Winter Hotel
I studied his eyes.
I wouldn’t have been startled
Had they shown signs of life.
They were half-open,
(half-closed),
As if he’d suddenly found himself
In some deep repose,
Caught by surprise,
Comatose,
Still in there,
Somewhere,
But, like a winter hotel,
Vacant;
Rooms to spare.
His lips,
Flat and bloodless,
Stained his face,
Like unfed leeches,
Flopped across his teeth,
Which were
Healthy, straight and clean,
But too big,
Now that the rest of him
Had shrunk,
Sunk,
Like Passchendaele,
Beneath the mud.
His pinched and breathless nose
Glowed,
Skin shiny tight,
Like Bakelite,
As if beneath the layers,
Instead of capillaries and veins,
Only wires remained;
He was no longer
Made by man,
But man-made,
As only man can.
At home,
Next to his bed,
His digital clock,
The numbers red,
Rolled on relentless.
Tomorrow
At seven-thirty,
It would still
Awake,
Scream in alarm,
And break
The silence
Until an arm,
Swung across
To turn it off.
The duvet would
Remain unturned,
The door closed,
The day adjourned.
Fairies would fly through the
Kite of light
Between the blinds,
And settle as dust,
As even fairies must.
In the half-light,
With the creeping
Smell of formaldehyde,
In the shadow of
A wooden cross,
I laid him out,
Checked his shroud,
Put a pillow under
His chin
To help close his mouth.
I ran a finger
Across his hair,
Dimmed the light
To remove the glare,
Was content to declare
Him ready
For the world.
Quelm Lane
Quelm Lane ran river-wise beyond the chestnut paling,
Across the bluebell belt and oak tree,
Where cultured garden ended.
On the other side lay the Sandy Hills and Jeans’s Pond,
Where bikes and dreams would fly and stones skim high,
Where lowly lives ascended.
Past the wall that set aside Makepiece Road from Paradise,
Past the Ant Tree where friends would meet
To descend the foot-worn way;
There Quelm Lane lay, as certain as the River Thames,
Umbilicus mundi, to a greater life,
To wherever that lane would stray.
Hoof prints turned and cupped the quaggy winter soil,
While bi-valve spray peppered careless legs
And sucked the boots from skinny feet.
In endless summer that same baked way was fossil-bound,
Hard cast in clay by season’s hands and time-worn trace of man;
Always on the spin and incomplete.
Past toxic myths of cuckoo spit, wolfsbane bite and digitalis death,
Fearful of the dragons in the tramp’s-beard grass and
Ghosts in the bark of each old tree.
Past spring onion fields that stained the air with taboo bliss,
Where the smack of outlaw dirt was Fry’s delight,
Where each tasty larcenous tingle set us free.
Where Quelm Lane died, lay Heaven and Rainbow’s End,
Amble reward, for the rabble that had rambled;
A chance to mud up and wet our hands.
The brook, Ganges-bound, always in sun and speaking in tongues,
Slipped beneath the great Iron Bridge, a giant’s stride,
Forever on, towards exotic lands.
We would fall upon the bank like soldiers, armed with nets and jars,
To yuk and wretch at the glutinous, heaving mess
Of a million tadpoles looking for their legs.
Curious sticklebacks would recklessly denude themselves,
Come to look at all the fuss and end up tasting jam,
Along with a hundred, one-eyed eggs.
At end of day, we’d leave palm prints in the mud and mud upon our face.
Some would release their hostages, like kindly kings,
While others took them to unransomed fate.
As we limply roved the well-worn way, we would boast
Of shadowy boatmen, natterjacks, nymphs, and whirligigs,
Tall tales, small boys and endless summer days.
On the Ringing of the Chapel Bell
The bare bulb burned dimly
At the top of the haunted stairs
And puked its jaundiced light
Upon those who dared
To hazard the time-worn stones,
While tired steps scuffed heavily
In the hope of driving
Out the ghosts.
There was a small hole in the wall
Just big enough for a mouse to crawl through
Then spiral down the thick rope,
Like a holy stowaway,
In search of what the host
Had left upon the silver salver
From the feasting of the soul.
To the right, up a few shoe-shined steps,
Beyond the oaken door
Escutcheoned by the flesh of a
Hundred thousand unwashed souls,
Lay holy darkness
And the spirits
Of eighty-seven old-school chums,
Who died alone in the mud for
King and queen
And for strangers who never
Saw the roll, their names
Etched in faded gold
Upon a warped beech wood board
In some dark corner of a chapel
Of an English public school.
The leather sleeve rested at ease
Upon cold brick, age-chipped, its hemp bowels
Fed through a wide-eyed lumen, smoothed
By the shedding of
A hundred thousand peels.
My hands, cold stiff, white cold,
Tightly grasped the umbilicus to God and
Lent my weight to my first uncertain
Drags and prods, afraid to lose my fingers
In the glinting eye,
Afraid to needlessly strike
And steal ten seconds sleep from those
Who cursed the rising light.
And sally, sweet sally, rose and fell
And whispered to me with each boldening sweep
That all was well,
While the ringer's knot
Lay in my hand, like a friend,
That walked with me
At warm day's end.
Pull, release, pull, release;
Each time sally slipped away,
I pulled her back with ease as she
Raised my feet to the tips
Of my filthy leather, thin-soled shoes,
And for one second I floated, I flew,
Bobbed upon the dusty, musty, churchy air,
Enjoyed the ride,
Unaware of
The double-tap until
It bellowed across the quad,
The science block,
Around the silent houses,
Through the windows of those
Who had no desire but to repose
Upon this their single day of rest.
And that prick, Father Blair,
Stood upon the steps below,
Like a fucking ghost,
And gave me such a glare,
That those epileptic tolls
Roiled and rolled like Stuttering Joe
Across the waking world.
I looked upon Jesus, his thorny brow,
His ruby red hands,
Pinioned forever by our appetite for sin,
And I swear that he smiled,
Raised an eye to me,
As if to say,
With that small mistake,
He would forever let me in.
Condition of Life
The cat cracked its back, slimed along the ground, dead eyes fixed, no breaths, no sound, belly drenched in early dew, fat paws spread, clown’s shoes, tail trailed through a dark green wake, a lifeless slug, through October fug, the miasma of night and day, the cloud of senses; dead leaves, fresh breeze, mulch and mushroom, spored wood in slow decay, false shadows, false gold, the stain of earth grown old, all set aside with each stuttered stride, a desert-lizard-dance, gene-led-trance, one step at a time, each patient, measured, balanced pace, a statement of intent, a silent slo-mo chase, accepted stalking of innocence, no intention of malevolence, merely instinct, to be, no sorrow, no regret, no reason, no integrity and on such a tide, on such purity, such freedom, the bird, in virtue, died.
Look At You
Look at you!
Just fucking look at you!
You’re already dead!
I can see the resignation
Floating through
Your fucking head,
Like a putrid body
Rolling by,
Dead-eyed,
On the riverbed.
I see your
Open-mouthed dread,
Slack-jawed in awe
As reality starts to claw
At your bleeding fucking heart.
Just fucking look at you!
What’s the matter
With your eyes?
It’s like someone turned
Off the fucking light!
Did someone sneak in
During the night
And nick every fucking ounce
Of life?
There’s a ring that bounds
The irides,
Like coral in a dying sea,
The senile bow that enshrines
Your ancient mind,
While your fucked up liver
Stares brownly back,
Like a discarded sack
Of human waste.
Just fucking look at you!
Look at those creepy fucking veins,
Crawling like worms across your face.
Look at the fucking landscape
And how it’s fucking changed!
It’s like fucking Passchendaele
All over again;
Defensive lines and craters,
In which you quail,
Turn stale,
As if your life
Was greater
For the loss of your
Soft veil.
Just fucking look at you!
Yellow fucking teeth,
Which you’re secretly pleased
To still have.
And it’s only when you smile
You can see the fucking gaps.
You look like a fucking old piano
That’s been played too much.
Now you have to purse your lips
To cover the fuckers up,
Cause even your fucking lips
Won’t stay closed
On their own,
Cause they’ve got so fucking slack.
Just fucking look at you!
Your brittle fucking hair
That you try to drag
Here and there,
Like a crippled dog,
Across your liver-stained,
Sun-aged
Hide,
But there’s not enough
Hair there
To make it worth the fight;
And your fucking eyebrows,
They grow like knotweed,
Suddenly freed from the seed,
To run rampant, stampede,
Across your face;
And not in one colour
But in every shade
Across the range
Between blond and grey.
Just fucking look at you!
With your fucking round shoulders
And saggy tits,
Your Cliff Richard neck
That leaves you unfit
To expose anything
Below your fat, hairy chin.
Your widespread imperfections
Aren’t genteel reflections
Of a life once lived in style.
They’re a fucking revelation,
A gene-embossed mutation,
And pretty soon you’ll be
Running out of miles.
Just fucking look at you!
Every fucking day!
I wake up to this
And come home to the same.
You should leave,
Just get the fuck out,
So I don’t have to
Stare at that fucking
Pig-like snout.
Had I known
When I was young
What you were destined to become,
I would have fucking killed you,
Hanged you from a tree,
So I didn’t have to see,
The sad, fat, aged fuck
Who stands in front of me.
Late Arrival
I booked in, smiled at the girl
Behind the counter,
Blue eyes and blonde,
Wrote my name among the thousand others
That had strayed this way,
Now gone.
I knew none of them,
Not by their scrawl or their home town
Or the ‘helpful comments’
They had jotted down.
They passed through me as ghosts,
Unseen, accepted, one more
Shine upon the wooden stair
Worn thin by all those souls
That once trod heavy there.
Like a Bedouin tent on shifting, cooling sands,
The hotel split and groaned,
Gave way to each untethered step
As a lover does to those with whom she’s slept,
All practiced grace and polished age,
Familiar with each passing phase,
Yet each move heard anew each time
To become a part of times entwined.
My thanks received as if gifted
On Christmas Eve,
Blonde hair, blue eyes gave me my key,
Offered me a drink, company,
Said in whispers how she would like to
Spend the night with me,
Or maybe just pointed the way and said,
‘Goodnight. Sleep well. You call the desk
If you find the depth of loneliness
In which you travel
To be too much.
We’ll send someone right up.’
I smiled, picked up my bags and took the stairs,
Forever marked as a man who once walked there.
Speaking In Tongues
He said he'd had a vision
And I believed him,
For he spoke in tongues.
He said he'd heard the word
And I believed him,
For he spoke in tongues.
And the crowd that gathered,
Like ark-bound refugees,
Fell upon his trail of crumbs
As if they had been freed
Of the shackles and chains
In which,
By birth or grace or destiny,
They lived each day.
He said he would feed us
And I believed him,
For he spoke in tongues.
He said he would make water wine
And I believed him,
For he spoke in tongues.
And the crowd that gathered
Cupped their hands with open mouths
And waited for the reign to fall,
So that they could be free of all the
Liars and the thieves
And pelt with stones those who fell
To see if they would bleed.
He said he was our saviour
And we believed him,
For he spoke in tongues.
He said he was a leader of men
And we believed him,
For he spoke in tongues.
And the crowd that gathered
Raised their hands and hailed his name,
Bore him through the streets and narrow ways,
Then dashed him to the ground,
Pelted him with stones,
When they found
That he had spoken in tongues.
Ramble
I ramble these lanes
And wonder
At the abundance
Of fifty thousand blossoms
That fight for life
With the jitter bugs
That flitter by,
Each stain upon them
Drawn by more than men,
By Honey Gods and Money Gods,
Those creators of content,
Stigmata,
Style;
Designs to fool,
To fools beguile.
Failure means end of line,
Allows those other
Shady vines to thrive,
Their second in
Full spectrum light
A chance to pollinate
With strangers buzzing by,
Nectar baskets slung haphazard
Across rigid limbs or
Thrust before them,
Full to the brim
With excess sweetness,
To be stored in case
Some unseasonable disaster
Should destroy the place
And they cannot
Come this way again.
This is my country now.
I have no need to go in search
Of berry bush or heavy-uddered cow.
I have no need to fear
The inclement elements,
Those moments
When the sun may disappear.
I dread no sting or bite
Or cancer from excessive light.
The only odours,
A faggoty, earthy, onion smell,
Of late-aged men,
In a crusty, musty shell,
Mingled with undue perfume
Which seeps from beneath
The rotten carapace
Of dying bugs
That scuttle between
Last year’s mulch
And this year’s leaves.
These acres, daily ploughed,
Nightly sown,
No longer captive to seasons’ flow,
Are the countryside,
New-grown.
Slumberland
In the land of slumber,
Slumber Land,
Lived a little old lady
And a little old man.
With eyes shut tight,
And smile upon smile,
They walked hand in hand
For mile upon mile.
Then one day he stumbled,
Stumble man;
The little old lady
Grasped the man's hand.
Then she opened her eyes,
Tightened her lips
And with slate grey stare
Let her grip slip.
Hand outstretched, he begged her,
Begger man,
To have some pity and stay,
But she just shook her head
In silence
And turned to go on her way.
The sound of his cries
Soon receded,
Yet her smile never returned,
And the phantom hand she was feeling
Faded with each taken turn.
Looking For The Light
In the room, the warm womb, unoccupied,
Though still and heavy with night,
Pregnant with the day,
The silence dwells, as if to say,
'He has died and no more life
Shall break this velvet veil'.
It is as if the world that whirled
To no avail has ceased while
Looking for the light.
In the amniotic glow, in quiet desperation
Tinged with dusty hope,
The gene-fed, dream-led dance unresolved,
The heartbeat flutter of the tortured uninvolved
Sends it into the sun; scalded and concussed
It leaves, returns, leaves, returns,
As it always must,
In a never ending flight,
Looking for the light.
In among the patinaed pews polished
By the slip and slide of the humble few,
The lost and fearful, found and tearful
Cast love-drenched glances upon
Their alabaster idol
And clasp their books in whitened fingers,
While in baseless faith the weak hope lingers
That He knows they might be
Looking for the light.
As the wall builds and closes for the kill,
As those burns turn to scars for good or ill,
As the ghosts that haunt begin to taunt you for your mortality
And you are cursed for your worship of reality,
As the boy that once you knew
Begins to slip from view,
You will, dear friend, though you fight
The urge with all your might, go
Looking for the light.
Slumberland
In the land of slumber,
Slumber Land,
Lived a little old lady
And a little old man.
With eyes shut tight,
And smile upon smile,
They walked hand in hand
For mile upon mile.
Then one day he stumbled,
Stumble man;
The little old lady
Grasped the man's hand.
Then she opened her eyes,
Tightened her lips
And with slate grey stare
Let her grip slip.
Hand outstretched, he begged her,
Begger man,
To have some pity and stay,
But she just shook her head
In silence
And turned to go on her way.
The sound of his cries
Soon receded,
Yet her smile never returned,
And the phantom hand she was feeling
Faded with each taken turn.
The Great Tide
Mother died today.
That’s fine.
That’s fine, I say.
The wash of time,
That great wave that takes us to the final tide,
Has drenched and drowned
The other she became,
So that we may call to mind
The better half of her remains.
Yet we count the cost
Of the moments lost,
Those grey, deformed, still born knots
Of chances never grasped, challenges untested,
Of places never seen, quicksand dreams
On which our straw house rested.
And those who followed her in chains,
Enslaved by her absence, in pursuit of the host
That gave birth to that haunted ghost,
Searched their transparent selves and saw
That, as she faded,
They did,
Until the blackened glass,
Glanced at as they chanced to pass,
Threw back a hollow innuendo
Of a dimmed, distant past,
Until a stranger so appears
To assassinate the early years.
My mother died today.
She has taken a piece of each of us
To her grave.
We have seen the tide and felt the wash of time.
Swim, swim and feel the shifting tide
Against your skin.
Old Together
And the silence is no longer filled with
Ambitious hesitation,
But bloated by remote disgust,
A mask cast from the frigid face
Of deathly stasis,
The warts and all relief that
Will forever hold you at the peak
Of your desolation.
Each gouge, each crease is
A censure, a penance, a brick,
A bone deep cicatrix
Born of fractured dreams.
Where once trod those whose desires
Took them upon uncharted roads,
Now stands land raped by the dampened fire
Of familiarity; the shared bathroom,
The undisguised disease,
That leaves you with the certainty
That you and I were little
More than shit machines.
I divorce thee, wife.
I shed you like chapped and broken skin.
I reject the shitting worm
In womanly disguise.
I shun the truth
That bellows through the lies.
We broke our word.
Never grow old,
Unveil the sins
Or pass each other like aged, yellowed prints.
We broke our unsaid word
To never grow old together.
We broke our unsaid word.
Father
I hold his hand.
It's not as I expected;
Not chapped, not rough.
I had imagined it would be
Snake-dry and washday tough,
Tortured by a thousand tally cuts,
Each laid by fate to betray
The heartbeat start and
Measured end of days.
But his palm bleeds heat,
Padded by the pulpy flesh that lays
Like a pillow among creased sheets,
An unmade bed, still warm
From those who've left.
'It's all coming to an end,' he says,
Matter of fact,
And makes me start,
Cling tighter in case one or other of us
Should decide to part,
As she has done.
I cannot deny his truth.
Would it be so heartless
To say, 'You're right, old man,
Your race is run. Your time has come'?
Or is it better to butter the blue-edged bread
With words such as, 'Don't be daft. You're far from dead.
There's life in the old dog yet'?
He is a dying limb,
Divorced from the body of his love,
And slowly but surely
The gangrene is setting in.
He withers, unable to thrive, deprived
Of the oxygen that he needs to survive.
I hold his hand and wonder
How I am to help him cross his final road.
I suspect that won't be the case though,
That he will do as he has always done;
See me safe,
Then let me go.
Forever Bound
Let me soar and
I shall soar
To the clouds,
To the very edge of space and
Gaze down upon
This unbound earth,
This silent, gentle place, and
All the swelling of the seas and
Hem-torn land
Shall seem to me
As fresh and clear as Eden born.
Let me soar and
I shall soar
Into the dark,
Turn my head and wonder
At the stars, the million suns
Igniting life,
Kindling all the souls
Who wake and wake to dare
To hold the universe in their palms,
Cross their life-lines,
Mark the course that lays before.
Let me soar and
I shall soar
To Heaven and
See your face, God’s grace,
Shared with mortal man,
For that moment of insanity and
Vanity, that flash
Of a match in the black that was our time,
Our time, well spent,
Heaven sent, if only to pass
As light from those dying stars.
Let me go and
I shall go
To all those places we have been and
See you there,
As once were seen
The shadows we once were.
My love, my love,
Think of me
As free and
I shall soar
To the clouds, to Heaven’s door.
I shall wait for you
To live your life.
Until that time,
Our time,
Live and live some more
And take heart
From our sacred past,
Take comfort in the lifetimes yet to come,
In the flaming of our dust,
In the certainty that we’ll be found;
Two souls forever bound.
I’m Dying
I have cancer.
Oh, not yet,
But it's a fair bet
That it's something I'll get.
I get headaches, you see, which,
According to the news,
May be due to the tannins
In my booze,
Or they might be due
To the golf-ball tumour
That my mobile phone
(According to rumour)
Has implanted in my head.
When I awake
Every joint in my withered body
Begins to ache,
As if some leukaemic switch
Has been flicked
And sent pulses of disease
Leaping across synaptic gaps
To my distal phalanges,
Which weaken me, irrevocably,
To the point where
I don't even have the energy
To comb my thinning hair.
And that random nose-bleed
Surely indicates some sort of thrombocytopaenic need;
If my blood's not clotting,
I swear that something must be rotting within
This fragile, paper-dry skin.
The mole that debouches its velvet head,
Deforming further by the day,
Is a sign that,
Beneath my epidermis,
I am beginning to decay.
My sore throat
Suggests a growth
Upon my vocal cords,
That sits there like chewed gum
Between the strings of a violin
And causes this feeble, toady croak
To emanate from within.
And I only have to suck a hard-boiled sweet
To feel my gut bloat,
Like the weighty udder
On a skinny unmilked goat,
As if, to dare to eat,
Means that even the smallest thing
Will bring on some mighty spasm,
Some moment of gastric gestalt,
As a giant, alien polyp forces
Peristalsis to shudder to a halt.
I am broken;
A mosaic of a man,
Scattered haphazard
Across the ruins
Of his shattered land.
It's not a doctor I need,
It's an archaeologist,
One who understands
That the shifting sands of time
Have merely taken off the shine,
That with careful excavation,
The man lost beneath the devastation
May be restored, adored,
That there may still be some appeal
In the history, the mystery, revealed.
The Bounding Of The Light
There is something unforgiving
In the bounding of the light
The way it circles days
Then hides in the night
At each sure descent
And each uncertain rise
Comes the passing of a friend
And an enemy's reprise
And I cannot help but fear
The passing of the time
The certainty of ending
The bounding of the light
The Immortal Womb
Why do we cling to life so?
Even though we know
That it is done?
We would do better to simply sigh, give up,
Admit the race is run,
Forego those final laboured respirations,
Those moments when words are gone,
When the silence is weighed by desperation and
The need to be moving on.
Why do we delay that final sleep?
When we have known for years
Of the innate promise
That we are forced to keep?
That comes unuttered with the fall
And the severing of the cord,
The rush of cold that betrays the warmth,
The safe and cradled heart,
The soft and gentle tomb,
Of the immortal womb.
Why fight the battle we are born to lose?
Why cry and rant at the horizon of our doom?
Why drink the poison that we are told
Will make us live
When we have given all we have to give?
Why give purpose to the passing day
To the seconds as they tick away?
Why lend hello when in return you get goodbye?
Why birth when all is set to die?
For love. For hate.
For the splendid, mended sun that bares another day.
For the biting wind that cracks your cheeks.
For the depthless troughs and measureless peaks.
For the sweet, sweet tang of fractured love
And the rusty faith borne of trust.
For the feeling of alive.
For the knowing you have lived
As you prepare to die.
Recall
What do I recall?
I recall barely anything at all.
A pond that shed its skin
As each new season sauntered in.
Sometimes, with a misty sigh,
Night chilled water
Fought with dawn's warm eye,
Shrouded fishermen and passers-by
And whispered of the changes soon to come
With the endless revolution of the sun.
What do I recall?
I recall barely anything at all.
The sanctity of Sunday morning,
When nothing dared disturb the lazy yawning
Of those destined to mow lawns and polish cars
In the blissful ritual of a furlough dance.
Through the cemetery the spinster sisters strolled in summer blue,
Arm in arm, and gazed upon those who once they knew,
Then cast twin glances as the shout went out across the flinted wall
To announce last man out to one and all.
What do I recall?
I recall barely anything at all.
The smell of beer as it seeped, enticed
The short-sleeved evening strollers happening by.
The dipping, dripping sun that cast long scars
Upon the remnants of a day that breathed its last.
The long grass and distant sound of a fair,
The cool of the summer evening's air,
The scent of honeysuckle and the sound of drowsy bees -
I remember none of these.
What do I recall?
I recall barely anything at all.
But you, I remember you.
I remember your citrus scent,
Your close-lipped smile that lent
You the tension of an explosion
Waiting to rent the world,
And when it did,
Oh, when it did, inside
I know I died just a little,
Because I knew that solitary laugh had flown,
Once used, disposed,
That nothing ever stayed forever;
There was nothing ever owned.
The Battle of Wakefield Road
In the distance lies the holy citadel,
Its gates shut tight since blood-red sunset fell,
No natural sound disturbs the night’s dark spell,
While in the soulless shadows, the unimagined dwells.
There are different truths that hide in night and day,
Each quick-sand built and prone to quick decay.
Each man must choose which truth to use today
And sleepless take his sword into the fray.
Night lies not dead nor is the day yet born,
As peace lies still inside the womb of morn.
Soon battle lines will finally be drawn
And men will make their stand upon the dawn.
Passwords shared, I hurry through the gates
To safety where the few will congregate;
And there we weigh our plans against our fate,
And wonder which will hold the greater weight.
Our spies upon the ramparts see them come,
And we smile, safe inside, at the banging of their drums,
While a thrill sends chills across the hearts of some
For the fear of confrontation yet to run.
‘Mount up! Mount up!’ I hear the Captain call,
And we step in line, step in time, prepared for the brawl.
Iron stallions belch smoke within the walls,
Eyes flaming at the hell about to fall.
‘Ride on! Ride on!’ as open slide the gates,
The light illuminating every brother’s face,
Their anger etched forever in its place,
As hate replaces vanished friend’s embrace.
‘Are you happy now?’ decry the Dervish screams,
As inch by inch I run the thrashing stream.
‘I hope that cancer steals your children’s dreams!’
Cry men who once broke bread and rode with me.
Goodbye, my lads, goodbye, I say to you,
We shall never speak again, by God, it’s true,
That no matter what they put each of us through,
It was a battle fought for those with nought to lose.
The Cessation Of Breath
The front door closed, the giveaway
That I was safe again,
Though left to fend alone
Among the jagged shadows and
Unblinking turncoats who,
In the brave light of day,
Fought their plastic wars
Across the Axminster Plains and
Mountains made from
Enid's latest escapades.
At night, without the light,
They stalked me
With glazed eyes and thin-lipped smiles,
Attentive in the darkness
For the slow, tired, shut-eyed yawn
That warned them of their chance to advance
And seize the sleeping child.
I listened for the familiar,
The homespun cocoon,
The chiming boom of
The Ten O' Clock News,
And begged her, with all my naked heart,
To not forget me.
There was a cessation of breath.
A palpitation of expectation
Trilled at my chest,
A hesitation, when this fledgling in the nest
Teetered upon the edge
Of unfed desperation,
In which the button-eyed bears
And ghoulish pink-blushed stares
Were all there
To fill the void created
By the absence of her love.
Then the silent, stuttered exhalation,
The revelation,
Of a foot upon the stairs,
The broken code that declared
Her destination;
Quick to bathroom, slow to bed,
Now a lightness in her step that said
It was for me.
I smelled her perfume before
She entered the room,
A mix of cigarettes and some exotic fruit,
Then the slow crawl of the bedroom door,
The wash of light across
The bedroom floor,
The weight of her upon the edge
Of my bed
As she gently ran her hand across my head.
'You went away,' I said.
'I did,' she sighed.
'I had no choice. My father died.'
My silence spoke my mind.
She said, 'It's fine. It was just his time.'
She pulled the rainbow sheets and counterpane
Around me tight.
'Come on,' she said. 'It's time to sleep. Goodnight.'
I watched the light recede as she left.
It was no longer the bear that scared;
It was the inevitability that the fear would end.
When You Go
When you go,
Don’t linger
Or, like some scene-end,
Slowly fade to black.
Turn your face away, say, ‘Enough,
I have no need to stay’.
We have said all
We need to say;
We have crossed the bridge of silence,
Reached the other side
In that voiceless conspiracy,
Unveiled over time.
What we were will always be,
What we’ve become
Stands testimony
To acts unsaid,
Thoughts lived out,
Without ceremony
Or a moment’s doubt.
Be content.
This time was ours,
Well-spent
Borrowed hours.
We always knew
That what we had
Was a Heaven-lent
Life-time debt,
To be settled at the leisure
Of some intangible event.
Don’t wait for me,
I’ll be along,
Before the bed turns cold,
Before I notice you are gone.
We two, this one,
This single ghost
That we’ve become,
Shall leave its mark
On all it touched,
For all it touched
It did become.
Comedians
There were dragonflies with wingspans
of a metre, maybe more
frogs with the faces of comedians
and Nazis by the score
there were poets high on dope
there was oppression on the plains
and disease on the streets of London
sending people to their graves
there were wolves along the boulevard
and snakes in apple trees
and places for the gathering
of unfulfilled beliefs
there were masters there were slaves
there were broken words and bones
seized on by the poor for the sake of
small men’s thrones
there was panic there was calm
there was rumour there were lies
there was room for those who loved
less room for those despised
and the house of god was little more
than baying at the moon
while every passing sunset
marked the moment of our doom
then with the dawn came salvation
for fear died with the night
and hope was born anew
with the rising of the light
oh, Pandora, those curious hands
set free the misery
you kept the hope
then gave us the rope
of truth and uncertainty
and now we hang ourselves upon impossible desire
the spark of heart made raging fire
by the burning of our dreams
so tell me sisters
tell me brothers
lay it on the line
has anything really changed
since the first sad tick of time?
There are still snakes in the trees
and Nazis at the door
and a ha-ha of indifference
between the rich man and the poor.
And nothing shall change
genes stay the same
while god takes the blame
for our strife
and nothing shall change
as long as man stays the same
with only self to
nourish his life.
When you wander
When you wander
Where do you go?
to the places I have been?
or the places I don’t know?
Are there still some shadowed corners
unbroken by the light
from which I am excluded
for my propensity to fight?
yet my proclivity for sin
would add colour to your world
where you go to hide without me
where your fears lie unfurled
Don’t dismiss the down unworthy
or those who wring their hats
who get down on bended knee
and hold out work-stained hands
don’t judge the unspectacular
the loud and the insane
for being what you're not
for fearing what remains
you’ve always had it easy
slipped on Melpo as desired
or smiled with golden Thalia
and found yourself admired
you are lucky in your corner
untouched by broken pride
for my room was swept so long ago
I have nowhere left to hide.
A Thousand Deaths
I’ve died a thousand times
and still come back to life
my skin shed by the roadside
to be devoured by the crows
I have choked on poisoned pie
and retched upon its bitter lie
but swallowed nonetheless
in the face of my overthrow
I’ll do anything to survive
anything to stay alive
anything to make the time
seem longer
anything to salve the burn
from too much time in my own sun
anything to come back
from the darkness I have sown
my resurrection is commonplace
a loss of dignity to be replaced
and often times a loss of face
just to hide my identity
to be reborn is a lesson learned
upon a soulful learning curve
I hope you see beneath the soil
That this dirty worm has turned
and you can forgive me…
...yet again
anything to make it right
anything to regain my sight
upon my lonely road to Damascus
anything to shed my skin
and bury it with all my sins
I would do anything you ask me.
My Diamond Life
I am the vinyl man,
A long single groove
Upon which the rough-edged diamond
Skims and by skimming
Scratches out the
Innate sound.
Over time that carbon knife
Chips and scrapes
At my polyvinyl clay
And leaves in its wake
A scratch, a pit,
Spits lint and bits of skin
Until my single sound is ground down
Into one unrecognisable from first play,
Filled with the knuckle-pop of slow decay.
My diamond life,
My treasured jewel,
Etches me
From the mould in which it found me
and in the end will drown me
Imperfect in the ground,
A changed, discordant sound
All the pure high hat and growling bass
Scratched out
And in its place
Just a tick, tick, tick
from A to B
That is now no more than
A stone-tape dream,
The ghost of all that used to be.