It was the most simple of questions
but one shrouded in mist
and complications,
like the no 53 bus making its
way down the Stanley Road in
unbearable fog, inching forward,
the tyres considering their way slowly
as the driver peered through the window
screen, his passengers wary of what lays
beyond the squeaky door
and the broad panic
as the mist devours the familiar.
“Can I buy you a drink”, she asks,
the sincerity in her voice catching
me off guard for a moment
She shifted her weight back and forth,
the black opaque tights
her mother made her wear that morning
because they looked nice underneath the pencil
skirt, shimmering
against the September sunlight
and as she looked despairingly at her dead phone,
the battery having been forgotten to be charged
overnight,
she began to become anxious, desperate and fidgeted
to the point where putting money into the thin slot
became somehow a sign of alien ignorance
but she never once lost her ability to keep the legs beneath her worry
Welcome to a vision of Hell,
an image in the public gaze
of the country with its reputation
for fair play and stance against fascism
and all things abhorrent, a country
that stood firm against the most evil man
and the tidal wave of black and to whom
decency for the most part was as inherent
as a love for a cup of tea at four in the afternoon,
and now is caught in the mire of selfish gain
offered by a weasel to a cornered mouse.
I remember my first day
and the grey jumper of differing sizes
and snot stained cuffs
to which I was then tied throughout
my seven years at Moor Green
was one in which I met you
and forty years later I still
think you’re pretty cool.
We stood side by side in class
and in the playground, though I had further to travel
as we didn’t move to Selly Park
till the days when the Four Seasons
sang of a decade before and my first game against
She removed the breadcrumbs from the base
of her fingers with what to some
would have been just the casual flick
of a an irritating itch easily quelled
by the simplest of caresses
but having watched her sullen expression
take root and a mean glaze searching
for the right level of disgust
as she destroyed the turkey sandwich on rye
as though it was the last edible substance on Earth,
I saw her flick her fingers dry of the small
leftover fragments as if she was brushing
We shall overcome.
We shall overcome
the cold and damp, the rain and bitterness,
the silver dagger and bullet
of hidden abuse that gets hurled our way
and we shall stand tall whilst all around us
kicks us whilst we are down
and all because one hand reached out
through the despair
and one set of eyes didn’t see us as
a problem to be swept away
and one pair of ears listened;
for we shall overcome.
We shall overcome.
We shall overcome
because
The beat provided by the laptop on stage
needed two men to seemingly
twiddle the knob
and press the bells
in which the girls came tumbling down
towards the front and make the monitors
and speakers blush and have
the onlookers either look
on in amazed silence at the agility
and flexibility
of the main girl as she taught
the boy who caught her eye
just how to make love
without touching skin
or making the bed in the morning,
the awkwardness of Saturday
It is into the kindness of strangers
that I must thank
after rescuing me
from the dizzying black haze that
swept vigorous broom like
over me on the night I fell out
of my chair down Florrie Maybrick’s Bold Street.
I have had hardly been out on my own since…
For the fear, for someone who is only afraid
of one thing, of such a tumble,
such anarchy in the mind
as the battle rages between
blood and bone,
between sinew and breath,
My right eye bled
and I could not fight back,
if I had, I may have ended up
in a worse condition, one that
surely would have had me
as close to death
as the day my appendix
no longer grumbled
and instead shot poison
into my system almost to the point
of no return.
My body stretched out like dough
being rolled out to make bread
for the hungry teens
on Cooper School field
and my battered face, sharp elbow dented
Let the cameras roll
and show the world our happy side,
a side show to the main event
in which tonight we shall ever be
the star with a smile and
the director of our final moves
caught on film
and like some great old movie
in which the heroes jump
out at the end and go
determined to be seen
as with guns blazing
we shall not hear the word action
over the roar of the crowd.
A good friend of mine once said