July 10th
Gossip this month, and girls’ gossip at that,
so I ask myself
why bore Big Brother
with such junk?
Because big brother forgets
what small town life is like.
Isn’t that right BB?
Up in your garret (or is it penthouse now?)
with whatever’s your version of wine, women and song,
what do you care that here there is no wine,
not much to sing about,
and too many women?
So what’s the gossip? I hear you say (or do I?).
Only that there’s a new hunk about town
driving all us girls bonkers with the hots
for him.
Daft bitches do I hear you say?
Correct as ever, Big Brother.
But then, when you think of us,
if ever you do,
it must be like looking through the wrong
end of a telescope and seeing pygmies.
Just pygmies.
Well, brother
dear, this month’s epistle
comes to you in
verse, which I’m sure you’ll agree
could not be
worse.
This morning
roak hid the sea, and from that grey wall
came the doleful toll of the warning horn.
Do you remember that sound?
Does it feature in your dreams?
Do I appear as well,
now that you dance to a brighter tune –
a fandango or the throb of tango
in a land of constant
sunshine?
By afternoon
our own pale sun gave up the fight,
left us early to face the dark.
On a day like this you left.
For what? Who knows?
Anything but this, you said.
Soon your letters became postcards,
then ‘Seasonal Greetings’. Now
you’re a blank in my filo,
a vacuum waiting to be filled.
This evening
just as I thought the day would leave us quietly
a storm rolled out
to sea and back.
Where are you when night calls?
Do you frequent some friendly bar
brilliant with familiar faces?
Are you the type who sleeps all day
then
puts on coloured wings
and
flies to the brightest light?
Through the night
frost will settle on the house,
paint its own stark landscape.
What strangeness do you wake to? Do thoughts
of home intrude to help you through bleak times?
Or are you still the same enigma,
stepping from one moment to the next
through cooling showers and absences
that have no truck with fond hearts?
So there it is
dear Bro. How did I do?
C&C most
welcome if it means you write.
February 2nd
Last night the
sea ripped the beach from its bed.
We heard the
screams
but know too well
not to interfere
in these family
disputes.
In the morning we
gathered to look,
ghouls at a
death,
the sea at our
feet, calm,
sated, gulls
riding anchor on its shoulders.
The meadow’s gone
the same way,
yard by yard,
year by year.
Now the house
sways on the brink.
When he saw his
rose bushes
scattered down
the cliff, Jack cried.
Finally, we moved
out when
the garden shed
was launched.
Very Important
Persons
bring their
sympathies,
go away nodding.
Perhaps we’ll
become little islanders.
Though surely not
New Atlanteans.
May 17th
Eddy runs the car
park now.
Remember Eddy –
the number-plate freak
who kept on
filling his little book
long after you
all moved on
to cricket
scores?
He grew out of it
of course,
became a
trainspotter.
Until they closed
the branch line.
He wouldn’t use
the bus
to go in search
of trains –
against the
spotters’ code.
Took to marriage
as the next good thing.
The Edwards girl,
skinny with glasses,
the one you all
avoided.
They say he likes
her soisant-neuf,
which might
explain a lot.
July 5th
Some would pull
the lighthouse down.
Who needs it now
we’ve got
satellite
navigation gizmoes.
No more stir
crazy keepers.
No more keepers’
daughters
to rescue the
crews of sinking freighters.
Just more space
for trippers’ cars
and charabancs.
Then what would
draw the punters in
to be stripped in
our tea-shops
and games
arcades,
boutiques and
chippies?
We have no
ancient stones or open houses ,
no pretty harbour
full of fishing smacks.
Lighthouse,
beach, a chopped off pier.
That’s it. That’s
us.
That’s what you
left.
August 31st
Trippers ask:
Whatever happened
to the tunny fish?
(Do they mean
tuna or dolphin – or porpoise?
I never did
know).
We used to see
them out there
whole packs
battling North
through the white
horses,
now and then the
man-size ones
hanging from
scales
down by the pier.
Tunny fishing was
a great sport
round these parts
before The War,
they say.
So why do they
ask
Whatever happened
to the tunny fish?
October 5th
Are you still
well-read?
Or just well, er,
red?
I ask because
your name
came up last night
in one of our
drunken rambles.
So it was:
“What became of
Jack’s eldest
– the
bolshie one who got himself on tee-vee
that time?”
You know, ’68 and
you
gurning at the
camera
outside Hornsey
School of Art.
Jack said there
was more fart
than art in that.
November 11th
Jack was on the
march today,
a lone Burma Star
between the ranks
of the British Legion
and the Desert
Rats.
That’s after he’d
marched
on the Organisers
to demand his
place.
Then he led us
out of church
when the vicar
forgot again.
Was he ever in
your ‘forgotten army’?
Surely not
then.
But now?
December 18th
Last night at the school do
Miss Barwell
asked after you.
How many years
ago is it?
Forty? At least
that.
Her mind is still
sharp
and she’s as
beautiful as ever,
her skin like
Basildon Bond.
She still drinks
only warm water.
She told me once
she hadn’t
planned to be a
spinster
all her life.
I know how she
feels.
But no man dare
touch
such a delicate
flower in case she
crumbled in his
hands.
The other one was
there too –
Miss Grim Arse
you used to call her
or the Wicked
Witch from Oz.
She said she
couldn’t see
why anyone would
employ you.
Not much changed there
either.
January 17th
Last week the old Jew-lady died,
the one with the
house by the tenfoot,
whose fence you
vandalized for swords
and cricket bats,
whose trees
became your arsenal.
Mind you, she’s
not the only one to go.
All our old dears
are popping off this year.
Not just popping
out,
or in for tea and
gossip,
but popping into
the grave -
women who’ve seen
out the century,
seen the wars and
the famines,
seen off their
men
at the gates of
barbarism.
March 10th
So you’ve written
another poem?
Then what? Do you
go down the pub
and bore the
locals with your recitations?
Do you eat a lump
of
swarzwalderchocolatentorte?
Take your latest
out to dinner and bore
her rigid with
your preening?
Isn’t’ it all
just wanking,
rewarding
yourself for a job completed?
I wonder what
you’ll do when
the book’s
finished.
If.
Immortality!?
Your poems and
stories, they’re only masks,
and when the
masks slip?.
Immortality isn’t
there.
It’s in the memories
of all who ever
met you –
even the stranger
passed once,
unnoticed, who
will love you till
the day she dies.
May 10th
Uncle George
hasn’t shaved
since cousin
Agnes died.
He hasn’t left
the house in days,
just sits by the
window
as if he expects
her
to come up the
garden path
with his bit of
shopping.
He can’t
understand.
He says she
weren’t even badly.
A bit poorly now
and then,
but not right
badly.
How can I explain
it’s not always physical
pain that drives
us to the pill box?
Sometimes a dead
friendship is all it takes.
But such as Uncle
George
don’t want to
understand
about women
loving women.
May 15th
Did you know Cousin Agnes
wrote verse?
(I won’t use the p word
to my illustrious Bro).
We found a pile of them
in her bedside cupboard.
Here’s a sample.
Only when I’m rid
of your lingering smile,
and the smell of your skin
has blown from the streets
will I be ready to stroll
again through the parks
and avenues that taught
us
youth’s arrogance.
I watched you die
yet you fill my air
with living menace. The shriek
of parakeet, howl of dog
signal your approach.
Even the breeze is you,
the scattered trash,
the concrete slab.
You are everywhere not here
where I stay secure; where
I know you cannot come;
where I dream of open fields
before this city grew
around me, stifling my voice.
Tomorrow I’ll walk out again,
defy you. But not today.
Down on the street
there’s an echo of
you,
a distant voice
stubbornly misheard,
messages garbled
on a mobile phone,
words carried off
by the breeze,
questions
drowned in the crowd.
If I turn around
I may hear what you
say.
A gilded angel stands at the gate
of the park, warns us to leave
our evil schemes in the street,
as if
we could think of bringing
to this green and watered place
our chain saws and dynamite,
bulldozers and pesticides,
barbed wire and purse-seine nets,
Bowie knives and snickersnees,
gin-traps and meat hooks,
gas chambers and…
Dante Gabriel Rossetti at the Grave of Lizzie Siddal
Such sudden loss of
love compounds insanity,
an absence of mind
persuading me to error,
encouraging that
random act of vanity,
to bury my poems with
you in lieu of sorrow.
What use have you for
all those mournful sonnets?
You who were once a
woman fair and gay.
How will the worms
appreciate my couplets?
What guard are they
against your sure decay?
And so I stand here
darkly as a phantom,
thinking of how your
love was won and lost -
lighting your open
grave with this pale lantern,
seeking to recover
some of the cost.
To rob you yet again
gives me no pleasure,
but surely brings a little earthly treasure.
I think the
last one was for you.
Perhaps you
could publish them,
a kind of
memorial.
It would
please Uncle George,
then we
wouldn’t have to put up
with his
beard.
September 22nd
Sometimes when
the light
from the sea is
especially bright
after a clear
frosty night,
and when the tide
is right
you can see
cormorants on the sandbanks,
halfway to the
horizon,
like a row of
harpoon heads.
What did your larky pal
write about here?
Unfenced
existence,
untalkative, out
of reach?
That may be so
where the birds
take breakfast,
certainly in the
village under their feet
where the edge of
the land
used to be.
But here?
Unfenced? Tell that to
the free-to-roam
brigade.
Existence? It
might be.
Untalkative?
Obviously he never met Jack.
Out of reach?
Well, that might be right –
at least I’m
still waiting to be reached.
November 2nd
To see you again,
even at a funeral
would be grand.
So why won’t you come?
Jack would have
said
it’s because
you’re a tight-arsed
snob too big for
your boots.