Wednesday, October 31, 2012

He only wrote poems in the sand


A decade of cinders, charred and recoiling
like flames on ice, burning himself
into the silence of the tides
sat on the edge of the sea, cold, unambiguous
dressed head to toe in sympathetic shades
of a sickened summer
as the boys on drift boards, surf by on clouds
heading inland as the eddies and swirls
build steep turrets and walls
whilst the vast temporal cadences
offer themselves up to sly celestial forces
he writes poems in the sand
scratched in the stars
sprawled on the sand
the agonies and rusted anguish
of life burnt away, not so much snubbed
as whispered out, the petrified seaweed
clings to the salt-cloaked body
the huge canon of work, smeared from history
by the sweet rolling waves.
He has no other dreams at all
always on the beach detained and cleansed
like a prisoner on the block, forgetting his crime
like the poems that he wrote in the sand.





Andrew Franks
from Scratched in the stars, sprawled on the sand - 2009

Sunday, July 8, 2012

And so it began...

With a crumbling cucumber sandy-wich
a thermos of brackish tea
and stern resilience in the face of a biting so'westerly.

Camped behind a mound of shingle
and the storm lashed groyne
there is no better place to write

there is no better place to be!

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Welcome to the English Beach Poets Society

If you have ever written or read a poem in the sand, scratched a heart with an arrow on a piece of driftwood, stared out across the English channel and written the greatest lines in history only to forget them before you make it back to your bedsit/flat/hotel room then this blog is for you.