You have been a constant, the charming warrior
championing a truth few want to see.
You have been at my side fair lady, causing a stir
in a heavenly pursuit which holds my heart in chains, locked with no key.
My dearest reason for living with nothing of monetary value,
for the price I paid in understanding your form, your beauty
in debt and indebted, in truth I have taken from you on cue
and the life I have led reflecting the sweet taste of irony.
On my second day in Bootle, an old man,
withered looking but comfortable in his stride
and his shoulders resolutely swaggering
towards recruitment, came up to me as I breathed in
a different town’s air and asked from underneath
his floating pencil gray moustache, which side
of the divide
did I belong?
“Divide”? I enquired, naturally thinking red or blue
or what was it she said, they also play up the road don’t they
in a different colour, or of course this could be a Wirral
I have spent the day with ghosts
and the twighlight
with spectres from a time I never wanted to let go.
I remember you all, I have felt like a bookkeeper in my heart
as each memory grows sepia with time
and the sadness I feel at the names of fallen,
hurt and punish my thoughts, deep
unyielding and untimely ends.
The pain of memory is such that in the light
offered by the shadow of a single forty watt sun
and the dim illumination of a progressive typewriter, begrudgingly
There’s a gig on tonight, do you fancy going?
Should be a sell out, you were lucky I got tickets really.
It’s in my friend’s room across the hall from me, it’s in his self contained flat,
you O.K. with sitting on a worktop and don’t forget if you need to smoke,
you will have to crowd surf across at least a three people sat down
and then watch out for the girl on the ground floor
who likes to catch leavers and ask for photographic evidence
of the set-list so she can write a review of the sound that
…If I had been born a girl,
would I put myself through the pain of later life
or given in to this drill like resonance that courses
through my spine, like a jack hammer gone mad
and which turns my sick to bile and my thoughts
to a looping insanity…
If I had been born a girl…
I would hope I would have even more compassion
than I hopefully am in possession of now,
and be able to forgive even those that are unforgivable in their actions
…Like when the dog farts and stares round for the intruder,
you shift the smell of blame of on your own shortcomings and feverish intent,
on anything that moves within your eyesight and dress your lies in robes of fur
covering the brown stain that appears on your underpants with money well spent.
The Cowering Chihuahuas and possessive Terrier smells just as fragrant
as the keen eyed Labrador leading the blind astray
and yet all are equal to the roundworm that feeds under the skin with skewed slant
There is still so much barbed wire surrounding the air between us,
gnarled and sharpened, it is only seen
when observed up close, through the flawed magnifying qualities
that a camera can capture on full zoom, or perhaps laid across
a piece of clear glass and seen through one eye, half closed, straining to scrutinise
the differences in opinion that has ensnared us, dangerously
and without feeling any empathy.
The barbed wire, svelt snake like, worm thin, scorpion sting,
is laid across mile upon mile of the territory marking out no man’s,
How easy to dismiss the five O’ clock alarm
and avoid by any means the next round of sentry duty,
how easy to roll your eyes, ignore the sound and keep calm
and once more doze in the arms of your chosen daily beauty?
How easy to dispense with the sound of a ticking bell,
the manipulative upstart of the daily uphill steep incline,
the kick starter which places you in Hell
and the sapper of strength, the dispenser of never ending decline?
How easy, I am never sure!
The paint is wet but that does not mean the words on the walls,
written with leisurely pursuit, are wrong.
What was the bitter pill you swallowed to lose the most feminine of truths,
the art of compassion and consideration
for all you serve, or is the serving just for self advancement
the chance to take one for the team by bending over
backwards in the fawning style of a clown, a quick one in
the castle
lobby as you will be remembered for the death and suffering of many.
It was once said in the time of Prince February, the shortest
ruler with the meanest of dispositions, that Tiresias once exposed
the fallacy of droplets of Poseidon’s tears
outnumbering the grains of sand felt between the blue eyes of the tired
and miserable and multiplied
by the grains of sand felt beneath the hooves of the far flung desert camel.
February tossed this so called joke aside, as he wished he could
have done to Tiresias with his all-knowing twinkle in his eye.
“Absurd”, February was prone to mutter loudly as he paced the halls