Author Archives: colinhopkirk

it would be upbeat with trumpets Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass or the James Last Orchestra who always seemed to hang around beneath Mexican archways looking moody and interesting or at Beach Parties surrounded by adoring women more sophisticated than my mother more like the ones my father chased usually in his dreams

I remember the sound of a dropped glass the air stiffening the garden’s sudden emptying my grandfather running for the stairs taking them two at a time my father shouting hammering on a door bees dancing in the roses white vapour trails cross-hatching the sky

My mother was definitely not happymy mother was set-facedmy mother was often laugh-lessmy mother suffered from occasionalbouts of genuine merrimentmy mother was a complicated personneeding to be understoodmy mother told my father the truthbut only at Christmasafter several dry sherrysonce a year she told himthat he had never loved her never really loved herand thereContinue reading “My mother was not best-pleased”

Where the shore meets the lakeplaced carefully on a low moundas one might raise a statue to be seenan abandoned helicopter kneelsrotors slewedengines seized and rustedscuffed military green and red stars faded to palest pinkUnder Perspex cracked and crazed and fogged a hothouse of fernsBlue dragonflies flicker in the sun

The shed  is a fallen drunk unable to right himself staring at the sky The high-seat an old woman  on thin legs  caught by the sun Birds everywhere on their way to  or back from wherever it is birds go Among the wreckage dog violet stitchwort cowslip

There it was pale shine calling from the field ditch waiting to be found And so I stooped climbed down through tangled hawthorn blackberry and rose cut arm and hand left a little blood pulled it free held it in my palm held it and wondered how something so small and fine could hold aContinue reading “Fox Skull”

Prone to excitement and hungry for attention chock full of hubris a fall of some kind is almost inevitable On the first day calling down the muse I will be struck by lightning My lights will go out This will be poetic justice On the second day crossing an empty street I will be mownContinue reading “A fall, of some kind”

I’m thinking of letting it grow my lockdown hair to see what happens I’ll let my sideburns bush old-farmer style like Noddy Holder or wilder like Ray Dorset the singer from Mungo Jerry I’m aiming for something unruly artistically unkempt mad-conductor wild enough to channel electricity like Ginsberg in full flow to generate some gravityContinue reading “Hornets vs. Poets”

The horses on the common stand backsides to the wind for hours, half-sleeping lost in some deep reverie filled with memories of mare’s milk and sunshine the smell of summer hay and everything is still until an ancient piebald flips and then they all stampede scattering the crows as if they have a need forContinue reading “Real Horses”

New bits in the hoover widgety gadgets small clear plastic pentagons the broken off bits from lateral flow test liquid gadgety widgets lateral flow collateral