SELECTED POETRY

by
Jeffrey Side

PLASTER PIECE

The sky-blue plaster piece
you chose because I touched it,
you will always keep.
You like to spend the days with me.

The Sunday I first took you
on plastic with red button lens
you turned out well.
The air was cold, but it was shining.

And the round crowned church
held you in its circle
and calmed you at my side.

You take photos on the light.

© Jeffrey Side

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ON HOT SUMMER NIGHTS

I declared my love to her
and she turned herself away.
But I will surely offer it
again to her someday.

She lived on her own
near to where I was born.
And though I never told her
to her I was sworn.

On hot summer nights
when trapped in my flat
I’d wander out to see her
wherever it was that she sat.

But she was with another
who went there for to hide.
And many distances he had travelled
to lay his baggage at her side.

© Jeffrey Side

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STIFF CHAIN ON TAUT ROPE

I think there has to be a return
to basics.
And I want to love you in some
untold part.
Where will you be when the
table turns?

You ripped the pages of a book
I misunderstood.
You proved my case wrong.
I licked your boots.

I have to wash my face three
times a day.
And my muscles
won’t get me out of my bed.

I’m always rocking on
these pre-Raphaelite women
who live upstairs from me.

You go from trousers to trousers
like a carrot.
And I watch you dry up like a well.

The light outside is like Matisse.
The light inside is off.
Are you really structured by
your biology?
Or are you something
more remarkable?

There’s too much noise here.
Loud neighbours are louder
when you know them.
She left her fingernails
on the floor.

© Jeffrey Side

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GOLDENROD

I watched you gather goldenrod in the fields.
I watched you swimming in the forest.
And I watched you keeping your hands upon your knees.

You breathe like a scientist.
And your breath becomes the count of dreams.
You smell as sweet as the secondhand books you throw away.
And you write in longhand on paper before the woods run out.

And the caverns in the earth are not singing.
And I cannot walk around the laboratory.
And I cannot rest my fingers.
And I cannot stay in when the sun is out.

I used to think you were a gift to the experimenters.
I used to think you were a gift to the men fighting for their home.

Or the men who cry on the heath and moors.
Or the men who fall in the underground.
Or the men who wait for us when the clock stops.

I watched you gather goldenrod in the fields.
The sun was escaping from your hair and your feet
were deep in the wet grass.

And your arms were filled with goldenrod.

© Jeffrey Side

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SNOW RANGES AND FAIR WOODS

Angers and failures:
my lads are not for reconciliation.

I alone drink accurately
on the uncertainty.

I drink for the occasion,
similarly impressed, to brakes, skies,
and ghosts.

Snow ranges and fair woods
have their stint.

Printed feasts of richness.
Thrushes that quote but do not sing.

Racing to the beginning where the
reed’s breath sums up heaven.

And yet the reed speaks of simplicity
while full motion reconciles earthly years.

Dread lurks in the forest.
Candle boys shine the rough men.
Safe are the spheres that are dried
like the shells

The old ships cry fleetingly
under the moonshine.

© Jeffrey Side

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I’M COUNTING ON YOUR LICKING

You have chosen wisely
the wrong man.
Don’t count your chickens
he hasn’t.

He has married before
And controlled
his birth.

No need for him
to change his goals.

© Jeffrey Side

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