Memoirs In Verse

Listen to: Let me buy you a beer... Let me buy you a beer and I'll tell you about it, Oh, I could have happily poisoned the blasted Chief Engineer, and although I didn’t mean to, I really didn’t, it's possible I did, and I didn’t really care. In the tortuous heat of the Yemeni summer, I was glad to leave the sun-baked deck where the ship’s searing hot steelwork burned my skin at the slightest touch. I headed to the ‘tween decks and the musty stink of the lower hold to check that the cargo for Aden, from London and Bremen, was all put ashore. I climbed past the patty piles of steaming human shit, dumped at the manholes by the stevedores to stop us climbing down, so they could filch the cargo without being seen, and I gagged at the flies and maggots, swarming so close to my face. I watched the last few crates of cargo swayed aloft in nets from the deep lower hold to the dodgy-looking barges moored alongside, when I found three plastic bags, full of drugs, stashed in the shadows o

This free verse poem in sonnet form describes the events of one calm night in the Coral Sea aboard ‘Chengtu’. Listen to:  The Distress Flare I'd never seen a brighter, more flawless sky, until that cloudless night at sea revealed its host of glimmering, embroidered stars above a moonlit sea of sapphires. When a fiery red and silver flare flew skyward, and like poor Pheidippides arrived from ancient Athens’ Marathon, fulfilled its purpose, and exhausted died. Roused into action by the soaring flare, I altered course, and in our searchlight’s probing beam, I saw a fishing boat adrift, her crew near death from days without water. They had but one such flare to send aloft, and wept to know that one had saved their lives.

This free verse poem remembers the occasion when, as an eighteen year old apprentice, my mother drove me to join 'Strathnairn', my fourth ship, in London's Royal Albert dock. Listen to: Farewell To My Mother I sat nervous and wary of the unknown as she drove me to London and the docks. I was still young, a youth, and immature enough to suffer a boy’s irrational dread of being seen in public with his mother. And I was ashamed of her ancient car, and felt that we trespassed as we clattered through the City, along those famous streets, past grand weathered buildings, still soot-blackened by years of coal fires, industry—and war. At the dock gates the IRA's bombs had failed to stir the police into vigilance. They stayed dry out of the summer drizzle, waving us through with barely a glance to where, like her car, everything was worn-out. The once-thriving dock seemed abandoned then, but for two or three ships idle alongside. The warehouses were silent and empty, or ruined,

This free verse poem, written in the form of a letter to my unborn son, explores my feelings of loss and loneliness when my pregnant wife and young son returned to the UK in readiness for our new arrival. Listen to: A Poem on Departure Dear Thomas, I should be used to being alone. My life has always been one of departures, but they’ve been my leavings; I have left others behind, and not always returned. Now I’ve arrived home, after taking your mother and brother to Jackson’s Airport, where for the first time it was I who was left behind. The airport was alive with raucous travellers and their wantoks , jostling and shoving through the crowd, with bulging bilums and striped nylon bags, and piglets squealing in woven grass cages. We entered the dilapidated terminal, where the babbling voices of the nervous crowd filled the departure hall, overwhelming the tannoy calling the flights in Tok Pisin , Women in meri-blouses and men in lap-laps exuded a fug of sour body odour and sweet buai ,

This free verse poem is my fourth and final poem in the ‘Kildare’ series. The poem comes with a trigger warning for those who may be offended by some of the harsh realities of life. Listen to: A Run Ashore The smell of stale sweat and tropical damp pervaded the stairs and the grubby room, where we sat with our backs to the wall, dripping in a humid thirty degrees, with knees pressed hard against the bed, which entirely filled the dim-lit room. Mama-san appeared with two naked women, and opened us a bottle of Tiger beer each. They introduced themselves politely; I didn’t catch their bar-names or care, for they resembled Laurel and Hardy, Ollie, tall and plump; Stan, thin as a robber’s dog. The simple thought of a naked woman is often enough to prick the arousal of a roaming adolescent seaman. Yet Ollie and Stan inspired nothing in me, and I found my interest drained as complete as the beer in my bottle. I admit they presented a curious sight, for when Ollie produced a cucumber, mounte

This relatively long free verse poem is based on my autobiographical short story ‘Mayday’. It describes the events surrounding a ship with a timber cargo on one October night in the English Channel. For artistic reasons some details have been changed or omitted from the poem.  Any resemblance to any events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Listen to: The Bothnia Star Part 1 - A Warning The letter and photos lay on my desk, sent from Archangelsk in Russia, by a frightened, but courageous young seaman with no one to turn to for help. The pictures were of two of our ships loaded at Baltic Sea ports, full and deep-laden with packs of sawn timber bound for the African coast. The sunlit waters of the western Med glittered and lapped at their main decks as they anchored after ten days at sea; then, I saw why he was pleading with me. Both ships were laden too deep in the water; their captains had risked their lives and those of their crews —for a bribe. They were but two of thr

This poem, written in contemporary free verse, is the second in the 'Kildare' series. Listen to: When Mother Read The News Armed with a mug of instant coffee and a fag, my mother opened the Daily Telegraph , and read for a while, before her eyes fell on the brief article: ‘The British bulk carrier, “Kildare”, 153,000 tonnes dwt,  is reported missing in the Indian Ocean,  and the ship’s owners have provided no further details.’ She scanned the pages, sucking hard on her fag, drawing smoke deep into her lungs, urgently seeking a clue searching for news of her son, reaching for her mug, for something to do. The telephone rang, she flew to the phone; it was him, the nice man from the office. His courteous, soothing voice assured her we were all safe (we weren’t), though not yet in port. The nice man oozed with confidence; all would be well, (it was the ‘70s after all). She grumbled she’d seen the article before the courtesy of a telephone call, but she was pragmatic, and if I was ‘

This poem is dedicated to the memory of Sergeant Jack Edwards of the 155th Field Rgt Royal Artillery (the Lanarkshire Yeomanry). Jack’s war was cruel; he was captured at the Fall of Singapore and rescued from the mines of Kinkaseki in 1945. I am proud to have known him. ‘Keep Going The Spirit that Kept Us Going’ is the motto of the Far East Prisoners of War. Listen to: Banzai You Bastards! That night we heard the echoes of his homeland, the melancholic choirs of the valleys; they brought peace to his impassioned mind, and a purpose born in purgatory. Without that choral beauty, then as now, he'd feel his anger rise to rage and burn at the trauma and injustice suffered, by those unfree, yet undefeated, men. Those exalted hymns and songs lent strength to his endurance of his slavery; the music of the valleys gave him hope, to survive the fetid mines of Kinkaseki. Hope gave him the reason to bear his scars— his shattered mind and wounds poorly healed, the damage of disease and foul ne

This poem is dedicated to my belovèd. Written in  sonnet form, the poem invites the reader to consider ageing by the extended metaphor of nature's tidal rhythms, to arrive at a place of acceptance and even anticipation for what each new ‘tide’ of life might bring. Listen to:  A Sonnet on Ageing No longer will I heed my years advancing, But measure life by what I’ve done instead, For deeds, like tides, usher in my future, To leave my past exposed upon their ebb. For the flooding tides that shape this life lived, Will turn heedless of my hopes or damage wrought, And by their rhyming touch, the tides demand  No celebration but relentless change.  Such tides convey my fortunes, and scour  My shore, until by subtle shift each ebb   Reveals new gifts, of soft grained golden sands, The sea-worn shingle, and perhaps a pearl.  So walk with me along the high tide mark, We'll see what gifts this morning's tide has brought.