As the waves fall on stony shore
the sword just sits there,
blunting in the washing sea-foam.

England’s winds carry the sand
from England’s rock to the grazes
on our ankles, our feet and hands.
They from the toes of Cornwall to
rocky Dunnet head
will our courage forward
through the first crawl on cam-corder,
to the last drop to earth.

‘We all began at the seaside’

Though days are gone, we linger
snaking through London with those southern scrubbers,
those diamond white men,
the Caribbean accents, the Guajarati, the Jews -
‘A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better one’
- we all patter round Oxford Circus and
climb aboard the number 9 bus.

‘Who so pulleth out this sword is trueborn King of all Britain’

And we watch the waves fall.

‘Hold very tight’

It’s there behind our ray-ban’s, our fake ray-ban’s,
their halcyon glint.
It’s the same secret, not one of us can keep -
Under the setting sun between
England's canals and sheep
the living live, cry and sleep.

-

It was London and my mother that
raised the muscles in my thighs to look firmly planted
and my face to look resolute when turned to the sun.
It was my mother and London.
They grew me up to look like I could pull out
Excaliber.

‘Lay me down trepanner man, but take the stories with you, if you can’.

So I, always King Arthur,
not a yank, not from Roehampton’s towers,
or Peckham. Not Tintagel, or Camelot,
escaped on an eddie to Manchester,
to bury stories with distance
and stare at cobwebs after rain.

'I’ll hear easy music, find out it’s easy, man.'    

But in Manchester’s plastic, in Manchester’s rain
It ran all the same.
Of a blunting blade, I dreamt,
until the Phrenologist came
and I asked him if I was torn up by London grit,
London loves and London’s spit.
But he said no,
no matter where you go
there’s just one secret that you’ll never keep
Under the setting sun between
England's canals and sheep
the living live, cry and sleep.

-

The sword just sits there,
honest as a dog.

And the sun has more secrets than any man on earth.

my shadow scuttles through the suburbs,
the seaside, the city, sideways like a crab.
The sandy cuts on my toes, ankles and knees
are bleakly investigated by a fly.

Has anyone sat at the round table?

It’s out of reach of my skinny wrists.

Lash me to a pole and wait for the Avalon tide
to slowly roll my English soul.

I better keep on living.
All stories, tears and sleep.
We are all just the living secret,
that not one of us can keep.