Half-Whole

I brought you back with all the Christmas presents,
and I intended for it to be
an interruption to me and my routine
but you've sat and accompanied me
through my life, lately.

You do the dishes, pack the bins
and take them out.
You and I have nothing, any longer,
to argue about.

I have never felt more pride. Pride has battered
my care for threads and dust.
In the pale gray light of day, it's still us.
My brother, your sister,
Of course we cling on because we both miss her.

Love infintismal. Call and I'll
listen to you. Always. 

When you went away
to interview for your future, I was scared
you'd bolted.
Tears revolted
from the eyes that have seen you on the sofa
like a well-timed cup of tea.
You - without knowing - have comforted me.

He's a strong, slumbering, generous soul.
He's my brother. The only half that fits my .one half of a whole.

Yellow and Green

I saw you last night.

You wore faded green, an oversized jacket. And you came through

the door of my childhood home as if back from the shops.

I leapt on you. As if I knew, in my sleep, it might

be the last time.

And this was the first time I’ve felt happy in such a long time.  

Golden and feather-soft, your hair against my cheek.

I didn’t feel like crying, but to speak?

That might ruin it.

You looked at me, laughed and said something like “I know, love. I died.”

Such a ridiculous joke,

we chuckled together inside my faraway mind.

Like we were looking back on an old feud, or chatting about

a petty friend. We were above this. It didn’t have us nailed.

Suddenly co-conspirators in the grand mischief and trespass we were doing –

We had stepped over the real-life line to deride silly death.

Fooling everyone!

You lifted me -- this woman-girl -- like a baby.

When you barged through the threshold, the green wooden door,

you barged your clumsy way back to me; the way you used to be.

Not that body, or long absence, or those heavy heavy ashes.

This was not the greying memory of

my mother who thrashed out of my life too soon.

You wore green and the light through the window

meant a late summer evening. I smelled the hose pipe and heard the footsteps on the gravel.

Us in the midst of some glittering dust.

Just the two of us.

 Pale yellow and green;

Those were the pastel shades of my dream.

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."