cruelly April
hands me flowers
so cruel April
the legendary bowers of Babylon that we once enjoyed
in dreams and fantasies,
dreaming like children, dreams are toys
to play with on rainy afternoons
when there’s nothing to do
and when nothing wants something of you
makes a point and laughs at
how so much can become
so little,
and life is reduced to
meaningless eulogies

and memories are also toys
except when you see something for the first time
in that way
before it was different
now it is flat
my hometown buildings now flatten my memories
they flatten my dreams, deflate, deflating,
and now April brings me flowers
but all the vases are broken
and the clocks don’t mention hours
just tick away and say
time will heal, paint will peel,
rubble will cough dryly, something squeaks
the radio is still on I hear?
“this is the six o’clock news”
let’s turn it off
we’re standing in the broken news,
top story, relocation and displacement
some were conveniently buried in an instant
and the flowers from April, thank you,
will do just fine,
we all wish to die at home

there’s nothing left for me now here I feel
or for anyone else on our street
but they all just hang around
dragging their feet
and kicking the rocks
coughing and remembering what the four walls looked like
how we take things for granted even during a war!
is that a rat moving down there?

I decided I was finished with it all
it had finished with me
I needed to remind myself what a solid structure
looked like

and colour
and how flowers smelt when the dust doesn’t mask your senses
and get into your ears.
War comes from ignorance, soldiers are ignorant,
if there’s one thing I want to rid myself of
it is ignorance, and my badges that weigh me down,
I’ll drop them amongst the destruction,
two little bombs, two little ripples in the lake,
my reflection is clear enough,
I know that he is going to need some work
not quite mass cleanup
just a clean flannel
and something delicate to remind me,
something delicate to remind me,
something delicate to remind me why
I cried so hard at 18
and why it felt like it was the end of the world
now it looks like the end of the world,
but it’s not, just visions of Dresden or Hamburg
and with all this,
with all this going on I suddenly
remember the last honest, real feeling I had was when I was 18
when mum played the piano
straight from the sheet
the mechanics of her hand
I remember how odd it looked
the span of her delicate hands
now the piano which was overstrung
and framed in cast-iron, built in 1911,
is in pieces.
There are still rings of condensation
on the wooden panels from dad’s beers
and I wonder where human life fits into all this
where iron strength collapses in on itself
and yet a ghostly ring remains,
it could leave any second
but hangs around as if something is unresolved

I go out of Coventry
take a train
end up in a country pub
just outside Gloucester
no soldiers
no 6 o’clock news
no flowers covered in chalk
no voices calling out as you walk
no glum faces dying to talk
just a pint of bitter
and Dylan Thomas

my new life has no nationality
my history belonged to my country
and now my future belongs to me
me and the mouse in my pocket

“Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war,
death after life does greatly please.”
—Edmund Spense

|PART ONE|
CUL DE SAC
Courtesy is informing
The gardener he shall not
Be needed next week
As sometime before then
You will fall suddenly dead


Like a blanket...
Yes, like a blanket
Or a shawl if you’ll have it—
A sheet that whispers a weight
Upon your shoulders that rise and fall
And rise and roll and once more rise
And collapse inevitable as relapse or vice,
We arrived as the sun is
Saying its final goodnights

Life spends some empty
Second inside your lungs
And continues on its way, moving on
Perhaps to resuscitate a
Fading gunshot victim
Or shake the hand of a minute

As time ticks furiously by,
A dog licks its teeth
A few sorry times, tastes a residual piece
Of something tasty he earned
In his attempts to learn fully
To roll over,
He rolls over now and then for fun,
In the disapproving face of the sun

But it’s a different thing to roll
Over at the command of your Master—
He who is looking disapprovingly at the world,
Disapproves of all of it
But through a very small window
He had not seen before
About the size of an envelope
It must have sneaked up on him

Most of all he is bored,
With packets of cigarettes,
Lighting themselves each night in
Spectacular repeats bright and brilliant
Pyrotechnics of white-hot potential,
You must shield your eyes, Master,
Heed the warnings of the doctor when he says
You are doing yourself no favours,
Tempting yourself by leaving them
Laying around in plain sight

And...now and then, just now, and
Just then he finished a whole one,
Packet of twenty, and his reflection,
Unshaven and puffy-faced in the
Deep ocean of the bathroom mirror,
Can’t look at him until morning,
And morning is a long time away

Meanwhile time is
Blackening the dog’s sorry gums,
It painted such dark spots on his Master's lungs                                              
That he now coughs impatiently,
The paint grips like superglue to
The walls and though a full exhale could
Betray their function for one,
Deform their shape for two,
Lungs so rarely tenderly embrace
And now his face goes blue,
And blue with many shades of blue,
And a touch of the colour of the just-rising moon


Nothing comes up...
His diaphragm, taut, it stalls,
Struck, retching,
Everything slows
Everything

slows

— stretches of sounds
And moans echoing
The sinister intent of
Turpentine visions.
Each bloodless
Indecision


You can see him doubled over
By the window, even from here,
And you’d think this bird will
Succeed in catching his worm,
Each slowed in turn, nothing changed,
Bird was swooping long before the slowness came,
Whatever happens, whatever happens...
The dog sleeps whilst his ticking legs kick,
But slower —  

A fly is caught between
The unaffected forefinger and
Opportunist thumb
Of a young girl who is well known,
(She once squeezed a cat
So tight that its insides
Got all twisted and burst),
She would not hurt a fly though
Especially not this one
It’s so lethargic, she thinks,

How she blinks at normal speed—
Immune somehow

Other kids are told to keep away from her
By their respective mothers
Who’ve no respect for others
you’ll see them goose-stepping down
streets in stop-motion synchronicity
These mums communicate by phone
Hogging the lines and spitting malicious
Rumours into the telephone wires,
Such poison is said to excite cables
Causing electrical fires and the
Firemen here have been called out
several times to find the same boy
Of about ten, crying *“Help! Pariah Dog!”
He’s shouting it now, calling the emergency
Services on a credit card phone
And his pennies won’t take
—So slow it’s hard to watch

The bow that fastens the little
Girl’s hair keeps falling down,
She kicks it down the sleepy evening streets,
Rumours cruelly spread of shadows
Calling her to where the street sweepers are known
Not ever to sweep

Everything is slow, as before but
Slightly more so,
The Master’s contractions
In such slow motion rhythm,
You couldn’t recognise patterns or
Repetitions with short-term memory
but they’re rhythms of threes and fours
but also nine over eight and
Four-four straight, the
Tempo is so slow it doesn’t register...
Listen closely for a while though:
Jazz is on the radio!

The dog’s legs still kick as it sleeps
As it dreams of jumping the garden gate,
Even slower now,
And life is longer now,
In ways
Of course we do not notice
But the little girl,
Returning home just before dark
How will this affect her future?
Time’s arrow
The tragedy of its trajectory
Leaves us in a state
That is not worse off,
But there is no help in this!
Positivity does not come
From the things which are simply
Not negative

And the worm
In a slow motion crawl,
Indignant, as the bird’s wings
Cast long finger-like shadows
That are shifting, flickering,
Twitching near crisis point,
Those last hundred-yards of the race
Where lactic-acid-spasms
Makes a mess of the atoms
And slow-twitch fibres made of
Matter once constituting
A percentage of the mass
Of a sabre-toothed tiger,
Cowering in the cold,
Feeling the pull of extinction
Weighted eyelids,
Mischievous hands tugging
On the ears
And polishing the fangs in museums
It was ashamed, the atoms told us this
But refused to declare a name for itself
Or the beast

Slinking and curling like a
Shoe sole that bunches up
The shoehorn is no good,
Not a help, but to borrow
Just one word of that line
And introduce the trumpet,
In its considerations of brass
And blues
It blows lipless fanfares for the
Invertebrate class

The worm, with frantic intent,
In search of his hole in the ground,
Profound effort,
See the slinky worm speeding
Across the lawn at the speed of a gravestone,
The bird getting closer,
In it’s time,
It’s a fizz of radio waves
With a fuzzy static outline,
Popping grains and throbbing like
Power surging through the telephone line,
Where voices can be heard warning of high pressure
With a fatalist sigh, and poor weather,
A voice with a regional accent
Sounding authoritative and wise
Intensity in the eyes somehow I imagine,
How we paint pictures of faces and people,
The voices are so telling at times,
You can hear whiskey-burns in the throat
Saying things of the colour
Of a nose, and sweet childlike lisps
Suggest dungarees and freckles,
And a gap between the front teeth,
Why these? What prejudices
Have slipped out weedily from
An imagination that is surely
Out-valued by its frame
Of gold with wooden panels

*“PARIAH DOG!”.....

|PART TWO|
D’YOU KNOW
THAT FEATHER
TOOK 23 ½ DAYS
TO LAND
Courtesy is not making fuss
Swallowing the disatisfaction
That grows as you
Realise this is the end
Quickly think up some wise words
To sign off with



ENTERING NOW, like
A man marching in honey:
A birdwatcher with a foot-long prime
on his single-reflex camera,
Also, enter with pages stuffed in your pockets,
On which are shown pictures of birds to identify,
Explaining where they nest and
The altitude at which they fly with
A detailed history of their forest-call-cry

He left in a rush,
A cup of tea (milk, no sugar, weak, hard water)
Was left untouched cooling,
But not at the speed that he sped down the road,
Spotting a thrush and releasing the wheel,
Fumbling for binoculars with excited hands,
Faith until death or heaven!

Even when he’s identified the bird, still
No one is steering his burgundy rover, still,
His hands are busied
By the focus wheel,
Won’t look away,
In focus, out again,
In once more,
Look at him! Show off!

His shutter snaps shut and alarm spreads
Amongst the birds and they dart away in groups
Fast as watercolour, laboured
And blurring in mid-flight

It takes a second or two for the echoe to die
Echoes find places to rest
Amongst the blades of grass
Humming in wait of a second coming

A matchstick structure, sublime
In its intricacy and *******
Of classical architectural traditions
Starts to collapse, later,
In good time, wait, and see
The matchsticks hit the surface,
Almost in reverse, it rattles
The table with fine-rain
Levels of cymbal crashes and violence,
If an ear was to listen
It would register the tinnitus that
We hear in our denial of pure silence.

Our denial of mortality
In its entirety, we laugh at those who
See ghosts on the west country coasts,
Those who dare catch a glimpse
Of long-departed lovers
On the boats that return from
Here or there,
Or solemnly sink
With conviction, miles from land
And there will be those who will
Want to understand

This woman we now see,
Was once married to a captain of ships
That sailed in the formation
Of an arrow, long and narrow,
He sank them all, bequeathed
His fleet to the icy grips of
That body of water famous
For having strong arms and
Snatching hands. She will never
Know if it was part of his plan.

He wrote her once to explain,
But the postman was caught
In the rain of springtime,
That time which is known to be
The season of showers,
And, attached to the grim mornings
Are the cruellest of hours
That postmen share with no one else,
But the letters, have so much life sealed inside,
Sealed by a human tongue
With traces of every kiss

In his pride, the postman did not give the
Soggy letter to the captain’s bride,
It ended up floating from here to there
Unintelligible for sure, the ink
Ran carelessly into puddles and drains,
When the ships all sank
They said nothing remained
The envelope was sealed by a kiss
By now it has found its way back to the sea
By way of rivers, tributaries,
Carried by wind and leaves,
On the feet of hikers that rest
On their backs under a canopy of trees,
It ran down the hills and salted
Ever so slightly more the sea
Where her captain’s body is found
And if he opens his eyes he’ll
See how his letter was returned.

If he opens his eyes.


She is running towards the house
Love, restless as the wind that determinedly
Keeps us all awake, it makes dull noises in its
Late night reflections on an unfulfilled existence,
It rubs its snout on rocks and stretches
Itself around their base to release frustrated energy,
They start to come loose and tumble into the sea,
Splashing the coastline with the tears of
Shipwreck tragedies,
The fallout of her uncertainty
In the ways of love,
Feeling so high up above her captain and unable to touch
His memories
That in fact never set foot on land

Her skirt is up above her knees,
Both feet off the ground,
The jangling sound of her keys are
Like thunder in this slowed down world
Where the worm is still journeying
To his hole and the bird
Is like a badly tuned channel
Where you can’t make out a single word

She runs towards the front door
Her moist eyes, familiar with
These skies that describe ominous clouds
And rain that hammers the floor
Again and once more and soon
She feels she will be buried in ice
With both of her husbands,
She sees him doubled over by the window
Panic in slow motion is like
A ship slowly upturning
In the drama of desolate sea stretches
That have swallowed so many
She moves, fast as a fastened shadow
Stretching.

Like life, reflected on the back of a spoon,
And the sun, finally, swallowed the moon

|PART THREE|
THE EMPTY SECOND
BECOMES AN
EMPTY SPACE
When it’s all over
forget about courtesy,
grab hold off a shooting star
and ride it all the way
until the photons say the
last word with a pulse of light


The man is no longer doubled over and
Observable from the window
As a result of his fifty-eight years
the equation of his life
All comes to zero
Whilst the mocking ticking and tocking
Of an old clock knocking minutes like
Nails into the wall—

He disappeared in a puff of smoke,
The ice in his glass melted and the woman picked it up,
Drinking it in a single gulp, the glass comes down as if
Magnetically drawn to the floor, the floor,
Where she lies silently and stretches her body
To get some release, she rubs her face against
The carpet, nothing matters except the next second,
Eyes, behind a blink or two, dart to another part of the empty room
She couldn’t think any further ahead than a second at all

And the zodiac crashed open
the ram sent stars flying
the crab snipped the string that suspended the stars
mars took some flak
and finally the sun was burst
by the horned goat
and aquarius held it
like the final fluid sphere

Stars, burning across the sky like the striking of a match
Those wishing on shooting stars
couldn’t decide what they wanted
many of them flying as there were

As well-known monsters
Weighed down by human hope,
clear out our night sky,
Leaving not a freckle to observe
Telescopes now point into bedroom windows
Shadows portray a sort of life,
Shadow puppets depict death through
Tragedy and lapses in timekeeping and
Obsessions with vanity

Life spends some empty second
Inside your lungs,
Continues on it’s way
To resuscitate a slowly fading knife attack victim
Or shake the hand of a minute,
Time is ticking laboriously by

The light, motherless and lost,
Spat out at as the sun was burst,
It looks up to see
the unveiling of the universe,
Finally,

the oyster swallowed the sea.




*—I didn’t want to be a poet by any means. After what happened working on the lifeboats I couldn’t go near the sea, so in a way I chose which parts of it I wanted and wrote about them. It terrifies me and fascinates me at the same time. I fully believe I will return to it only as ash...

Your bow is all elbow,
a flank of forearm that is
supporting and simply cradling
my imagination
where a dozen or so
lifeboats hang off starboard
in case things get too much

I, captained by your sturdy arms,
nip up to the crow’s nest
for a sip of spiced ***
for a bit of warmth and
perhaps more—

a full beard that reminds
me so much of Darwin
I feel certain I am on the Beagle
and hungry to shoot some
lame birds one by one!

Your shoulder
where I can sleep forever—
come sharks and eat my catch
while I whisper poetry,
summon ghosts and
******* Hemingway,
whose macho act was betrayed
by his pain-filled eyes
and sensitively painted
one-word skies

You, my aching hull
in human form,
rocking gently as the sea
slows our progress
knowing we are
wishing away time too often

the working of the gyro
prevents my seasick blushes
we do not yet know each other
that well but all is fine as I see it,
your arms really are made of
shipworthy wood and
beneath deck, where I will sleep
tonight above Atlantis’s cesspit,
we just bounce off each wave,
getting closer and closer to the moon
but not yet arrived,
has sleep come too soon for me tonight?

I’ll rest and stretch and groan
like weary ****** do
once Surya helps me turn out the light




*—Yes, once my ship did start to sink. I called until my throat was gone and ended up swimming a good distance until crucially a boat came by and pulled me out of the sea. I remember thinking: I should feel more grateful to be alive. I went back to where it sank and retrieved a few personal items, then I sat on the beach a wept as if the whole thing had just hit me.

a series of quatrains*

Anchor’s bound for hell as it falls
Sadly I watch the fast rope slip
It is gone, I need a strong sip
From a sailor’s bottle, land calls

In a boat, earth and moon move you
these deceptive cargo ships hide
the stash of smugglers, I choose
To rock back and forth with the tide

Such fearless ships save lives at night
and daytime too but not for thanks
for it also ferries heartbreak
when lovers part on boarding planks

A message in a bottle lost
was found on a cold Cornish coast
The message read “darling please
know my love will swim across seas”

I daren’t live by sea much longer
Oh! what I’ve seen, fear gets stronger
with every lapping slurp I hear:
the drowned whispering in my ear

Once I fished in this bay of shells
My line was frayed from reeling sharks
A blue whale fought me three miles out
In his bowel I awoke at last

Boat or ship? For now ‘ships’ they fly
A rocking chair, without duty
They float, enchant, sink but don’t cry
shipwrecks are a thing of beauty

I chanced upon an old letter
That had clearly sailed legless on seas
Crumpled, damp but inside the envelope
Intelligible writing by sight
But by comprehension I was lost
Disorientated by sea-sick phrases

Somewhere a long way from our
shore a man or woman, very desperate
to find their way on board a ship
going in the right direction

When those who could speak
a second or even third language
were called forward
this person’s mind reached far,
back to french lessons at school,
every country visited and greeting noted
and piped up: I speak very good French!

But French speakers were common
Try harder! shouted a polite man
I can speak Zulu!? silence...
Pashto is very useful…
Ah! my mother tongue,
I dream in that language
Yes I am still in touch with my mother
with whom I speak, of course,
in Pashto

Setting sail on the lonely sea
There is nowhere to hide
besides the engine room,
And in there you will be used as fuel
Put to good use




*—Well I did think once that I was being summoned to an underwater land but in fact it was a ruse, a trick to rob me of wallet