Poems

No Innocent Times

September, 2019

Airbrushed memories of joy romping through winter snows

Or Autumn leaves

Feed gaga nostalgia of so many lies

Those costume dramas

Of Downton slavery below stairs in stately homes

My great aunt Maggie ‘in service’ all her life

Thrown out with all the other bric a brac

Those cosy scenes of making jam and spunky spirit

In so called innocent times- a breath away from

Deaths of millions-monochrome snaps that haunt the brain

With smells of apple pies and brilliantine’s

Erasing unsaid relatives dying in slums

At the fag end of working slog.

Yet still I make the journey north and walk

around my father and his father’s world

an hour-a hundred and forty years corralled

into a pitch of land overlooking sea

and squinting sky. A home, now a holiday let

close by a scrub of space-where once

a workshop breathed smells of wood and hot boned glue

Go find a better life than this my dad would say

I cycled to the edge of town one day

Viewing a new world sloping down the hill

Soon I was off to seek out some Eldorado spot.

Dad and grandad ogled my postcards of places

Scattered beyond their reach by wars and time.

Now I have come back and they have both long gone

I walk along their bit of beach-

Recall three generations gozzing in the sea.

They’re floating grandad

Aye lad think how it goes in time.

We gawped the brine scud breaker toss

Our spit to flattened sea.

My Gozz  ‘as all gone dad.

Let go my hand and skewered some distant point.

Nay lad just mixed. Someday y’ll dock in lands much

 further than your dreams.

Standing now at the edge of sea

I stare like them at passing time

A scillion scuppered notions

And from deep breath

Gozz into the waves.

Guns and Arrows

October 2019

‘Arrows’ we shouted and we like wild things

shrieked into the copse of green at the edge of plateau.

Seagull feathers stuffed in snake belts,

smacking our arses on bareback stallions we leapt into

the trees -reached up fingering the birch branches.

Closing our eyes imagining straight shafts

then breaking them off, pulling sinew threads and tears

of sweating sap streaked across our brows.

​

I didn’t care for cowboy heroes with polished guns, guitars and silly Stetsons

 - I sensed the bully- John Wayne – kill the pesky injuns sheriff - You bet I will.

 I liked the sense of Indian listening to the ground -bodies garbed in skins

and paint tattooed across the arms.

​

Arrows were the things I understood -raw wood fashioned with flights

to hunt for food, to ambush, avoiding the metal blast of bullet.

When I had my chosen stick I found a shadowed place

and with my penknife whittled off the nodules, cut sharp the point

eying it in open air.  Precision etched the key v- notch-

sensing already the hidden whiplash string around the arrow;

the crackle of detonation somewhere in the air.

​

When we were ready we would stand in line on the windswept plateau like

Geronimo’s braves across the skyline.

With the arrow tight in fist we sped to cusp of cliff

hurling our rockets at the clouds and distant worlds.

With tuneless hiss we urged the thing to go,

feet light on the edge, pushing up to simulated soar.

The arrows flew their coarse then dip -died in the spume.

We hoped they would soar forever- they never did.

Silence skewered us to the wind, feet clodded to the scar.

​

Going home, full of Indian brave, I saw the wigwams, sat cross-legged with

Mini Ha Ha smoking pipes of peace.

But on our street Nick Mercer, sitting on his wall, dressed up in prattish cowboy

togs with Woolworths holster and tinny gun pointed at me, firing off caps-put

put- my tomahawk already embedded in his skull.

​

What did you do all day my parents asked? Nought much -what could I say to

them that never dreamed of hurling arrows into space?

​

Sixty years on, Go West Old Man, in Cherokee I drove the ‘Trail of Tears’ –

thousands starved out at gunpoint to distant Oklahoma. On the plains vast herds

of buffalo wiped out by Winchester 73s.

No arrows to be seen but shops of hunting knives and guns-

still tearing the wild heart out of America-

slaughter on the campus; No no, he says

It’s the nutter not the gun that is to blame

And on the lonely streets of London

Another blade cuts deep into some young life and still I watch the clouds

Hoping for peace and broken arrows.

Key Notes

Dec 2019

My hands are lit up by the glow of the chandelier
Fingers with their own memories
You’d notice my eyes roaming about the bar.
‘Jeepers creepers where d’yer get those peepers?’
I hope you know your music standards and have had a drink in a place like this before.
Think 2017 retro- George the barman in bow tie and red silk waistcoat-fancy drinks, flapper girl free olives a white grand piano
The smell? A cocktail of strong boredom, spiced up with a little despair and shaken up with lust and a sprinkling of infatuation.
‘Play it again Sam: the old cliché. Autumn leaves …do you know it?
‘Of course Madam… How about’ piss off back to your husband and watch those Eastenders Blues Yeah- ‘It’s that ole devil called love again’…there’s always a Billy in the bar, getting stoned, on the look out for Mr Wrong.
Over there standing by the bar, one eye on his reflection the other eye on the pull. He’s watching the young, rich, try anything once, full of bubbly, skirt up to her throat, chic. Our own imitation Jack Nicholson. Asked me for something by Elvis. Had to remind him that we didn’t play that kind of music here ‘SIR’
‘Excuse me young man…could you play ‘So Tired.’- goes: so tired wah wah wha- those trumpets with thinks on the end
‘Mutes?’
‘Pardon?’
‘They are called mutes to deaden the sound of an instrument.’
She tiptoes back to her table. A theatre star of the 50s.
The eyes still sparkle but the rest of her looks like a Joan Crawford death mask.
Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away’ a good song to tickle the hearts of a few people. The guy at the end of the bar. What’s he trying to forget? Wife left him? Business down the pan? You can always recognise that look.
I’ve got you under my skin’ for the lovers. Skin, eyes hearts and later other bits fused together. Lucky bastards the others are thinking but it won’t last.
One day I’ll fly away… she is there sitting on her own tonight. Usually she’s with her Man Thursday. He’s probably had a change of mind and gone back to his wife and kids in suburban limbo. What about Don’t Marry her. Not very good on the piano but the lyrics would mix with her martinis. ‘She’ll grab your sweaty bolloks Then slowly her knee. Don’t marry her fuck me.’ That would make everyone listen but I’d be out of a job.
‘Here’s your Pimms Liberace. Courtesy of Lauren Bacall or maybe you’d prefer Mr Bogart tonight. George the barman’s little joke.
The bar is starting to fill up. A mass of dislocated parts and music to fit every bit of the hodgepodge. What tune would suit your mood? Go on I won’t pass judgement. And me? What shall I play for myself on this cold April evening?
Dah dah worn out faces…m…  m…  m It’s a mad world. Spot on

Spaced Out

January 2020

It’s every July

not just that July of 69-a landing on the moon

but every July I smell that jasmine

against the filtered lights of night.

Not just any night but that night

of twenty-three hours - fifty years ago.

There was the blast off-more Dan Dare than Thunderbirds-

a miracle of scientific lingo-alongside lives on East End

streets, soot blackened, still bomb crated- tarted up with

swinging sixties. Staring in at tv rental shops a flickering of

the great space race.

But fifty years ago, phoneless, no car, no tv -the police

knocked on my door.

Message from Mile End hospital-your boy is born Sir.

This was no successful landing. The week before the

consultant waved an x-ray in my face- It shows half the

baby’s head is missing- we should terminate to save your wife

more pain.

Half a head not there- more Star Treck than Dan Dare-

imagining those monochrome prints of Hiroshima dead.

Those astronauts fired off from Cape Kennedy- moon-bound

with dread of orbiting forever.

Cycling down the Mile End road, dizzy with thinking - beams

of headlights blinding. Sweating from some fear lying

incubator- locked

 A Victorian freak- my own elephant man for

all to see.

A rocket blowing airmen to smithereens of skin and bone.

Outside the maternity ward-through the mist of lights I smelt the jasmine summer.

A nurse led me to the room-a solitary plastic cage-the echoing

beat bagatelling off white emulsioned walls.

He’s trying hard.Pity he was premature.

The X-ray? I said.

You can sit with him, she said, your wife is sedated.

He was formed in beauty but with a hesitant beat of heart.

 I sat for hours like those in mission control Houston. I

thought of space talk- abort, burnout - and then that silence

sleeping in the cold of moon his breathing ceased-the

termination of a twenty-three-hour life.

The cheers across the world for one small step upon the moon

But each July I hear the beat and then – a tinnitus of furious

tranquillity in my skull.

Autopsy of a Holiday

January 2020

​

In between was the moorland: a breathing space dividing the quiet spa town from the fuggy muscled steel.

Leaving behind the Italian Gardens, the watching sea and air fanned by gulled wings for a dirty gulp of iron living.

A teenage holiday wasn’t for deckchairs or for the views.

It was the sinew rippled over bone- my special sensorium.

Talking dangerous of girlfriends to aunts that ruffled hair and linked arms tight, uncles coming back from the steelworks, washing at the kitchen sink, white faces behind the black dust and sitting in vests at dinners piled high. They went upstairs and came back, flushed fresh as gangsters with shiny brillianteened hair plastered down like seaweed,

spiv suits and armlets shining silver in the dim blue gas.

Then into the town bathed in sodium light.

The billiard hall and booze and back slapping jokes-

different from my home, reading in silence around the fire.

Here I climbed a stage- Clever lad -a charmer like his mam

You remember my sister? - they agreed with knowing smiles-

Lives by the sea now- cut off from our family. I knew it was only chat

but I’d never been near the centre of some attention.

He can spell procrastination- knows the latin and what it means. ‘What’s the latin for bloody steel?’ someone said- ‘wasn’t invented then’ I muttered. More laughs and backslaps and somehow I was one of this hard graft crowd- proper working class.

How old do you think that fella is-him sitting near the bar? my Uncle Barney asked. Fifty like my dad?

That’s what it does to you- a fireman close to the furnace door-Good money but each week takes a year off your life. Stan’s only in his thirties.

It lingered in my head that albino skull; a death mask forged in steel.

But on the way home we had fish and chips and tizer from the bottle

and I was back in holiday mood with the work’s smoke adding taste.

Years later I took my daughter to places in my teenage life.

She enjoyed the Scarborough sea and beach and knickerbocker glories in the unchanged ice cream parlour. She shuddered in the gloom of

Whitby Moors and gasped with disbelief at Middlesborough.

This is where you went on holiday? Destroyed to a shell-houses boarded up- a shanty town. Youths on corners like feral cats- no more slogging smoke but the taste of mould.  We had fish and chips and tizer in memorium to the pride and joy that lived there once.

Today nothing broken has been repaired: decades of vacuous mantras to a background of recalled TWOC-ing-

cars flaming on roads where the youth stare at cooling towers

like a Vesuvius coating of an unknown past.

In London I stand near the Millennium Bridge- think of layers of wealth piled high-diamond encrusted sculls embedded in turbine halls;

recall those northern holidays now buried under slag heaps with no RIPs

illumined in glittering steel.

Second Hand

January 2020

Everyone was at it in post war times

Jumble sales and second hand

 and friends with hand-me- downs.

Dark grey wool to match the drab sense

Of little new and everything made do.

There wasn’t stigma

Everyone was at it- squirreling about

In old church halls and tatty niffy shops.

 My Mam was good at

Sifting out the best-sniffing out the odds and

Sods that fitted me Ok. Some kids jeered with their eyes

- even called me posh-dressed up like some

Pseudo toff with gaberdine and silky shirts from

Throw- aways by rich prats on the hill. But I got the willies

The creeps-wearing other kid’s shoes- I could trace my finger

On the inside bit seeking out the shape of toes- maybe it was the war films

 where soldiers take the boots off corpses

Walking forever in dead men’s feet.

Like when I was fourteen in my cossie-following Martin and Gina across

The beach in the summer heat- my toes raw red inside the sandals

My mam said looked a million dollars. I took them off-the relief of skin on sand. I chased Gina to the sea screaming, our hot bodies tensed at the shock of chilling waves.  I held her tight-the touch, at last, of something new- but she recoiled, rushed back to Martin dressed cool chic, staring at the blurred horizon.

‘I burn in the sun,’ he said but Gina wouldn’t listen-pulling off his shirt

‘Oh, fiddly dee, don’t be a bore. Help me with my prisoner Tom.’

We pinned him to the sand - giggling, alongside Martin’s stifled cry to stop. The last button opened and Gina hoisted the shirt free-a victory flag for all to see.

Everything misted in my eyes, some silent place -a pure white canvas daubed with raw, purple battering. I knew the artist, understood his pissed dad’s violent hand.

Martin seemed to hiss- covered with a towel he trudged away.

I didn’t feel my sandals rough hide against my calf kid feet on my way home.

 Even now when I see some old discarded shoes -strange impressions on the leather insole- I think of my best friend

And hope the fist marks have all gone, nothing time-worn

As he rushes to the sea.

I Spy Secrets

Jan 2020

​

Listen do you want to know a secret

Do you promise not to tell?

I bet you do-those hush hush bits nestle inside like heartburn

 things we see or hear

But never expose.

writers want it out-laid bare

there for all to see-to comprehend what makes you tick.

 That’s why I loved hide and seek-shrouded in the depths of bushes

Hardly breathing as the one who’s ‘on it’

Passes by-footsteps crinkling on dry sand and leaves.

My head choker block with thoughts-

Recasting me in another life

 Hunted by soldiers searching with cocked pistols.

my sweating face awaiting the click of death.

Or climbing high on the factory fire escape

A vantage point- watching the other kids searching me out- muttering I spy-my arrow pointing at their hearts.

My favourite game-the living spy- listening to Dick Barton-special agent

Or in the Futurist cinema’s dark pit watching the Third Man-following the ‘dangerous edge of things’ footsteps clinking behind the shadows.

On my sisters’ hand me down bike-with cow horn handlebars, wearing the army and navy airman goggles cycling the streets for bits of info-scribbled in a notebook.

I spied old Riley pissed, a bottle in his hand-talking to the sea.

Saw Fatty Dunbar running from Woollies’-sweets dropping from his pockets.

One day with nought much going on I saw my Dad-all dressed up-count

rendered my mam called him- not in his workshop togs on a weekday

afternoon-striding out over valley Bridge. Huggermugger I waited behind trees

or cars until he arrived at this posh house-hidden behind the front garden wall I

saw him rattle the brass lion knocker on the door.

The terror is how far they’d go to learn your secret.

I imagined I’d be tough- but with God breathing down my neck

Confession with Father Michael was bad enough- the punishment for sin was

just a few hail Marys but the palpitations were in my voice telling things about

anger or kissing girls.

Captured in a spy film I wouldn’t last two minutes- the enemy tweaking my sensitive ears I would spill the beans.

At a family wedding last year, my three older sisters and me talked about my dad- I’m sure he was up to something back in 49. Mary said

Why I asked

Oh you’re too young to understand -as though I was eight years old again

Listen do you want to know a secret

Do you promise not to tell-my sisters?

The door opened. A woman standing there. She  kissed Dad in a Brief Encounter sort of way; they went inside hand in hand.

 I cycled away that heartburn moment stored for years in my skull.

Love in season

January 2020

​

Whether she to she

or he to he

or he to she

like me those loves were like the seasons

we recall. No matter when you met

eyes stared and those erratic brain

pin ball zooms besotting rational thought.

Yes baby- it always seemed like spring.

Oh yes you flaunting fool- those first shrill belly bursting

tweets from trees in sticky buds-no cruellest April Thomas

with all those daffs and hidden sproutings from damp earth.

Touch electric, those fingers on your skin

designed for you - thrust new-born from old sap winter.

Suddenly there is hope eternal-counting chickens and all that stuff

hand in hand skipping

into days that might last forever.

The touch inflamed-everywhere the land is full.

Kisses nectar stuffed - the waft of lavender.

Lying in the park you both see skies of blue –

Oh yes, I could die for you.

Swifts hurling dipping hunting on the wing.

Manana? No just this moment,

gazing through the red rioja wine,

avoiding questions of

dark secrets of fruit falling -

rotten to the core -Procrastinate doubts

of early pain-just cling a little tighter

with closed eyes

against the sun’s repertoire of burn.

Don’t get me wrong there is still the need of love

to share the silent requiem of our new-born-

a life snuffed out in the bronzed mayhem of autumn.

The secateurs aloft-culling things that bloomed before.

What is dying? - did you forget that love would last forever?

The fickle chills are blowing,

leaves are doubts- you think you have misjudged

that fruit you ate between your lips now turned to mould.

Branch by branch burnt out on garden fires.

Goodbye hardwired to winter.

Drawing curtains on the world out there.

Whether she to she

or he to he

or he to she

the wind through bare trees talks of pain-always one

that is to blame-for such a waste of time.

We hibernate, we who once were soaked in love

migrate across the leaden skies

daring to think of our world circling the sun,

in just spring, when we were young.

The Gym

February 2020

​

Strange place-the clash the thump the sometime grunt

of pushing up or out-

 the effort against the iron Brew of weights and plates and hours

running nowhere.

Strange place- a smell of steel and plastic stained with salt -the debris

of t-shirts and bottles half full of blue isotonic fudge.

Mystified why punters bust a gut parking close to the gym entrance

then bust another to run and tug for miles. Strange the clothes –

dressing for sweating tight lycra for some and baggy flop tracks for

others.

The poster on the way in- Get Fit- with models six packed and

women with oiled sinews and scowls you wouldn’t mess with.

Fit or looking fit or shedding pounds- dripping steaming on the murky

windows. Avoid Monday evenings -packed with guilt for binge fed

weekends- that massive vindaloo and six shot chasers.

Strange place the gym- as many reasons to be there as thoughts of

reflections in a hall of mirrors.

Strange me- going for years-ogling life- the vain and retiring. Only

the lonely- the guy there every day- some Eleanor Rigby picking up

dumbbells where his dreams have gone- pretend action instead of box

set binge in solitary rooms.

I started early looking at ads for Charles Atlas- be muscly and no

Scarborough sand kicked in my face.  Dad’s tired joke-Tom’s taken

the course please could you send the muscles.

Something to do with change-change the body you are in. Wanting

better- better running- better winning - but I never got taller-what a

pity-with a six-foot dad and a four-foot mam I didn’t stand a chance.

The reps repeat and just one more jerk to make a jig saw of

rampaging years-listening to music blasting out my yoga thoughts of

meditation. Watching the punter, we call Flash- always cleaning the

machine -scared of germs-probably doesn’t sleep imaging the corona

virus stuck to his barbells.

Strange place the steam and sauna later- not quite my Dolce vita-

teasing out today’s mangled mess of thinking. The smell of dampened

wood trying to shut out images of layers of skin exfoliated in the

breath. And Albas man -sprinkling oil everywhere-good for the

breathing he says-Yes, I mutter my eyes stinging with eucalyptus

tears.

The communal showers- now there’s another twist on life- the shy

and extrovert splashing side by side- saw this guy bending over with a

razor- strange way to shave- gritting my teeth at the thought of

someone’s bristle scum near my feet- but it got worse- shaving his

pubes with a Wilkinson Sword-now there’s a first – a Brazilian I

thought I’d never meet.

But in the car the world is all at rest- switch on the Getz for Sweet

Rain sax- the windows mist with my own flush and yes, I do feel

good- invisible endorphins –short lived but long enough to shout ‘Oh

yeah baby’ relishing the thoughts of dinner and blood red thick rioja

wine.

Backlash

February 2020

Last night you died.

We did our best- the doctor said-

a moment you had brainfagged all your life.

Pathways blocked existence bookended between

spermed- egg and RIP.

Coming out of the shadows you see their eyes, their tears for you,

the drip-feed is removed, a pillow plumped,

the suitcase that your daughter packed, unpacked

is packed again as the ambulance reverses,

its flashing lights startling the dark street.

At number 18 you smell the floorboards

and the dribble stain is cleaned back into your dry lips.

You stand and stare at the coffee spoon falling from numb fingers,

the tinkle on the aluminium sink.

You go back to the favourite chair and wonder

what the cryptic clue is all about- of course- Post mortem-a stiff examination,

words pondered about mortality and the nursery of stars. Maybe

a poem for next week’s unplugged.

Staring at a young life in a daughter’s school snaps-

one dark night she is born and you hold her

in the steel quiet of the waiting room. You met her mother at a party

when you had forgotten any sort of touch.

Alone in echoing rooms waiting for a voice to say

I want out, the other woman had said-the aching years leading to walled exits.

Staring at her in the doorway

but knew that love had blown your head off  

and you were playing chess of all games.

You don’t know where the years have come.

A kind of limbo but you feel so strong,

days stuffed with work and sport and dash,

sitting on blown up furniture, touching long hair, the smell of hash,

blood on the tracks which tastes like yours.

The best years, of course you will always remember, spick-span girls,

their lips and those roasting moments

when eyes met like there was never anything but eyes and hearts.

And anger. Try somewhere else. that voice doesn’t fit our ancient spires.

Homework, book on fungus book in the chittering bedroom

and feeling like an orphan. No one cares for a spotty faced sprig

red hair shooting like course grass. Listening on the stairs

to parents talking and the jangle of marbles in your pockets.

God is everywhere; knows your every thought.

Punching Fatty Dunbar’s face to suet, waiting for the bolts from heaven.

The touch of silk and the heavy drift of mimosa and words

jumping from shop signs; ‘antique,’ ‘undertaker,’ ‘haberdashery’

that sank inside you like electric spells. Is there any paper?

yelling from the outside lavatory’s chilblained mist. When your mother

falls asleep and the first panic of dying. Mam, mam, mam?

The comb in her fingers smoothing through your hair and everything is warm.

Her breasts and belly and you are sucked back into the smiling dark,

limb on limb,

 a sparking brain,

 a wriggle

 and then no more.                  

Confession

March 2020

Sixty years an atheist,

ready to declare that dust to dust is all that life’s about.

But those Catholic roots are still buried deep,

a soft spot for those early years.

When some loon says

it’s a farce the papist thing-

Its easy to confess and start again with a pure white soul

I must defend the act of telling all-

the collywobbles and fear of spilling all the beans,

a gigantic mea culpa

on all your sinning life.

 Why do I link that dusty priest’s box

near the church pews with Bogart’s Big Sleep and films in noir?

Going with my Mam to the flicks,

her favourite gangster pictures, I picked up the lingo.

You dirty rat I’d snarl which always made Mam giggle.

My my my such a lot of guns around town and so few brains.

Your accent is so good she said giving me a Hollywood buzz.

Boring the hell out of classmates and pissing off my sisters

already toity teenagers with a ten-year-old Cagney sprog for a

sibling.

You don’t know how stupid you sound- you don’t fool

anyone.

But America was where it was at back then,

an Eldorado following me into teenage angst.

They called me chicken. Y’know chicken.

 Fifteen, white T-shirt, jeans and a red jacket but no car-

 only a second-hand girls’ bike with cow horn handlebars.

How come all American teenagers had cars and looked thirty?

MGM and Paramount had prepared me for my audition.

Sitting outside the confessional in St Peter’s Church,

sweating- thinking about admitting the big one to Father

John who read me like a book.

In the dark masking my identity with an American twang-

Bless me father for I have sinned….

What do you want to confess?

Last week I went with a chic to the Italian Gardens and we did it.

You forced yourself on a girl?

Not really. Angela...no Suzie Knew what to do. She placed my hand on her chest. Then

pressed her ripe lips down to the teeth. She led me through some bushes behind the bench

and sank down onto a flat piece of grass. I didn’t have to move. Her hands were inside my

pants stroking my thing like it belonged to her. She whipped off her underwear and steered

me in.

Did you try to stop?

Hell no. I was sort of hypnotised. Then she gave me a push and I landed beside her like a

Catherine wheel fallen off the pin- all fizzing.

Think of the unhappiness you could bring to the girl. Ask for forgiveness and say ten hail

Marys. Oh, and Tom, take your mind off the lasses and keep up the acting and storytelling.

Walking home down the hill I made my resolutions:

no more confession,

no more American dreams

and if being with Angela was a sin- then bring it on baby-

Great Balls of Fire

Night Hawk

March 2020

​

Goodbye dear- I hear the click of crochet needles as I open the front door-

the divide from sleeping hideout to the outside vibrant dark.

I jog my streets and I jog at night.

Rubbing the thighs to circulate some blood-remember those days when elastic legs could move like pistons.

My street too neat with Edwardian dolls houses.

Amber lights fingering the pavements with tree shadows.

My breath crackles out the fag of everyone’s days, hoping the corona virus isn’t sneaking here.

See the careful lamps hiding behind curtains.

Turn the corner and things open.

The streetlights are higher. Speedier run up here.

The first sweat is the sweetest.

Up the hill the sniff of dosh on houses.

Big brash gated fronts, intruder lights in the gardens, railings bling-gold spiked. Look but don’t enter-our castle mate.

Wonder where the money comes from-three Audi tanks guard the entrance.

See inside the massive windows-human devoid, but there are cellos and music stands and leather sofas. We are very rich Ok.

The gnashing growl of a bull mastiff slices the air.

 At the top of the hill is the guy selling the Big Issue crouched in dark nothingness. His hand out, I am very poor ok- uneasy tremor in my gut.

Onto the High Street.

Everyone is smoking or on mobiles. Booze with loud voices.

I cut through them like a knife. Squint my eyes and it could be Las Vegas. Mo Farah sprinting through the popping blood -red night life.

Up the road near the motorway.

The scalding hiss of tyres. Cars sting rayed to the road in a ribbon of eyes.

I feel alone in the metal glow- an urge to fly-shedding my old skin for Jupiter’s winged Nike trainers.

Out of the glare, into Gasworks gardens. No gasworks, no gardens; just a skulking bit of road. Paint-peeled houses with rubbish bags everywhere. Chicken bones in the puddles. You can almost smell the rats licking heroin needles.

 I run faster; a tinge of fear-my fists as tight as knuckle dusters.

Across the park my breathing ebbs.

The clouds part and there is a full round silver moon.

Young people shy in embrace coming out of the guilty shadows. 

Then the drizzle buffing up the roads to a polished yellow. The trees frightened, huddled between the walls of bricks like a missing piece of jigsaw.

The beautiful buzz. All the scratchings of the day fly away with a soaring jazz sax.

 Back on my street a screaming of applause- a Rocky fist raise. I open my front door and shut out the raw living night.

How was it? -ok I mumble. Just a run. ‘Hurry up... I’ve made your hot chocolate and Midsummer Murders is just starting. Someone dead -hit with a pestle and mortar.’

Shed the sweat of running skin- flop back into the soporific sofa- flickering brain of this semi-detached dead world. - until tomorrow and the next blood kiss of night hawk.

This Season

March 2020

I try to view the weather without thoughts

of some impending doom.

In the garden there are thrusts of vernal life;

savvy sparrows attack feeders

scattering husk on sodden earth.

Every moment an invasion of green,

yellow and muted mauve- signal

that life rolls on-a time impervious

to human fear of danger in the air.

No isolation here where forsythia flaunts gold embraced

by the strangle hold of jasmine. Tulips gasp in the

cold wind dropping red tongue petals on cats

that seek the sun, or half crouched to gorge

on feathered movements in buddleia shade.

Its March they say and I recall those ancient words

about the lion and the lamb

now gagged by the invisible sniper of our dreams.

Then like a siren in my mind I hear a wind chime

from the apple tree and in some splendid stupor

smile and do not feel alone.

Departure Times

July 2020

​

Some leaving times go unnoticed – hardly a scratch

climbing the escalators to a flight to somewhere

Goodbye as easy as see you later but never do.

I’m talking about tougher moments- my head melting the damp pillow on a hot June night.

shaving the scalp to a billiard ball

hammering in the nails.

Begin with panel pins-easy to prick the surface

like an Edwardian summer-

my mother wearing her Sunday best

my neighbour Mrs Allen smelling of California poppy,

breathing cloyed with emotion.

But it wasn’t our way

I could see in their eyes so many

words of embarrassment -

talking about the North Sea fret and

‘Don’t forget your sandwiches.-

your favourite egg and lettuce’

The quiet in the din of trains the

clash of metal doors and then

I was in and they were out there.

On the station, hands up with small waves

the thump of engine and I knowing that everything

coming was beyond goodbye.

Driving in the longer nails

pointing like magnetic needles I would rather erase

before I’m swamped with regret.

Never look back had been my mantra-but I did-

 that working era the room, the corridor pounded for years

 by my footsteps- thoughts now airbrushed away

 with polish and new carpet as though the toiling years had never been

Just before sleep alarmed at my own angst brooding

 I hammer in the long roof clouts that whack me awake

 lancing that secreted bit of brain, they call the heart.

Fuck off  I ‘d mumbled and she did

leaving me oozing from the rough cracked egg.

 As clear as a million laser shafts I see the curl of hair

 in the closing door, the whisper of shoes

and the lingering perfume thickened to nasal drip.

But on this windswept January evening

exiting Holborn Station

I think only of the now- like some carpe diem jester

trying to forget departures and what will arrive --

Through the cafe door down the winding stairs

words whistling in the sniff of ale and vegan pie- the unconscious staples fixing bits to

glowing synapses

I guess that something will remain- perhaps vanishing into some future dream

 posing questions in my remembering.

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