She used to only call me when she was drunk,
or in need of some way to be herself,
to flop down on whatever couch or bed
I had in the spare room
for five minutes and allow the weight
of the world to be unfurled and hung out to dry.
When she was drunk I could cope, she was never there for long,
and always courteous to my own need for space.
When she was sober, she would wheedle her way into my head and dare
Our relationship has always been based on the need of one side,
yet today has been calm, composed and full of peace
and I wonder if the positions were reversed, in me would you confide
and I wonder if it should have always been like this, a tranquil release.
I sat back, I relaxed and did nothing but listen to you breathe,
your sincerity of spirit I realise I had kept always out of sight
I had asked you many times silently to leave
but in my head, you talked away unhindered, secretly loved, never used in spite.
I don’t remember standing in line with my hands held open,
a wooden bowl and half gnawed wooden spoon, chewed and nibbled at,
distressed over not through hunger but through fucking pain…
but I’m not meant to talk about it, complain or discuss it because
it shows a weakness, it shows lack of moral fibre that my great-grandfather’s
generation would have called Victorian values…the same Victorian
values employed that never allowed a heartbroken woman to grieve properly,
that allowed a monster onto the streets of Whitechapel
I can’t think of anything worse to find on a gravestone
than the words, born, died, and nothing in between,
save two dates and the inscription dearly departed…
…is that truly all that is left behind once life leaves
the departed behind.
If I stand before my gravestone now, a mean feat and fate indeed
as I would like to think I would go out fighting a bear somewhere
in the Canadian outback, armed only with a blunt potato peeler,
an old yellowed and damp from the abundance of snow that
I was there on the day that the Devil was kidnapped by God.
I wasn’t sure exactly which one it was
as they all look the same to me
but I know she had form as a hijacker and usurper of religions past
and now was after the biggest bruiser of the lot to aid in a deity war
that would confuse humanity.
Bundled into the back of a long black hearse,
I hid out of sight as the Devil kicked and cursed and bemoaned
I missed the knock
on the train’s dirty window as the young poet
frantically tried to catch my attention as I mooched past
in a reluctant poem of my own.
The blonde haired girl with glasses, wide-ever appreciating eyes,
skipping heartbeat,
who sat across the void of space and expanse of tables
in the café, missed the chance for true adoration as she fell head first
into the eyes of the wildly passionate and sincere man
with eyes only for her ignorantly blessed friend,
The river runs deep if it is allowed to flow freely
and the clutter and wreckage of the abandoned shopping trolley
covered in slime, the mess of one generation passed down
to another in shrink wrapped, tightly wrapped, always trapped;
is removed and placed far out of sight.
The free flowing river, the conscious of independent thought
should not be stunted, diverted and allowed to stagnate in some form
of pruning cultivation, the flower should be allowed to grow
and take over the muddy ground that lays along the bank,
The Rapper smiles at the free soap box he is given
and he uses it, controls it, manipulates and exploits it,
until the box irrevocably falls to pieces,
joist by rusted nail, plank by frayed duct tape…
yet even when his vitriol makes no sense, when the fans
take the shit he spouts to be gospel and they don’t even
question music history and the small cog in a connecting wheel
he plays, admittedly a hundred times bigger than the mechanism
I run at full speed upon and forever going backwards,
…and there is no grand gesture of acknowledging the audience’s applause
as the violinist stands perfectly still, watching,
waiting,
for the small, unseen blazing wink
that tells her to slowly, without mercy, break some hearts.
It matters not at all, what the violinist wears, for the assassin’s bow
gently pierces the skin and boils the blood of the victim
and she slowly places the breathe
in play in which the body can bear no longer, the beauty contained within.
The long drawn out note, the gentle scream that drives me mad
I have reached the age in which the first man who made me laugh out loud,
who gave blood, sweat and tears in an effort to defy the wind,
and who by the time I was 14, could quote line for line
in an effort to be allowed to study drama at school,
decided enough was enough,
and wrote, “Things just seemed to go wrong too many times.”,
and took the next boat out to the onward great adventure.
I have reached the age in which twin greats to music were lost