DAVID MCLINTOCK - POEMS

David McLintock lives in the North-West of England. He has published poetry intermittently since the early 1990s, in small-press and online. His life is based on notebooks, lists, and peculiar encounters with people. He believes you can make poetry out of the mundane trash of the city. He likes making words do things they weren't invented for.

The Man Who Got One
​

​I had this friend
Who admitted to me once
That when he was a child
He’d been fascinated by life
And that now he’d grown up into a man
This fascination hadn’t gone away
And that whatever it took
He was determined
To get one for himself.
 
I was staggered,
He didn’t seem the type,
But despite my protests
From then on
He spent the better part of each day
Devoted to this task,
However detrimental it was
To anything else.
 
A few years later,
Having drifted apart
Some while before,
Him not having the time
For the things he’d used to,
Me not caring to push it any longer,
I was surprised to get a call,
And to hear his urgent voice on the other end
Telling me to come over,
Cos he’d got one.
 
I asked where he lived now,
Not expecting him to answer
That he was still in the same place,
But I put my coat and boots on
And made my way across town
Wondering if the area
Had improved without me knowing.
 
If anything, it was worse.
 
I found his house
And it looked a bit rundown,
The garden was a bit weedy if anything.
The car on the drive didn't look that much either.
In fact, it took nothing to notice the rear-left wheel was off it.
 
He answered the doorbell quickly, smiling.
Inside was as I remembered it
Only 10 years older.
But he seemed really happy,
And started showing me round,
Pointing out things that really weren't worth pointing out.
 
I wondered whether he had been ill, to be honest.
 
It turned out he was single, too.
 
“What do you think of that?"
He finally said, waving his arms
Like some kind of evangelist.
“Isn’t it fantastic?”
I looked around, I didn’t know what he was on about,
And finally I told him,
“What? I can’t see anything?”
He paused, looked at me, puzzled,
Asked if I was sure.
I said I was.
He looked at me again, sadly I thought.
“It’s so strange,” he said.
“All of you say the same.”
 
As I walked back across town
I kicked some stones down the road
And found myself crying a little bit,
To do this day I don't know why.
 

I multiplied together 2 nine-digit numbers …
​

​I multiplied together 2 nine-digit numbers.
No-one wondered how I did it,
No-one wanted to check my answer.
A computer programmer, 
A social worker,
An international shipping merchant,
A translator,
And an English teacher.
And not one of them was at all impressed.
The computer programmer asked:
“Why?”
I looked at him as if he was the strange one.
“Because I can” I answered,
And repeated it 9 times, quietly.
 
 

The Prettiest Girl Who Ever Saw Time
​

​The prettiest girl
Who ever saw time
Knocked around up on the river
Next to my old father’s place,
 
And he wooed her with his boat,
And wondered at her,
Her line lolling in the water,
Her hair,
 
Her bare toes paddling,
Idle as a child,
And the only thing she caught
Was him,
 
And he had nothing to give her
But his failings and himself,
His cabin with the door
And meshed windows,
 
His rattly truck that barely
Beat the ruts,
And she left,
But then came briefly back
 
To give him me,
Which he took, unwillingly,
And lived with a look
Out of his eyes
 
For the moment
I too would leave,
As if he could will it,
Till I did,
 
Which maybe is a day
He has not forgotten,
Or he may have, or he may
Not be there anymore,
 
Or he may have a look
Out of his eyes
Totally absented
From all of his past,
 
Something akin to wonder,
Or akin to something
He knows he never
Quite saw,
 
Something like a boat,
Something like a river,
Something like a woman,
Something like a child.
 

The poet has nowhere to hide …
​

​The poet has nowhere to hide,
Has nowhere to rest, nurse hate,
Rock forth, nowhere dried,
Packed, ready-sealed, to elate
In opening late, versing
As key goes in door, wallet
To floor, assured cursing -
As muse of nicht pour gullet -
Will not go between his mantra
Of world-love, all-love, and lord-love:
His larder's stocked, true tantra -
Approving spice, seed, and stove.
 
I pity my restful foe,
His non-gnomic con-me's, his lasty
Resistant eyes, his all-know
All-gone, his hair hashy,
His fear, overbearing as was,
Now sub-Socratic, bleakered,
Barely worth tongue, fosse
Frazzed; a harlequin sneakered,
Smashed on a sprung-through sofa,
Gouting largesse, loud-wording
Gauds, bits of him a knifer
Still, most an idiocy boarding.
 
Not for I must I pity,
Nor for I can, but for the joy,
For the mockery, treachery, for the smarty
Gleam, the sheerness, for the coy
Sly slippery side
Of self undoing all good,
Knuckling well back at pride,
Handily gainsaying that prude,
Slapping that Lancelot's back,
Burping that sucker, unshucking
That constabularying schmuck,
Offing that cuckooing, that clucking.
 
For there are things must be done
And them I shall do. No
Small poet frying his pan
Of lines need I now
To go for feeding from to.
I have my own bubbling.
Some boil gloop, some glue.
I've no trouble dribbling.
I sooner spend my turbulent
Roubles quibbling info
Ilka, who's noo Boss Rant?
Than grinder cuisinist curio.
 
Once I saw him in his pots,
Underneath the worktop,
Clawing at them, clats
And slams, all tempered, lop
To his eyes. When he looked
Up, at me laughing down,
His cheeks tightly in-sucked,
Hollowing strangely, a frown
Drew across his brow,
In three deep waved lines,
He formed a smile, then a low
Sound, a haiku of bent fork-tine.
 
Summitted gutturally,
Forcibly, ignobly, with
Malice contemporaneously
Sniggered, up at my standing life,
It was as if he and I was one
And he knew it first, and knowing first,
Threw me off my track, and won,
Left me tired, racked with thirst,
Raising my fist at him heading
Ahead to a storming victory
Taking with him my due rewarding
And with that everything left of me.
 
 

I'd rolled a cigarette ...
​

​I'd rolled a cigarette and stowed the baccy 
pouch and rizlas safely down in a pocket 
and rummaged through several other pockets until 
I'd found my lighter tangled in my hankie 
and unwrapped it and stepped outside the pub 
to light one up. The rain had stopped, its wetness 
still glinted off the pavement. Flash red fuchsia 
heads fallen from the hanging pots
on the pub wall lay wet and squashed on the kerb, 
floated round an algae-scummed puddle
teetering to the mouth of a roadside drain.
I stared at them as I inhaled. I paced
idly back and forth along the pavement, 
never venturing too far from the pub front,
as if, to move too far might invoke banishment,
or as if, someone might come and take
my place, and in taking my place, might take me.
Shepherd's purse sprouted from cracks along the road, 
across the pavement, little white flowers content
with any space they could find. I puckered my cheeks
to take in a lungful of smoke, and was content.
From a carpark across the road, a pair of 4
by 4s followed each other out, growling.
I noticed the mud-spatters up the sides of each, 
and wondered how many walkers they'd taken out.
A cyclist came along on the pavement, wrapped
in waterproofs, and as he passed he waved, 
because we knew each other some years ago.
I held my cigarette up waving back,
but he'd already cycled down the street
and around the corner. I really should be getting
around the corner too, I thought, considering
the time, and how the shops would soon shut
and I'd nothing in my cupboards. I finished my smoke, 
and stubbed the butt on the pavement under my heel, 
just next to a particularly blood-red fuchsia 
flower. Then I went back into the pub.