Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
When I drive over the moors
in the hugger-mugger traffic,
I think of the children
murdered, hidden.
When I see the southern sweep
of the Saddleworth Road
over the fern and the peat,
I think of them.
It is almost a prayer.
And I wonder if my chance,
fellow travellers think the same.
Remembrance is solitary, transitory.
By David SelzerUnder a steel net – sponsored by a multi-
national – in a disused limestone quarry
were all of South Africa’s birds, except
the predators.
The black warden softly extolled the aviary’s
human values: calm, peace, gentleness.
How well he knew each of the inhabitants:
who delved, wove, fluttered, chattered, nested,
hatched, fed – and defended abundantly.
At home, damp autumn turned to cold winter,
birds pecked at the ice on the stilled fountain
and the coalition of the willing
prepared for war.
By David SelzerFor Ian Craine
‘Marjorie Beebe is the greatest comic possibility that ever worked in my studio. I think she is destined to become the finest comedienne the screen has ever seen.’ Mack Sennett
Her bottom was a serious matter:
the butt, as it were, of numerous pratfalls
in many Mack Sennett two reelers – like
The Chumps, Campus Crushes and The Cowcatcher’s
Daughter – in which she was a capricious,
lubricious Columbine with witty eyes
and good teeth and various Harlequins,
who ended invariably as losers.
From Kansas City, her mother took her,
on the Yellow Brick Road, to Tinsel Town.
Beebe and Sennett became lovers, despite
or because of the thirty year difference,
so he knew her asset first hand so to speak.
From silents to talkies, slapsticks to wise cracks,
her Mid West accent playing well, then Mack goes bust
and Marjorie gradually disappears.
Was it the booze? She was certainly
a toper. Or, more likely, The Hays Code:
irony suppressed, vulgarity outlawed,
Puritan America triumphant!
By David SelzerThe succulent, bright green shoots of early spring;
the blackthorn – on distant hedgerows like
sporadic late frost or, close to, pearls
of scattered barley; the tiny goldcrest
with its mighty voice – see see see, see see see:
presage the summer’s rich beneficence.
This is her second spring. She points with wonder
and joy at a sudden breeze that shakes
the cherry tree, disturbs its white petals
against the bluest sky, the brightest sun.
She is walking now – or, rather, teetering
fearlessly through her own universe
of daily marvels: dead leaves, small children.
Adept for quite a time in her own
lingua franca soon she will learn ours,
a mundane, quotidian miracle.
By David SelzerThe radio telescope trundles on rails
in a landscape of dairy cows and ponds,
tuning into the dispersing cosmos.
The universe is replete with sound. We
fill it with meaning and impedimenta.
Star sailors embark on metaphor
and intricate engines. We record
the energy of suns dead longer than
dinosaurs. We listen to stars yet
tolerate hunger – and we stare still
into the black wonder of starry nights.
Like addicts, we exploit experience.
The ether is redolent with humankind,
our majestic jabber.
Acknowledgement: This poem was first published in ‘Still Life’, a poetry anthology published by University of Chester Press – http://www.chester.ac.uk/search/node/still%20life
By David SelzerFrom the spoil heaps of the redundant gold mines,
when the wind blows, the dirt blows always
over Soweto. In a flapping marquee
at the end of a street, the wedding took place.
Aperitif nibbles became gritty,
paper cloths grimy, the cutlery
silhouetted in grit. There were many
speeches – long before guests ate the freshly
slaughtered lamb and even longer before
the singing and dancing. The hired canvas drummed
with hope, humour, courage, enterprise, joy.
By David Selzer
