The Soldier

Keep soldiering on.
Like you've done all your life,
Since you went away and had all those adventures,
you took yourself and her beyond beaches, beyond trenches,
Beyond life: we have it.
You commandeered a life of ours,
steered and sailed into the harbour,
set down a diamond anchor.
I can never properly thank you,
for the life you gave her.

The love you had; the songs you sang,
Must have drowned out the bang, bang bang
in your ears.
Over the years, you wound around
and never made a single sound about the
stamps of feet underneath or above that have taken
your little love and mine.
We won't be fine but at least
we have your strength and your skill
your incredible strong will.
you've had your fill
and until
you feel like you can take no more

I can offer you something, an overture.
I can do her voice, and can conjure her up.

Diamonds and silver and resin and ashes.
Bodily things that we can't feel.
My love for you is an atom bomb of real.
You're a strength.
So we've gone AWOL for a while, but like a true soldier
you'll emerge and soldier on.
Even though the thing you're fighting for is gone,
continue, find a new one: me maybe?

Everyone needs a soldier to protect them.
Everyone accepts help if they need it.
Everyone is an empty flag awaiting an emblem,
A soldier who wishes it was only war he has to revisit.

P.E.K.

He was the man of the family,
forecd, he didn't want to be but he stood up.
A scrappy, curly haired boy who - instead of toys - had
courage.
He hated his father.
Because he didn't know the meaning until
he was one.
His sharp edges, and cellophane words meant he never heard
my cheers on the sideline.
He never knew how proud I was that he was mine.
Fleshy, but retract. If he saw me react,
it was hidden. Two times I saw him
cry.
My dog and his mother, things in him died
those days. Loyalty, responsibility, and love.
He was was like a strong thing that had been given a shove.

And then she went, was gone.
When she went. He strode up towards me,
the hero, the pick-me-up, the Dad I'd needed,
he went on a journey himself, he had to pull
down things that were on a shelf,
picked up stones,
ensured that his children were not alone.
When he walked up that lane
in his leather jacket, arms outsretrched,
I still can't thank him yet. For being my
hero, my Dad, my rock.
If we only have one left, I'm glad it's you, we've got.

Page 3

It's easy to
get change from a pound for a paper.
A pair of tits.
"But if she didn't want to do it she wouldn't"
"She makes loads of money."
"Strippers are canny."
"Come on, love, show us your fanny."
You've paid some money, and you deserve a product.
Let's not be reductive,
she looked seductive so it's - of course - alright.
At a certain time of night you have to expect
to deal with a knob: it's a pretty well paid job.
Like banking...except you won't have
a twat in your glass office visibly wanking.
We've got it better than ever before,
so these "feminists" should stop moaning,
drown out their shrieks with falsified groaning
and shaven havens. Splayed legs.
Let her go to the toilet and mop up your dregs
and you go home for the evening.
Believing it's normal, a stag night tradition.
A screwed up banknote equates to permission,
consent.
It was never your intent but you took it.
Fuck it, it's easy, it's across the counter
like buying a packet of fags,
and aren't they all just slags anyway?
Your missus would never do that,
wave her arse in the face of a gurning twat just for money.
Funny. Isn't it?

Neverland

I imagined myself a pirate;
a sea-conquering villain, instead of a hand I might have a hook.
I imagined sailing to - not Neverland -
but another place where they say
little boys can grow up.
There, they have the time to play
and they don't have to pine for the close of an
endless day.
Canons on pirate ships don't scare me;
They go BANG and a round shiny ball goes up through the air.
People know it's there. Not like the monsters
under our cars, in the streets,
who fight for the joy of inflicting defeat.
For this reason, I understand why
a shaking hand tugged me along
and parcelled me onto this boat.
We're all just trying to stay afloat.
Stay alive.
But an ocean presents a slight
challenge.
It's not like the stories,
but it might have a happy ending.
I'm told I might even make new friends:
that could work for me,
better than lurking in shadows and underneaths.
I could sleep for a while, once we
cross these thousands of miles.

But instead it's over before it began.
The ebb was too rough
and I just wasn't tough enough, a lousy pirate.
Fluttering down,
I don't know yet that in time I'll be spewed onto the sand.
I don't yet understand that
I'll be a martyr, a symbol, a "turning point".
In equal measure, my lifeless corpse will anoint and enrage
on page after page of tomorrow's litter.
It's enough to make you feel a
little bit bitter.
They'll question our motives,
my family's wealth,
my apparent good health is held up: evidence.
We had it okay,
we should have stayed, they say.
I'm clothed and fed and I've ended up dead.
Shame, clearly.
And such a worry that we very nearly ended up
joining those swarms, plagues.
Isn't it our sole intent  to cement
the image of your homeless and soldiers
sleeping under a park bench?
If I were a grown up,
or at least still alive,
I'd ask you why you think we fled..
to survive.
Tied ourselves to an unwelcoming vessel;
huddled but hoping
like limpets slipping off metal.
Even 'opportunists' know their limits.
If you live in a country with some kindness left in it,
you might remain in your home,
instead of washing up on a shingle beach,
a lost boy forever, on his way to Neverland,
alone.

Hero

You're a hero.
At least to me.
You're a watchman, a rescuer, a figure in the window of a lighthouse.
You speak of logic and reason but for a long time
our bond has been like spontaneous seasons.
Glaring sun and suddenly stormy;
tempests couldn't move us, we were that stubborn.
Instead of reality, there was worship, myth and a holograph figment.
You were an idol of my own depiction.
I thought you fell,
but as I got older and wiser as well,
the pedestal became a small step; one you skipped off.
Still, every single time you told me off I
blamed you.
I saw a tarnished knight, but I was jousting with myself.
It was me, my childish fairy tale need
to know who I was, who I wanted to be.
I wanted you to define me; that's easy.
I think I'm still interpreting "me".
Well, you're partially me,
but I have ownership and have gathered insight,
which might help us out.
Whenever we next inevitably fall out,
remember: I love you.
Not the you I imagined and adored.
The one I know is real, warts and all.
And heart attacks, death, slit wrists, cries for help,
they're rungs on a ladder that, in the end,
matters.
The love between us is really all that matters.
We've come this far, why not grow?
Even though you're no Prince Charming, to be honest.
Your lack of tact is
sometimes inordinately alarming but you're mine.
For the foreseeable future, or forever, that will be more than fine.
And now he needs you. More than I do.
Let's not skirt around the issue; some hurts
will take more than a tissue and a whinge.
Like a door that can't open without a hinge, he's shut.
So here's my advice. Tell him once, perhaps even twice
that you love him more than he loves himself.
Take the heavy objects off the shelf and let it hang there,
weightless. Our lives are a mess and you're the rescuer.
Never before has this ever been truer.
Age doesn't mean we don't need you as much.
Please wrap him up in that thing that you have;
this thing that I can't explain, but it crops up when I see your
name on the phone:
"Dad."

There is only this

A scavenger has scraped its way

through the back way when I didn’t notice.

Under the ribs, smashed through the chest,

It tried to forage for a heart that’s not there.

Every artery and stem of me

Alights on the fact that she’s not coming back.

 

There is only this: this absolute and utter opposite of bliss.

Insects crawling over my skull, inside and above,

I am empty, there’s no life left without her.

 

A hermit undercover, why can’t I

say how much I love her and miss her?

Salt on paper, ink blots on letters to ashes.

A blusher brush that smells of perfume.

A top I stole; cling on and hold on.

 

I am not very well. No one can tell

Because I am a good player of hide and seek.

My feelings are in the airing cupboard, in the towels,

Like a word with no vowels, I’m incomplete.

Resources depleted, I am a carcass.

Have nothing left.

 

Childhood

The glass; half empty or half full?
Looking through a magnifier it seems like the dust stands out
but in hindsight it's actually great.
Even in photographs I falsely overcompensated.
The chip told me it would be better when I was older.

Now I'm looking over that shoulder
and I can see that we had it alright.
Better than that.
I've been a little bit of a twat to
say divorce defined me.
Their love underlined us both.

Dad sang us to sleep with tales of rattlesnakes and bugs;
he helped me ride a bike, drive a car,
just recently filled me with air.
He made things appear from behind my ear,
held my nose in his thumb like a magician.
Taught us made-up words and we'd listen intently.
French numbers and swimming.
He taught me about winning.
Lost his religion on the karaoke;
Mr Nereda, my dad, the bee's knees.
Our dog died.
That was the first time I heard him cry.
He made me sausage sarnies, then re-started his life;
met an angel and cleverly made her his wife.
He's worked every day of my life. 
Just now I saw a moving image,
him waving a flower in front of my face
to make me smile as a baby.

Mum was always her.
"Hello, love."
Looking at pictures isn't enough,
so I've gone back to the archives in my head.
And there are so many moments.
Cliffe Castle, Colne, casualty with Dan,
She smelled of Ysatis and Lamberts.
I remember sleeping on clouds.
We played with Magic on a rainy day.
Dan snooker-cueing porcelain dolls and
cutting hair from trolls.
She made us read, made us laugh, made us people.
Christmas with mountains of presents,
mince pies, carrots, the lot.
These are the things I forgot in my
misspent stroppiness.
And in that moving image,
she was with him, waving flowers and feathers
in front of me, in a pram, dressed in pink.
Why didn't I stop and think about a life before forever?

The cup was half empty but brimming
with invisible poison
and I surpassed naïve.
You can't pin a heart onto a sleeve made of glass.
But in a furnace, the glass melts and under pressure it shatters;
I don't suppose it really matters but now I know.

Those days in the past I lambasted:
they were a blast.

Back

There is a sliver of light under the door.
I want to make haste,
but am unsure of the risks.
In the light I must see things as they are;
not from a manufactured “afar” or through a
self-induced fug.

Surely, though, the bright must be better than this,

an unending darkness, and what for?
Memories are scattered all over the floor and the table, burying me
and I’m not entirely able to surface.

Sometimes I think I’ve been swimming

to the shore from the sea but, if anything,
I find myself
on an empty peninsula.

On one side is destruction and on the other:

something I can’t quite see
through binoculars of grief.
From disbelief to sadness and near madness:
I’ve felt it.

In trying to find shelter I realise there is none

 that I can find; I must make it.

Shake and slap myself in the face to sort myself out.

Shout and scream and claw my way back.

 

Clare

I saw you as an enemy.

A threat to him, Dan and me.
You tried so hard and we were awful;
what an absolute mess to scramble into.
Like a wildflower, though, you stuck in there.
Despite a sixteen-year-old bitch with blonde hair.

 Once I ungracefully emerged from adolescence

I could see this “Clare”.
A travelling chick, beautiful and cool;
even with Dad…you were nobody’s fool.
Clever, funny and smart. In the end,
you became my dearest and most treasured friend.

You know me. Because you tried to.

You’re a riverbank that I can cling on to.
A sturdy rock under a waterfall.
When things get too fast, you put on the brakes,
and I don’t always thank you enough.

And of course there’s some stuff I can’t say.

Like now she’s gone, and even before,
I consider you a mother.
Myself and my brother: our hearts would break
if you weren’t here.

Thank you,
thank you for always being here.

H

You watered me when I was wilting.
I was tilting to one side and you propped me up.
You told me not to give up.
so I didn't.
I kept hold of your hand and you shovelled
me into a lifeboat.
Somehow you managed to keep me afloat.
I will never be able to sufficiently say:
"You kept me alive and made me okay".
You're a warm weather forecast.
My present, future and (thank god for my cat) the past.

Bypass

You think I've passed you by
but I couldn't think of anything worse.
However seeing a body in a hearse
brought some truths home.
You are my one and only,
not in a melodramatic way,
but a pedantic "I don't want to be an orphan" way.
We do need to cling on to each other,
but like magnets we sometimes repel one another.
I'm like a lawn you've kept mowing;
you'll never stop owing me a little snip
here and there.
It's control; you don't like that
taken out of your hands because you're strong in every way.
I have bypassed today,
not for want of caring but
for fear of the excruciating pain of
losing someone again.
My love is a stalwart and will not shudder
but the boat beneath me
is lacking a rudder.
You try. Tell me to get by.
My heart, though, is a pressed leaf.
Nothing inside, underneath or beyond
tomorrow.
Apologies are never accepted;
shame a migrant stowaway and disease
that riddles me.
You will never consider me a person,
not a child.
I have so many regrets
and owe debts for the acts and the rants.
Fear like the shadows of spider plants
and plagues of fire ants crawl on me.
Will you ever say "sorry" to me?
Doubtful.
Hateful.
Spiteful.
Selfish.
That's me.
I wish I could show you
the person I've attempted to be.
Come to my place, see my life,
read my letter.
Know your daughter. You might be proud,
if you met her.

Sarah

From the moment we met in Year 7
We were only eleven but
it was abundantly clear
we were friends.
Through storms and other rough weather
we found a way to remain together.
Cherryade and vodka,
little cards, much laughter.
Road trips and sleepovers;
I'd do it again and over.
Spain, beach hut, boyfriends, girlfriend,
wife.
It's been amazing to be part of your life.
But now you have to be strong.
Just like you have been
all along.
A bump in the road.
I'll be your airbag.
Remember all the joys you had.
Keep them rolled up in your pocket,
captured round your neck in a locket
or hibernate them inside your heart.
Soon you will start
to put one little foot in front of the other
and know we will always have each other.
Those memories, they'll make you:
laugh and cry and shout and scream.
You will see him every night in your dreams,
and when you wake up, pick up the phone.
You may not have him, but you're not alone.

Four Years Ago Today

Four years ago today,

your heart stopped and mine broke.

Something about an artery,

but I just think your heart was at capacity.

So they patched you up and fixed you for me.

Four years ago today,

when I realised you’d almost died,

I stopped looking up and started looking inside.

But inside myself I got a little bit lost,

driftwood flung around and tossed about by a tide.

For a while, an intermission.

But your mission has always been to make me strong.

That was your plan, I know, all along.

Four years ago today,

The last four years were just a prediction,

that “minor” affliction,

the scars that you bear

are hallmarks of the strength I hope I can share.

Though I may not show it always,

there are days when if thanking god was my thing,

I’d hypothetically do it.

Four years ago today,

I wished I could run up that hill and go

through it instead of you,

go through something hard

but you made sure I never had to.

Four years ago today,

I lost my faith in invincible,

and in principle I suppose that’s good.

I guess I should stop being that driftwood.

or throw it on the fire, watch it burn

as I try to turn into a grown up.

Four years ago today,

you came back to life,

and now that’s what I need to do.

I breathe and I eat and I sleep and I work,

but it hurts even to blink.

And I think that’s why someone decided

to save you: I need you, although it’s so hard to re-play,

I’m so glad that you lived

four years ago today. 

Daniel

Tail between legs.
Head in a shell,
Skull in the sand.
Prickly spine,
Your pain is mine.

Spray in the face,
Claws out,
Fangs bared,
Standing-on-end hair,
I am still there.

Find your way home.
Follow the cats' lights.
Over the bumps.
Past the sheep dogs.
See your way through the fog.

Know my name.
Know my number.
Whatever it is.
Whenever you phone,
You're not alone.

Dear Mum

The clouds look so harmless, so meaningless
But when they're there, and the sun can't shine through,
I feel you a little bit less.
Dear Mum...
I hope you watched me today,
I tried to let nothing get in the way of my unexpected ambition.
Seeing my dreams come to fruition, though, is nothing compared
to having you here to be able tell you about it.
I am unlearning morse code, it's like going blind,
I have to adjust, change, roll with the times and get used to it.
I feel like you and I are without a conduit.
I went to send you a message,
but is a message still sent if you're not there?
I feel scared, the phone is a reminder
of when you'd tell me to be just a little bit kinder.
Listen, remember, regret.
Repeat.
Look at the photographs, cry, weep, repeat.
The touch points of my life are still in place, milestones still not met
but the memory of your smiling face
stops me like a fox in the road,
scavenging on tatty Polaroids to feed
something that everyone says I should be soon throwing away.
I'm not ready yet to do all that.
Your fingerprints on a glass are the only things I can make last.

Garden

So a garden is new.

It’s so living and everything.

And I have to say thank you.

I have to do all the things

that my feet put in front of the other.

But I’ve lost my mother,

my confidant, my drinking buddy, my friend.

People keep saying this isn’t the end.

But it is, isn’t it? How can it not be?

The funeral, the priest and the ashes.

She’s never going to stroke my eyelashes as she sings me

to sleep again.

I’ve lost my best friend.

Her hands were the same as mine

but cold. She never got to grow old.

Her hair was as golden as ever

and people remember her as something

I never will. She was no ordinary mother.

They say she looked peaceful

but I disagree;

if she’d known this was coming, she would have fought,

put into practice all the things that she taught me.

Fight back. Withstand. Have pride.

Do not keep everything inside.
Ironic.

I look at my shaking hands and remember.

Like shovels. Northern, meant for cold weather.

I’ve never endured a storm like this.

A TV drama with an evil twist at the end.

She would have loved that and recorded it.

That horrid little bastard, travelling upwards.

I wish I could just dissolve it.

Dismantle the thing and absolve the pain that it left behind.

Questions squirm their way out of answers,

flashes of in-car, sun-glittered glances.

Like flashbacks but not as glamourous. I see her face,

In every empty space.

There is so much I’d like to tell her.

Like how we loved her and how much I miss her.

And how despite the distance being there, I still kept hold.

She always said she was getting old.

But she wasn’t; she won't.

But don't doubt:
She was still the most beautiful girl in the room.

The most beautiful bride in the car.

The most wonderful mother there was.

The most dazzling glint in a star. 

MUM

You are the sunshine.

And whenever it comes out I will

stop myself from screaming and shouting

because you didn’t like that.

You always smiled.

You always seemed happy.

And from the moment you held me

you were a constellation for me.

Not just one star, but a collection.

A reflection of you, me, us and stars.

We still don’t know how lucky we are to have known you.

A blast of joy when I saw those numbers

on my phone – you always made me feel less alone.

You were a Catherine Wheel.

Spinning and beautiful and everyone stopped for a minute.

Please let that moment stop with me in it.

Ma, Mum, Little Blackie, Hells Bells, Helen.

Maybe I will never see you again
and if so, I have few regrets.

Maybe that’s as good as it gets. 

Some beacons are brighter than others

Like a silent village on the edge of the sea,

you’ve been there for me through the chops.

And the rough tides,

and all of those sea metaphors.

That’s what friends are for, right?

But generally, they’re not.

I think for a time I might have forgotten how to be…

well, just to be.

 

You didn’t forget me.

 

You were there despite the strife going

on in your life.

Your kitchen and your cat.
You made me feel more important

than all of that.

Remember wine and whinging, bingeing on things

and each other?

Tori and Sia and Kate Bush and another, and another.

Eltham and New Cross and Watford and Torquay.

Where I’ve been, I always want you to be.  

And think of the new things that Tring can bring!

The rhyme is getting ridiculous

but I keep thinking of you, me and us.

On a serious note...

My wonderful, fiery, unstoppable friend.

Pride doesn’t cut it. Love doesn’t either.

You’re my teacher. You have been my stabilisers.

So many hotels and drinks and appetisers. 
Bath robes and hostels, 
fights and hugs...we laugh now about it. 
If you could flout a friendship, I'd flout ours. 

And now we're older, a little less bold in our beliefs, 
but we are secure in the knowledge we'll 
have a you and a me,
and a suitcase full of memories. 

Brother

At first it was small,

then it grew into a person that was you.

A pillow over the face, Magic taking flight,

some unremarkable days

and clutched-up nights.

The fights you used to manufacture with a stuffed elephant.  

Me kicking out, acting the witch.

You, who would never lie.

Somehow thirty years have gone by.

Pride and anger and love and frustration:

a repertoire that stretched from Devon to London
could never get the

way I feel about you spot-on.

In Torquay, you slashed the hair from my trolls.
I cut the wires of your toy and

we started fires when we became friends.
Later, a fist through a car window…
and other things. You worried them,
and you worried me.
Some flames are best left to burn out into embers,
but please remember not to revisit:
fighting is not the best way to pretend she's not gone.

You didn't know your own strength then.
You still don't.It’s strong to start again;

even more so a number of times.

You’ll always be fine, because you have the

best of those two and maybe a little of me.
Now show us that person we knew you would be all along.

Pierre and Mr Twit taught you to be clever and kind to others.  

I admire my brother.
 

He’s a friend, and that thing they brought home, in the end

might be okay.

The Bird and the Sea

The Bird and the Sea

Like a migrating bird, she flew to the city one winter.

One more adventure she thought,

One more flight path to valiantly venture.

There was cooking and cleaning with meaning, not much money

Isn’t it funny?

A jarful of ordinary days and fleeting nights have somehow patch-worked themselves into a precious memory.

In time, she settled.

Made a nest.

Embellished it with trinkets and the rest.

Red walls and chipped laminate floors.

Revelries, near-misses and flags on the doors.

Shiny pint glasses lifted from pubs; we were light-fingered and light-souled.

And we joked of growing old together.

And then the coastline came inland for a visit.

Almost like a tidal swell.

I liked him as well.  

He was good enough;

Not just for anyone but

for her. Which is no mean feat.

After all, he had me to defeat.

Then I saw the bird and the sea become one.

Happiness seemed like just something to be done; the in-thing.

You’d think it would bother me: losing my sidekick, my love, my partner in crime.

But in time the coastline also became mine.

A familiar friend within the space of a mere weekend.

And so a funny kind of existence began to become.

My friend found a sea view without realising she’d needed one.

Then looking out of the window became a journey.

Venturing further, the coast and the sea and me

went our separate ways but kept hold of the twine that had sewn our time so defiantly together.

Until another winter years later, on a river,

the dirty, snaking path back to our beginning;

he said he’d always be with her.

First post...

This is a big step...publishing or even sharing my poetry wasn't something that entered my mind until very recently. I was asked to read something at my best friend's wedding and, as an English teacher and long-time secretive writer, I decided to put pen to paper. The reception at the reception (!) was something I didn't expect and made me imagine that maybe I'm not so bad at this poetry stuff. So here it is. A lot is personal - as good poetry, I believe, should be - and all of it is up for appraisal. I don't pretend to be technically adept or even accomplished in my writing. I just write what I feel is right, and am partial to a bit of internal rhyme!