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