Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
Through the open hotel window, above
the river’s lulling sounds and revellers’ shouts,
kittiwakes cry, nesting on the art gallery.
I think of the oceans they have crossed
only to be here. Sometimes, when I
wake in the night, I cannot hear you breathe.
By David Selzer
We crunch through razor shells and squelch through
blackish silt – there is coal in the drenched sand –
to reach the artist’s cast iron avatars.
They are steadfast against anglers, vandals,
local Tories, jet skiers, the Coastguard,
and the RSPB – but not the wind
or the sea. Some are rusting deeply,
some barnacled already, some sinking
or rising – others missing on this
shifty shore. They have watched the North Sea.
Now, from here, they can see Snowdonia,
The Skerries, Queenstown, the New World –
and, some, when the tide is in, sea creatures
in their wilderness of oblivion.
Above, ships pass and the wind farm turns.
By David SelzerShipwrecked on his way to Ireland, the saint
was washed ashore to the foot of the cliff:
founded the church we walk uphill towards
between hedgerows of honeysuckle
and meadowsweet. The church squares to the wind.
A cemetery of slate edges the cliff.
We look down. A seal bobs by the lobster pots.
By David SelzerHorses gallop across the beach, a dog
barks at a black headed gull that lifts
into the air as light as spume and we,
almost entirely by chance, find a rare orchid
on the dunes among the marram grass.
By David SelzerFor Alex Cox
This is the year Dien Bien Phu falls,
Algeria rises, segregation is
ruled illegal in the USA,
the first kidney is transplanted and UK
wartime food rationing finally ends.
Lime Street was filled with thousands of boys and girls,
gathered to greet the singing, celluloid,
Born Again cowpoke, Roy Rogers (erstwhile
Leonard Slye), and his entourage – combining
a promo tour with a Billy Graham
crusade. The youngsters, pinched with cold on that
blitzed and windy street, clutched their copies
of the Roy Rogers Cowboy Annual.
Those with seafaring dads – and there were ships
filling the Mersey then and its docks –
had something from the Sears catalogue
of Roy Rogers’ Gifts: boots, guitar, holster,
ersatz buckskin fringed shirt. (Roy and his wife, Dale,
had been mobbed in London, fringes ripped from
the genuine article). But Roy and Dale
were in bed with ‘flu in their Adelphi suite –
so Trigger trotted the route alone,
climbed the hotel steps, made his mark at
reception, entered the residents’ lounge,
visited his master’s bedroom and appeared
at a first floor window for a photo op.
But was it Trigger or, his double,
Little Trigger? And which rears on its hind legs
stuffed in the Roy Rogers’ Museum,
Branson, Missouri, the ‘Show Me’ state?
Or is either or both with Roy and Dale –
and Bullet, the dog, of course – alive, well and
moseying along on the moon’s dark side?
By David Selzer
OR CARE IN THE COMMUNITY
People new to the neighbourhood soon notice,
rising from one of the walled gardens
or the terraced yards, an occasional
bird call – wood pigeon or even cuckoo?
Distracted by the previous owners’ always
doubtful detritus, it takes them longer
to realise the sounds are human though
of indeterminate age and gender.
Exchanging a Victorian madhouse
for a gentrified Victorian suburb,
making ambiguous bird noises rather
than rocking to and fro in the urine-stink
must be better – but no less sad, no more
purposeful, still unconscionable.
By David Selzer
