I gave thanks only the once,
over a meal hosted by my grandmother’s
cousin in a small town near Philadelphia
and the small party of four, a second cousin
twice removed
and his wife both took a hand of mine
and prayed.
I was silent, but acknowledged their words
and I thought of home
as we sat in the heat
of a crowded restaurant,
the steam of the passable gravy
warming the inside of my nose
as I prepared to smother the turkey.
The bucket list always grows,
for what else is the point of being alive?
From the insane to the rationale, the desire
to the humble and all via the avenue
of memory and atonement,
I wish to tick every single thing off my list.
I have kissed a thousand women
and loved a few thousand more,
I have scored a solitary league goal,
right foot volley, very lower league,
I keep the press cutting as a souvenir, August
1989 against the Salisbury Deaf,
I have no memento
Little girl, skipping up the airbridge from the ‘plane
I wonder if you’re visiting or coming home again?
The look upon your face is total joy and zero pain
A sparkling ray of sunshine in the rain
Little girl, tripping light fantastic in your mind
Travelling the world, your world
To see what you can find
One great life adventure, looking forward, not behind
Barriers for you not yet defined
Little girl, ripping through the rulebook of the day
A burst of living colour, in a monument of grey
The steely eyed glaze of righteous wrath
passed over me and stopped,
biding its time, patiently building up
dark eye shadow glory
and then like a meteor
over slow ice fields and the mindful of their own
business trees of Tunguska …
she let loose with venom and destruction
telling me I had to live in the real world.
A resident of such a world I am
but if I choose for a while to revel
in a place where smiles are seen,
where the friendly knife doesn’t cut you
There must be a way
to hold the world to ransom
through the medium of peace
rather than allowing the distance
between us,
between ideology,
between deeply engrained and terrible dogmatic belief;
which allows the spread of fear and suspicion
in all things in the name of national blanket
security
and the wrath of your god.
I dreamed once, half asleep, caravan dust in my eye
the bed clothes strewn
to all corners of the narrow bed and leaving me
cold and naked,
The worship of the gun, the religious zeal
of caressing the weapon and praying
over its deliverance is just as wicked
as holding a Bible or holy text up
and proclaiming that you take a life
because your god told you to.
Yet we do nothing, the death toll keeps rising
year on year on year on year,
like a man addicted to powders
that boost his sagging virility, his prowess
in the bedroom assured with a fully loaded
and cocked ladies pearl handled gun
He brought out the best in you
and the courage you displayed at the end
I wish I could see in me too
impossible companion, a saviour, a friend.
The finest of companions, you dared to believe…
you dared to make me believe beyond your physician
and now you leave
the stars dying light, a glorious mission.
Yet what if you have not died, what if I find
I can still kiss you for evermore,
hold the best in my solitary single ravaged heart,
My own meaning of life:
I promised to try and never do harm,
occasionally unsuccessful, botched even
or even been the disaster, the black sheep
I was always told I would be…
but as a whole
I have to believe I have been more respectable
than wicked and yes like anybody else
I regret bitterly the times when failure has been
the only option, for even in deep sad failure
must come hopeful good.
My own meaning of life:
To try and never be swayed by popular opinion,
She is beautiful,
for when she shook my hand
I saw nothing but grace
in her eyes and never mind
the face she wore
once before
now she was brave
and away from the sneering looks
of those to whom she would never
be completely free of,
she stood tall and with true
personality no longer hidden
in shadows,
she is the woman that captures
a heart, the stocking, sheer and black
holding up her innocence,
for she at least
in choosing to live,
I lock myself in
my solitary medicated confinement,
grieving Jekyll, erudite and calm Hyde,
and allow the room to close
around me, swirling like thunder
clouds, blackened and angry
but with the tinge of optimism
that the confinement will not last,
it will not allow the meekness of surrender
to bitter my experience,
for after all, the prison, the bonded jail,
is my own to suffer and nobody else
paid with their lives to see me sweat
out the pain of individual isolation.
Hollow incarceration,