The superficial feel of a day merging into the next is highlighted more in December.
The few short hours in which the remaining, decaying leaves on the ground
deposit their skid-like dead mark forever in the winter blasted ember,
only to be eaten away by the snow and harshness of the chilling, frost biting sound.
December is the widow of our years.
It fights for all its worth against the final reckoning,
but it knows that soon, very soon, it will sleep forever and in no more tears
After all, it is my own stupid fault.
I certified you to live, breathe; fester like a germ in a blocked sink,
inside my head and was never surprised when you drew across the bolt
and tunnelled your way to where you grandstand at what I think.
Your expertise, I applauded, for who could not admire the sense
of purpose you showed in whispering in my ear,
of living with easy contempt with every pound, shilling and pence
worth of damned words at my chosen life and career.
Others might see you as the omen before the oncoming storm.
The loud-mouthed, certain and confident callous bellow
That comes full of wind and withered joy before the year weeps and grows old
And turns young at heart Old Father Time into a dour, disabled dying fellow!
They might see you and rage as you do, all piss and wind,
Shaking their fists in frightened fury at what you may have wrought
And the golden amber hue fading as they recount who against they have sinned
Their conceit in conflict now chastised in thought.
Of all the things I wanted to be
when I was young boy,
the jobs I imagined being able to do with a
certain degree of satisfaction,
never mind at all
the wage
in which was not even a secondary factor
in my overwhelmed mind
as I never thought I would be married
and father children
of my own in which to foul up their lives,
the most appealing was the life of a Hobo,
or the tramp
when spoke in English tongue.
If I could have had anybody as my first drinking partner,
the first one for whom the tempting taste of
bitter
in a dimpled handled glass, offered over
with great ceremony from a woman with biceps
protruding, bursting out from underneath a starch filled blouse
more obscenely than an unsightly black tar mole covered in three curly grey hairs,
who suspected I was underage
but knew I could control the art of a pint without making a scene
in the Bicester darkness and in the company of pre-cancer darts players cussing
To sit in The Cambridge,
the air warm with excitement,
as beer flows and complements to the flavour
of the rousing conversational chase, back and forth,
hurriedly
slowly…
the odd glass or three of
Simon’s Cider peppering the aroma,
punctuated by a Ginger Goddess
staring into her empty glass with the shock value
of one in need of another
after a heavy day hitting the books,
the pages in between and the words beaten
into submission, black eyed, panda like,
sat under constant university
strobe flickering wildly,
No matter
how many times you make me feel
as though I must apologise,
I never hear the slightest murmur of a returned regret
or explanation, just the continued self-justified
rant of the hardly innocent, ever smiling, resolutely angry and bitter soul.
Is it possible
to feel more degraded than the way you made me feel,
the contradiction of the argument, the swallowing
of the pride in which would allow my dog
that barks down my ear, growls with impatience,
that slowly salivates and allows to drip
…
You were the first of a select few
many times
and have remained so
both our lives.
From being my first friend, my beautiful comrade in arms,
the first who was the better part of me and
the shoulder for my head, your unwilling soldier sending
the S.O.S. out to be rescued, to the girl I asked first and who
quite rightly
turned me down. The woman with the fire in her hair
and in her stomach, the guts of a warrior, the compassionate heart of a nurse.
(For Stephanie Kerr.)
You danced for me, although I never asked you too.
I still think that afternoon was extraordinary and made
our friendship what it is today, built on a foundation
of responsibility of thirty years rather than destroyed
in half a minute as I bumbled around,
fumbled, stupid boy like attempt to ask you out and to dance
for a month or two.
You have known suffering, ordeals in which
I can now only offer a long distance shoulder
but one that has always been there and as we were both outsiders
Tears were never wasted on you but the anger
diminished as it should when somebody dies in your mind.
I see the face in other books and feel the sick-
ness return at the thought of you.
A Sonnet for the love of you, the memory of the cult
captured and freed with remorse, the handshake
unfulfilled and unanswered, my fault.
It matters not as I still care and hope that you are happy now with nothing at stake.
On your own request you relegated yourself from a paragraph to a sentence,