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.

I often pause to think of others.
Like the couple on Beak Street I saw leaning
in against the March wind, pinching
still-fitting 1970’s smeary gabardine
mackintoshes around them like over-stuffed
sausage casings.

He; gaunt and with that sunken on-the-way
from this life look, she; rotund and
waddling with cheap home perm flattened
under a clear plastic penny market rain
hood whilst her free hand drags a
shopping trolley between them both like
an unruly and unwilling square tartan-coated pet.

She chose to wear those opaque tan tights
and they are so cliche, aren’t they,
with her seen-better-days blue brogue comfortable shoes
which shuffle shuffle and scuff along
next to the groceries and the gray nearly-ghost.

He looks like a man who has resolved to
hang on a day longer if he can, for her
sake, or for someone’s sake if not hers.
I’m sure it’s not for his.

His gaping-mouthed breath, like it
must sound loud enough to startle although
the bus window and the rattle of empty seats
mask it from me, sucks his cheeks in and out
with the effort and I see his eyes scrunch
up unseen as he keeps up her pace which he taps
out with a walking stick, stomp, stomp,
stomp like he is grinding out cigarette butts
with every step.

To where and why do they walk so painfully
in this bouncing rain?  What are their
names?  Is this yesterday’s sour wine of
relationships I see through the dragon puff
of diesel exhaust or a glorious culmination?
Or perhaps mainly their reality, unpoetic and
unremarkable except to someone like me who
often pauses to think of others.

If you cross or transgress her she’ll smash you to bits
this girl is a tigress with a pole-dancer’s hips.
She’s learnt to be fearsome , she’s learnt to be curt
this way is far better, she’s harder to hurt.

She spits at the people who’re full of conceit
and she loathes the liars, those full of deceit.
See, once you’ve been bitten when expecting a kiss
the lesson you learn is: give love a miss.

But this hardness is wrapped in the green of an angel
that strides towards doors of the sick and unable
where she washes the needy, unseen by our eyes
and caresses the hands of the ready to die.

The mad, the unwanted, the babbling few,
the burdensome, the quarrelsome, the too sick to move.
She bites on her lip to snip off her feelings
as she doles out compassion and makes life have meaning.

Then slips into darkness with the turn of her key
and returns to her gremlin and slumps for TV
where, lulled by the warmth and fatigue of long days
she drifts off to sleep, it’s better that way.

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.

These long-trodden ruts, with mud like pitch
by farming day and ankle-snapping wallows by
wartime night sucked at your boots and swallowed
the uncapped cigarettes of the part-time tommys
who perched, bayonets ready, over the vents of the
train tunnels. This Summer they bake stone-dry
undisturbed by you.

The secret corners of the meadows, like skirts unhitched
unbuttoned cloaks, let you pick, giggling,
your mushroom breakfast like that day we carried
them back triumphantly as victor’s trophies now
sit doleful and forgotten for wont of you.

And above the moor is the startled cry which
shrieks from the fluttering height of a hawk breed
called by a name none of us left can can bring to mind
yet it sprang to your smiling lips as easy as your
rambler’s stride outpaced us all; though you told me
and we rehearsed the right Somerset burr it passed
through my memory and out the other side.
I should have listened to you.

This Winter, when the hail fills the ditch
and the narrow snake lanes are drawn again
in pastel shades of frost and and the crows
shiver in the bare trees at the bite of a
bone-cutting wind, who will remember to crack ice
on the pond for the fishes if it’s not you?

When classes gather on rowdy trips,
chattering school days out poke at the
billhook and scythe on the hitch,
and with murmuring lips rehearse
the curls of a brogue tongue we’ve lost and
peer at the ruddy-faced sepia snaps of smocked men
crushed by the effort of lofting up those hand-built
hayricks, will they know one of the little boys was you?

Who is left to remember the willow switch
the strike of which peeled the smell
of the sweat steam from mud-dusty hide
to tear the plough through cake-crumb
soil with shrill pursed two-fingered whistles and
shouts of “here boys” and “walk on” to
plait the criss-cross pattern
of our farmland fit to burst later with Autumn
plenty if the who is not to be you?

How will we know the ways of every niche
to string the berry-bearing twine amongst
the nooks and crannys of glass or the bud
to tweak or root to lift and clumping ball
to split? The way to cast, broad and measured
in a cupped hand gnarled by ungloved labour
sleeps unwritten with you.

The joys of horse and rattling, rich
reward for boyhood toil, bucking cart,
riding high on the hay, your father pacing
at the rein; a tiny returning champion, skin
like leather; all now squared into an oil fairytale
to perch in maidenless parlours and picturesque
postcards who know nothing of you.

I knew you. I will remember.

Guide me, tell me what the sickness is.
Is your stare the look of mortal sin,
that richter grin on your clammy skin?
Tell me, is that the look of tempted fate,
the fatal conclusion of the all too late?
Tell me, can I do something, can I sooth
the thing that eats your heart, can I kill the
demons on your behalf?
We were so good together, we fought the
world and nothing could beat us, we
were the ones they said would last,
we were the ones who set the pace,
we were the ones who’d win the race.
Tell me, are you still in there?
Did we get caught by the snare of
the evil vixen, warmed up witch with a
bloody mixer?
Is the person I met so long ago
breathing the breath of the living
death or do you still flicker your
fires behind those glassy eyes?

Show me, show me something to give
some hope.

Let me know that you’re not
lost, that the bridge too far has not been
crossed. We were so good together, we fought them
all, the biggest problems, we led the way
and the others followed, we were the ones
with the bright tomorrow.
Have you left me? Are you gone forever?
Hand in hand with your smokey satan?
Did the odds beat you, have you lost the
game? Will things ever be the same?
We were so good together, we fought the world
and nothing could beat us, we were the ones
they said would last but the flames and spoon
were just too fast, you poked the hole
but they set the pace, led you to the call
of the inner space.
The deceitful warmth of its other world womb
hides the fact it’s your living tomb; we’ll
pull the works from your skinny limbs,
pump in life and earthly things,
but the call of the siren’s song goes on
and carries your mind to the world beyond.
A place where nether creatures fly
where shaking needle wielders die
and sparks of love, of happy days
are wiped away by their wicked ways.
You’re set adrift on darkened water
because you chose to kiss the devil’s daughter.

Today we go to Cassie’s Park
we go to lay the wefted sheet;
the Christmas love her parents give.

Today she runs amongst our minds
and plays upon the hill
the little girl in guarded hearts
who lives amongst us still.

She never had her running start
a wisp of here and gone.
Denied her chance to make mistakes,
a brief but shining light.

In Cassie’s Park, we stoop and
brush the autumn leaves and twigs
and shed a tear, we brush from cheeks
all reddened from the cold.

In Cassie’s Park, in Cassie’s Park
there’s a hundred years of love.
Of folks who came and stayed a while
and left us names in stone. The
builders of our country,
the merchants of our youth,
the moms and dads and kith
and kin; we let all our
loved ones in.

But tiny tiny, amongst the trees
is one be-jewelled corner
where Cassie lays for all our days
still loved and not forgotten.

So when your Christmas bird is cooked
and laid upon your table,
please raise a glass
and toast the past that
graces Cassie’s Park.

My black friend’s unwelcome at all polite places
Or in meetings at offices
And at the functions where listening is “easy”
And piped into nice spaces.

My black friend – him and I – we have history
That covers our schooldays
and tinted our teen years
and made me forgetful
and scared off my feelings.
He’s a best-hidden secret
Disguised and imprisoned
Avoiding the scorn
of our impressionable peers.

I took steps to avoid him
Changed jobs and careers
Hid all his details
denied his existence.
But despite my efforts
he found me
You must admire his persistence!

He met me at work
some time back
And shocked all my colleagues
(They didn’t know he was black).

He said the wrong thing
In an attempt to amuse
Which backfired terribly
A result of the booze.

After, things deteriorated
and he became more perverse
forcing me to take steps
to ignore him
- he just acted worse.

So we both sought counselling
To fix the big split
But mistakenly selected
A prejudiced git
With the only suggestion,
well meaning I’m sure:
to take stronger drugs
And to learn to ignore
The black man who tracks
Me at work and stands
Looking soulful
at my closely-locked door
which he cannot go through

He presses home his opinions
However extreme or innate
And encourages me to feelings
Full of bile and pure hate.

But perhaps with this confessor
My black friend and I
We should have been honest
More open and true
And told the full story
Of a life coloured blue
With a useless black partner
And a man lost to age
And a request for deliverance
That fills up the page
Long lost, unread
Which started its journey
inside my head.

We tried an arrangement,
my black man and I
and went off without saying
A word of goodbye.
And for a long time,
I alone ruled
And everything was “cushty”
“Even stevens”
It was “cool”.

That is ’til just recent
A chance event brought along
The circumstances needed
For his return, to belong.
He’s sitting here typing
Whilst I watch from behind
Those black man’s eyes
A cowardly witness to crime.

To those of you reading
And decrying the words
with political correctness
and observational verve
you’re missing the bleeding
and the intellectual burn
of a dysfunctional,
thinking,
emotional,
worm.

And in a way that’s the point,
If you’re looking for reason,
That perhaps it’s time
For a black friend season
When with help in a manner
Which borders on murder
Your brain commits crimes
Of unspeakable glamour
With a depth and a character
Too bold to be useful
To a black mannered mood
That becomes utterly crucial.

You are this in a moment.
A brief and salty moment.
As we soak the sheets
wet through
with our sweat

rung out

from the heat of the flames.

But the fire, so hot, burns
too bright
bright like a sun glint on glass in my eyes
hot like a furnace

crucible hot

ore meltingly hot.

It eats all it can
find.

Until the fresh fire logs I bring
no longer feed it
and the tinder crackles
and spits.

Until the flames shrink and grow small
and glow until they

nearly exist

and the heat turns to a warmth
and the ashes whiten
and blow

in the winds of change.

Until the soot stains remain.