David Selzer

1046 posts

POETRY

WAITING FOR THE BUS FARE

David Selzer By David Selzer6 Comments1 min read1.9K views

The bus, its doors still open, is about

to depart on schedule. A young mother,

with a toddler, is talking loudly

on her mobile in the bus shelter,

telling whoever it is that she lacks

the fare and will wait for whoever it is

to bring it however long it takes.

Should I offer to give her the fare?

How would she react? How it would look?

 

With a pneumatic sigh the doors close.

I turn. She is still on the phone, clutching

the little boy’s arm. And I suddenly

remember – how full old age is of

memories that come like revelations –

rough chalk marks on our modest gate posts

and tramps, caps in hand, at the back door

of the small, thirties rented semi, begging

politely for a ‘cuppa’ and a ‘slice’,

before they had to enter the workhouse,

around the corner, or after they left it,

and my grandmother supervising

her daughters dispensing charity.

 

If I had been able to have asked them why,

seemingly alone in that aspiring,

suburban avenue, they would entertain

such guests, albeit on the back doorstep,

I know they would have answered, in surprise,

‘Why? You give what you should!’

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE ROOFS OF MARRAKECH

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.9K views

Were storks here before the Berbers descended

from the hills, creating the ochre city

on the plain and sailing to Iberia –

or did the birds come to build their immense,

intricate nests because there were towers?

 

Flocks of satellite dishes point eastwards.

Beyond the Atlas Mountains, snow covered

deeply now, are the Sahara Desert

and the immemorial routes south to the green

and desperate countries of West Africa.

 

In the nearest mosque, the muezzin

(a youthful, mellifluous tenor)

sings the afternoon prayer – so close it sounds

as if he were beside us. A stork, nesting

on the minaret, opens it wings – its beak

like a prow – and rises surely into

the indifferent sky.

 

 

 

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POETRY

SURVEILLANCE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.6K views

A police helicopter hovers above

my house, flailing the air, its thrumming

outlawing conversation, even thought.

Perhaps they are observing the druggies, dealers,

who gather round the BT kiosk

by the nearby park, and then scatter,

like the Vietcong, when they hear the rotors.

 

The police will have my scowling mugshot –

as I glare upwards at this wasteful,

pointless, harassing jolly at my expense –

to add to all those other dissenting acts

recorded against my name at NSA

and GCHQ: for example,

supporting the ANC while apartheid ruled,

and now tagging ‘Cuba’, the war on terror’,

‘drones’, ‘Waziristan’ in my posted poems.

 

Why be surprised? If we employ spies,

to justify their pay they will find secrets,

which, by definition, are meant to be

private but which are not, per se, wrong.

While metadata clouds in the outskirts

of Cheltenham – costing so much money,

employing so much talent – thousands

of people, elderly like me but poor,

die each year of hypothermia

unregarded.

 

 

 

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POETRY

POET AND PROFESSOR

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments1 min read2K views

‘The spring recoils upon us like a myth…’ The Professor, Kenneth Allott

 

We would meet occasionally, by chance,

outside lectures or tutorials,

near the bus stop by the Philharmonic Hall,

Professor Ken Allott in from the suburbs,

me from various damp, cold flats in Toxteth.

He would always speak and would always ask

about my writing. ‘A young man’s game,’ he’d say,

smiling. He was in his fifties then,

his two volumes out of print. He was

a good teacher – and a fine poet.

 

Ah, if I had seen then how fine –  a craftsman,

witty, lyrical, ironic –  what time

youth would have spent with age to learn about

our art, walking together up Hope Street.

 

‘Heaven is full of clocks which strike all day.

It is to music we are put away.’

 

 

 

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POETRY

RIVERS OF BLOOD

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.7K views

I think of a freckly, fair haired lad

of fifteen, an Irish Traveller –

from that nomadic, hard grafting culture

spawned by the Great Famine. As he ran

from danger across a playing field

he tripped and was killed by two youths, fellow

Catholics with Irish surnames, one of whom

allegedly said, as he stamped with both feet

on the boy’s head, ‘He’s only a fucking

Gypsy.’ The judge did not consider the crime

racist. (Possibly the manifold

ironies had leached into his judgement

and atrophied it). Though it is no longer

legal to overtly, verbally or

otherwise, attack any Asians, Blacks,

Jews and/or Muslims per se for all Gypsies,

Travellers and/or Roma per se

it seems always to be open season.

 

They are tidal rivers the rivers of blood,

those prophesied, self fulfilling torrents

of violence, made to seem inevitable

as flash floods, typhoons, so unstoppable:

a metaphor that is flourished – when

political fortunes are at an ebb –

by scoundrels looking to float their boats

whatever the flotsam or the jetsam.

 

 

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