The fence is falling down.
The panels groan,
Well above the evening news.
–
It’s flexing with the tide,
Of the brand new coastline,
That now cuts through the street.
–
I wrote a thread on Twitter,
To try and prop it up,
And stuck my insecurities around the posts.
–
I voted for the Fence Fixers,
But they kicked the neighbours out,
And the fences still fall down.
A shout out to the dreamers,
—Baked beaners.
Street sweepers, full-beamers.
Butchers, bakers and candlestick cleaners.
From the corporate marketing Zoom callers,
To a vaguely defined group of consumers.
We’ll take your cash but ease the pain,
With dramatic cadence and cliché.
Speed it up—
…slow it down.
Make it all feel more profound.
And ground your words in humble roots,
With clear-skied shots of Northern towns.
Appeals to phoney wartime spirit,
Mixed with local dialect—
“Make us a cuppa and a proper brew”—
And general fear of the internet.
Covid, back to work,
A bit about too many phones,
Every day heroes, sepia tone shots of
Yer da skipping stones.
Syntax, swapped to force a rhyme.
Break of scheme to hammer home poignant messaging.
So get out, switch it up, change the world!
With your friendly, local [insert here].
Give us your fucking money.
Or we’ll endear you even more.
“Maybe this isn’t something new,
But, persisting, what will always be:
Drifting in and out of view,
The limits of humanity.”
Find me at the edge of the yard.
Just some body, nearby to that
Neat, still burning constellation.
–
Curling leaves shuffle in the wind,
Circling the well-kept stones before
Trending towards the crude border.
–
Beneath the proud, silent branches
They found a plot for aching bones,
Wrapped up in their ancestral mud.
–
Now, as then, the ground they walk on.
“A friend of this family”:
Words that injure this offbeat plot.
–
Calloused hands that worked in service
To those callous and pedantic hearts,
Kept close to bare the weight of myths.
–
So speak aloud the fading name,
Worked into the moss-wearing stone
When it still stung the hearts of men.
–
Listen to the ringing church bell,
Whose sound barely touches humble ground
Here, at the edge of the yard.
He wanders in an empty field;
Firm ground
Stood at the edges of modernity.
–
The air itself breathes deeply,
Then exhales,
As though returning home.
–
The magpies hop across the ground,
Silently dignified,
He salutes this stately parliament.
–
This is the religion he has picked.
Passed on
By the corrupting mouth of man.
–
That trivial rhyme, a song of insecurity,
Pulls on the tether
Back to the past we care to imagine.
–
So there, in an ancient silence,
He prays
To tame his galloping mind.
–
Watch him at the altar,
Firmly grounded,
Outside of modernity.
You laughed, when you tripped
And fell. Then I did too;
Fostered by concern.
Some crudely drawn anatomy
On the cast; a silent apology.
The comedy of affection.
–
You laugh to broach
The intimacy. A fragile body
Submits to a sympathetic
hand. That mends with
Irreverence and Sudocrem;
Sheepishly applied
–
I laughed, as I brought up
The tray of food that day.
You, wrapped up in blankets.
Me, in a pinefore.
“Your breakfast is served!”
A giggle infected by a groan.
–
I laugh
Less, when the pain lingers.
“Don’t be so hysterical,”
You grin. To regulate my
Anxiety. No better treatment
Than levity in heavy conversation.
–
You laugh, when I say
“What will I do?”
“Rather me than you.”
Drifting down the hall you say,
“No worse than a fall!”.
Outshining the halogen bulbs.
–
You laugh but it didn’t take,
At first. The ward is silent
This time of night. And against
The fading evening light
We beam at each other.
And laugh.
It was not Cupid’s Arrow
That struck him down.
It was Cupid’s IV drip.
A prick to deliver the sustenance
he needed to go on.
–
The slow trickle of feeling.
A steady dosage of affection,
Sensibly prescribed,
That writhes atop his skin
Like morphine.
–
It wasn’t Cupid’s arrow
With all it’s vulgar sharpness.
It was Cupid’s Anadin.
Take two in the morning
And blunt those human pains.
–
It wasn’t Cupid’s arrow
Tearing a golden wound.
It was Cupid’s suture,
Knitting back together
The gaping relics of
A life, till then, misspent.
Don’t you miss the 319?
The brutish sound of steel on steel.
A soulful choir’s roars and squeals,
That promised dreams beyond this line.
–
The narrow paths between the seats,
Coughing dust and worn threadbare.
The long nineties and Tony Blair,
Haunt the patterns of the fleet.
–
Doors beeped the same emphatic beep,
To much more brash, emphatic boys,
Who talked above the warning noise
That now just wards away their sleep.
–
We laughed across the table tops;
Youth carried through old England’s green.
It promised things we’d never seen
And led dreams towards their final stop.
–
I wait beside the busy tracks.
A ghost of that receding time,
Kept here by the yellow line
That never lets you back.
06/01/12
Let’s welcome in the new year.
They swing the door open wide.
I’m yanking at the handle.
Close that fucking door.
I’d prefer to stay here.
At the edge of the universe.
In the twilight hour.
Where memories dance in the cool air.
Don’t let the fireworks stop.
Aim them at the sleeping sun.
I like to look back.
At all those things we’ve done.
The new year is a new mountain.
It’s a grisly truth.
It’s the bully in the film
Who the hero backs into.
He’s behind me, isn’t he?
But if I never turn around,
I never get the knuckle sandwich.
We kissed under the mistletoe.
Then at midnight.
Then we are abstinent,
For eleven months.
Kiss me twice at midnight,
And say that I can stay.
Not at your place.
But in this moment.
I found love on Naked Attraction
Between the arse crack of a stranger. See,
The faintest glint of destiny
Unhindered by our clothes.
–
The pattern wrapped ‘round her upper thigh
She has dedicated to Mum’s mortality.
The heart-shaped human tragedy
Inked on tender skin.
–
The patterns etched ‘round her hardened wrist
She has no choice but to keep them now
And take each glance and furrowed brow
In rediscovered stride.
–
They say that she’s wearing nothing, but
She scratches at the fabric
Of the overcoat that’s woven
From insecurities.
–
My civilised brain tells me that I
Should protect this injured modesty.
But I’m taken by the honesty
In everything I see.
Uncultured Review 