Dominic James (UK) lives in Glos and follows poetry meetings along the Thames River Valley. Recently published in Bad Lilies and Dark Poets Club, his second collection, Smudge, was published by Littoral Press, 2022. Of his poetry films Four Statues was shortlisted at the Drumshanbo Poetry Film Awards and, full of fun, Dominic has completed a college course in filmmaking during which his docudrama on Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning was featured in Cheltenham Fringe Festival 2025.
Time, Gentlemen
Again Great Northern Railway Tavern, Hornsey,
first encountered, student days: tumbling
from a tube cum deco station, Turnpike Lane,
furthest north we’d ever been… Thinking then
of Camden, London in those velvet times.
Now cold’s returned to chase a furtive Spring
away we find at last we own to be
no more than ordinary men. Taking
our table by the door where Pride and gin
keep pouring in and drinking drives the decibels
up high among the dusty shelves and books
we’ve scoured a thousand times before – being
creatures of good faith, authentic in our lives,
men of middle years. ie. The brutal thing itself.
Back on the Wine Dark Sea
Sleeking down your musty thigh
pressed to the anchorage of thought,
young scamp: camp-up your merry looks.
I find you in the swinish hold
and prise apart those crusty lids:
dark eyes brimming with excess.
Who broke the slim amphora’s neck,
loosed panthers on the quarter-deck
sent parrots squawking stern to bow,
slipped-in a water snake?
How like the young Rimbaud,
smiles tug your sluggish lips and crop
the green shoots of your madness.
