OURSELVES ALONE
Blink back your bittersweet tears
That well of honest pain; Someone, in their darkness, hears And knows our black terrain.
Some loneliness remaining Between the lost and found; Latent, half-remembering, A love that makes no sound.
Just anger stills the sorrows, Which fetter and deceive; In hope, unchained, tomorrow’s No shadow we believe.
An audience without a cause Behind net curtain hides; Numb, deaf, and locked in laws That solitude derides.
Fearful but for unity, The ghost that haunts my sleep; Weep not, nor felon be, If dreams you cannot reap.
RIPE
Gift of Easter blossom: your lips, pert and plush, seeming parted, take a second bite at the marshy mesocarpdinner alfresco on the Champs de Mars.
We pick our approach to drooping rest; the Eiffel tower from Montparnasse winks at the window.
Waking with yawns to a mountain range of cherries, piled like pyramids, beneath the shuttersa cerise dream, doubled on a single stem.
GOODBYE ( at the margin VII )
A mill hand’s terraced cottage becomes our first address; its pinched dimensions the limit of long-forgotten philanthropy.
Bought through probate, we step into dead man’s shoes, take on his twilight world of roundpin bakelite sockets and leaky gas taps.
From amateur plumbing to ceiling replacement, each weekend a choice of DIY; my struggle to paste up wallpaper begins a chain of memories.
When the prudently chosen wardrobecapacious and second handcan’t be made to turn our tight landing, you axe the plyboard incumbents to matchwood in less than ten minutes rage.
Taking stock of the hushed parlourfloorboards and bookshelves stripped, and empty now of wisdoma year of half-finished home improvements returns my wooden stare.
Outside, the “SOLD” signboard parades approaching departure. Only I remain waiting, in vacant possession of mixed feelings, to hand on the keys, and leave.
SHORE THING
Windows ajar, awake to the dark: a squeal and hiss of braking below. But I hear the surf’s looped roll smash mussel shells, pounding their jagged fragments into sand.
Like spume in the wind, doubt nags my skin, but does not crystallize. Instinct, professes Winston, is what matters: we’re hostage to our genes. Queasy, I reach for the remote.
Another celebrity channel: the stink of dead cuttlefish washed up among plastic bottles, glass shards and broken chairs. Night buses jostle a stretch limo.
The mini-bar yawns, and houses tilt seaward. Here in hotel limbo. Over a rutted mudstone shelf flood tide fills extinct footprints, leaves question marks in pools.
Full English breakfast dawns: mushrooms grace my plate, the closed anemones of trodden water. A cormorant suns its unfurled wings, cruciform as my upbringing.
ELEGY ON A GRAFFITO
Seeking asylum in a slogan, I came your way, and you were gone.
Along that misnamed Canal Walk the railway’s looming curtain wall strides parallel, is overlooked by brutal sixties council blocks. There, in deliberate two foot capitals, loaded with purpose and almost forty years timeworn, the brush-stroked statement, green on grime: “WE LOVE THE VIETCONG”.
Before advent of day-glo spray, before stencils and CCTV, whose dissenting hand and eye conspired to frame this risky sutra? Back, when bovver booted skinheads made fearful my own middle-class teenage long hair and platform soul; when the message was the message, not some braggart’s frontier tag.
Now crumbly pointing gets rebuilt; those painted words bricked over, forgotten fellow travellers. But no more writing on the walls, move on. The rest is masonry.
FOR THE RECORD
In yawns of dawn departure loaded, yet left behind, the camera; not for the first time we’re reduced to postcard reminiscences. Look right there, in the glove box crushed, a former plastic canister spills its sprung brown roll, glossy with pictures taken yet concealed.
Scenes not seen, forever frozen in the pause before a red light shows, get held in fleeting recollection. That moment when I squeezed your hand, kissed your cheek and cracked a feeble joke: because we stood and gazed beyond the margin’s frame of reference, I know by heart its landscape.
Sundown across waves, a cliché slips behind the lid of nightfall. Looming large at distance, but in a snapshot’s fixed alignment, close up the green-washed glitter is never so sublime; remember we leave someday as we came in –take only what’s disposable.
To a Comma (the butterfly effect)
You stopped by and we both paused: my weight lent on shaft of spade, yours on an overlooked nettle.
Still from restless beating, your crinkle-edged wings, held stiff by their veiny network, fold open: blood-filled solar panels.
I’d not seen one of your kind for years; though I recalled the name. But my guide said you remain, with two broods every year, commonplace in this neck of woods –the punctuation of summer.
Antennae sense the breeze: you quiver with readiness, pulsing foresight.
Minded to read those hieroglyphs, dark on your orange parchment, I had neither tongue nor time: this torn page fluttering flies away, unclaimed, where breath lends itself.
45 rpm (for Gareth)
Dust collects on the black grooved discs, stored in blokeish order of genre, date and playability. Each is a memory, maybe: history consigned to loft space. Life no longer measured by revolution's turning circles.
When told you'd swapped Led Zeppelin 4 to get the Anti Nowhere League, somehow I knew we'd rub along.
In our heads still flailing pogo limbs explore B-sides, ignore the limits of extended play. As background noise accumulates alter egos nurse baseless crushes. Click, pop, crackle and hiss: yearning and protest jump at the scratches.
We trade arcane detail of line-ups and releases: I'll see your Damned and raise you Desperate Bicycles.
No more stacking singles on Dansettes then, nor littered ransom note of picture sleeves on bedroom floors. Cut-off corners once were ex-chart bargains, are now forgotten clues. As time runs out, a needle rides its crowded spiral to the heart.
We've reached the point when ears turn back, fill their own future in. What went before outstrips notes yet to hear.
ALLOWED
“Do you never listen to a word I say?” You ask, balking at further repetition.
Pointless any protest that I've (so audiology reports) hearing of an eighteen year old, since already my ears are full
with the creak of timber in wind and some distant chain saw's buzzdrone; with squelch of muddy bridleway as trains grumble through the valley; with a bird scarer's fitful claps and crows' indifferent croaking.
And besides I'm otherwise occupied
searching hedgerows for sloes and rosehips both, cross-questioning feathered small talk all around, translating the tinnitus of a stream.
Yet I misinterpret a tone of voice and over my own tongue stumble: its barbed wire excludes the public from what has been fenced in.
Abruptly then aware, I rush to meet head on your silence waiting still within earshot, at the next stile.
Burnt out yet standing still, my lattice dome of rusting girders becomes mind island. Pillars and spars and ties and synapses are wave-riding, wind-whipped vortex: the left skeleton of bare memory, alive only with murmuration of starlings.
Seventeen chains from shore to pavilion's end: a span first swept by hems full length, with parasols and gents in Sunday best. Columns, screwed to seabed, cast iron guarantee of briny promenade. The rim of seats leaning backward, offers pause to contemplate; on all sides scrollwork and curlicue reflect our frippery.
As years roll by, trippers flock and the features grow. Paddle steamers share their landing stage with anglers, pierrots frolic, daring divers plunge, and bandstand transforms to concert hall. Then decking widens making room for dodgems, ghost train, helter skelter. While toddlers peer through gaps in planks at sea below, scallywags cadge pennies to play the slot-machines. A pulse of their footfall runs up and down the stale decades of disrepair.
By fire, by storm the motherboard gets disconnected, remaining cordless, rooted just beyond reach. Had I still limb enough to swim the distance to where you shelter under arches, I would meet you on the shingle breathless, unable to explain quite the attraction.
IN A MANNER OF MY OWN CHOOSING
Death came to call last night. Pulled up in his green-and-yellow chequer striped van, and stepping out in the ribbed jumper, corporate boiler suit and fluorescent tabard looked a right smart bastard.
I wouldn’t have minded, being – in a professional capacity –usually happy to chat with his Grimness. But we were just about to leave for a well-earned Halloween break.
Asking no questions, he brushed straight past. Although – as concerned neighbours –inevitably we became involved: hanging on grimly to chase after relatives and keep the clogged road clear.
A shame we couldn’t do the same for the arteries of our friend next door, whose ashen face, when they emerged, told its own story. Fifteen-to-two compressions and breaths only for appearance sake.
He's been around too often lately; we live in a No Cold Calling zone. Couldn't he read the brand-new County Council signs? The Reaper shrugged: second thoughts were more than his job's worth.
I wanted to punch his lights out. Shout: “You're not taking me till I’m good and ready, and in a manner of my own choosing.” But in kids' clamour to be dressed up, he closed his door and slipped away:
a siren postscript of blue light.
FULL CIRCLE (for Scarlet)
With open arms, unripened June reaches skyward where criss-cross runes, like cloudy kisses, vaporise. Approaching our meridian on wheels, I duck its overhang, gaze through windows and hurry past; untaken timelines, glimpsed and gone in the passage between stations. Deep sat, my crows feet eyes backtrack, echo distant, tunnel vision. In its shoebox a photo fadeslover’s keepsake of gilded yearsand there before you first fetched breath, all mock demure, your mother smiles.
Youth supposes endless encores. But leant on wall, hands tucked behind, the image speaks of no return: leaves me to plumb that pool of genes for common features, weaving stitches out of scars. The hidden birthmark ageing, losing definition.
Decades later, from time to time, the disjoined stories rendezvous, make cameo appearances along the riverbank. I'm perched in blustery spitter spatter on a barstool with espresso: scanning the walkways' lit parade
to fit, in teatime’s suck tide, each quick step in its place. Yet skirting sentiment until - as five chimesout of the grey you stride, across the bridge between us, into view all heels and legs and brimful of confidence. Neck like a pillar;
bold as once I was, decades since. Then marching off to the nearest, noisiest pub, we talk full tilt and reason you've reached half my span. So from here on our ratio narrows: as day dims slowly might-have-beens get overthrown, while shared things grow.
one steady hand kneads our nape where a boulder's heat is borrowed yet magnified the shape of its ache polished shoulder smooth with spilt regret from a lifetime's dream that tears were all cried out ending as though they never began
ORBITAL
Sunset stripes its cloud hedges, gilds with glares our ring road. Sky signs, white-on-blue, spin cars like Bohr’s electrons in opposing shells.
Cross words fly; we fence at barriers, switch lanes, probe for gaps in the weave of traffic. From a thrown butt end sparks bounce off tarmac.
Giant numbers, red and flashing, further fix our speed. In circling one another will we collide and scatter next time round?
Or pass at safe distance, repelled by waves of recognition? Wheels within a wheel, knowing the limits of uncertainty.
THE DIP OF THE HORIZON
This day's for looking round, for turning arthritic necks and shuffling feet to scan horizons. In the showery distance a rainbow's arc breaks through, questions our assumptions.
Circling the full three-sixty we eyeball each degree, our heavens to divine.
Nimbus, cirrus, stratus: middle years bank up in layers of letting go, between clouds one and nine.
Function, sense, control fall prey (or will) to dotage, heart attack and strokes.
A pyrocumulus forms from waste incineration, and children leave like geese to make their own mistakes.
Our tide is on the turn: we eavesdrop the plaintive skirl of curlews' evensong. Lapwing are loose pages, Dunlin wheel with hundredfold glints of sun, and crepuscular rays flood marsh with myth of silver linings.
Abroad in Norfolk's flat land, its big sky broken with flinted perpendiculars: the towers of village churches.
Sufficient unto ourselves, self-catered, we are adjacent to a stub: its height unfinished when bequests ran dry.
I cross to the porch's sanctuary, doubtful pause, then reaching grasp the knocker: its iron ring a wide palm offered.
Enter. Bathe in puritan light: it floods the nave with their plain sight, unstained, saving where the flung stones failed to carry.
Painted angels adorn the hammer beams, a roof space ripe for conversion. Roundhead musket shot an echo of spilt blood.
From charred rood screen a whiff of burning stakes; seven sides of sacrament have been effaced to know the font may not blaspheme.
But custom renews the rotting pulpit and window tracery shadows faithful stay. Each holds to its own maker.
My chair-leg scrapes on flagstones: the feudal benches long gone for seats more versatile. Seeking comfort in our habit.
Kettle, tea and biscuits hidden under cloth. Refreshed, my silent choice of postcard views becomes a picture missal.
GOING WITHOUT SAYING
Your beard, though grown long and matted, retained its ginger streaks. And visiting after the second stroke I’d become used to your silence: a mind withdrawing, seeking in still life of washing up, some pattern. Going without saying.
Yet we talked more easily then in that drab assessment unit. Our currency whatever fragments came to mind: random Italian, the Ministry of Food, buses –Midland Red and the Outer Circle. How heavy had that film projector been, ferried home, and followed by reels in foot-wide storage cans to show Far From The Madding Crowd on front room wall. You were surprised I knew of your uncle, him in the Irish Post Office: ever the sceptical, “I doubt it”.
There were cracks in the varnish: suspicion of nurses, counted two by two on fingers. The insistence that doors be left open, and in pocket fifty pence for phone call to be always sure of escape. Not taking the English at their own face value. Each thin-socked, shuffled step placed painstakingly before the next. Going without saying.
Further on. You’re sucking tea through a straw, head so stooped that I must crouch to meet your eyes. Few words. My hands clasp yours, by thickened nails the hold’s returned.
I kiss your freckled crown, its tissue paper skin cropped closer.
By yesterday there’s no grip left. Pupils rolled under lids, your eyes are dry.
And full shaved again after thirty years I see revealed in skeletal cheeks, revenant, your own father’s face. Come without knocking.
You always said the darkest hour comes just before the dawn. Now moon is a clipped naillast thing to stop growing –and sky finger of five red lights splits the black horizon of goodbye, tears gathering at the crossroads of ten to four.
Nothing would be a lesson if it didn’t come too late. As morning breaks you’re laid flat, comfortable for first time in weeks. Gone without saying.
TIME OUT OF MIND
What flood discharged you here at this meandering point, where banks of crumbling psyche burst, and morning bells peal dolorous over pasture?
From room to room you drift. Your shards of silence set a crystal curtain tinkling; brief the insight shimmers in sunlight glanced off trees.
The cut-up montage monster roars unlived choices, relapses into dumb acceptance, inevitable as single socks escaping laundry baskets.
Coats are hung upon their hooks, shoes put in their rack. When words dry up grim duty calls; letters sullen sit on stairs, seek to catch you unawares.
The hood of cloud rips open: over your shoulder daylight moon peers down, traps - like fly in amber - that template of who you thought you were.
When perception's hinge came loose what gate were you passing through, which slammed behind? Unlatch the snib, return, with heart quilt solace from the remnants.
Sea-level. Our world at a right angle. Train your view; find in four hundred feet of whitened face, a black spread-eagle, half-way from swell to sparse pine rim.
Toes and fingers stretch for fissures, caress the geology, hopeful seek from each nub, crevice, sill and spur enough inconsistency to anchor.
In that speck of concentrationto us no more than drop in the ocean of better judgements - the wedged gravity of mind complete unto itself.
Chalk bag and quickdraw, crimp and undercling: I envy the nerve, would belay between overhangs, traverse the crux of it, to become as you wish to seem.
FALLING (to Anne, for 25 years)
It is hard to pinpoint when I missed my footing and could no longer walk apart from you. Perhaps it began with a fern unfurling from clenched fist into kiss, asking and answering its own question.
But I fancy our season to be that of hedges, ripening between start of new school years and the first bare branches. Every autumn the litter deepens and we kick through, sweep clear: our rustling path reset by what's been learnt.
Held in the circle of your smile, always I'm catching up, cupping my ear for echo of our courting song, or – like a waterfall –the resonance of your laughter, tumbling just a hand's reach away.
