And through the cold coat of
Winter wear, a greener bud
begins on branch that dares
to hope for warmth and better light.
Here, here and here
there lifts a brave blade of
grass, defies threats of frost
and skies overcast by monochrome bright
Sun shaded from sight.

Then tumbles flake into warm drip
of life and wakens and washes
the dust from daffodil eyes
who poke a cautious tip through
earthy blankets
first one there, then there, now
here and here and here and here.

And then a yellow strikes upon the
V of beating wings, and kisses
the sleeping bark awake on trees
who unwrap their groggy arms
and stretch towards the rays
with greening finger leaves
and catkins and stickybuds
and squirrels who agitate
and chatter
and bees who sing a welcome again
to tulips who rush to the surface
to greet them
and rabbits and foxes who chase
and soon we two join too like lost peoples
returned from long dark adventures, emerged,
to add to the business bustlings of
Spring.

I am tongue. I am expression of thought.
I am revelation of conscience.
I am identity and I am definer of knowledge.

You are the off switch of contemplation,
creator of false drama and
hanging moments, the appellant to
common denominator.

You are repellent of sophistication
for fear of losing the mass of imagined
uncomplication. You are budget and
the science of demography and driver
of simplified-greed buy one get two
buy five for three commerce.

I am tongue.
I am thought into words. I am description
of the indescribable. I am music of
the soundless mind. I am pricker to tears
I am stretcher of horizons. I am inner voice
surfaced into scratched black. I am
rhyme and reason and soul into poetry.

But you are to kill me.

These long-trodden ruts, with mud like pitch
by farming day and ankle-snapping wallows by
wartime night sucked at your boots and swallowed
the uncapped cigarettes of the part-time tommys
who perched, bayonets ready, over the vents of the
train tunnels. This Summer they bake stone-dry
undisturbed by you.

The secret corners of the meadows, like skirts unhitched
unbuttoned cloaks, let you pick, giggling,
your mushroom breakfast like that day we carried
them back triumphantly as victor’s trophies now
sit doleful and forgotten for wont of you.

And above the moor is the startled cry which
shrieks from the fluttering height of a hawk breed
called by a name none of us left can can bring to mind
yet it sprang to your smiling lips as easy as your
rambler’s stride outpaced us all; though you told me
and we rehearsed the right Somerset burr it passed
through my memory and out the other side.
I should have listened to you.

This Winter, when the hail fills the ditch
and the narrow snake lanes are drawn again
in pastel shades of frost and and the crows
shiver in the bare trees at the bite of a
bone-cutting wind, who will remember to crack ice
on the pond for the fishes if it’s not you?

When classes gather on rowdy trips,
chattering school days out poke at the
billhook and scythe on the hitch,
and with murmuring lips rehearse
the curls of a brogue tongue we’ve lost and
peer at the ruddy-faced sepia snaps of smocked men
crushed by the effort of lofting up those hand-built
hayricks, will they know one of the little boys was you?

Who is left to remember the willow switch
the strike of which peeled the smell
of the sweat steam from mud-dusty hide
to tear the plough through cake-crumb
soil with shrill pursed two-fingered whistles and
shouts of “here boys” and “walk on” to
plait the criss-cross pattern
of our farmland fit to burst later with Autumn
plenty if the who is not to be you?

How will we know the ways of every niche
to string the berry-bearing twine amongst
the nooks and crannys of glass or the bud
to tweak or root to lift and clumping ball
to split? The way to cast, broad and measured
in a cupped hand gnarled by ungloved labour
sleeps unwritten with you.

The joys of horse and rattling, rich
reward for boyhood toil, bucking cart,
riding high on the hay, your father pacing
at the rein; a tiny returning champion, skin
like leather; all now squared into an oil fairytale
to perch in maidenless parlours and picturesque
postcards who know nothing of you.

I knew you. I will remember.

I’ll reach for your hand without looking
to see if it’s there.

A slight movement,
light,
with a deliberate glide to a stillness.

We’ll turn to face each other on the
beach. Sunset fire in our hair.

Our moment,
together,
share an intimate look that makes time halt.

In our eyes is understanding, the fingers
that brush say it all.

Tidal current,
advancing,
we’re joined, inviolate, inseparable, betrothed.

The wash of the purest blue green sea
licks around our ankles, clear below an azure sky.

Vital moment,
fleeting,
cast off cares and make the bustle of life…stop.

Good men, cutting and slitting
opening the endorphin path;
direct and natural action, fitting, echoes of the past.

Sundance ceremony, the three day fly away from it all;
Helios and Aten, Stonehenge circles
olden day trances, shamanic peoples.

Now beat the drum.
Echo the unleashed modern mind.

All join together,
link hands, commune.
Inglorious enrapture,
gutteral cries in the
heat of the lodge, with
the steam dripping from the walls and skin.

And I’m feeling faint,
nearer to the quest,
dizzy with the spirit.

Yells from within, ancient, deep:
out loud, screeching, rising
undulating, throbbing in my thoughts.

Body drums back, beats at my chest.
Lips cracked but moving, the muttering secrets
ever more rushing to the surface;
wild, urgent, flashing, scary…comforting.

I’m a root in the earth, a bird, a wolf;
totally human animal.

Oh, is this the secret?
under it all, under my modern me?
Tell me.

The event was a magnificent fleeting sliver of time
that bloomed in our past and grew in our
unintended lying to fit a need,
way beyond the deed.

You set it on an altar with signs and guides
and glass cabinets;
but the goodness of the moment, the worth
of the story, is long gone.
Gone in reality, passed. Living on
in your words which are a distorted
lense that bends the light of the truth
so it curves to fit your purposes,
however well intentioned.

Do not venerate the place, do not
make it an undeserving monument where white-gloved
curators must tremble at an imagined
majesty and handle the crumbs of our
everyday tables with a breath-holding
reverence, heavy to the touch with
import and meaning which they agonise
over obsessed and
are tested so that they may say
they have a certificate that signifies
their understanding of what we were and
what we stood for in every way.

We lived here in ordinary ways. We made all
our mistakes, fallible and room-spinning,
puking, with a depth only you see and we wished
we had in our time. Your artefacts were our broken clay pipes
and your big discoveries were the rotting bones
of our dogs. So, do not venerate the place;
lay down the next generation of
legend and trails with your own flints and sonnets.

Impact
When I die I want to have made an impact.
Not the kind that arises from close meteor contact.
Or that sort which you get when performing the
half stock-broker with double twist from the
top of the nearest skyscraper. I’m less desperate
than that.

It’s not enough to have littered the world
with progeny who didn’t take my name, although
it’s a shame. I’m not bothered by the fruits
of my labour – they’ll wash away soon enough,
on the next technological tidal wave – I only
did it for the money; I did it grumpily
and for financial gain.

There are no cocktails named in my honour.
No twists or slings or things mixed two parts gin.
No sex-on-the-beach brain-cell stunner.
No exotic fruits or names with
Latin woven in to defeat the
brains of spliffy students in their final summer.

They’ll bury me nicely and read Dylan Thomas
poems at my eulogy. There will be flowers, for
a generation, but eventually neglect will come
to stake its claim. Nobody will be remembered
enough to blame.

In time, my skin will putrefy and decompose
and my best burial clothes will unravel around worms
who’ll wriggle through my eye sockets and romp with
partying beetles who’ll munch on my crusty bits and
nest in my pockets.

In years to come, when the creepy crawly disco is done.
When the mound above me has sunk and the veneration stone
at my head has greened with the lichen of a second
generation of dead – who will know I had a clean driving licence
and paid all my taxes on time?

“You sleep here, our guest“, he ushered proud
with gestures through a darkened door
that hid the horrors of the pinky cloud
and unicorns with flowing hair upon their head
and for our slumber; the truly mocking,
garish, pink fairy princess bed.

Stiff-armed corpse I, gazing up
to spy the glowing fairy sky
and around our gifted passion parlour
a Barbie car and house given by
brother, father.

Taunt me princess with your wings
and your daytime glowing things;
stack your Barney DVDs, his singing
doesn’t frighten me (I grit and set
my teeth just so and resist the urge
to shriek and go).

Rattled handles resist the wrench
of fulsome promised fun-time
wench; so slipping from
the fairy princess bed I turn the
handle for her instead.

But in place of smiling perfumed
partner I look down low and
see the owner of the pinken palace
boudoir, come to rescue Barbie’s
car and as I follow the fairy princess
gaze I see she looks at me amazed
and points a shaky pinkie finger
thus and says, as only fairy princess
must,

“I…”

“…can see your winkie…“

Guide me, tell me what the sickness is.
Is your stare the look of mortal sin,
that richter grin on your clammy skin?
Tell me, is that the look of tempted fate,
the fatal conclusion of the all too late?
Tell me, can I do something, can I sooth
the thing that eats your heart, can I kill the
demons on your behalf?
We were so good together, we fought the
world and nothing could beat us, we
were the ones they said would last,
we were the ones who set the pace,
we were the ones who’d win the race.
Tell me, are you still in there?
Did we get caught by the snare of
the evil vixen, warmed up witch with a
bloody mixer?
Is the person I met so long ago
breathing the breath of the living
death or do you still flicker your
fires behind those glassy eyes?

Show me, show me something to give
some hope.

Let me know that you’re not
lost, that the bridge too far has not been
crossed. We were so good together, we fought them
all, the biggest problems, we led the way
and the others followed, we were the ones
with the bright tomorrow.
Have you left me? Are you gone forever?
Hand in hand with your smokey satan?
Did the odds beat you, have you lost the
game? Will things ever be the same?
We were so good together, we fought the world
and nothing could beat us, we were the ones
they said would last but the flames and spoon
were just too fast, you poked the hole
but they set the pace, led you to the call
of the inner space.
The deceitful warmth of its other world womb
hides the fact it’s your living tomb; we’ll
pull the works from your skinny limbs,
pump in life and earthly things,
but the call of the siren’s song goes on
and carries your mind to the world beyond.
A place where nether creatures fly
where shaking needle wielders die
and sparks of love, of happy days
are wiped away by their wicked ways.
You’re set adrift on darkened water
because you chose to kiss the devil’s daughter.

My black friend’s unwelcome at all polite places
Or in meetings at offices
And at the functions where listening is “easy”
And piped into nice spaces.

My black friend – him and I – we have history
That covers our schooldays
and tinted our teen years
and made me forgetful
and scared off my feelings.
He’s a best-hidden secret
Disguised and imprisoned
Avoiding the scorn
of our impressionable peers.

I took steps to avoid him
Changed jobs and careers
Hid all his details
denied his existence.
But despite my efforts
he found me
You must admire his persistence!

He met me at work
some time back
And shocked all my colleagues
(They didn’t know he was black).

He said the wrong thing
In an attempt to amuse
Which backfired terribly
A result of the booze.

After, things deteriorated
and he became more perverse
forcing me to take steps
to ignore him
- he just acted worse.

So we both sought counselling
To fix the big split
But mistakenly selected
A prejudiced git
With the only suggestion,
well meaning I’m sure:
to take stronger drugs
And to learn to ignore
The black man who tracks
Me at work and stands
Looking soulful
at my closely-locked door
which he cannot go through

He presses home his opinions
However extreme or innate
And encourages me to feelings
Full of bile and pure hate.

But perhaps with this confessor
My black friend and I
We should have been honest
More open and true
And told the full story
Of a life coloured blue
With a useless black partner
And a man lost to age
And a request for deliverance
That fills up the page
Long lost, unread
Which started its journey
inside my head.

We tried an arrangement,
my black man and I
and went off without saying
A word of goodbye.
And for a long time,
I alone ruled
And everything was “cushty”
“Even stevens”
It was “cool”.

That is ’til just recent
A chance event brought along
The circumstances needed
For his return, to belong.
He’s sitting here typing
Whilst I watch from behind
Those black man’s eyes
A cowardly witness to crime.

To those of you reading
And decrying the words
with political correctness
and observational verve
you’re missing the bleeding
and the intellectual burn
of a dysfunctional,
thinking,
emotional,
worm.

And in a way that’s the point,
If you’re looking for reason,
That perhaps it’s time
For a black friend season
When with help in a manner
Which borders on murder
Your brain commits crimes
Of unspeakable glamour
With a depth and a character
Too bold to be useful
To a black mannered mood
That becomes utterly crucial.