To the sound of screaming,
turns the eyes and the ears of the ordinary
agape in horror at the desperation of a jumper
as he splashes through the glass
fixing a final flickering gaze on tear-welling faces who,
with tightened lips let pass a whimper “oh no, oh no oh no”.
The rain of rock crashes chase away trivial reality,
the lattes, the must-do meetings,
the synchronization of calendars
in a kerosene flash; thanks to religious brutality.
There, urgent amongst the
surging clouds are those in
black turned gray. Gold-hatted
knights who shout for your own good.
Scared like the brokers,
fathers like the chairmen,
rushing like the insurers
but they choose to run the other way.

To love means my heart does little skips when I
look at my wife  and she hasn’t noticed I’m
looking so I can see the complex mixture of
browns that blend so perfectly to make the color
of her eyes.  It makes me smile.

To be there means to make The Little Kid put on her
Aztec hat, not because it makes her look cute, which
it does, but because it stops her face getting red
and puffy in the bitter wind, even though she looks sweet
with those fluffy red cheeks.

To be at peace means to notice the snoring of the dogs
as they lie stiff-legged in that sun, plush against the
carpet and to smile, again, at the silly sounds a little dog can
make whilst it sleeps.

To be happy means to take all of these things, live
them fully and let them sink slowly into what makes me
who I am right now; a happy man.

To be lucky means that I can tell you about them.

He’s got that blankie still. Rotted with the
drool of comfort years and glazed with some
real sweaty summers. Snuggles it close as ever.
An anchor in the squally seas of change.
Creaks those cranky joints together with
a huge Kirky-boy sigh and thumps himself
into the cloth with squeezed-together eyes.
I swear he used to smile.

Now he just rumbles on that blankie, day and night
with those wobbly-paw half-yelps of him
chasing down sleep sheep or some night rabbits.
Or he just guards at that bottom window and sighs
through his nose at the disappointments. Waiting.
Early days he’d point the flop from his ears,
whiskers shivering, and bob his head like Ali if he heard
a car coming up the road. It’s knocked the shine out of
his eyes, all that fruitless checking and weaving.

Now all Kirk’s got left is the stare-and-stare, glassy eyed,
into the distance. Not a flicker except a blink to wet those
big brown pleading pools. But he hasn’t given up even though I’ve
explained it all to him until we’ve both had enough and
wack down by your couch. I’ve written to everyone else
and told them, cancelled things, notified, crossed the T’s,
but, I just don’t know what to say to Kirk.
Kirk’s the problem.

I am tongue. I am expression of thought.
I am revelation of conscience.
I am identity and I am definer of knowledge.

You are the off switch of contemplation,
creator of false drama and
hanging moments, the appellant to
common denominator.

You are repellent of sophistication
for fear of losing the mass of imagined
uncomplication. You are budget and
the science of demography and driver
of simplified-greed buy one get two
buy five for three commerce.

I am tongue.
I am thought into words. I am description
of the indescribable. I am music of
the soundless mind. I am pricker to tears
I am stretcher of horizons. I am inner voice
surfaced into scratched black. I am
rhyme and reason and soul into poetry.

But you are to kill me.

The shadows hide things.
Malevolences who loom at the edges of my sleep.
As I start to sink into the marshmallow quicksand of my bed
they huddle, a gaggle of threats in the corners of the room, plotting.
They know me. They know the real me.
The me that runs away from trouble.
The me that’s scared of everything.
Overspending me, lying me, cheating, crying me.
I am deafened as they bang the drum of my heartbeat,
a roaring, storming crashing sea of a pulse in my ears,
relentless;
beating, beating, beating, beating.
Have mercy!
The night terrors whirl slowly in from
the menacing giant squid-ink black abyss
of my bed-time sight. Their voices whisper
to me; “bereft, bereaved, bequeathed: the pain”.
They creep their fingers into my mind
and squeeze out the happy thoughts;
“make way, make way for the doubts,
clear out, clear out for the fears”.
I shake my head, desparation shake,
writhe to loosen their grip on me.
Swhirling spirits, they gather themselves
together, form into something dirty, something from
the precipice pit come to feed on the sap of my soul;
“we will riddle you, we will rack you”
the zepherous whisper as I burn in their hell.
“Money, money, money”, there’s the taunt.
I’m forcing myself to think of beaches
and sunshine, deep breaths, deep breaths, but
they’re pulling at my tortured twitching legs again;
“we have you”, the pain, the pain, the pain.

I’ll reach for your hand without looking
to see if it’s there.

A slight movement,
light,
with a deliberate glide to a stillness.

We’ll turn to face each other on the
beach. Sunset fire in our hair.

Our moment,
together,
share an intimate look that makes time halt.

In our eyes is understanding, the fingers
that brush say it all.

Tidal current,
advancing,
we’re joined, inviolate, inseparable, betrothed.

The wash of the purest blue green sea
licks around our ankles, clear below an azure sky.

Vital moment,
fleeting,
cast off cares and make the bustle of life…stop.

The event was a magnificent fleeting sliver of time
that bloomed in our past and grew in our
unintended lying to fit a need,
way beyond the deed.

You set it on an altar with signs and guides
and glass cabinets;
but the goodness of the moment, the worth
of the story, is long gone.
Gone in reality, passed. Living on
in your words which are a distorted
lense that bends the light of the truth
so it curves to fit your purposes,
however well intentioned.

Do not venerate the place, do not
make it an undeserving monument where white-gloved
curators must tremble at an imagined
majesty and handle the crumbs of our
everyday tables with a breath-holding
reverence, heavy to the touch with
import and meaning which they agonise
over obsessed and
are tested so that they may say
they have a certificate that signifies
their understanding of what we were and
what we stood for in every way.

We lived here in ordinary ways. We made all
our mistakes, fallible and room-spinning,
puking, with a depth only you see and we wished
we had in our time. Your artefacts were our broken clay pipes
and your big discoveries were the rotting bones
of our dogs. So, do not venerate the place;
lay down the next generation of
legend and trails with your own flints and sonnets.

Inspired by the photos in this collection.

Toes down, scuffing,
the half-walk, half-carry of
the dawn doomed.
The carriers huffing,
with straining curses
wrist under arm, between
arm, down to The Place.
Sunlight is peeking
through these bloody hills
and streams like a white dust
amongst the trees.
Picturesque and beautiful
for this ugliness
as the boots judder
onwards sullenly
and buck against
the tree roots for the
sake of resistance.

Up and up past the chicken
wire.  Hairy string, tight
against bleaching skin,
tied behind cruelly;
a shuddering hunch of a back
buried in the dirty coarseness of
the square-shouldered
coat.

A quiet sobbing, mutters,
regrets, toes down, scuffing.
Legs idling and too weak with
fear to support even this
sad sack of humanity.

Rough hands push back towards
the post and bend wires against
and through rings.  Pulled
erect but sagging against
restraint.  Humble tears drip
weakly, and a croaky whispering
begins.  Futility.  Humility.
“I was just scared Lord, so so
scared”.
Blurry arms are raised and
point for his last time.
Brutality is a noisy bang
that makes the morning birds
jump from their perches.
Two shots and he slumps
towards the ground against
the pain; and the dirty square
coat starts to slowly darken
and stain.
Quieter now, rasping:
“I was just, scared”,
then, laboured: “so so
scared”.