Tag Archives: Marc Woodward

Ice Hole Ghosts by Marc Woodward

09 Wednesday Mar 2016

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Ice Hole Ghosts

I quit my job in San Francisco
when I heard the Klondike news.
Got myself a pick and shovel,
swapped work boots for my shoes.

I bought a year’s supply of food
to drag behind me on a cart,
joined the rush up to the Yukon
with a young man’s eager heart.

The Chilkoot Trail was harder
than any of us guessed
some turned back, others died,
the weak ones just got left.

I teamed up with a Prussian
to look out for each other,
side by side we hauled our loads,
two bending, wheezing, brothers.

We lit blazes on the permafrost
until the clod had thawed,
shovelled out the dirty grit
then lit our fires once more.

When the April melt got hold
we built sluices out of wood
and sifted through the dirt for gold,
seizing any grains we could.

The following winter winds
had me hanging by a thread.
The Prussian took with frostbite
and the Ice King left him dead.

I bought another plot of land
and thereon staked a claim.
I turned a profit not from gold,
but from selling on again.

I came down from the goldfields,
left the dreamers to their toil,
bitter for my losses buried in
the strip mine’s grimy spoil.

I’m now back at the Chronicle
where I write the best I can,
but the ordeal left me broken,
I’m a whisper of a man.

‘Thar’s gold in them thar hills!’
the laughing printers nudge and tell,
but I’ve left the ghosts of Sourdoughs
digging ice down into hell.

Marc Woodward is a poet and musician resident in the West Country. He has been published in anthologies from Ravenshead Press, Forward Press, OWF, and various magazines and web sites including Ink Sweat & Tears and The Guardian web pages.

Cnut Raises His Hand by Marc Woodward

19 Friday Feb 2016

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Cnut Raises His Hand

Henry of Huntingdon, the 12th-century chronicler, tells how Cnut set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes; but the tide failed to stop. Cnut leapt backwards and said “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.” He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again.

There at the blowing edge of land
pushed forward in hope, they brought me
enthroned in gold on trickling sand.
The broad sky decreasing; the infinite sea.
Wind whinnying over the Marram dunes
its cold, striating, whiplash tunes.
I raise my hand to the thoughtless sea
where grey waves curl, collapse, build;
come back voracious, oblivious to me.

My throng at last stand quiet and still.
I lift my head, my eyes, I drop my hand:
No sea has stopped at my command.
A wooden cross will wear my golden crown,
while I before a truer King kneel down.

Wanton Agnes by Marc Woodward

16 Saturday Jan 2016

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Wanton Agnes

My glowing pink skin belies me
and I know that glint in your eye:
you’re hoping we might go to bed?
Would you feel the same
if I was pea-pod green instead?

Before the bang and the ringing bells
that chimed us from cave into sunlight:
that’s how I was - and my brother too.
Ah, yes, you know me now?
You’ve heard the gossiped news…

I’m Agnes, the green girl who lived:
I learned to forsake green beans
and to eat your garish food
then watch at the placid mill
as my skin took on your pig pink hue.

My homesick brother did the same
but his heart was always green.
Constant as malachite,
green as the willows
quivering by the wolf pits;

green as loyalty, green with memory,
green as the bright watermeal
that hides newts and frogs
but couldn’t conceal
his bloated pink corpse.

So take me to bed, perhaps make me your wife,
I’ll love you as any pink person might.
But you must know that when I hear
the high bells of St Edmund’s
tolling out bold and clear,

I’ll want to take the cold hand
of my brother’s colourless ghost
and walk where once a way appeared,
down by those lonely traps,
- that stranded us sun-struck and blinking, here.

This poem is based on the legend of The Green Children of Woolpit.

Marc Woodward is a poet and musician resident in the West Country and has been published in anthologies from Ravenshead Press, Forward Press, OWF, and various magazines and web sites including Ink Sweat & Tears and The Guardian Web pages.

Arthurian Trilogy by Marc Woodward

04 Sunday Oct 2015

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Arthurian Trilogy

1) Lancelot in the Park

I know you used to come here
because you told me. Perhaps
in an unguarded confession?
Anyway, that was back then

and now, this bench, this park
- with its quivering poplars
silly ducks and bread-waving
kids. It’s just mine alone so

I sit here in chain-mail with my
thoughts, poems, vanity and I
wonder if I couldn’t achieve
more in a different life. This

shield I wear, this suit of
words, this sword of art,
once they swept young damsels
off their small glass slippers,

won princess’s hearts. I
would regale travellers in
dog-floored, noisy mead halls,
lie about fire breathing

dragons. Then another’s Queen
punctured my bravado
split my shield and left
me enjambed and alone

in this theme park of my making.

2) Le morte d’Arthur

Arthur returned to his kingdom in leaf.
Vibrant grass at his feet, overhead
a bursting beech. He took off his armour,
drank from a stream then lay in the April sun
feeling its warmth on his grey stubbled face.
Saracens, Moors, Dervishes. The dust
of foreign lands. He was done with it all.
The wound in his shoulder was still bleeding
and no flowery poultice had staunched it yet.

The shallow brook clattered through green cresses
and the impatient grass grew taller.
He slept untroubled while blood pooled round him,
until he resembled Ophelia floating
in her willowy glade, the blades of grass,
red as her hair, waving in the Spring breeze.

3) Guinevere

Guinevere walked through the morning gardens
where primroses partied in slanting light.
A liquidity of songbirds pardoned
the slinkingly slow departure of night

This walking around in meadows at dawn,
this dripping about in ethereal dreams,
was wearing thin on her, losing its charm
she’d give it all up for Starbucks and jeans.

She’d buried Arthur at Avalon Tor,
that squalid town with its hill of hippies:
already they’d opened souvenir stores,
tarot talkers, spell sellers and chippies.

In a parallel world through a wormhole in time
she’d drink gin and tonic. With Lancelot and lime.

 

Marc Woodward is a poet and musician resident in the West Country. He has been published in anthologies from Ravenshead Press, Forward Press, OWF, and in various magazines and web sites including Ink Sweat & Tears and The Guardian web pages.

Song of a Dead Man by Marc Woodward

05 Sunday Jul 2015

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Song of a Dead Man

Dead man came softly
to knock on her door.
He said ‘Don’t forget how
you knew me before’.

Dead man sat gently
to rest in the hall.
Looked at her paintings
hung up on the wall.

He said that the best
was the canvas of crows.
She said they were rooks,
he said she should know.

++++++The wind on the hill,
++++++the tree by a tomb.
++++++The moon on the moor,
++++++the fire in her room.

She offered him whisky;
he asked her for tea.
A shiver moved through him,
he was grey like the sea.

They talked for a while
as the night slid away.
She awoke in a chair
at the cold edge of day.

The dead man was gone,
though traces remained.
Some mud and some moss,
a few tear drop stains.

++++++The wind on the hill,
++++++the worms in the earth,
++++++the moon on the moor.
++++++The fire in her hearth.

 

Marc Woodward is a poet and musician resident in the West Country. He has been published in anthologies from Ravenshead Press, Forward Press, OWF, and in various magazines and web sites including Ink Sweat & Tears and The Guardian web pages.

Green Man in Rocombe by Marc Woodward

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

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Green Man in Rocombe

I saw a Green Man fleetingly,
standing close by the farm shop barn.
The height of a tall hawthorn tree
in that instant - then he was gone.
For a bird song moment he stopped,
(as sliding morning vapour cleared
to wrap around the bramble tops),
then looked my way and disappeared.

Not wistful at the summer’s cease
the gentle closing of the year,
but smiling in a hat of leaves,
garlanded with rose-hip and sloe,
he vanished like a startled deer
or ermine on new winter snow.

 

Marc Woodward is a poet and musician resident in the West Country. He has been published in anthologies from Ravenshead Press, Forward Press, OWF, and in various magazines and web sites including Ink Sweat & Tears and The Guardian web pages.

Daedalus’s Lament by Marc Woodward

23 Saturday May 2015

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Daedalus’s Lament

I was known for my skill,
indeed I built the great labyrinth
- for which they imprisoned me.

So when I made our wings
I made them well, worked the wax,
chose all the feathers carefully.

I didn’t know if it could work.
I knew the theory and some facts,
used all my art and trigonometry.

People forget now that I flew too.
I didn’t just stand and cheer below
to watch Icarus ascend the blue.

I warned him not to get excited.
Not to soar too high,
climb too close to the sun.

I made no promises either.
But now people look at me
as if to say “he killed his son”.

I only dreamed of escape
- he shared that dream with me.
Was I so wrong?

 

Marc Woodward is a poet and musician resident in the West Country. He has been published in anthologies from Ravenshead Press, Forward Press, OWF, and in various magazines and web sites including Ink Sweat & Tears and The Guardian web pages.

Minotaur by Marc Woodward

07 Saturday Mar 2015

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Minotaur

She sent stories,
recounted dreams.

A circus of fancies
strung out in leopard skin,
high wire and candle smoke.

The slow move of hand on thigh,
lip on temple, the brush of hair.
The ring mistress in a coloured bra
spread legged upon her chair,
commanding half lit other worlds.

Moving closer,
hooves clatter,
sawdust swirls.

*

Now at the ring rock tolmen
where icy water
melts from the cold moor,
curls over granite
scarpers though gravel,
she chooses to swim.

Some rite, some freezing pleasure,
some punishment perhaps?
Some way to cool the hot breath
of the minotaur who came
panting on her back?

 

Marc Woodward is a poet and musician resident in the West Country. He has been published in anthologies from Ravenshead Press, Forward Press, OWF, and in various magazines and web sites including Ink Sweat & Tears and The Guardian web pages.