Schooling

Thinking back, I couldn’t see

how God shaped England – he was

just a character on a screen somewhere,

barely even watched by me.

Something foreign,

for the birds,

certainly too far away.

 

Those days, I paced

in smaller shoes, kicking up hours,

kicking off at school –

 

hesitantly praying some early developer

would be nudged my way

by unseen hands, slipping beneath

lock-tight waistbands that guarded the gap

between what I knew, and that

which I mapped out nightly, kneeling.

 

Much later I developed feelings,

and as my hands were not yet ruined

I wrote with pen and ink –

yet, no deity delivered

though somehow I still sought

a tossed-off thought I’d had at seven

 

Perfection awaits,

all jelly-smudged lenses, belief in heaven

brought via rings and playground glances

that somehow develop into

a slow-panning glossed eternity.

 

We bury disappointment beneath abandonment of faith –

after all, we grow out of shoes

and countries

painfully fast.

 

The Workers

There are men in rooms, sharpened

by white-wet light which cut right through

the inch-thick residue

piled on glass. Windows -

a constant here – magnifying whatever was left

of the outside, the other place. Such men!

Jaundiced, slow

prodding small seeds in row on row

of cat-black soil -

fertilised by those who know

their compounds, their futures, or just

how the shoots can grow and bend toward

a sun that may

or may not thrust itself from dawn to night.

Chariots. A great bird. Ball of gas.

They sit, and gaze

and hour on hour they push and test

the cracking husk. A blade, a new life

races upwards.

-

Now broken free, it’s quickly splinted

strapped up, gartered, forced to stand.

They gender, sex, they splice and list,

pen tips wet lips

and stems are bound,

crutches employed.

the blossom is sketched, breath is held,

leaves cover shame, and shame is shown

clearly. Slowly. Daily.

-

It is hot in here

and so very, very quiet.

They say the men are old.

A Walk

An oily sun

turns on England, see

rolling icons:

the slick stuff of old photos in

 

a shade of green that still

seems somewhat unlikely.

Pylons lurch from groaning gaps

where rust and soil collide

 

blowing inwards a

childhood terror, egged on

by public service broadcasts -

a boy once died

 

alongside greasy signs, all

Danger Of Death

and yellowed reminders that

our trespasses will be prosecuted,

 

unforgiven.

Out here, no good mornings,

no forelocks tugged.

Just wet stones, slowly turning.

 

Yet still cars pass,

out for Sundays strapped in.

 

A corner was taken at speed.

Birds slice up the skies.

The Holidays

They are divided at stations,

little more than numbers -

 

while axles pause and lips

yearn for lips

 

children running

into another’s arms and

 

breaking the mothers

left, wondering,

 

if all the days

watching cracks and splits

 

as seeds burst forth, and

emerge from stone

 

in pliable, sonorous forms

not even gazing backwards

 

were worth it

places

she asked me:
“take me to your places”
a pause chases lips – I
stop to wonder
if that means the bed of flowers I once saw
tended each night by a sole sanyassi
raised from boyhood, smooth and black-eyed
filled with pride at the task of arranging
a marital nest by a holy pool,
where a god and his consort nightly meet
to scatter petals to the wailing
of each scorched dawn, or

the hillside hospital

which was slipping down

to a seaside town, where my wrecked feet would carry
the wonder of doctors – all pins and scorn -
while I, smooth and black-eyed
would shudder, withdraw
from antiseptic green walls, and
various tools
sharpened.

Anyway,
by the time we met,
both were gone.

Stones

This light-dusted town, pocked with memories

drags these feet between old blocks. Patina shifts, and the

soils of years harden. I am swerved -

westward and that way, past new wives,

shivering children, bottle-green voices,

those who sell and those locked in

to hands scratching deep, having grappled at mornings -

the bakers have left, the workers are hid. Somewhere

.

the sun does its thing, defying the wash

of English temptations, of time spent downwards,

avoiding the days. A road appears – surprising

one who spent time abroad – yet it holds the usual

glittering discs, and tightly packed wraps

of chemical compounds all set for the night,

boxes for boxes, and watery tea

infused with the times of the river.

.

Fate cuts no hands, but my legs are compelled

to step down this path my tendons had lost. I’m struck

at a window, piled high with desires -

softly forced rocks, strung up on silver,

jaspers and jets, vivid value in earth,

selected for those who are pulled to pass on

slices of India, hacked out by a man

whose coalface was lamplit, decades ago.

.

My eye follows wands tipped sweetly with orbs

knocked out of amber, suspending old lives.

Passes through pages, tinted expressions

exclaiming small magics, ways to heal, odes to

even the lamest complaint -

I come to rest on the girl, caved in receipts, and

propped to the side of a pretty collection

of bangles and phone lines, old records, deceptions

.

reserved for those who know their base. A piece

of something catches my air, and movement

makes movement, we bend to the floor.

She knows the deals, chips me away,

shows me a stone that will change

my days. Time is eaten, and weeks petrify

in bed-shapes, hollows, ashtrays carbon-dating

various poses. We identify awhile

.

as one, yet something stops mouths,

even swollen and sore, I look at her stones

refusing her faith. Energy, auras, cosmic detritus

drop from rubbed lips; I harden and shift

such attrition occurs, as if this is

some type of natural process. Erosion erodes,

we are carried in rivers, washing up

somewhere, elsewhere in towns.

.

Now, walking, I notice the beaded masses

painted and plucked, and laden with stones.

New wives, shivering children,

bottle-green voices

gather at windows, gazing to wish

at millennia structured in glittering cuts -

a slice of India, something to pass

for those who can abide the noise.

commuteII

Doors drag themselves, and we thrust through
reeling from signs that flicker and switch
with shutter-speed trips, cutting this way and back.
We take pains avoiding inky gazes -

the strange and the fattened, locked into their wrists,
caught up in the stars, the columns of tales -
families, lost wives, the barking, the sad
the girls who have murder cut into their hands.

The morning’s still flashing, in typical ways -
attempting to prove that changes can come
from this tepid wash of English skies, these
towns pulled from marshlands, the days have drained

such wonders. They built with all intentions -
riveted, nailed, knocked up by top hats,

industrious line upon line, now held

in ghost-faced postcards, praised at stations.

The coast breaks my sight, and somebody tuts

at the sun slashing through the uniform blinds.

A shot of blue, a stretch of sand is caught before

the cities sprint towards us.