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
I hit upon a theory one warm night in mid-June,
just a simple thought but one
that nagged at me all through the next day,
one that I wish I could have had years ago
and saved me from a lot of bother
as I chased after women
when I was younger.
The theory, I must impart this to my boys,
unless they grow up as men to whom the carrot,
the sprout and the Quorn appeal,
is that if when round the women’s house
The thunder growls with the offer of temptation to
the old enchanteress Witch of Searesbyrig and the flash of
lightning seals the loaded deal as yet another limp weary
traveller, half drowned by the talasmatic Nadder, dogged by Time,
fully disciplined and near dead from his direct action and exhaustive days
flight and fight against a foe of fury unseen,
seeks his way, seeking shelter from the strange energies
that such a storm springs up from Satan’s well.
Such words of welcome to the weary and wilting man
On the day that Christopher Lee died,
the world of Nightmares seemed less important
and as I struggled in my usual, haphazard way to fall asleep
I started counting teeth, the times I had seen
The Hammer House of Horror films helping
in this regard.
My father, upright, upstanding, noble of heart,
hated me watching Grange Hill, the non realism, or perhaps
the frightening truth of 1970s education in the heart
of the country at stake, enough to know
that it was a not a television programme for a boy
I smile,
though I am no villain,
flawed and complicated, problematic and absurd yes,
but no villain am I.
I smile
because the alternative is to scream,
to take the point of existence out of the illogical equation
and drown it, submerge it, threaten
to immerse it under so much sea water
that the pain will stop
after a while
and the easy breathe of innocence, so sweet,
will fill my lungs with joy.
I smile
because the alternative is