I will not hang
by an open doorway, or even one
where the door is slightly ajar, glass bottomed, for fear of the label,
lest I hear your secrets tumble out of your mouth
and into the ears
of those less worthy of your undisclosed closet life.
I once heard my granddad through the floorboards,
a big man, a wise man, act as the secret man in red
with Reindeer slippers on his feet and stag like antlers
scratching down the back of any bus driver
The message never gets across,
I cannot blame it for failing, for like the desperate man
telling his heart to stop gripping tightly, sucking
the very breath out of him and as the feeling of dizzy peculiarity
washes over his mind as if complaining about all the wrongs
the heart has thought, I ignore it,
as the message gets itself becomes ignored.
The message, one of such ease to take in, one that requires
so little thought on the receivers part, is tossed aside
as if written on a paper napkin, stained with curry sauce
I do not sleep well, for your silent voice still sits in my head.
The darkness of the night,
lit up by the neon, plastic-looking sirens
of an ambulance
and the police cars who came screeching to a halt,
running over the dead
hotdogs, battered burgers and remains of candy floss, dropped
on the floor, trod on with contempt by the man who lost
his girlfriend’s respect because the sight of the gun
was off kilter and the way she told him off
for being pathetic, meant that the candy floss had to pay the price,
The Prince of Denmark is no fool,
and yet the aggressive bear
that sniffs and breathes the perspiration lingering
at the back door of the Prince’s castle is enough
to send the guards out, armed with spears, to fight the shadow
of what passed as cold deep frost, this bear
never hibernates.
The bear, perhaps a relic or offspring of another terrifying creature,
the type that heroes are born to fight and have mead
run over in great abundance as the fires lick the mantelpiece
and scorch the legends of
The Bikers rally that took place in Philadelphia that day
was but one highlight from a journey out from Media with
my dear friend Carole.
The city of brotherly love became the place where friendship
blossomed and now after more than twenty three years
I know she is still looking out for me and taking the lost
lonely lad she found isolated on a bench in a bar, surrounded by hundreds
of all-American types, drinking, laughing, shouting for the unseen
team to score in a game I didn’t understand properly, out for a walk round
I have played many parts. The glove maker’s son
from Warwickshire suggested I should.
I have played the illusionist who laid upon the bed of nails
and who doted silently for his clown. I have played the clown
in the art of allusion, the fool, unseen like Lear’s imagination,
the part suiting me well; but thankfully, I never performed
a role like the court jester, slapping his masters on the back
but with the cunning engrained into the psychotic fancy to
remove a king from his throne or the down at heel
How is possible for the person who had the world at his feet,
the beckoning call of history call out with a flourish and fanfare
each time he raised his eyebrows and gave an opinion,
to fall so blindly, stupidly and recklessly low?
The flourished fanfare, now fading and sounding as if being delivered
by a midwife who has taken the job on,
not from duty or responsibility
but because she couldn’t get a job as a stripper or a walk on extra
in fashion shoot, her hands dirty, unsanitary and with the twisting
Were the Northern Lights ever there in the great beyond?
I didn’t see them in the same way that I never heard you say
I love you, the emotional call of the union and bond,
the words that once lovers might say.
I saw Niagara Falls glisten in the fading light
and took solace in the embrace of its roar as it ravaged with thunder
in the darkness, yet I never saw you look more radiant or a captivating sight
on the evening you left me in the rain and cut me out from under.
They might look like big cats from way up here,
Kings of the jungle, the lords of all they survey,
a roar so loud that it can be heard across five miles of open
scrubland and all who perch by the dwindling pool,
sucking up
precious water, live in fear of the noise that travels far
and in terror of what lurks beneath the stillness.
They are not Kings, lords, unless of misrule,
they are though beasts, savage and bloodthirsty
cock-sure and baying for the blood of an innocent,
I have in my family tree
only one person in five hundred years
who was born in Ireland, technically that makes me one
in five hundred and twelfth of the Emerald Isle.
Even then it was by default as he was born at his mother’s insistence
as she could no longer hold on to the pull of the umbilical cord
and would kill any man
with a face of black thunder who tried
to stop her getting rid
of her impetuous fairy like Cornish-Scottish hybrid load
and to history, who knows,