Old Boy's Movies

I worship boys
in old movies.
Cool swaggers, careful quiffs
the slouching leather jacket
the swinging, lazy hips.
I love the girls
the cars, the slang
the cigarettes and whiskey
I dream of heroes, rock 'n' roll
and dancing through the fifties.
I love the sneer and the cool drawl
the milkshakes and the diner
the music and the shopping mall.
But rock is dead it seems, long dead
a legend and an icon now,
and in its wake -
-
-
-
I worship boys

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poem by Jack Turner
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London Calling

London calling
it's smokers lungs bleating
in sharp consonants, lulling vowels
a mother's voice calling to her bosom
a pillow
in the City of Dreams

The wordless fields, speechless roads
gape and swallow like a hungry fish
The empty air echoes, taunts
and jeers

at night the small stone walls turn into brick
and pavements grow from grass
and orange faces peer red-eyed
through the dark

the twigs crack underfoot
brittle fingers like the lies
that keep me

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poem by Jack Turner
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Television Lovers

Once, something passed between us more than space and time
And something other filled my bed than flailing arms and kicking legs
And nights pass by in silence
Television fills the void
You leave the radio on late to paint the silence
And talk more with the static voices and the singers
The newsreaders tell me more about your world than you
And the dogs walk longer these days than before
and broken things take longer times to heal
the bones, the hearts, the ears, the lips, the words
all the organs of Love, degrading
You turn the volume up louder
And watch

poem by Jack Turner
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Sunday Morning,2p.m

Morning dawns slowly through the smoke
its gentle nudging wakes me from my from my sleep
Bodies, mounds of sweating flesh, scattered on the floor
Their figures smell like morning breath, though they don’t know what morning’s for.
And dead eyes stare, glassy, red and sore
straining through a murky fog.
Glistening yellow skin stirs,
ripe aubergine lips
A dying frog croak calls for aspirin
Or anything to quell the pain;
some cough drops for the grater in my throat
And anything to get my swollen belly flat again.
Ghostly, spectral figures float vaguely through the fog
Their mouths and eyes as blurry as their thoughts
a jigsaw puzzle memory with the edges gone
vanished in a world of Sunday’s.

poem by Jack Turner
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And So, Retire

The twilight comes slowly,
Almost unnoticeable
and weary limbs sink thankful to the chair.
Another day over, and in for the night.
The fire flickers like a memory
of summers past
and passions turned to ashes.
The mirror lies, perhaps - but only to the young
and no frosted glass or gloss can hide
the hair that fades with her desire
or the blush
that fades from in his heart.
The evening lulls into familiar deja vu
and he etches a map of routine
across his face and she feeds the fire like a child
or a past that could be born again
rising from the grey with golden plumage,
sweetly serenading;
a courtship, condemned to life.

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poem by Jack Turner
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