persistence of time (for Brian Herdman)

That was now then,
and then again.

This now is now
as well, somehow.

So many, rolled up
like millimetres

each one separate
yet measurable

each connected
arbitrarily

buried under the weight
of subjectivity,

under six feet of clay,
and partly iron,

Three statues trampling
their future into nothing

Like unnameable figures
from a Trilogy

Now it is we
who are worms in the bin,

not the puppets,
but the string,

We are the statues crumbling
into chaff, blown away

into the eyes of passersby,
The dirt in their tears.

We have been,
and will be, for years.

One wonders how and if
and when, my friend

That this now might be
now again

29/07/2025

Nettle Wine

A bank of live wires.
Fine powdery clouds
from balled up buds
tearing along the wind
beside themselves.

I recall a grandfather
I hardly ever saw yet
saw enough to call him
mine. I never tasted
any of his garden wine.

The clay from a half-dug
pond clings to a funeral
dress. Bees sleep among
the flowers and I relax, for
we are all less than pollen.

11/05/2025

I. Cheers Then

The Sword reaches westwards into Juno.
Cyclists wobble awkwardly, warmth-starved
and useless. I might as well have what's left.
Rosy-fingered sunset - not yet. I leave them
on the beaches where we fought them
on the beaches. A beach is never a beach.
Not a walk in the park, either. Breathlessly
leaving footprints through symbolic sand.
I pass a carousel that has some rides left
in her yet, children clinging to her sides
as music distorts the chatter of the waves.
She is tired, she must be, how long now?
I leave all of them behind, I'm striding out
past a low hung shore that wants more
than I ever thought I could bear to give.
I've seen her in photographs I can't erase,
Black and white and belonging to others.
I've seen her tied down with strangers
landing upon her, trying to slip past all
manner of defenses. But she welcomes
me despite those charismatic minefields.
She trusts me with her boxes of grenades.
I thank her bedforms for their support as
they curl underneath the arch of my shoes
that curve underneath the arch of my feet
that carve into curves of the lands I'm leaving.
I say goodbye to everything so nonchalantly,
walls have gone up in far less time than they
took Rommel, less time than they take to fall.
I damn every last block and brick and splinter
every nail and sand-laced mortar, iron fibres,
I damn every molecule of myself, I damn it all.

II. Jetée de Pêcheurs

Skipping past words that mean nothing,
tracing fingers through sounds like “null”
that make me recall Nemo and the gulls
and wonder what all the world is wearing,

I've been having dreams where breathing
is all the waves can think about, search for.
I've been waking up stood at bedroom doors
with one hand on the latch and feeling

with the other just the curve of my throat,
the thyroid that never worked in my gran,
the clavicle that Michael broke three times,
the pulse that throws itself forward and out
like a promontory, with lovers hand in hand
casting lines to catch a bite of peace of mind.

III. Crushed mussels

Sand under scrutiny, a microscope, in your eye.
Sand under foot, pressure, fifty filthy seas rising.
Sand under whelks, winkles, limpets, plankton -
Sand underwhelming, brought forward, left behind
Sand over fist. Sand over everything, your money
sand your life. Sand across roads, kicked up
by the last gasp from between slender fingers.
Sand in piles next to piles of sand. Sand glasses,
sand shoes, sand watches, sand briefcases.
Sand castles, hiding sand-riddled dungeons,
where the prisoners are fed sand. A last meal,
whole grains of sand which are rubbed all over
wholegrain sandwiches, dim pleasure of
a pun spreads across the jailor's darkened face.

His is the face of crushed mussels,
cast off crab shell crinkling
in the gentle warmth of spring.
You could pour ceriths and cockles and cowries
into that face like you could pour
glass flutes under a huppah.
You could and you want to stamp
the s**t out of that face and grind it into dust.
Stamp until you find a rhythm.
136 beats per minute will do.
It's even at least.
The jailor's face is black like feldspar,
like obsidian, but we're on a beach, so -
take bladderwrack instead, take some
mermaid's purses, stale yet wriggling,
take the back of your mouth, mid-sneeze.
After sweet nothing on the beach, in the sand,
someone has written: bisous. Kisses.
Surrounded it with a heart, some crosses.
I stamp on past,
I'm finished with lists.
Mazel tov!

IV. St Aubyn

Flagpoles scratch at the sky
The drapes fall carelessly.
A fisherman and rod are stood as one,
a hundred metres from the roiling foam,
the line is cast forwards and back,
pointlessly and forever.

United Kingdom, Poland, Netherlands,
Norway, the United Estates of America,
Switzerland, Germany (I know simply
by it's black and red), Canada, France.

Just names really. Names like grains ingrained.
Names that signify entire concepts, histories,
cultural identities, each one pointing at itself
each one pointing at everything next to it.

Look at me! This is me!
Look at that! I'm not that!

Along the promenade, someone has tied
a clock that is stuck at ten past eight
in the picture I take of it. Beneath it,
tannoys and their wires whipping in the wind
droop their heads like Glénan daffodils.
Miles away, scientists smash particles
into other particles only to discover that
time is always wasted.

Rocks the colour of that bruise
He gave me one afternoon
tell me I should turn around.
The sky in it's death-throe
illumination tells me that hope
was never here: look at me! it says,
Watch how I can set water ablaze.

V. Casino Bibliotechno

Here's a closed library
Squatting beneath luridly lit,
jingling neon pink windows.

I try and marry the two.

Inside I imagine reading clubs
dressed as croupiers
asking what they thought
about the characters crowding
round the roulette table.
There's maybe a kids section
where the cards are bigger.

The Dewey decimal dice
are overloaded but still
manage to roll across tables
that are constantly told to shush
by staff as they shuffle their books.

Chips and overdue receipts
are swept across green felt
like a microfiche reel.

The stakes are always high
in the casino bibliotheque

VI. Langrune sur Mer

To say I cross a green land
is deceiving. The bottle rocks
softly surround glass pools
like damp upholstery, like
favourite slippers left in rain.

The sky sulks overhead,
streetlights come to life
to signal that the sand
has moved once more.
Always, everything is one
step ahead. Around the corner
lurks yet another casino,
a single stinking iris cowering
in the hedgerow,
concomitantly with used tyres
filled with concrete and steel
cheap recycled moorings.

The flood defences here
are indigo and useless.
It appears no one sees that
forty days have been and gone,
all the couples have fled the ark
and emissary birds intended
to search for signs of land
have caged themselves
to protect themselves
from themselves.

My feet ache.
My knee aches.
My elbow sings.

VII. Beach Huts

Over my shoulder
flickering on the horizon
something like an oil rig,

something plummeting
through the channel’s floor,
an oversized hyperdermic.

To my right are rows and rows
of beach huts squatting angrily
in the dusk of their insolence.

Passing the fishermen's pier
reaching for my throat once more,
Silhouettes of grief growing.

I wonder how much longer
I will be needed by those I care for
I wonder at the longevity of my utility.

The pier is empty of fishermen
and lovers. There is only the sea
embracing its black timbers.

Not a single beach hut is open,
and I notice each door is red
or blue, like Morpheus’ pills.

I imagine tourists emerging
in red, white and blue swimsuits
when the world is awake,

to sit on red blue or white benches
their skin turning red from the blue
but these are not the hours.

I have been dreaming, too,
of the dead, and how much more
they’ve always known than me,

and the oil rig itself
was only ever and just
an offshore wind farm.

The tide is in,
I can't return
the way I came.

I leave the beach at white
forget-me-nots crowded
by boulangeries and dog p**s.

VIII. Luc sur Mer

White light on the sea
is memory now, a
surface tension,
a two dimensional farce.

Halogen streetlights
barely offer company.
They were gassed
with iodine, I'm sure.

Some colours I just
can't bring myself
to acknowledge here.
The black tide rises.

It forces me to the road,
I’ve left the beach,
Cédez le passage
to the Ocean's breath

as it smothers the land,
cleansed us of bisous, of
Nemo and his crew, with
20,000 gallons of night.

IX. Plage des Confessionaux

Crawl back along the path
toward the roil of shingle,
behind quiet silhouettes of
fishing lines propped up
amongst buckets of bait.

My return is heralded by
a slight shift in the sky, the sea
has paused just long enough
for it all to fall through gaps.
There is not much of anything left.

The coves that crouched
in their own shadows earlier,
pregnant with pure absence,
have loosed their darkness
on the quiet dying of the world.

I could say it here, perhaps?
I could tell her how much I do,
how the thought is like sulphur,
the dream was always too big
and how I can't stamp it out.

The dark is oddly comfortable,
appropriate even. I could admit
all the terrible shameful things,
throw them against the rocks
here, and become a cold fish

The unnameable was reduced
to a featureless grey worm in a
bin or a bucket, and, even then,
he still wasn't happy. What hope
would a cold, blind fish have?

X. Lion sur mer

Love band youth
Joints buckle blue

Carousel horses
Blacklight choices

Pitter patter pity stop
Terror teething up and up

Sand soft, concrete mellow
Red and white and blue and-

Chalet Henri filigree
craning gable end of me

Body broke, plastic gate
jelly legs, belly hate

Water gulp, chest rest
Caught breath, rest less.

01/04/2025

Mae Geri

I need a foot
firmly planted,
supporting leg
bent slightly
for balance,

the other to rise
into the chest,
chambering
with potential
energy. I need

Weight forward,
shoulder forward,
kicking forward
on balls of feet
with toes lifted.

I’m explosive
momentum,
a door breaker,
a breath taker,
a firing line.

I'm direct and
well received
in that way.
My only fault
is in my honesty,

for if you guide me,
take my foot
as it falls, turn
in to my body
and sweep,

if you brush me
to one side
and slide past
beneath my ribs,
a world inverts.

31/03/2025

Megalocardia

They told my dad his heart's too big
They told my
They said how are you feeling now?
Does it hurt?
They said he won't be here for long
He won't be
It's just we want to make sure before
sending him
They said the phone was ringing long
Before I
Long before I picked it up and heard
Her say, she
said are you sat down, sit down, Gran
said listen.
She said everything's alright but he
Had to go.
She said it'll be alright pet, it's alright,
You're strong.
She said I've got to go but look after
your sister.
I said I'm sat on my bed but I wasn't
I was stood
I said I'm okay, I said I'll let her know
And I did
But Gran had gone, and Grandad left
after Dad,
I said Dad, I love you but what is this?
your finger
I said you finger has a clamp around
He said
That's to measure my blood’s oxygen
He said
This is what I can do whenever I want
He said
I can slow my heart right down at will
He said
The machine is beeping more slowly
now, I said
He said I know, he said, and look here,
He said
And pulled apart his chest, a rib splitting
Lamb rack,
No mess at all, just an obsidian mass
He said
You have a big heart too, son, as alarms
rang like
telephones rang long before
He said
You try it, so as I can see,
He said
try it he said try
for me.

24/03/2025

Sheepstor

Love doesn't like straight lines.
Love likes rain-washed zigzag
paths through pine and drystone
walls still rising, as needles fall
and granite has the last laugh.

Love doesn't like straight lines.
It likes the way the heavy gate
swings open with two children
attached while whiteface sheep
enjoy the freedom already had.

Love doesn't like straight lines.
I, like the summit of tors climbed,
like the way clouds will descend
to swallow peaks and reservoirs,
will reach and sink into our love.

I like the way it all rushes through,
how the turbulent mist hurtles by
and makes flying islands of hardy
tussocks, feldspar, quartz, in that
infinite struggle for permanence.

18/03/2025

Plastic rain

A new addition to the water cycle:
A crude oil sea that lifts in summer sun
a polystyrene cloud-shaped clavicle
to be pulled to shore by a nylon tendon.
It precipitates above the newfound height
of non-recyclable man-made waste
and fills the rivers with its beads of white
in polymer chains with acid aftertaste.
It's not all lost, our politician's cry,
our purity of life's not under strain -
under plastic microscope with plastic eye
we see no microplastic climate change.
There is no plastic falling from the sky
as rain, it's only in your heart, your brain.

A plastic mist descends from the sky each day.

09/03/2025

Paperweight

Consider the qualities
of a paperweight.
Differentiate
between function
and form.

The most essential quality
is its heaviness.
It must hold papers
like one holds down a job
or holds on to life.

Breathing is near impossible
for paperweights, their chest
is tight and shoulders round.
No paperweight was ever
remembered for its levity,
only its loyalty.

It must be stable.
Well-balanced at the base
is crucial to prevent it falling
from the desk, from grace.
They don’t like life on the edge.

Ideally, paperweights are forged
from durable materials like glass
or stone. Some prefer metal.
Paperweights are goods ideas
for anniversary presents,
therefore, or first dates.

Aesthetically speaking,
there are various designs,
shapes and sizes.
Some are simple,
others more elegant
and refined.
We could dwell
on what that suggests
about political alignment
and where a paperweight
might fall on the spectrum
but that feels like a waste
of time at this point.

With glass paperweights,
the clarity and quality are
of the utmost importance.
Color shouldn’t matter
but, arguably, it does.
I’ve never seen a yellow
paperweight.

The finest paperweights
are of exceptional quality
and craftsmanship,
with exquisite attention
paid to detail and symmetry.
They are in an immaculate
virginal condition
and, if you are lucky,
one in a million.

But if you ask me,
The perfect weight
is the one that sits
squat and round
in the palm of your
half-closed hand,
patiently waiting
for you to raise it.

05/03/2025

These Hands

These hands are not mine.
They were, you might recall,
somewhat softer, somewhat small
and nothing like at all
these more recent hands of time.

These hands are not mine.
Nor the grains of sand that fall
between the eyes, the glass, the wall,
between the palms that held it all,
back when the world was fine.

These hands are not mine
that conjured up a midnight squall
and bent you into stone-faced thrawls
without love for common man at all.
How could you miss the signs?

These hands are not mine.
For mine curl up tight, as grievers bawl
when their softer futures, yet to crawl,
have slowed and stopped, won't move at all,
don't move the oval hearts of office swine.

These hands are not mine
that take the white-and-red stained pall,
swap half centuries of stars for spangled shawl,
from the mass grave of they who gave their all
take the freedoms fought for, fought for by all
take what little’s left, these hands take it all.
I can't wash my hands of these hands at all,
these hands that aren't mine, not mine at all.

10/02/2025

To kill a mockingbird

You could drown it

You could keep it under a belljar
and suck all of the air out.

You could fire it into space
tied to the side of a SpaceX Rocket
until it joins all the other metal debris.

You could dowse it in methylated spirit
and throw lit matches at it until it erupts
into bright neon blue and purple flame
like a brandy soaked Christmas pudding.

You could tie it to a rock thrown
from the top of the Burj khalifa with
a litany of anti-islamic propaganda
written small upon the rachis
of each and every grey feather.

You could save it

from the depths of a bucket
or the despair of a vacuum

you could help it escape
the whiplash of escape velocity
and you could save it

from the immolation of a bored mind
from birdseed laced with antifreeze,
cats, flying fearlessly into windows,
the best inventions of the worst minds

and you could befriend it, make it feel
safe and welcome, feed it and water it
until it feels like it's part of the family,
until it trusts and loves you so completely
and absolutely, that all you need do is ask.

04/02/2025

Aquarium

Late January trip to the blue
inside of a window, our hearts
breaking like Drake's drum,
ready for war, ready for blood.
All orphans in a watertight box
coaxed into jars, bringing joy
to the masses. Nine brains
finding their way through
a manmade saltwater maze.
One of us is worrying about
the last time we were fed,
one of us wonders what fish
think about inside rock pools.
If it was up to three or four
of us, we’d be paddling with
the brittlestars and guppies.
But we're not allowed. We
are wrapped up in each other
so entire, that one lookout,
a single rectangular pitch,
comes back to tell us that
our packed lunch is ready.
It's wrapped in itself, too -
sandwiched between shell -
we carefully avoid its claws
as we press it against glass
and break into the white meat,
our powerful beak clipping
away. we can taste it's last
thoughts while all the other
kids cheer at the spectacle
before returning to their own
glass screens of blue light
that bounces off our blood.