They called the poet a fool for running to Italy
on the day he broke a thousand hearts,
yet even as the last maiden cried out in a mournful
repose and beat her now discarded breasts,
her long fingernails
biting deep down under that velvet, ivory white skin
and drawing blood that eventually found its way
to the oblivion of the dusty floor, licked clean by mites
and the might not haves running through her brain,
the fool, the poet and the madman all
became as one.
Surely the measure of a man is not to confined
to the quality of his actions
on the battlefields of life, the swift response
to the spectre and dark shadows of looming war
or in how he holds himself when dining out in the company
of a young woman for the first time;
It must be seen above all in the dignity in which he holds
himself aloft when he prepares to say goodbye
to his father for the last time, it is the moment
in which a man becomes a giant.
Let me not forget you,
for in you I am tied to this place
and will be remembered by at least one
who liked me for what I am.
Let me not build a furnace
in which your memory becomes ash
and simply allows Time to erase line by line
the meaning in your measure and your affection.
Let me not become a piece of fashion
discarded by you, thrown into the back of drawer,
placed uncaringly into the hands of another
You are my soul
for in your happiness lies my truth
and whilst there are times
you must have despaired at my lack
of your complete moral vigour and
straight laced contemplation
in me,
I know that you have been proud.
I will never be the best that you could have fathered
and that I have failed
with death-defying ease
over and over again in many
of the sacred trusts and truth you placed my way,
however, I know
in everything you ever did for me
This Fois Gras that passes as over stimulation
in a world caught between addiction and boredom
is no stranger to me. The constant need to be seen as busy,
to be productive, to be industrious, to be
constantly consuming Time, to be seen, to be seen
and watched and asked why if you take
the moment in which the splendour of a flower at bloom
catches your eye, someone will tell you
with a sneer and a stifling look of contempt, all the usual
despairing buzz words they have learned from their
I can’t play out today,
there is no use knocking at my door
and asking if I am free
and then slyly suggesting I lend you my ball
for I know I won’t get it back
as it will be booted at some point
into a neighbours garden
and I will get the blame for it breaking the glass
of their greenhouse, the shards of that fallen
glass murdering several tomato plants and a prize
cucumber, green blood dripping from its
dying form, riga mortis ensured.
It was unlike
any conversation
I had under-
took with a
train guard before,
normally the
discourse was
limited to
the duty bound
and the sent-
iment of
tickets please
with gruffness
and dampening spirit
between stat-
ions and stares….
This though was illuminating and joyful,
as the young man known as Crispy Baghands
from Blackpool told me of his story
and how he had joined the post of sentry on parade
of Britain’s railways, Beeching’s great and terrible crime
I offer myself the look of self pity,
knowing full well I am the cause of my own disease,
that I am the one who pushes relentlessly
until beaten to a pulp and crying mercy upon my knees.
Well fuck you insolence,
you never were my favourite gravy train
and save me from my own compassionate sense
for if I should go out screaming, it’s because I’m still sane.
I am gripped in the acid hold of life
for deep in the middle of the four a.m. shadow
Upstairs at Eric’s
the best night’s sleep I ever had,
except that one night in the wilderness
where I slept alone and exhausted
for a while as I ran away from society
in order to find myself.
My Grandfather’s spare bed
at the top of the stairs, a set of rooms
he had not seen since the late seventies
as his baring and his weight meant
he slept downstairs till the day he died,
was by far the greatest bed of all.
The old Victorian room,
It’s the stuff they don’t tell you about in schools
that when you find out about them, the sheer arrogance
and mocking laughter that comes off the screen
or jumps out at you
from a previously unread book that realise with distaste
and agony that yet again the liars have composed the score
and the tune has become unpalatable.
How is it possible that education does not prepare
you for the crimes in Indonesia in nineteen-sixty-eight
that were before your time
but so much closer than the radical deeds of a supposed heretic