Author Archives: Alan Reynolds

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About Alan Reynolds

Poet born and raised in North Carolina and now after a sojourn in England a long-time resident of the Netherlands. More than 4,000 poems, many published in US and UK literary magazines and on CD and in books.

Revolution

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The wind rescinds the harsh rule of the regent.
It blows his fleet of fierce ships aground.
The revolution spreads out like detergent
on an oil slick. It’s the biggest stain around.

The people on the even streets are insurgent;
they put the odd street people to the sword
which sounds that bit more classical than ‘murder’
but hurts as much. Such power has a word

that a haberdasher – good teeth, wavy hair
and a voice like John Wayne – commands the news.
Each day he smiles on television beaming
misinformation that the strife is over

until it is. Then, at the crowd’s suggestion,
he moves into the palace, and parades
on feast days, and survivors open shops
and all is as before. It never stops.

The wind resembles zebras

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The wind resembles zebras more than zephyrs
as it kicks its heels up heeling over schooners.
Shoehorned into a hovel in the harbour
this wind cleans house and rousts the sleeping souse
who’d crept inside decrepit and sedated.
Weary but aware and seeing clearly
for the first time in this century, with a grin
he’d forgotten having, he salutes the wind
that whinnies, kicks the door ajar and jostles
the man to mount it, ride towards the horizon.

No Title Yet

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He is old as the hills, he’s fanatically bent
although the world’s gone queer,
on becoming an ancient who some might think wise;
his failure here is clear.
His doctor’s retired and his priest has expired
and gone to Who knows where.
He spends all his mornings on diets and prayer
and his afternoons on beer.
His grandchildren helped him creep out for some sun.
He found their attention dear.
They left him outside and the winter was long
but it’s spring and he’s still here.

Valuing the Workplace

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I like this sound of light industrial noise,
the ring of hammers, claps of sawed boards dropped
hard on the stone tiles, cries from men to boys
to get a move on. Mondays I would opt
for the swish of Trisha’s long shirts as she mopped
and on through Thursdays mostly what I’d hear
was the clack of motor fittings slotting back
where they ought to have been anyway before
the handymen unhandily though lack
of skill mistook a taper for a bore.
Thank Thor it’s Friday. Ship out. Close the store.

Nothing but the facts

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For weeks I have been looking for/trying to remember that wonderful summation of what facts really are, and I just found it:

Fact:

A piece of information presented as having objective reality.

“We speak of facts as if they were objective reality, but they are really our or someone’s perceptions. In fact, Fact means ‘made by man’ and is a word whose root is Latin, factum, the past participle of facere, to do or make. A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let the investigation cease.”
Reading the News, Robert Karl Manoff & Michael Schudson, editors, Pantheon Books, 1987, p.62.

The book itself is described here

Primavera, Edge of Summer

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Of his rugged good looks, senility and death
compete to pry away the final pieces.
He is finding life less precious these last days.

He’s become, he thinks, a contemplative species,
a sapien now it so little matters.
The tatters of his reputations count
less stridently each shrunken afternoon.

His latest prides and prejudices dismount,
and he, unhorsed and fearful of the sword
that he brandished for three decades and once used,
takes solace in the autumn sun that frightens
his face this spring, and he is sore amused
at the quandaries life presents him, such as death.

He shivers in the arctic breeze that splays
the sunlight into shards of frigid glory.
He is finding life more precious these first days.