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
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
Nature smiles at the irony
that is on display in the side step of land
that acted as the border between the heathen
appreciation and the Godly interloper. The whisper
that has seen the branches of green rise up
and mushroom their canopy of shade
over the entire wall and threatens to engulf
and convert the minds of all
who live down St. Andrews Road into saluting
the wonder
of environmental progress as the battle for hearts and minds
is out of control.
It won’t last of course,
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
It is the whisper of uncertainty that growls
softly next to my ear and throws punches that strike
between my ribcage and pummels the heart
over and over again. The shouts of derision
of the fear and loathing in the back of my mind,
whispering slowly, the crescendo damning with faint praise
and the suffering of the crested rejection never far behind
the swell of the tsunami breaking itself apart
on the polystyrene rock of my thoughts;
the erosion of Time left ever scared on my scared
and fractious mind.
I find myself more drawn to the past
than I have found myself in decades.
The rose coloured telescope pinpointing with
alarming accuracy what I already knew
but was too deaf, to blind and stupid
to understand what could have been
if I’d had the courage to stay and not move
on once more.
The past, the illusion of fine weather days,
of fresh country air filling my lungs
and cleansing the stuffy headed inoculation
first given to me in a needle fit to burst