The loud room, empty of everything
but the silent chatter of a million voices
all asking the same ridiculous
questions time and time again
I have come to understand as pointing blame,
apportioning censure, charge and guilt
my way because it is so much easier to
attribute condemnation to the man
who will only fight back when
someone he loves is in danger
but who will happily absorb any
bruising cut you snake out on his skin;
for the silent chatter that grows and fans out across the empty room
I once wrote a small Nordic saga
in the shape of a poem for you,
to say thank you
for the precious gift you gave me,
an ear on a bad day, a shoulder
on one of the black days
and yet nothing I wrote in the space
of the blank page, was adequate enough,
not good enough to match
the beauty that your words that had soared
above the crowds inside St. George’s Hall
or caught fire in a cascade of glass
and petals as you sang with truth and honour
So I’m your poison that you gladly drink,
the bitter harvest in which you have reaped
the rewards of conquest and now the trace
of almonds, the shade of night,
the cold touch of stout fast Oak and
velvet caress from the cyanide in which you
say you have taken from me
is all but an urge to be a martyr
on your part for not agreeing with you.
I am your poison
But you may as well scamper with Napalm
The man with the chip on his shoulder,
rubs his bald head in disgust.
Caught out in one lie in which his team
put imaginary words into speeches
about how life has been changed
since they took over the running of their lives,
some may say hit with sticks, branches, dead silver
like trees and the snarling rage of a whipped up
frenzy, he now looks down the mass and suggest
with fist thumping air back and forth
in perfect tones of a pseudo
gentleman who has learned nothing,
The thunder and lightning
over Bootle at least brings rain
to fill the pot holes on the streets
and roads that criss-cross this Northern town
overshadowed by Liverpool, overshadowed by
Southport, overshadowed by its own historic self
are cleaned and the raging water greets
the Mersey as it scampers
and rushes through drains
as if hiding, running, waiting to ambush
behind closed doors as it keeps a secret
apart between the beauty and beguiling
majesty of one and the faux old and careworn
of the other.
The wall thankfully is rounded,
after all it is easier to escape the manipulation
you attempt to thrust down my throat,
rolling with the solid tide of plaster
than sitting in a pointed sharp angle
as the verbal putrefaction spoils for a fight.
Over the keys a wash comes unbalanced hatred
and like a dictator you ask that all take your side,
and to say nothing, to want the world to move on
away from such madness, the corner you push me into
becomes a rock in which to cling.
Perhaps I don’t belong anywhere.
At times I feel as though all that I do
is but a waste of someone
else’s time and that the friendship
I offer is but seen as rusting decay.
To take each heart I’ve broken
and see it corrode in the flesh of my palms,
to see it perish under the scrutiny
of insane composition and to share that
wild word with a world that doesn’t care
is to punish and pound my head
into the mud and dirt and yet my
The Sgt. Pepper band was finally broken up
sometime in an early afternoon
when no one was looking
down on Mathew Street and the sound
of the full throttle cover
rang down upon other’s ears.
To bring the cover up to date
is all we ask of the young,
to make it their own and give us the anger
and passion that is missing when friends
can no longer be found,
but our own cover of our favourite song
remains unsung and unpainted
It is a grace of Waterloo
and one that the Iron Men
and seagulls hold no dominion
as they squabble over sunlight
and the quiet rage of the ships
that cut through the Mersey sound
on their way down stream.
The other end of South Road,
the bottom stop and between
the Liver and X2 stops
of Southport and Preston
stands firm the Plaza, resplendent
since the outbreak of war
and since “Peace in our Time”
was declared over cold eggs and copious tea
Still they stand,
wedged hard and rusting in the glow of
sunrise… sunset
and the tides that cover them in between,
these men of unblinking perspective
and who show their contempt
for Humanity by turning their back
ever away from the shore line
and the gaze of seagulls,
punished for their insane chattering
and their dogged resistance to change.
Though blind from birth, they see all
and in the whispered delusions that reach
their ears from screams of children
and the agony of parenthood,