Stuck halfway between the sky and the sea,
I am unsure if the plane circling high
above Mellieha is the speedboat or just
a vapour dream brought on
by not being sure of what is up
and how far down the Devil rides.
They touch the fingers of a god
as they find faith in their soul
is not unbroken and yet in the Mellieha sky
I see the speedboat
flowing out the spilled Mediterranean seaweed
which a tractor, ridden with impunity,
collects at certain times of the day
The cold African winds batter my face
with red dust as the sound
of dead memories whistle
through the forest of boats
and rich men’s yachts and cruisers
named in some Channel Island port
or Black Sea safe haven
and the ghostly sound
rumbles in the Three Cities’ harbour
as the age old Inquisitor looks on
in distaste.
The yacht’s only movement,
the bobble on the aloof and frosty stared
sea, up and down in quarter back tussle,
the owners drinking green tea
I see the Manhattan morning from the dusk
of a Maltese bay and I realise there is no colour,
just black and white memories
with the spectacular vision of off sepia groove thrown
in for effect as I recall days of stories
from the Adanac house and I know that
Time is eating away, burning up, like a Catherine Wheel,
spun by an unseen hand in the darkness
and the fireworks light up the sky
in desperation, in ground down coffee bean surrender
and the taste of yoke screams in heat
The category is now changed,
the box to tick is shuffled around
like a deck of cards in the hands
of a teenager drunk
on sideboard cider, cheap
and trashy, a sly grin of arrogant pissed up
humour, which now says I have found Middle-Age
and I scratch my head in confusion,
is it Middle-Age or is it just a shorter time
available in which to get things done.
Perhaps not the right way,
perhaps the way to see it
is that I have earned the right
The clown,
the man who wears no mask at all,
plays the act of Ringmaster
with such defining grace,
that it seems impossible to believe
that he cannot be seen
for what he is, the terror of a toytown
enthralled by his smiling, almost leering,
inwardly demonic, outwardly man of the world,
sophisticated as an alleycat on heat,
the clown rules all, for he is King
of his own little world.
The Clown is cheered,
the clown is lauded as the saviour
The fireplace of broken dreams
caught alight when you stepped
into the circle, that night of deep
hot wind that blew in from the
Channel and through
our make shift village by St. Malo Green.
Your German boyfriend, Sebastian
by birth but Rudolph now by design,
plucked gently on the guitar strings,
some fanciful song
which you just knew was meant
to enrage the soul,
and the women’s heart’s in the camp
fluttered, whilst we just rolled our eyes
towards the evening sun and wished
I have carried the love for you seemingly forever.
For forty years I have lived with you
in my heart, my very soul
and there has not been a single day
in all that time in which I have not thought of you.
I have stood by you, watched you fall from grace,
I have seen you tumble down and graze your pride,
I have seen you become the main villain
in your own deluded play and the performance
of a lifetime snatched from the jaws of defeat;
We are the diseased generation
blown apart
by those who sought to destroy
the revolution, who told us our ideals
were wrong, who told us we could not,
under any circumstances, be allowed
to live a life unoccupied by the thought
of the bullet and the bomb,
of the starving masses knocking
at the door, of propaganda bitten chewed,
enshrined and made law, offered on a rusty
plate, bacteria hiding, syringed
into each delicate flower adorning
the rim and scraped clean, licked spotless
I cried in front of thirty odd class mates
on the day that they sent Boxer down
and I took, begrudgingly, the teenage
ribbing and piss take
that followed for around a week,
until someone else slipped up
and they left me alone to brood
on the glue factory and death
of a noble horse.
It didn’t bother me when I
found out around the same time
sentimental age
that Native Americans and the cold
people of the North used
fish to make their glue, it didn’t impact
The fire in the eyes,
that’s what she called it,
a friend of long ago
who saw the small boy
defy the argument
and the pre-stated life,
only good enough to take a bullet
for Queen and Country,
she said that assertion was wrong;
the devastating and smouldering
inferno she saw beneath the blue
drops of water told her different;
she said you were an explosion
waiting to happen,
a volcano on the edge of an abyss
on the edge of Time whose wake