You are the modern example
of the Playboy whose morals took a long, lingering hike
one summer’s day in the Midlands
and you smiled at all as the cream sat proudly upon your lips
like a tomcat on heat and the hand
stayed shuffling and straightening, readjusting in your pocket.
Ah but you thrilled all with tales of money spurned
and like a poorly run casino you kindly splashed out
on things to keep the bloated creature named economy
happy, sated and desired as it kept you
Now that I’m older, still dying my hair
With many fears about why and how.
Will you still be sending me books on crime
Poirot, Marple, even Harry Lime?
If I’d not phoned till quarter to three
Would you have a search party at my door?
Will you still need me, no need to feed me
Now your 64?
I am older too
And because you brought me into the world
I will forever love you.
I was never that handy mending your clothes
The poisoner of the well is never
satisfied until he has
murdered the whole village.
If he could, he would add to the venom that seeps, multiplies,
grows in strength and adds to the imbalance of his impurity,
his lack of moral conviction and toxin fuelled hatred for others well being
by unzipping his fly and with great relish, untangling the so called beast
and piss in the drinking water.
The deep yellow nasty smell that he insists is not there,
the unnatural toxin
that runs through his own veins and makes his flesh burn
Middle Age I have found to be a painful reminder
of melancholy memory. I tell myself that I am not old,
nor scared of what is to come, the hurt of loss, the fragility of kindness,
that I have these greying bags under my blue eyes not because I am tired,
exhausted with continuous running and pulls on my time,
nor wish for a deep dreamless sleep every night
in which nightmares are also kept at bay without the aid
of a chain of garlic slices hung around my fattening neck,
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,
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,