"heathrow" poems
My darling boy,
The real one. The real thing and all.
A figment of my imagination but in my (tiny) self I hold.
You.
There is much awe in my city, my dear, but you are the skyscraper. Much joy in my world, but you are the bubbles, clumsily blown by a three year old. Much wonder in my life, but you are my eyes when fireworks are set off. There is much music, but you sing a different song, of other lives lived, of sisterhood, of soul mates, of brothers, of lovers. Once again, we are.
It had been so long and on your descent, your landing, your smooth slip through Heathrow’s arrival gates (the home of my memory hidden in its ink)
I felt myself climb
Back into you
In the strongest, yet weakest way
Possible
Now you must rest. Go home to your mother and sleep til you wake.
Those days later
I watched you step out of that car
And as if in swift teamwork, my body was broken and healed at once.
I watched you cascade, so graciously, towards the bell ringers.
The people, your people
Your girls – full of anger, heavy wombs and hurricane.
I whispered, under my breath, ‘thank you, I love you’ and became
Me
You arrived and left without a girl on your arm – because, the truth is, you could never have anyone on your arm
Not even
You
My olive tree
The fruits of my loves labour never lost
A middle aged woman’s warm self among metallic scratches and blips.
A photograph – taken just before
Half of your face
Filling the whole page.
I will write to you
For you
As yours
Daily
And at the end of each I will
Whisper, under my breath, ‘thank you, I love you’
Thank you
I love you
Scorpio x
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 10:02 AM UTC
Memories can become blurry, over time,
like underdeveloped photographs,
or incomplete, like sunlight through blinds.
Our lives move ever forward,
like the inflexible patterns of stars.
Once fevered and immediate events
recede, with frightening, doppler effect,
as remembered yesterdays,
become forgotten yesterdays.
New Haven was abuzz. The hotels were booked and moving trucks had taken every free parking space for miles. Last Sunday was freshmen move-in day and 1,554 freshmen moved into their Yale residences. It’s one of our favorite days of the year. The hubbub of freshmen moving, lunching, shopping and later, seeing off their departing parents, created a delicious emotional chaos that we watched unfold, like a Greek chorus.
The movie ‘Love Actually’ begins and ends with montages of people greeting friends, family and loved ones at Heathrow airport - it’s emotional and heartwarming. Move-in days are a lot like that - with their gordian knots of beginnings and endings. My parents were nervous and emotional on my freshman move-in day - as was I - but we all tried, desperately, not to show it.
Welcome to New Haven freshmen, everything’s beautiful, but you’ll get too busy to enjoy it much.
We upperclassmen move in tomorrow.
Aug 24, 2023
Aug 24, 2023 at 1:20 PM UTC
He tells me I could get a boyfriend
if I spoke in my bad British accent.
It's very illegitimate.
I've only ever been to Heathrow,
I have no idea what dialect it is.
But he still says it's ****
It would catch attention, I'm sure.
Interest from long haired hipster boys
Maybe the occasional "Oh, are you from England?"
And I could fib and say yes,
because the average American can't hear the difference
between a girl imitating Masterpiece Classic and Keeping Up Appearances,
and a true born Bristolian or Brummie.
"You're sure to get a man," he says.
'But I don't want one.' I think in reply.
I think he really just wants to know
if I am considering replacing his memory.
"Not yet Govn'a," I say in my best Cockney.
Not yet.
Feb 25, 2014
Feb 25, 2014 at 3:45 PM UTC
I watched from Farringdon as Satan fell;
I’ve battled for my soul at Leicester Square;
I’ve laid a ghost with Oystercard and bell;
I’ve tracked the wolf of Wembley to his lair;
I’ve drawn Heathrow’s enchantment in rotation;
at Bank I played the devil for his fare;
I laugh at lesser modes of transportation.
I change at Aldgate East because it’s there.
The Waterloo and City cast its spell;
I watched it slip away, and could not care,
the Northern Line descending into hell
until King’s Cross was more than I could bear;
he left me there in fear for my salvation,
a Mansion House in heaven to prepare:
so why return to any lesser station?
I change at Aldgate East because it’s there.
Three days beneath the earth in stench and smell
I lay, and let the enemy beware:
I learned the truth of tales the children tell:
an Angel plucked me homeward by the hair,
to glory from the depths of condemnation,
to where I started long ago from where
I missed my stop through long procrastination.
I change at Aldgate East because it’s there.
Prince of the buskers, sing your new creation:
the change you ask is more than I can spare;
a change of spirit, soul, imagination.
I change at Aldgate East because it’s there.
Nov 8, 2010
Nov 8, 2010 at 3:29 AM UTC
Ring the Bell for Old DePauw, Ha!
Here's to Cold DePauw
Here's to passing cars.
Here's to winter, Here's to bars.
Here's to frozen Noses, rigid Fingers
Sore Livers, rough Throats.
Here's to Shivers.
Remember the beginning
Remember waking up
Remember lost keys.
Remember yesterday,
A year ago?
Remember that longboard we found
Amongst the art.
Remember that sculpture,
And the moving stone.
Remember Heathrow.
Here's to dreaming.
Let there be Lighters!
And ashtrays!
Let there be fireworks
Keep the air and the friends in
Keep the door closed.
Keep it locked,
But let the noise out.
Keep the fan on.
Give me shelter
give me recollection,
give me choice
give me space.
We need more love
more canceled flights,
need more VHS,
more wine
more cheese,
we need more heartbreak,
more sweet dreams.
Let us keep pictures
Let us keep letters
Let us keep papers
Let us keep sweaters
And glitter,
Keep it all.
Let us keep it alive.
Jul 31, 2011
Jul 31, 2011 at 5:37 PM UTC
I can't speak for the others
I can only reflect on my own thoughts and the heat of discomfort.
I can't speak for the woman who wept beside her oversized suitcases on the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow, I can only consider her tears and what they did to my own heartache.
I didn't speak, but I reached over after several minutes of communal silence and placed a tissue (clean and unused) on her lap. Before I was back in my seat, she had taken it and covered her face in her grief and the tears came again.
The grandmother across from me got up next and placed a red stripped mint on the woman's skirt.
The dad who stood in the doorway, dressed for the beach, followed, leaving an offering of a capri-sun.
The child in the pram looked up at his mother and she smiled encouragement to him, as he offered his Spider-Man, pressing it to the woman's hand
and as she unveiled her face and saw the offerings, she laughed, brief and wet, but with a smile that stayed. She hugged Spider-Man, nodded and then with a sensibility to a child's needs, handed it back with thanks.
After a moment she found my eyes, and mimed a request for a fresh tissue and then in the silence she settled for her journey as we all looked away, dutifully silent.
Oct 19, 2022
Oct 19, 2022 at 11:55 AM UTC
It was Flight 101 to London, England
The airline being Great Britain Ways
The flight would be in hours and not days
First greeting was “Welcome Aboard”
This was a nonstop flight
But Great Britain Ways was an airline in not having passengers feel uptight
Well a certain Flight Attendant would think otherwise
The plane was now flying over London with Big Ben in the distance
Suddenly a passenger had to use the bathroom being in an instance
Yet the jet wheels were down
The Flight Attendant informed the passenger that the flight was near
Heathrow Airport and every passenger must be in their seat
Despite all that, the passenger was in the bathroom and the Flight Attendant in defeat
However, the Flight Attendant did inform the passenger to hold on tight when the plane lands on the runway
Once the wheels touched England squeaks grounds, The Flight Attendant immediately unbuckled her belt to check on the passenger
The Flight Attendant got up and the passenger was ok
Well what a flight and a day it was
But the passenger feet that touched solid ground and the flight arrived safe and sound.
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 6:53 PM UTC
the bookies of High Street North will give you odds,
1000 to 1, our paths will never cross, a simple notion,
we’ll never meet, it’s a sucker’s bet they’re happy to take,
despite, shhhhh, not that hard, truth be told, airplane,
Terminal5, Heathrow Express, Paddington Bear Station
and yet, there are oceans to fly over, viruses in
every nook and cranny, and the biggest risk, those
what ifs...and the worries viral multiply as imagining
grows more spectacular than wild flowers on the
heath, bogs conjuring up Holmesian fluorescent hounds
she’ll know for whom this poem tolls, but
will never understand that my envision of her world,
through her eyes, unfamiliar words mellifluous,
for me, they, a nectar, the special Ritz teatime,
but don’t be mistaking me for an Anglophile
no, this Yank plainly loves her garden of nature,
and her own nature, beloved as well, floral blooming,
how it grasps his heart with her two hand’s nouns,
seizing and ceasing its beating, nicks it, his rhythm for
poetic composition, so little more to add, other than
writing this made both a young boy glad, an old man sad...
postscript
someday she’ll crook her finger, like the crook
of her hair, and this Tom, will no longer be waiting
Jul 25, 2020
Jul 25, 2020 at 7:29 AM UTC
Suddenly, all those sad Decemberists songs
we sang on our beds, your car, the bus
to Heathrow, apply to us.
Well, except that one
about the chimney sweep whose love is dead
and the barrow boy whose love is gone
the Yankee soldier whose love is torn from him by war
the Odalisque whose lover is drowned
the double spy who trades a tryst in the
greenery for documents, and microfilm too.
We are not the star-crossed William and Margaret
whose hazardous love provoked a cruel Queen,
their fates tangled in the roots of the Taiga.
We never made it to Grace Cathedral Hill
to watch the city lights in the cold New Year night.
I was more brine and **** and vinegar
than you knew.
I'll let you know if they ever write a song
for ill-timed confessions and bitten back words
and the way love can run out
like an empty tank of gas
halfway to the sea.
Feb 18, 2013
Feb 18, 2013 at 4:56 AM UTC
Farrokh Bulsara a.k.a. Freddie Mercury
British singer, songwriter known universally
Confirmed he had AIDS and then died the next day
His music through Queen still rocks us all the way
Came a man from Zanzibar named Farrokh
Whose tastes were both flamboyant and baroque
For fame he was ready
Changed his name to Freddie
After his death millions still love this bloke
A Heathrow baggage handler prior to fame
Wrote a song about his favorite cat, Delilah by name
In his personal life he was very shy, gentle and kind
His life and times are “guaranteed to blow your mind”
Oct 19, 2019
Oct 19, 2019 at 11:46 AM UTC
No sharks in the waters of your eyes.
No broken pens on the plane heading home.
No missing cards in the deck.
No long red lights and
No happy accidents.
No contrast for your happiness.
Flying over the French alps but all I see are plateaus.
Jan 5, 2016
Jan 5, 2016 at 10:58 AM UTC
I find it strange when I arrange
To go anywhere else but here
All over the map – how 'bout that!
Now I'm here, then I'm there, “every-wier”
Yes, strange, I say, how that on one day
You're looking at the Kommetjie sea
Then, in a few hours, you have the power
To be up the Cairngorms to ski!
I find it so foreign, like the look of a sporen
To imagine going south to north
But when I arrive – Heathrow Terminal 5
It just took a plane, of course
When west up the south coast of Africa
I look on the map back t'ward home
I think “How on earth did I get here?”
What a strange thing it is to roam!
If only I'd time, after this rhyme
To travel further more often
Perhaps I'd acclimatise - become more climate-wise
And this strange, creepy feeling would soften.
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 1:56 PM UTC
Grey skies, contrasting bone-white tree skeletons,
Trudging home for Christmas is an endless nightmare,
Second night hotel-less on a Heathrow bed-less floor,
The crisp white snowiness of home but a distant hope,
Media revels in this travellers’ misery, so switch off,
I think I will head home somewhat earlier next year,
This snow bound, homeward bound, hopeless man.
Nov 25, 2012
Nov 25, 2012 at 9:40 AM UTC
It was Flight 101 to London, England
The airline being Great Britain Ways
The flight would be in hours and not days
First greeting was “Welcome Aboard”
This was a nonstop flight
But Great Britain Ways was an airline in not having passengers feel uptight
Well a certain Flight Attendant would think otherwise
The plane was now flying over London with Big Ben in the distance
Suddenly a passenger had to use the bathroom being in an instance
Yet the jet wheels were down
The Flight Attendant informed the passenger that the flight was near
Heathrow Airport and every passenger must be in their seat
Despite all that, the passenger was in the bathroom and the Flight Attendant in defeat
However, the Flight Attendant did inform the passenger to hold on tight when the plane lands on the runway
Once the wheels touched England squeaks grounds, The Flight Attendant immediately unbuckled her belt to check on the passenger
The Flight Attendant got up and the passenger was ok
Well what a flight and a day it was
But the passenger feet that touched solid ground and the flight arrived safe and sound.
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 6:45 PM UTC
Moon precisely ineffable
Engulfs a skyline's silhouette with threads
Of shadow and meticulous
Magenta.
A grain of Night and color, smoothly pollinate
Metropolis and Heathrow
With crush velvet promise, all around
The denouement-
Of half related constellations
Anywhere.
In the meantime, there is Nothing.
A scarecrow made of glass...
An atmosphere of clarity
Deliverance and Rebus...
Bright and Dreary motion
And Darkness, everyone...
Darkness.
Nov 2, 2012
Nov 2, 2012 at 1:04 PM UTC
In the amber of a late October,
altered by illness
and a mauling from friends, we have
come again to London, and come
one to the other,
in truth, it seems
for the first time
in twenty-something years.
These are our days.
Above us, white lines from Heathrow
streak across the sky and a silver
airplane flashes in the tawny sun,
its underwing turned gold.
Ahead is Christmas. Outside
the bang-blast of fireworks, and
the tread of traffic dancing
to the drum of what must be done.
Not us, not now.
In here, our clothes removed, our skin
cells open, one to the other,
once a day, we practice: love.
And the stillness
of the season holds us, bathed
in something more than kindness.
It was you who led, as male
desire is wont to do, ***** unyielding,
it cut to our truth. And I who thought of practice:
that Buddhist word, that way
to be, to being
in the place that one is in.
So now we meet each evening to meld
the passing and the coming life
suspended
clothes off, upon a cushioned floor,
each time (it seems) anew,
each stroke the first, again,
in hours that know just what they hold
in this, our stilly autumn
in these, our golden days.
Feb 18, 2010
Feb 18, 2010 at 12:44 AM UTC
I Think Ziggy’s playing guitar again.
And walking on the wild side.
I fancy a walk it’s a fine spring evening.
And I’ve kept my self busy with half arsed house cleaning.
Who knows what’s round the corner?
What tattered hymns are being hummed from the leopard skin trolley dollies?
Their kneeling for distraught drunken jockeys
Discussions which inevitably create fraught tension.
That which must be defused
Catch a break brother you’re casting successive **** storms.
Throw on the parker and thus to the shelter.
Thirty six and dour and positively *****
Few dollars in the bank.
Show patience and may receive what I deserve.
I lean and drool, the swagger of Liam Gallagher and clean my shiny Excalibur.
Indulge the kindness of strangers.
The merging of unstable behaviour.
Shake the snow globe and set tasers to stun
I talk to the luscious Lucia. Tell her to skip the small talk and let’s get to marinating the pork
Another dumb quirk, dumb dirt that comes from my cracked beak.
She considerers me flippant and freakish.
I am truly scrooge macduffed
She returns to her posh rugby fan with blonde locks and a chin that could hold six pints.
I lay this dog to die and meet some more familiar faces.
All the venues are familiar.
Avast the putrid fog of masculine sweat, the desperate air of ****** puns that drag and caress us in the arm pit of jacks sick giant.
None of our jokes make any sense and were ducking and diving into primitive offence.
The next few hours are unacceptable and the horror must have me in chained.
If I could describe the rest Charlie Bronson would light my ***
Woke up next day lying on the wing of a Heathrow aeroplane.
Without my trousers.
And several tubes in the near regions.
And now it come to this.
Prison showers and a Glaswegian mans kiss.
Jan 10, 2015
Jan 10, 2015 at 11:03 AM UTC
Dead inside
parasites
Lost our feelings lost our souls
Eat rotten corpses like disintegrating crows
Gaia is tortured and *****
Mother earth's desecrated womb
Locked butterflies in a tomb
free world for the dead
We are pests in a planet not even our own
Doomed to eternal depression,
Kings of chaos, a royal crown of a dove's corpse
Peace? you'll find that in Hell.
Barren hopes for broken futures
Sacrifical youths to fake idols
Morals drowned in a well
Dead hearts locked in our own decaying cell
Barren hopes
for broken futures
pests in a planet that is not even our own
no dove with an olive branch
no gods no masters no life just caskets.
Engraved,
Dear,
I'll stay gold.
Aug 27, 2014
Aug 27, 2014 at 8:29 AM UTC
Think you've been linkedIn
that you're as safe
because you're connected?
yeah
well,
take a long look at Brinks Mat,
money for old rope
robbed by them old blokes you
passed on the way here
and you still think you're linkedin?
stick a pin in any map and that'll show you
that there's a pinhole in the map, you see it and
believe it because the pin was in your hand and
Linkedin?
being Linkedin is a pinhole in the sand forever
caving in
forever falling through the castles that you build,
filled with this desire to set those sights of yours just a little higher
you'll give in to every whim,
make believe you are the pin, but baby,
you are not Linkedin
it's just a ******* scam.
Men with pins have a multitude of sins and lies disguised as truths and sold in fortune telling booths by Gypsies all related to the seventh son of **** knows who is the biggest pin of all.
Don't you fall into the trap of thinking you're linkedin because that's just crap and you're bigger than that, almost as big as Brinks Mat thought they were, but we don't go near there,
anymore.
Oct 11, 2015
Oct 11, 2015 at 5:49 PM UTC
A perfect day, standing on the train platform to go home,
the late evening sun golden as a dragon's treasure,
when an earth-ending roar shifts eyes to the sky and
there to humble all,
the Concorde takes off from Heathrow,
almost straight up, its edges haloed by the light.
Beauty on wings.
In a few months this magnificent,
never to be bested machine of optimism,
will fly no more.
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 8:57 AM UTC
Johnny won't tell me what he is wearing
I beg
show me your shoes
come no one will see you
Nothing to lose
sympathize!
snap a photo
be normal like everyone else!
you won't stand out
I promise
Everyone selfies
just snap it yourself
I just want to see what your wearing from
Heathrow to Nairobi
come on tease my eyes!!!!!
I am waiting..hurry the plane is about to take off!!!
show me **** it show me
come on Johnny
Apr 9, 2014
Apr 9, 2014 at 2:36 PM UTC
it's all alright
quit worrying so much
for just one second
you did everything they asked on the app
wrote your essay
brought it to the lady at the front desk who irked you so when she asked,
"You've never been abroad?"
you'll get in
walk through the door onto that plane
maybe a 767
maybe some other form of human packaging
mixing elbows and hips with everyone else bound for the country I once called home
it'll be about seven hours of careening through the air
seven hours an angel
Heathrow is crowded and a wave of people threatens to take you in their riptide
but you'll be better than fine
in the middle of all of those great buildings
I mean,
****
it's London:
one of the greatest cities in the world
and if anybody should be there
it's you
and you might get lost over there
in all of the faces of strangers and opportunity
and that makes me happy
it really does
but at the same time
I'll be here in Richmond
good old Richmond
our Richmond
doing my best to be supportive
doing my best to walk the straight edge
between waiting and living
doing my best to get your face out from behind closed eyes
You're going to London
and I'm going crazy
Oct 30, 2013
Oct 30, 2013 at 9:58 AM UTC
She was transparent,
blunt and beautiful.
what she lacked in grace,
she made up for in good times.
I remember the face she would make
when she laughed at my stupid jokes.
her eyes would squint and her mouth
would shrink right before it widened
stretching from corner to corner
showing her lovely white teeth.
She wore a dark red shade of lipstick,
loved my writing, the poetry and songs.
I miss her pinot grigio kisses
and her nicotine scent.
She left me at Heathrow airport
and on her way she went.
She was going to be an actress
and I was going to be
whatever I was going to be.
She saw the best and the worst in men.
I wonder though, what she ever saw in me.
Feb 13, 2021
Feb 13, 2021 at 1:18 PM UTC
I found a new bad habit in an
Airport announcement
"Now boarding London-Heathrow"
Thought, how much could it be? so
I pulled it up and-
Oh, that much.
I checked my bank account.
Our friends thought I was funny
When I said I'd take donations-
Who doesn't dream of running?
They didn't ask me why.
We joked around, I shook my can,
Laughed, until you stayed my hand-
All I need in London is
Directions to your bed.
Mar 10, 2014
Mar 10, 2014 at 8:51 PM UTC