Sebastian Barker
The Quercy Cross
There in the shade of the Quercy causse, the cross
Stands, as the bells of St Jean de Laur float over
The green auditorium of thin oak trees.
Patterns of sunlight rearrange their colour
As the wind strokes the oaks and settles down
To the fructification of the forest.
The sun pierces the leaves and stings the ground
With baking pools of stone in this neverest
Of ecclesiastical ascension
Towards the stone cross smacked with gold fungus,
An aureole of butterflies, the neon
Blue of the jet-threaded sky, the cicadas
Penetrating literature, with sharp teeth
Biting out the substance of my living breath.
Andrew Barnes
Cherophobia*
Monkey saved after arson attack,
white clouds bloom over la Rochelle,
a blue whale’s heart weighs a thousand pounds,
today we learn the difference
between basal and psychic tears.
All these facts keep me occupied,
knowledge is neutral and drives my day,
I don’t have to think or feel,
it’s just there, a comfort,
with no pressure for dislike or enjoyment.
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
white car stranded on a railway line,
Van Gogh only sold one painting in his life,
my train home to Sheffield
costs me two quid per mile.
Happiness is such a risk,
being open to emotion can let in despair,
I prefer to know the answer to questions,
rather than to question anything myself,
that’s a calmer place, safer ground.
*The fear of being happy
Vocal
This voice is frail,
sometimes croaks with a cough,
strains for space to squeak.
This voice can rail,
against injustice,
betrayal and all vices.
This voice can pin hypocrites
to the wall,
a dagger to their black hearts.
Then at times I lose this voice,
timid, in fear, nothing to say,
scared to offend,
others, I hold my tongue,
mute and dumb,
a voice suppressed.
This voice is not as loud
as the overbearing shouters,
the great swell of noise.
This voice is my truth,
that no-one bothers to hear.
I shall speak anyway.
Christopher Barnes
DEAREST (41)
…in Elysium
you’ll stride barefoot.
*
We are stardust
yet should be corpus.
DEAREST (42)
…chuckling
enlivens the fluttering heart.
*
This grubby world
is not a mirage.
DEAREST (43)
Papa tickles spectres…
Farewell.
*
Juxtapositions, second glances,
capture axioms.
DEAREST (44)
…responses unlock,
murky tutoring.
*
New insight
hacks chimerical jungles.
FRAGMENTS 41
Enervating ventilation with pushy accent.
Underdog-sheen conditions.
“Register of ‘undesirables’ hatched.”
Not easy-going, or benevolent.
FRAGMENTS 42
Dismantled possessions, orbitless.
Rewind knob.
“Washington precluded…”
Tenable germane shredding.
FRAGMENTS 43
Hoodwinked by escutcheon.
Perforations margin sprocket.
“Lethal diseases, bioweapons.”
Vertex of a flame.
FRAGMENTS 44
Action Man hurtled at wall.
Resistance spanning guide rails.
“Cockiness of no-platforming.”
Lay-a-trap rhythms, melodic evisceration.
TOWNSCAPE 41
Resumption of lozenge detail.
Vitamins resource carnations.
Prefabricated hub.
Football orbits…
Where Akycha melted into flickering storm.
TOWNSCAPE 42
Projections hung from overreach.
Cytoplasm widens miscanthus.
Unblunted ledges jut.
Blackboard’s antipasto sponged…
Where Anpao blew diverting smoke rings.
Festival
Angels of tat
Blink at our guru an hour.
Recklessness in loose tongues
Is curtailed.
Insight duties no verve
Nor sermons.
A junk-grimed spoon
Feigns lustre by the candle.
Cloud-Climbing
Luridly chrome-tint
The speedboat-driving octopus
Is kiss-blown on the forehead
By each tragedian
In our guru’s aura.
We’ve unbuilt the mind’s shadows,
Dizzy from hearkening oversouls –
Gunk
On the engine of the universe.
Tonguing Spittle
Our guru ticktacks eyes
In the Pete Burns doll.
Run-out-of-time sundown.
I airscape him
Fluttering with gopis.
We blubber, mystify,
Culting for juju lips
To halo the sky.
Imaginary Rain
The mushroom cloud bomb
Engravened with nylon fuzz,
Roosts on his aquarium.
Our guru’s rigor
Gambles by humouring senses.
We backlog anxiety
For peace.
Stilling Bacchus
Our guru, thresholding from wine bars,
Slurs his doodads inducing cheer.
That shoplifted My Little Pony,
Raging to be eyeballed,
Crash dives off a pizza box.
Hopelessness owns my physical body
Reshaped by nous.
To Bethany Hun
Whether we’ve conviction
In a ‘violence gene’ or dissent,
Your abortion has our favour.
Those mugged by your blood ties
Are head-counted in the umpteen.
Snatch this untroubled ‘love-lies-bleeding’ clump
And £20 note,
As tender thanks from us neighbours.
Upright efforts are invariably saluted.
Naturally, Mr. Ainsley Worth
We’ve thrown-together sentiments
On your blue-colour interview pull-off.
The earnings are dashed hopes,
Particulars lamentable.
Experience’s fitting only on CVs.
We’ll be glad-spirited if it’s fly-by-night
– Here’s to a trap-escaped destiny.
Skin and Bones
Long-Gong ™ mute dinner chime
Is the unassuming fat-shrink aid.
(Water stands still in glass.)
Amuse yourself with hours,
Made thin by loitering distractions.
(Aimless plate, droop-safflower.)
Forgo
Minus remorse.
High-Rise Frolics
Now-You-See-It ™ by Quickrope
Inevitably delivers.
(Rhumba Avenue in unsullied towels.)
Procure our flash-gape, creep-shut
Washroom roller blinds
For the EXHIBITIONIST in you.
(Magnifying glass, soap dish, bubbles.)
Rouse those opposite
With and eyeful that wiggles.
Black Widow ™ Lipstick
Neutral tint, unbouqueted
For jolly nights.
(Grinning chump at dinner table.)
Blended with venom,
99.9% pledged
Wedlock-repelling trait.
(A slack-phosphorescent lamp.)
Before swerving your vital principles,
Close in on fangs, tenderly growl
Into the nerve of monogamy.
Greenwich ™ Perfumes
Happening, innovative –
The aroma of boiled cabbage
For Sunday dinners transcended.
(Wickerwork table, chairs, miscellaneous roses.)
Superlative with juiceless pea beads,
Lacquered sprout eardrops.
(Prim waiter, roast chicken.)
Be the aura!
Emit the occasion! Create memories!
Hatchful Ranges ™ Deliver
Cored-out frosted apple beakers –
Get splashy with the new look.
(Eye-patch, tache, bronze face.)
Upgrades the flavourings of spurious ciders
Or mineral waters for nourishing days.
(Five straws in exquisite vase.)
Cut a dash in those lifestyle preferences,
Dream up a ‘very you’ future.
from the Electric Chair poems
Penalty
Hostile verdicts on your faults – placarded.
This resting-place for fleeting portraits
Totters us with stomach butterflies,
Grizzly-fallow blush of your remains.
Blind-corner eyes misapprehend.
Gratify caution, be clay-cold, not dare-devil.
Somewhere, devastations may even mist.
Bandy scraggy thorax hairs,
Pitch unanswerable time.
Execution right-handed you as an upshot.
Direct currents are now set down.
Death Power
As all round offs are
Rumbling the dissolving spot is grave;
Score settling pulps neutrality.
Yours is the strapped-in scream.
They’ve got mains-operation to a knack
And have gone for felons to fix
In an awfully down-to-earth world.
As Pavlovian slaver
Seizes a jerk,
Civil are authorities
Who have you hugged by the electric wasp.
Rudy Baron
I don’t like
poetry
anymore
it doesn’t seem to satisfy
my needs
straddle a sensitive fence
balance and juggle
look down in perpetual fear
at alligator moat filled
words
anxiously await approval
will they look back
will they respond in a chorus
of halleluiahs
will they bury themselves in
selfish states of simplistic
mediocrity
will I be healed–
I write blankly
coil behind a dark curtain
of closed eyelids
wait for some majestic painting
to unfold
tapestry of skeleton
my bones woven cloth
in letters
can I be read
someone please tell me
what those images on the cave wall
actually mean
that stain on my shirt
bleeds from left
to right
vivid expression my emotions
rarely return
its novel state
an island
floats along
complex strands of thread
appeared one day
suddenly burdened with the task
to watch vigilantly
over
sterile fields
I want to do something
I want to do something
for you
I want to explain
the taste of tomatoes
and the taste of your tongue
I want to lick the lines
of your hand
swallow the fortune
of your
future
I’m sorry I said those things
I apologize for my meandering
excuse me for spontaneous oral eruptions
pardon that verbal misgiving
forgive that last moment we were together
will I wander back
into useful language
should I tell friends
appropriate
notes of encouragement
hoping that last salutation
will suffice for a sign off
or should I heroically
wave at ships
that have left the pier
succumb to previously
heard vibrations
Seymour
liked forming
the shape of pretzel
bones snapping and cracking
unwinding from his twisted form.
The view from the window
is blocked by a building
absorbing the sun’s rays
drips them onto the sidewalk
form crippled shadows.
The library’s books all contain
identical creases in the spine
patrons opening
to the same page.
If Seymour had an opinion
to all this
he would let it be known
through verbal ejaculations
or the thunderous tension
of premeditated silence.
The exit over the doorway walks by
a blonde woman
watches the red second hand
pause for one second.
Vacationers watch TV
on the beach
florescent light washes
away figures on the screen.
Seymour offers her a drink
she stares into the glass
listening to rumblings
restless
agitated ice cubes.
Someone drives their heel
into a neighboring toe
screams some
visceral curse
thinking this is a step
in some form of direction.
The air only gets heavy
when the sky ducks behind a cloud
a man with an ugly tie
discusses his breakfast.
Seymour contemplates his existence
as a superhero
while thumbing his day through
shirts purchased at second hand stores.
The name Slimey, the wet snail
has been co-opted by a small child
resistant to friendship and acts
of recognizable kindness
by wrinkled relatives.
She can’t dance! Never could!
the last line of a job evaluation
puts to rest any chance
of upward mobility.
Seymour
acknowledges
the eyes close
the curtain opens to dream
the knock of familiarity.
Popcorn
Popcorn is yellow
or is it white –
“I don’t quite remember”
she cried.
If you do, call
If you don’t, call anyone.
Have you got a dime?
I’ll ask the man in the purple
pajamas and fuzzy slippers.
He smiles and winks,
shows me a quarter,
requires I do a magic trick.
Johnny!
It was pepper on my cheerleading
pom-poms this time
I wish mom would leave him
in the yard, so mean
crime and slime
all is grime
la la la la
Can I stop singing?
No!
Can I stop saying la?
la la la la
OK, now?
No! Never!
Nigel barks at doctors
doesn’t like them
feeling the pain of probing
arthritic vertebrae
“They’re going to cure you”
his wife yells from a 3rd floor fire escape.
The only question she ever asked
was “What’s wrong?”
The blinds at the corner tailor
are too short
a great temptation
for zealous, rampant peeping Toms –
the line goes around the corner
begins at the newspaper stand
where children
sell overpriced lemonade.
Can you follow up with that?
Can you get back to me?
Can you please repeat every word
I’ve ever spoken?
Can you please tell me
exactly what I mean?
Can you move aside?
Can you please let me through?
This summer has seen a rise in shells
washed up on the beach.
Elderly men pay boys
to throw them back
hoping to slow the tides
and the erosion of time.
I’ll have a cup of coffee
apologize for an early departure
the TV remote is dead
and my eyes don’t dance anymore.
A flickering shadow
trees tangoing in moonlight
fading music of the wind.
Richard Barrett
Office 4
non-verbal threads strung between
our connections of lip-curl and spectacle adjustment
exclusivity awareness the commonly overlooked
circumscribes us and
the secret language rebuilding
Salford in a second all others remained
stationary //not solid to touch
palimpsest analogy with earliest known marks
:public discourse of
weekend enquiries and workplace assistance
talk as disguise unnecessary archaeology
to uncover meaning
not without weight nor worth dismissal
renaissance dream of learning leaning progression
just a pause on the way propagated to pretend
against any movement at all //
I see your holiday photos next year
we might be there together
Brian Beamish
Chelsea
Out on the tiles, Victorian smiles, a horde of
Clucking, strutting stool-pigeons
Pecking at the glazed shop-fronts
And the glazed-lead faces of the jackboot cashiers
A Formica fuck and a cancerous look
Reading their prey like a how-to book.
Nearby a punk shop with all the spit and bile
Of a Trappist monk.
Moment long gone.
All the outré strands ironed out –
Make them a Sir and they’ll stop being surly
A knighthood woven short and curly.
Plenty in this polished vacuum tube
Clinical and clattering like a cocktail
Of nail polish and acid.
Sherpas required to trek this wasteland
Milksop corpses with smashed-glass eyes
Tossed in the jet-stream of azure skies.
Gary Beck
Bitter Lesson
Capitalism defeated
fascism, communism,
briefly allowed
loyal citizens
small tastes of the profit
as they blissfully reveled,
deceived into believing
they were important
to the long term owners
of America,
concealed by guarded gates,
immune to the suffering
of those who lost homes, jobs,
cruelly condemned
by callous aristos
to poverty,
disease, idleness,
while the wealthy indulged
in excess pleasures.
Lost in the Land of Plenty
I live in a welfare hotel
and when the electricity
gets shut off again
in the room provided
by Homeless Services,
without the heater,
even with blankets,
it’s freezing cold.
I hurry to dress
so I won’t miss the bus
that will take me to school,
even though I hate it,
cause they call me names
and make me sit in the back
with the other homeless kids.
But I’ll try to ignore
how the teacher treats us,
how the other kids treat us,
no matter how bad I feel,
cause at least I’ll be warm.
Larry Beckett
Boston
from U. S. Rivers
American Revolution / Cuban Missile Crisis
Old Solitaire,
that gull, on the Long Wharf
Why come ye hither, long years,
signs bad weather:
the April night: October morning:
the king’s
redcoats photo reconnaissance,
crossing
the river: launch site
your heart what madness
at San Cristobal:
Kennedy:—Air strike—but then. . .
In the North Church steeple
show two lanterns
if out by water,
if by land, one:
Joint Chiefs danger
on our hills: all out invasion,
if it bring holocaust:
and the Sons of
Liberty send
Revere, riding to Lexington,
warn Hancock, warn
Oh hear ye not: stop Soviet
ships bound for Cuba but
ye’ll learn to back:
the rebel’s arrested,
and the deacon’s horse:
Strategic Air Command
goes DEFCON 2:
one slip, and the last fire:
shots, they abandon
him wild and free
as the day breaks. In secret
we withdraw Jupiters
from Turkey: cold warriors
govern by fear. The gull
lands: Boston answers:
against the easterly blow,
this vigilance.
Trenton
from U. S. Rivers
American Revolution / Sixties Riots
Washington crossing,
his blue army walks
in snow, barefoot, bleeding:
Dance to the Kill
King? Power! music
assassinates the window:
Joseph, divinity
student, rounds up
East State, make peace
All we need is a drummer.
The rebels take
King, and aim the cannons:
So that the dancers Diamonds
fly off, apples,
easy chairs steal away,
golf balls stinging the pigs
on Perry just won’t hide:
this officer, cracking
off a warning, is jammed,
guns Joseph down.
Under the Battle
Monument, firebombs
kill Trenton, bricks
hail on the firefighters
the horns blowing: only
abandoned lots,
hotels: the governor holds
an ice cream cone:
Go home! over the river,
crossing Washington.
Harriet Tubman
from U. S. Rivers
Out at the Highway 17
bridge, over
the Combahee River
Jordan’s deep, the engineers,
under the marsh, uncover
rice fields, unearth
They call her Araminta
these shards, all burned:
and hire her out to masters
site of the raid
in sixty-three: for dozing
at the cradle,
whipscar, her face:
the ferry crossing and
wide: these Union gunboats:
She says she’s Harriet
in command Tell
old Pharoah and she walks
up the Eastern Shore,
out of Maryland,
morning, early When the sun
come back
blast horns, lift flags
to the slave huts the first
quail calls:
no arms open to her: she lays
the underground
railroad Follow They crowd
the launches Let my
people, and won’t let go
till she sings Milk and honey
to peace them on
the other side Black soldiers
burn down the bridge,
fire the plantations:
seven hundred fifty-six
go free, hitch rides, the big
rigs rolling on
the widened highway: Call her
go down Moses.
Jornada del Muerto
from U. S. Rivers
First Atom Bomb Test
South, by
the badlands, into the Jornada
del Muerto:
minus twenty minutes: countdown:
the fugitives
from the pueblo revolt, no water,
no wood: the ten-
story tower: the bomb,
at Trinity: faire is foule
black lava,
dry lakes: ground zero,
five thirty a.m.
Mountain War Time:
the sky brighter than day-
light and foule is faire
as they look back
over the Oscura range,
the fireball, rising,
and the mushroom cloud hover
through the fogge
white sands, wavering
under the haze, fallout
and filthie aire: the shock
radius equals
five hundred sixty-four
times t plus the pillar
of fire, to the power,
luminous, red,
So faire and foule a day.
We are downwinders.
Amarillo
from U. S. Rivers
Seven Cities of Gold / Pantex Nuclear Plant
Coronado, if
I ever find
Cibola,
the seven cities of gold:
across the Llano Estacado,
only
pueblos, and that friar’s lie,
Quivira,
across the Palo Duro,
only the yellow
rose of Pantex:
seventy-two hours
a week, he watches
that there’s no breach
in the warheads,
pits, plutonium, over
the Ogallala aquifer,
Texas water,
under the prairies,
one thousand centuries.
Tim Beech
The Praise Singer
(For Geoffrey Hill)
A holly bush stands within the unroofed walls
Of a disused foundry on King’s Hill, Darlaston;
Dark leaves glazed with sweat and difficult,
Berries, the hard-won blood of forgiveness,
Pointing towards grace or the idea of grace.
Memory, part-recovered, part-revealed
Of forged iron, wood and the struggle for meaning,
From the black-rainbow reflection of sump oil
To dead leaves at the foot of the holly,
Shaping precisely the edge-tool of words.
Blackthorn
I lie on a bed of black thorns
Each poison tip piercing my skin.
So long in the cold, so long out of the sun
I am winter’s lingering shade.
I breathe deeply as if asleep,
My eyes wide, staring elsewhere;
I see death waiting on the near horizon
Like a sunset through mist.
The moon, three days off the full,
Clears clouds of black silk
To a sudden silver light along the branch.
I stir, shuddering into the icy winds of spring.
Goss Moor
About a lunar landscape, terraced mountains
Of white clay waste, an army of scrub
Advances, laying siege to a land unloved.
The cattle riddled with ticks and red water
Nose carefully around the unknown depths
Of abandoned tin mines become floating mires.
And can it be that I should gain redemption
Amongst the old chapels and temperance halls,
In this compelling beauty of loss.
The Wood of the Suicides
A loose re-telling of part of the thirteenth canto of Dante’s Inferno
It is the first thoughts on waking that are the blackest
despair – when the will to endure is at its weakest.
Consider then the fate of those who would pre-empt Fate.
In the seventh circle of Hell we will dwell
as tangled trees, smudged with lichen tears,
in a dark valley
where Harpies, creatures with claws like scimitars
and the pale faces of ravenous women,
will tear at our bark and our branches.
And we will bleed
and we will groan in agony
far greater than that we sought to escape.
And on the last day, when the last trump is called
we shall return to the wood
and the Harpies, in the guise of Great Grey Shrikes,
arrayed in black and grey like
sisters of some ancient and terrible order,
will impale our empty bodies
on the long thorns of the scrub in the dark valley.
And where not even the white blossom,
March pure,
can offer us the hope of redemption.
Kierkegaard
A boy of twelve
Is sent to tend sheep
On a remote moor in Jutland.
It is raining
Merciless horizontal sheets.
He knows nothing but hunger,
Grinding hardship and duty.
He climbs to the top of a small hill;
Looking upward, his vision
Obliterated, he curses God.
Like a sea-fret erasing
Memory with doubt,
His son wears the inheritance.
He tries to bury guilt under the smooth
Alabaster of pure thought;
To inch along the frozen lake
Of melancholy towards the ever-
Retreating horizon, the rare
Moon-pearl of absolute bliss.
The Ontological Argument
(For Judith)
I cannot seem to get beyond Descartes’
Mechanical universe that frames the mind
As ball-bearings on Hooke’s Law rubber bands;
Reducing it to that which can be said;
And seeks to fix, once and for all, our souls
As chemical reactions on a wheel of flesh;
Neglecting the inherent uncertainties,
The counterintuitive life and death
Of Schrödinger’s cat; the paradox of spin.
25th June 1998
Here, in the small octagonal room –
Overburdened with flowers –
Dahlias, pinks, carnations, lilies –
The book is open to the exact page,
One day after the feast of St. John.
Amongst the abstract lettering,
The carefully scripted names,
A singular illumination, yellow,
Drop-head cowslip, its smooth, pale leaf
Beside your name.
Over the mantle-piece three white roses
Barbed with the roar of argument,
Their leaves darkened with coal dust
And the thick accent I can mimic in seconds
And which will never be mine.
Here is the utterly misunderstood
One blood contending with itself
Into the clash of opposites.
Here is the pale rider folded in soft petals.
Here, too, the tears that will not flow.
Sandy Benitez
Waiting Room at the OB-GYN Clinic
As the engorged clock ticked away,
I patiently sat in the waiting room
with my husband. The pungent smell
of familiarity greeted me. I sensed
the odor emanating from the used toys,
baby magazines, and plastic plants
that surrounded the room. Young girls
held hands, giggled with their beaus,
some were alone and stared straight ahead
at the walls like prisoners awaiting
sentencing. Twenty-something women
seemed more relaxed. Reading with their
legs crossed, swollen bellies peeking out
beneath stretched cotton baby doll tops.
And then there was me, a mother of two,
of advanced maternal age expecting
for the third time. Sitting quietly.
Waiting for the storm. Rearranging
the rooms in my heart to accommodate
one more permanent guest.
Stefanie Bennett
The Soft Domestic Economy
for Paul Summers
Via the vending maelstrom
I get a blighted
portfolio poultice.
An art deco
electric toothbrush.
Three cut-out
culinary
square meals – and
a jump-to-it confederacy
of confidence madrigal
where… nothing is
as it seems – just
the usual
acidic glare
from my bed-sit
night nurse
who has
Madam Blavatsky’s
eyes.
The Foreign Affair
Bossy was kicking the bucket
long before she did:
rationing
the great white froth,
bellowing
something sinful – & worse
in winter
when the calf
was lost
to heaven.
Cow days. (What’s that!)
A tanned rump
& heads
stuck
in Greenwich
mean-time… the eyes
all telling.
She saw
‘Hell’.
She disarmed it.
Dear Reader
In pursuit of the common touch
they wanted to know
if I’d stake
my life on it.
Vive la difference!
What I’m most curious of, is
would they then raise
defiant fists
if I didn’t?
After Jeff Wayne’s ‘Forever Autumn’
When a mother leaves
the nest grows
brittle. Sleep
becomes unstitched.
The sun fires
in the belly’s
ribcage – and
the eyes
caretaking fog.
When a mother leaves
the mirage
of invention
stays.
Mike Berger
Tattered Child
Eyes are the mirror;
they speak of ugly things.
Melancholy drips
from trusting eyes.
Tattered flesh; black and
torn where the belt buckle gouged.
Too traumatized to cry.
Suffering brought on by a
drunken stupor..
The child escapes his
drunken father’s wrath
by hiding in the dark corners
on his mind; he watches fish
in a mental aquarium.
His scars will never fade.
He will turn to the dark
side with anger and violence or
become a cipher, walked on by
everyone.
Either way, we’ll triple dose him
with meds and steal away
any chance of being
a real human being.
Tears
A single drop caressed
her blushing cheek. The
corners of her eyes were filled
saying more than a thousand words.
Her soft smile could belong
to the Mona Lisa. Tears didn’t
hide her bright eyes; they
seemed to shine. The beauty of
a waterfall or a flickering flame
in a fireplace produces the
same emotions. Few things
are more beautiful than a
woman with tears in her eyes
Madrigal
A pocket full of rye.
The train to nowhere is leaving
the station.
A one way ticket for her please.
A one way ticket for her please.
Obtuse angles grate against the
dark vermillion sky.
The train whistles it’s goodbye.
Shrill to the core.
Shrill to the core.
Quivering hands blow a kiss
as the train departs. She is
going away over that dark
sunset over the hill.
Goodbye, I love you.
Goodbye, I love you.
Jerome Berglund
1 (‘Tesselation’ — String/Gunsaku)
child’s play shadow of the bars projected
achromatic decor color scheme
light pilsner imported from Germany
blossom viewing we say adieu in a formal way
sun’s shadow a python climbing
with ermine flash degrades the pigment
anting zydeco
Untitled
1
farmers
staring up into the sky
we wait
2
heart full of nails has sprouted wings of gold — if painted, peeling
3
makeshift tourniquet can stem bleeding too… he discovers
4
grasping for a castle
pardon my reach
through your gossamer
5
scooby doo the monster:
always capitalism
under various guises
6
drying stoop after the rain — maybe things’ll work out anyhow
David Betteridge
A Piper’s Progress
I came from The Cave of Gold, Uamh an Oir,
more years ago than I choose to tell.
Its entrance-exit lies halfway along the winding road
that leads from Tir-nan-Og to Hell.
No-one who ventured in that cave, except for me,
was ever seen on Earth again.
It is a cave of riches and of death, full of beauty
and the reek of a murderous Green Dog’s foul breath.
In I went as a young man to claim, not gold,
but the prize of the mastery of playing,
which I gained, at length, immune
from the Green Dog’s slaying.
Uamh an Oir was my nursery and my final school.
Ahead, a long way off – off any calendar or map –
there lies my ancient and continuing goal.
Small step by step, precarious stage by stage,
I advance towards it, sometimes lost or slipping back.
It is an Age of Gold that never ends,
where Peace and Bread and Land are shared,
where Love can be exchanged for Love alone,
and green and golden Plenty takes the place of Lack.
This poem is distilled from a longer poem-cum-prose work about the Russian Revolution,
as seen from Glasgow’s George Square, called Flight & Fall. The character of the Piper is borrowed
from Gaelic song and myth.
Bewildernessed
Here you get a further sample of Piper’s oratory-in-verse,
this time from Day Nine of his ten-days marathon.
Piper’s choice of music for this occasion
consists of Slow Airs, Scottish and Irish,
with the addition of a set of variations
on a tune by Ronald Stevenson,
namely his tune for William Blake’s poem
“On Another’s Sorrow”, which begins,
“Can I see another’s woe,
And not be in sorrow too?”
Can wells,
that a long drought made bitter,
self-restore?
Can sparks,
scattered from a beaten fire,
be raked in, and fed,
and made to blaze more brightly
than before?
Can pages,
torn from a precious book,
be chased,
brought back from a high wind,
and then re-bound?
Can the green ribbon of a deep song,
and deep thought, extend to furthest folk
its strong tug, and bring them soon
to the dear place where we all belong?
Where did we go wrong?
Where, and when, and how?
At every turn; and from the start,
matching point by point
the faults of those
whose hegemony we tried to end.
False leaders, whom too trustingly
we let command, presumed
too arrogantly to rule, and over-rule.
They dragged us down;
they stole the profit
from the produce of our lives;
they bled true meaning
from the hard-won words we use.
Their arrogance, their partiality,
their self-destroying choice of means –
we took them for ourselves.
Can a city, wrecked by poverty
or war, build again, and stand again,
secure on its old ground, attaining more?
Can we, bewildernessed,
construct a narrative and map
that leads us into wiser days?
Can there be a spring of good
sufficient to flush clean
the heaped contaminants
that history conveys?
Farid Bitar
Unexplained misery
The wars of Palestine are never ending
Insisting to never leave anytime
As the many years pass
As I get older than a stone
As the millions of olive trees uprooted
The wars keep coming back with vengeance
My nightmare keeps revisiting
I run away from it, seeking refuge in the woods
With a majestic lake greeting me camping
And the fog lifting at sunrise
Gaza keeps erupting with bunker bombs
I keep screaming, for the bombs to stop dropping
I keep praying for a miracle
I keep thinking this is a bad dream
And when I awake
Everything
From the previous day
Is just the same.
Mircea Boboc
Zombie Apocalypse
All my friends are dead
in the zombie apocalypse.
Carefully I thread.
Blackness in the fingertips.
I am hungry. I lost pounds.
I’m the king of solitude.
Don’t you see that I am crowned
with the tears of servitude?
What if I just do you harm?
What a pity, what a dread!
When I sound the old alarm,
how can it revive the dead?
While I love you from afar
with my heart encapsulated
into a too-small a jar,
you want me, as well, sedated.
But I don’t march with the hordes,
So I’m giving up on you.
As I cut resisting cords,
there might be remaining glue.
Patrick Bolger
Evidence
Those damn boys. Occasions of sin.
He once told me. Cardinal Desmond Connell,
prince of the roman catholic church.
He nodded, leaned his head to one
side and tried to hold my hand.
He was sorry. He said.
At the age of 31, I sat alone in
the High Court of Ireland. On a leather
seat, dark wood, the skin around my nails
bleeding. I sat. Waiting. For the offer.
On this settling day.
I was assured that my voice, would never
be heard by the High Court of Ireland.
In the absence of compassion and
apologies, they bring forth money.
Trading in their own currency. The roman catholic church.
Where my bitten nails sit, I shake.
The offer is put to me, I should
accept, I am told as they will never go
higher, without proof of penetration.
Without proof of penetration.
The eight year old boy, me 23 years
before this day, should have collected
evidence. Evidence. My blood. Or his.
Semen.
Blessed are those who have not
seen and yet believe.
This is the Roman Catholic Church
This is the institution that moved Thomas Naughton
Of the Kilteagan fathers
From Africa to the West Indies
From the West Indies to Aughrim Street
From Aughrim Street to Valleymount
From Valleymount to Donnycarney
From Donnycarney (via Stroud) to Ringsend.
(Stroud was a spiritual therapy facility for paedophile clergy)
This is the institution that wanted
‘Proof of Penetration’
Evidence.
This poem first appeared in The Children of the Nation: Working People’s Poetry from Contemporary Ireland edited and introduced by Jenny Farrell (Culture Matters, 2019)
Jan Bradley
Immortal
Immortal in split second – a moment kept
Alive on paper – so dear
To one who was not there – but here
Looking into a window of the past
Deeply trailing every line – light and shade
Expression;
Imagining the resonance of her voice – her scent
The touch of fabric
A growing smile – a glance towards me
Connecting – unfolding – aware
This painting with light
Drawn in through the camera’s eye
And an eye behind the camera – who knew
What was on the other side of the door
Above the hearth
Beneath the apron
In the gesture – mind and heart
Set in amber
This woman etched – by daylight
Exposed – developed‚ fixed.
Untitled
Elevated by distorted shoulders
Tag along like a lamb –
Weave behind the boulders
My head’s above water – looking down to his feet
So remote in their isolated – unshakable beat
Stifle a thought, inhibit a sound
Hold back the tears
And look to the ground
Hide everything – ensure no one knows you
Including your fears – conceal them from all view.
Make light of the darkness
Benign and humane
Though cut off and matchless – a distance remains
Closeness too is suffering now
Fall with the next step – or soar from the bough.
To The Cloud Juggler
i.m. Hart Crane
There is only the shifting of moments
A mind brushed by sparrow wings
You slept on yourself –
On fragments
Unable to pick the arrows from your side
They say; one glance
Could cross the borders of three states
In eyes that upheld some dream untied –
Where time waits
Shadow cuts sleep from the heart –
Cobblestone worn
Swooping in eagle feathers down your back –
Airborne
Hands that seem like wings of butterflies
To touch those hands
That counted nights
You were there falling; and you fell;
Whose leaps commit such blazing lights
Kodaked somewhat out of focus
You drifted,
How many hours you never knew
You were a child,
Like me –
On a loose perch
Leaning from the window
When the train slows down
Fighting with blind fists of nothing
You poured your words into the broken world
With a heart that cast its line in troubled water
To skies impartial, that did not disown you –
Or claim you either
To create what I hold healed,
Original now and pure
There and beyond, my other hand –
On my heart
Is plummet ushered by those tears that start
Relapsing into silence
Wrapping us and lifting us;
Drop us then returned –
Onward without halt, –
Not soon or suddenly
No never to let go
Outside as soon as you could get away
From the company to find
The only rose on the bush in the front yard
Here at the water’s edge
The hands drop memory
Your footsteps
Walking the straight road toward thunder
You left this world hanging in the night
One star, swinging, takes its place alone
And time shall set –
The morning stars adrift.
Dorina Brândusa Landén
Beginning of the Century
In this part of the world there aren’t mismatches.
The king is returning from hunting.
The Prime Minister is dining.
I have catarrh.
My legs treading on snow
leave black traces on the diffusing white
like a war photograph
where all the dead are the young.
The air in your lungs burst
underwater bombs and my own body
became a deadly weapon
in line with the global trend
of self-destruction.
Happy mornings tumbled down
my life drops like a magic ball
in the world there is minus 38 degrees
and snow breaks the bowed branches.
From an immense geyser of ice
one can hear a vague vibration
as a distant hum of bumble bees
one can hear the too fast beating of the arteries
of those who live
under a law of its own collapse into nothingness.
Reindeers are crawling through the snow.
On the road the elk are hit by cars.
Selfishness
increases like a zygote of an enhanced race.
Candidates to government sneer
from a smattering wall poster
creditors are lurking around the corner
bread and honey aroma
thieves are stretching their cold tentacles
to steal your soul and money.
Shareholders investors
very rich people
overly benevolent
overwhelm us with an equivalent compassion
with our smothered desire.
Losers and bankrupts
failures
people with empty eyes like nests
driven by flocks of mist wander
on roads that lead nowhere.
I think of them as trees in the forests
where innocent wild beasts find death
woods percolated too much
by roots pulling up the sap
from bodies that have perished without a trace.
Suddenly angry blizzards fall
and wave the rolling seas
stormy Atlantic oceans
will cover us later
with the roar of the white foam kissing our faces
the uproar of the departures
towards the paradise where we’ll wake up
on resigned shores of countries that
we’ve forgotten how to serve
due to the mundane life – unbearable –
and to the maddening constraints.
Oh, many things are happening here
and beyond horizons the unfathomable vaults
indifference is strangling us
with braided straps of incantation
of those times when we were sharing
more shadow than light.
In the world we’ve created
there’s no more room between us.
We’re doomed
in the anxiety of the beginning of the century
in the circle where we’re locked
me and you
all and sundry
never to leave it again.
Art
On the snowy field furrowed by blizzard
with pale drifts you come
sliding on a sleigh of sentiments
from mountains grounded up by frost
towards the lake where the moon washes its metal
a white path flawless carved
hither now and then
let’s have a wander: to stay for a moment
up on the hill in the silvery forest
above the smog
from city of glass and stone
which I left
without ever going back.
Knife a Heedless Heart of the Day
Here is the afternoon!
The sun is stuck in a hard orange peel
a bird cries
the sweetness of the syllables is a dewdrop
on a leaf.
A beautiful life.
My blood is loaded with them.
Crossroads of words
friends intolerably bright
in search of their own navels
each saying whatever they believe they should say
with a mathematical logic of reduction
wherewith odds and ends are burned.
The multiplication table is smashed into smithereens
someone is killing the sins the fears
the common places the boredom.
The knife – a heedless heart of the day
cuts the bread.
Fish and wheat. The promise.
Roads on which are returning
hungry children at home
while others eat galore
from their scarcity.
Someone
flips my clarity.
Oceans are pools of water
mountains
are splinters of flint in the forbearingly grass
winter’s a village covered with flour.
Midnight
the stars the traffic lights.
Insomnia.
Buffalo and foxes are running
on a half full moon
a nightingale is filling the void
with its golden aorta.
The guard lit its lantern
the hunter recognizes
the pugs.
Nobody saw me crying
though my sadness rakes my temples.
Morning comes as a blow to the plexus.
Eyes
Suddenly my eyes can see everything:
things as they are
the grass and the animals
the air vibrating above the road
the enraged cars.
Showers of vulnerable and irenic people
who will care for the tomorrow’s gardens
will solve the social problems
will start revolutions among the dunes
in this side of the century
where we remorseless love each other.
Over our heads pure banners
or just our skin
under which we are marching
until we become alike one another
legally and ravaging.
Images that heap
up to the edge of the latter
and the most feeble
from the vault of my breath.
The old saying is that over that ancient bridge
the Vikings the Romans the Goths went
terrible with their faces towards the wind
all of them lost in the history
in a legendary time
and they say: go ahead
found your own vein!
At the fourth pillar
I hit my forehead
I remain dizzy
as if time space and I
have collided
and a sudden blow
has separated us.
The horses of night are trotting through my flesh
my heart rate runs
at normal parameters
I deliver empathy feelings words
I exploit myself
working up my life
I vociferate
ignoring the misleading understandings
that my peers do amongst themselves.
What I’m expecting from you?
What I’m expecting from myself
now when I gather
more past than future?
To go further
to walk carefully
not to break my neck
I can’t go back
although I know – for the final
there are further solutions.
Peter Branson
This Life
A wife, two sons, grandchildren he adores;
a touch of gas, light fingerprint, no more;
makes shoes and thrives to face retirement age;
marries at twenty four. This is a life
well spent – and yet, one stroll in no man’s land,
the harpies’ wail a constant, direful tune,
crows dance in frail limelight before his eyes;
no Blighty kiss, ‘Whiz-bang!’ an’ marrow-less –
nor that but this, a fate played out in some
adjacent universe: no duke gets shot;
both camps, a century past Waterloo,
pull back, take on each other’s point of view;
no over-in-six-weeks to end-all guff;
no Nazi party, fuehrer, no ‘Mein Kampf’,
Depression, Reparation, Holocaust;
no ‘In the field of human conflict stuff;
no ‘Causes of the First World War, discuss’,
no mushroom cloud, Cold War, bad history books.
Grained prints expose rain shadows of the truth,
like names engraved on marble cenotaphs –
“Don’t fuss,” the sergeant says, “Die like a man!” –
expendable as blanks, by bullet, shell,
bayonet or gas, self-harm, the clap, slow walk
at dawn – wide eyed, these silent, flickering ghosts.
Which Side Are You On?
There’ll come a change of tide ‘n’ tithe,
When we’ll be forced to choose a side.
So: which side are you on, friend, which side?
When money’s tight, jobs on the line,
Those bankers, they’re still doing fine.
So: which side are you on, friend, which side?
Our National Health they’ve undermined,
They’ll skim the cream off, privatise.
So: which side are you on, friend, which side?
Our trains, electric, water, gas,
We’ll have to fight to wrest those back.
So: which side are you on, friend, which side?
For reasons we don’t understand,
We’re killing folk in far off lands.
So: which side are you on, friend, which side?
They’ve put our planet in a mess,
The world we know is under threat.
So: which side are you on, friend, which side?
We’ve always been a mongrel race,
It’s why we’re handy, in your face.
So: which side are you on, friend, which side?
So Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew,
To free the time, it’s down to you.
So: which side are you on, friend, which side?
Which side are you on, now, which side?
Turn, Turn, Turn
“The key to the future is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.”
Pete Seeger, 1919 – 2014
You sing for Ho, John Henry, Irene, old
Joe Clark; blacklisted, never cross clear lines
you’ve drawn, pro union rights and ban the bomb,
what’s held in trust. You take an axe to Bob:
“Truth’s in the words,” you say. “There’s no shortcuts.”
Great man, can’t lie to you, like Orwell’s tramp,
affected, Eton-caste, though all you say
rings true, too smooth for me, that voice don’t suit.
No Woody, hard-nose, sour as coffee-grounds,
you sweeten folk, yet when it really counts,
no compromise, your heart Clearwater sound.
At peace inside, Digger and Leveller,
Christian and communard combined, you rhyme,
nudge hope to life, raise ghosts for modern times.
Streetwise
Smell hits you like a brick and scalds your tubes.
The mobile cauldron glugs and spills its brew
of liquorice milk, a shadow tide, released
on cue, to flood the street, then steam till proved.
They sow stone chips, a halfway-house quick fix,
whispers broadcast, with deftest flicks of wrist,
till all the negative is shrouded out.
Job seasonal, itinerant by rote,
most toil till flush, to study form, day-long,
and brag in pubs, but all are diligent
on task and know by custom what to do.
The regulars spend winter clearing drains,
repairing seats and fences, making good.
The dragon, stirring, heaves and sighs. A giant,
it tramples things, fearsome and thundering.
So tyres don’t fling too many wounding shards,
they’ve posted signs. You yearn to be like them,
skin creosote on feather lap, wet back,
kids’ open take on value, social class,
dark devils from the underworld girls, nun-
like, hurried, pass. Tools petrified, like paint
in long-forgotten dreams, you scrape your boots,
like them, last thing, heat shovel, chasten till
it gleams. Later, you press your lolly blade,
where tar has oozed, kerbside, your mum’s warm words,
“A bugger to wash off!” You break the skin
to daub black gold, five minute yolk, across
each cheek. Like extras wheeling wagon trains,
Comanche brave above, wild horse below,
you conjure mirages of flickering ghosts.
“Lions after slumber”
For Maxine Peake, who read ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ in Manchester, 2013
D’you recognise them, university?
They’re playing hunt the beggar, light cigars –
“It’s only money” – festival of fools.
Their greed’s a virtue: let me get this right,
one day, if we don’t kick against the pricks,
no promises, some scraps may fall our way.
What price our hopes, our punctured commonweal,
our national health? We bleed, a thousand cuts.
They lay the blame on us. We foot the bill,
bankers who bring this ogre to its knees
get pensioned off. We do their dirty work
abroad, come back in body-bags, no clue,
rhyme, reason why. These thoughts in mind, recall
the poesy, “Ye are many – they are few”.
Specials
(artists, who carried out the job photographers do today, during the American Civil War)
The camera’s burdensome, exposure slow:
can’t pause a battle, time and tide, while art
is conjured up and fixed from shade and light,
so magazines use Specials to reveal
the direful confluence of civil strife.
To taste the soldiers’ fare, you trek long miles,
risk health, both on and off the ‘field and share
their fate, the waiting, weariness, disease,
the mud, mass burials, the aftermath.
You place your trust in pencil lead and keep
your paper dry, unleash the hounds of war
on drawing rooms, engraving hearts and minds,
Bull Run and Gettysburg emblazoning,
amongst fine china plate and tired spittoons.
The Deserted Village
No people; grace notes in memoriam;
the human fingerprint of outraged ghosts:
where villagers were drenched with bullet holes,
like weeds, there’s none to bear true witness here.
When roused, the dragon strikes, stirred by the flames
of victory, reprisal, ethnic spite,
where snipers ambush, downturned faces stab
him in the back, Davids, given the chance.
Gardens outgrown, some jig-saw walls remind,
like doctored secret files. What else sustains:
no cars or bikes, rag dolls in rusted prams?
The children here are always late, the school
bell never sings. First light, the blackcap thrives;
last post, come evening star, the nightingale.
Senghenydd
Nr Caerphilly, Aber Valley, Glamorgan, 14th Oct, 1913
For Jack Micklewright and Mick Pickering
For golden treasury laid down
three hundred million years ago,
lost souls, defying Nature’s spite
and gravity, the heat and dark,
toiled underground. Same blokes got docked
full pay because they didn’t work
whole shift that day. The manager
and owners, who defied the law,
were fined, fire-dust they failed to damp-
down tinder-dry, twenty-four quid
in all. Time haunts this site with wraith
and rhyme, black faces, voices, runes
of night. By now, there’s little left
to tell you, as you read this place,
long fingerprint impressed in sand,
part of an open hand outstretched
when Googled up, via satellite,
you’re walking over battleground.
They say the valley shook, blast heard
as far away as Cardiff, on
the morning dirty air caught fire
below, whole families of men,
proud rugby teams, loud chapel choirs,
consumed, an open-furnace sky,
false dawn, turned purgatory to hell
on earth. “I felt a hand, a face,
scarf tight to nose and mouth, just like
a shroud.” The pithead‘s levelled, gone
for scrap, the heaps of slag above
the villages long carted off,
post Aberfan. All’s change. Should we
be glad, jobs moved, community
bypassed? Life’s far less dangerous
these days, yet still too cheap. He loved
his job, post NCB, now wheel-
chair bound, each vertebrae a botched
tattoo, lungs like spilt milk. Not black
and white. Fuel costs the Earth. Now all
that’s left are graves, same date revealed,
a Coventry or Passchendaele.
September 15th 2011
Take feral youth, down-sized by school, instil
deep regimental pride, Afghanistan,
Helmand, where body parts of royal marines
are hung from trees. Desensitise, force feed,
add mindless drill. Rewired, weapon in hand,
live anger in the breech, democracy’s
at work, the dirty side, bile in his craw,
hair-trigger primed. Strong blood, let off the hook,
he goofs, cries “Shuffle off this mortal coil,
you cunt!”, erodes your moral ascendancy.
Outlaw inspired, like Batman books, , wolf’s head,
you hang him out to dry, the text he’s blogged
for mates back home, regurgitated dark
text file, apocryphal, pure Hollywood.
For Tony Benn
You told it how it is, a money world
that doesn’t work for most, all double think
and spin. My question, did you go too far
or not half far enough? A lifebelt in
a sea of sharks, what use is that? They love
you now. Their Fool, you never stood a chance.
On Red Hill
We scaled Red Hill as kids, passed council homes
and coppice, farm track, steeds in tow, crossed mill-
pond’s dry pie-crust to outlaw-tumbling wood,
wild bikes to stow, wolf-heads beyond barbed wire.
What dwarfed the church and narrow minding streets,
in my child’s view, is gentle slope today,
to silent fields where lark and lapwing thrived,
the Peaks a dozen haze-blue miles, beyond
the consequence of Manifold and Dove.
My father, grandfather, died satisfied,
the Welfare State and workers rights, the world
they handed on: What would they make of us?
Their struggle thwarted, ours has just begun;
mountains to climb, fresh battles to be won.
Extraordinary Rendition
‘War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength’
Mantling the bar behind time-honoured pint,
he never turns to face, yet when he speaks,
the room’s wide-eyed. “No bones to me which lot
get in.” Recall his educating stance,
faint shrug of left-side shoulder blade. “For us,
things never change.” Off to the Spanish War
a teenager, proud as a gable end,
late eighties now, he’s devilled with hindsight.
In nineteen eighty four, ‘the enemy
within’ (real life) was fitted up, side-lined.
Art synthesized but got things wrong, at least
in part. Room 101 on England’s green
and pleasant? There’s no need: where thought police thrive,
the spin’s insidious, the weave warp drive.
The Poet Speaks
Real folk don’t know me. If they did, what would
they think: a fellow traveller, no “Which
side are you on?”, drawing of blood; fag end
concealed behind white-knuckled fist, no grand
design, unwitting pawn for status quo?
Hundreds of years of verse in print, folk song,
a century and more of literacy
for all, new how-to-write degrees on tap,
yet Common Man is clear, “There’s nothing here
for us.” Most teachers try, yet bungle it;
nostalgia mix, just one more brick, kiln hot,
to juggle with. “If only I’d more time,”
they sigh, “I’d take up poetry.” I say
Give me the child and I’ll show you the man.
Consumer Rant
You’re too polite to say “This isn’t right
for poetry.” Your face gives you away.
He thought like you: “Society, there’s no
such thing. We’re all capitalists now.” He caught
a hacking cough; dead within weeks, so what
the hell? Whole Spectacle, cradle to grave,
anthem “I spend therefore I am” drip feed,
star wan-a-be, celebrity TV wet dreams,
we’re immunised, too numb to see:
corporate greed, sharp practices, fat cats
who bend the law until it snaps, phone taps,
bankers on speed, peddlers of how-to-write
degrees, police on the take, and, in the trough,
up to their necks, M.P.s. Our country bleeds.
Comic Cuts Bin Laden
‘Comic Cuts’ was a British amalgam of reprints from US magazines. Hugh Lupus, or Hugh the Wolf, was granted most of Cheshire by his
brother in law, William 1. “Killing a captive who poses no immediate threat is a crime.” Benjamin Ferencz, a prosecutor at Nuremburg.)
Himself again, pub window seat, tells how
he got laid out upon the bridle-path
behind. A wild beast bars his route. His mount
rears up and that’s the last he can recall
until he comes to here, this roadhouse inn,
listed, survivor from the golden age,
white render, Norfolk thatch, for those who could
afford a car way back. Oak panels, beams,
stone inglenook, tall story in stained glass,
fag end Pre-Raphaelite – kills wolf and spares
King John; saves Magna Carta too, drunk with
hindsight. Truth’s washed, teased out, spun, woven, cloak
of many hues. It’s Pax America
these days; “Geronimo!” Cue Marvelman.
The Bleeding Wolf Inn, circa 1933, Scholar Green, South Cheshire, 7th May, 2011.
Red Shift
‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’ (Hamlet)
Before this latest mess they badgered us
to use their cards, take out those “Own-your-own
home” loans. Phone call, spam mail or snail, imprint,
TV; end of the day, we fall. Roll up:
“It trickles down, prosperity, so all
do well, d’you see.” Ring out that tired theme tune.
Don’t tell us when they’ve taken out their share,
there’ll be just bare bones there for you and me.
They bind us to them heart and mind, refine
with clever marketing how we consume,
when, what and where, control our spending lives.
If they could knock them out, they’d steal our souls;
bankrupt, buy out and asset-strip whole third
estate. The bubble burst, it’s panic time.
There are no gay Antonios about
to bail you out before their ships come in.
No comfort blanket, see. Not how it’s done
these days. Once you’re destabilized, may be
too late; the toy balloon, inflated, grasped
by finger tips, released. No siren’s raised;
no fire engine, police car or ambulance,
that drop in pitch to signify you’ve flipped,
blue chip to sheer insolvency, worn out
your credit-rating stations-of-the-shop.
Micawber’s hope that “Something will turn up”
simply won’t do in this brave virtual age.
They’ll goose you while you’re healthy, salmon-pink,
try not to drain you dry; gentled you cope.
Red shift: you’re irredeemable so can’t
catch up. They take the reins: “The deal was all
explained to you before you signed. See there,
small print, the bottom of the page.” No change.
They charge-you-till-you-bleed and when you do,
they seize what they already own: buy now –
pay later stuff, your car, your home. You’re in
a mental Marshalsea. They’re in control.
“I’m being reasonable. Don’t take that tone
with me. It’s here in black and white. What’s that?
You didn’t realise? Why? Can’t you read?
Those tears won’t wash. There’s nothing I can do.”
Cappuccino Smile
The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude –
George Orwell, ‘Why I Write’.
Young Costa girl
with fashionable dreadlocks
and early morning eyes
sits down, no customers
about, asks what
you write: a poem
on ‘Tollpuddle’,
at least you’re trying to.
“They pay the minimum,
this lot. No unions here”;
melt-water over stone.
The coffee bar warms up
so she must leave,
missing your mulled
apology by miles.
Robbed of their common wealth,
farm workers starve
on seven bob a week.
These fields were hedged with greed.
No combination laws,
the charge is fixed and primed:
transported seven years,
but not for what’s been done
and said, grapeshot across
the bows. “The Safety of
the country is at stake,”
the Judge points out.
In 1984,
“The enemy within”,
life imitated art.
Red Hill
“The sulphur-yellow breast of this lovely, slender
bird at once distinguishes it from the Pied Wagtail.”
‘The Observer Book of Birds.
Back there the world you knew was pied or grey.
Behaviour was Dominican black-white,
inflexible; God and the devil, good
or ill. Their rules, carved deep in molten stone,
were indefensible. Old atlases
were grubby pink whilst war was freezing cold.
And everywhere was grey, inside and out,
shop-soiled and Eastern European-like,
grimy, whipped with neglect. Air was clogged up,
simple enjoyment rationed, frowned upon,
like wives who couldn’t keep their steps pristine
or went out stockingless – “Flaunting themselves!”
Then everyone had eyes and mouths to feed.
You learned that lot who lived on the estate
were undesirable “So keep away!”
Their kids looked dangerous yet when you met
on neutral ground down by the Coppice Stream
they were OK. Knew where the best nests were:
“Look through.” Sunlight behind, shadows congealed.
They showed you round Red Hill, cadged rope for swings,
caught newts and sticklebacks. Oh brave new world …
School was incomprehensible: the codes
got changed yet you were never told until,
toe prints in shifting sand, it was too late.
Nuns scourged you with sound-biles of hate, knelt you
on cold stone floors, white throbbing knee flat caps:
“Don’t you dare move!” The pied in your bird-book
was colourless and blear, like grainy old
B western film at morning cinema
on Saturdays, but then so was the grey.
On Red Hill
This hill’s a nub of legend; livestock died
mysteriously, witches conceived to meet.
In spring high larks pulsed out their breathless strains
through spiral galaxing to para-glide
where lapwings wheeled to scream hysterically,~
seasoned their ancient right to use the land.
A drovers’ road once curled about the ridge
to source hill farms and far-from villages.
It’s now a vague footprint and dwindles out
before the hidden ford below the falls.
Beneath an overwhelming limestone face,
once popular, long overgrown, tokens
of love are sealed in vaults of living stone.
In olden times the people of the town
below the brow were sensible to moods
the weather tossed across the tall skyline.
Lore talked of violent August thunderstorms,
flash floods that kissed the eaves and drownings too.
Once a blue moon or so, the stream that fed
mill races, water wheels, ground flour and bones
for china clay, recovered gravity,
re-jigged its tired theme tune. Where iced winds bruised
through emptied starlit streets, few stirred beyond
warm hearth and candlewick and false sunsets
behind the sombre overhanging crest
cast deepest shadow like a winding sheet,
dark reservoir that swamped all in its path.
These days, few take the time to wander here,
the place where you rehearsed life’s fingerprint,
mucked out and stabled bold forgotten dreams.
Over the years new-fangled farmers’ ways
and Stepford-like executive estates
have silenced larks, reeled in the peewits’ dance.
In this brave cyber age, all wants and whims
mere credit cards away, our lives theme-parked,
folk stealing exercise on static bikes,
web-bound, stuck on reality TV,
the world has turned its back upon Red Hill.
El Compañero
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, 1928 – ‘63
Ironed out, posed for flash photographs,
as outlaws were beneath boot hill,
apart from bullet holes, blood stains,
that hunted feral look, you could
be wakening; New Man, moonstruck.
Refraction of the murdered Christ,
you’re light on shadow, positive
from negative, pure black and white.
Your image on tee-shirts, key rings
and coffee mugs, you rise again;
pop art, icon for mutiny
by pampered children in the West,
first-educated workers’ kids
striving to realign their roots,
odd public school bods drunk on ‘If’.
Fair weather communists, your men,
more Levellers, Peasants’ Revolt;
wrong time and place. Smothered by myth,
“Shoot, coward, you’re only going to kill
a man.”, comic cut hero, Will
Scarlet to Castro’s Robin Hood,
d’you never doubt yourself, long odds,
bad health; your export drive against
landlords, tired theory bent to fit?
Fearful of what you represent,
whey-faces wash their hands of you,
(steal yours, proof for the Green Berets
and CIA, price on your head).
Appreciate the paradox?
Teeth drawn, market the fable, “Sell!”
Poems ‘n’ Pints
This could be any town,
tired old committee room
up narrow jointed stairs.
Blokes brushed with anorak,
women in skirt-wigwams,
each takes a turn, performs
bright work. Rehearse, reprise,
there’s not much listening
goes on, just showings off.
This is no common muse
to prick out feelings with,
plant words for everyman:
recession, dole and debt;
Iraq, Afghanistan.
Quaint dusty poetry
on bookshop shelves; should this
grow topical you guess
they’d move on somewhere else:
local theatricals,
folk dancing club, life class.
Sniff teargas on the breeze:
the Christian fundies, keen
to wrest control, press on
their home-to-house attacks.
Armed guards and mines
back up the inner city tide
at flood. This lot don’t flinch
as mortar fire takes out
the local library,
oblivious to what
is really happening
outside. Stray bullets chip
the old pub front. Gaga
about the last poem read,
some woman who communed
with this small goose, they leave
things far too late You find
the fire escape as boots
kick in the door. Up there,
right now, all hell is loose…
Errwood
(The ruin of Errwood Hall, Goyt Valley, Derbys)
Climb Shooters Clough above the reservoir.
Giant rhododendron, chestnut, oak and pine
conceal vast cultivated terraces,
deep feral green beside the Silver Brook.
Find ravaged Errwood Hall, walking with ghosts:
Italianate conceit procured to make
a second-generation high church gent
of merchant and mill owner, Sam Grimshaw.
Design abandoned with so much estate
below high water line: d’you see, revenge,
justice, sweet poetry; enlightenment,
wizened by time, robbed out to feed the dam;
a dynasty built on live sacrifice,
breathtaking smoke, starved back to back; God’s plan.
Home Ground
I would like to see a return to the biblical law outlined in Isaiah
and Jeremiah. It would put our people back in God’s order …
(Pat Johnson, friend of Mike Cain, Nevada, USA)
No way you’ll miss how much the place has changed,
even in these uncertain times: that sign
“White hetero English Christians welcome here”
on main routes into town; banners strewn high,
“Death to all socialists and sodomites”;
“Code violators shot on sight”; prayer cloths
on posts; religious art on every wall
and gable end. Folk altered overnight.
Churchwardens menace, black and uniform,
gun metalled smiles. All pubs and betting shops
are boarded up or turned into bedsits
for newlyweds. Sports Hall’s a holding pen
for fornicators waiting to be cleansed.
Women dress modestly, all face-painting
thought-crime: this haven for upstanding men;
no noise or litter, buses dead on time.
Lethal Cargo
‘The Guardian’ newspaper, Thursday, 14th May, 2009
You taste that spice-fugue air before the birds
cry “Land ahoy!” Once manufacturies
exchanged for ivory or slaves, now trade’s
in First World dodgy stuff disguised as slops.
No joke stink-bombs or dirty water flushed
from tanks, two tonnes of toxic gas, enough,
if fly-tipped in Trafalgar Square, to lay
millions of people low, The Guardian swears.
With thirty thousand shipwrecked, some expired.
Executives refute blame, say it’s up
to folk to prove each case before they’ll pay.
Yet they’ve flown victims out by business class,
dumped them in luxury hotels; no graft
involved, the company swears blind, just chat.
Brotherhood
‘Molestation and rape were widespread and endemic.’
The Ryan Report into Child Abuse, 2009.
‘It had a stench of violence about it.’
Artane Boys’ School, nr Dublin, 1963, run by
The Congregation of Christian Brothers.
Shed my religion here soon after faith
and hope abandoned me, unseen, unheard,
to hard-faced charity; anonymous
as monstrance smiles, rootless as autumn leaves
at these school gates. So many years ago;
I’m damaged totally, for life I sense.
All that you need to do, to comprehend
what happened, hold this mirror to my face.
Just one more station of the cross to bear
with no respite: thrashed if you rocked the boat –
and some got off on that – after they’d come
for you at night. Tripped by their second vow,
burning they fell, yet reigned, Guinness black – white,
estate within a state, as safe as saints.
The Late Abortionist
For George Tiller, Wichita, Kansas, ‘09
Tied, tossed aside like puppies in a sack,
urge to survive, flailing, to swim against
the tide, abortionist, reluctant host.
Who’s paramount? Impossible, you think,
but what is certain is it’s dire to kill
a doctor doing what he feels is right,
within the letter of the law or not,
beneath the mantel of Christ crucified.
Next night outside the church where he was shot,
they held a vigil under candlelight.
What of the witch-finders who stir up beasts
with twisted desperate minds, cry wolves who howl
“Mass murderer!” dry tears about “Death camps”,
perpetuate such awful sacrifice?
City
‘Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life … ,
protection of parents and school and policemen and the law.’
(Lord of the Flies by William Golding)
1.
Like yesterday, loud as a photograph,
your cameo from 1968:
‘Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh. We will fight and we
will win’, proud mantle you still shelter in.
Soon as the coppers charged, the marchers fled
towards Hyde Park. One raised his truncheon: eyes
reflect your gaze each time you look, two girls
in tow, crouching, startled, behind your back.
He sets himself to strike, but when you don’t
raise hands, resist, propriety makes him
a man again. Beyond his friends, he leaves
to source a hooligan he can subdue.
Something invisible yet sacrosanct,
of home and neighborhood, has held him back.
2.
‘He isn’t breathing!’ Hospital pronounce
him dead at 8pm. Just before noon,
the four horsemen of the apocalypse
in tow, jazz bands and jugglers entertain
6,000 protesters, 5,000 police.
With Tony Benn, purple smoke bombs, pink paint,
“Build a bonfire, stick bankers on the top,”
all’s in good part. Huge rabbit’s dragged away;
surreal; three people charged, one with assault.
Some go too far, hiding their number tags,
like 1984. Strangers rehearsed,
bussed in, well up for it, like storm troopers,
drumming adrenalin on double time,
blitz quiet South Yorkshire villages, smash doors
and furniture, terrorize miners wives.
Celebrity
You morph into your smiling fix
for chat show host or journalist.
Which YOU will they pin up today,
goddess, donkey, world’s wife, slut?
Red carpet’s out, so blood won’t show
when shutters open, gossips spill
your private beans for real cross page
and screen: no air-brush fix; no shame.
Folk you’ve not met claim ownership.
You face them down with badger mask,
from harmless soul to psychopath.
I’d rather be an also-ran,
the I know you and you own me,
but only bits I let you see.
Aftermath
They’ll come as ways
are opened up
spring solstice time.
The lord, his fate
a certitude,
dines with his ghosts.
Through sun and rain,
folk soldier on
much as before.
We mind far less
than burying
a winter’s dead.
Things green apace
as furrows ease
their frowning brows.
Livestock will thrive,
God’s holy will,
the grass grow sweet.
One dragon slain,
another beast
will take its place