Christmas: a sonnet

Kindness is spreading like a virus.
It passes quickly through the winter town.
In this season, me has become us
as if the world’s riches were running out.
There is chaos in the sales hall
in the perfume shop, a near riot.
Drawn like insects to the gaudy mall
in strange dances, we jostle and thrum
through the cells of the multi-coloured hive.
We slide, hum and collide, busily
clutching our packages, our love.
Are we asleep or more keenly alive?
It is a play in which we know our part.
A ritual of the altruistic heart.

Peckham Rye Common – a winter's night

The road is clogged with frozen hope
A red light blocks our path
Air touches us, ice-fingered
A bus is slewed across the hill

Sometimes, I want to explode
Stuck, like now,
In tightly-coiled anxiety
Impeded by others’ stubbornness

It is my life, not theirs
The road should be clear
No red light, no snow
No fear of what might be

I want to implode, in your arms
I want us to be wrapped in a ball
Like a long, slow swallow dive
Into a calm, emerald sea

Visiting my father, Kidderminster

If I wrote a poem now, it would be a peaceful one

Your hands like parchment, skin too large
In the Victorian hospital

Eyes turned in, jaundice yellow

Wisps of hair snowier than I recall

There is bristle on your chin

I have never seen that before
Shaving was your daily pride

Liquid leaks from your lips

I can't even drink a cup of tea

Oh dear, oh dear Will, you repeat

As if expressing a minor surprise

At this life, in the poor house
And your body's inexorable decline

Your talk, as ever, is of houses and schools

Am I a snob, do you think?

No dad, you are merely a man of your time
You define yourself by questioning

I know I made mistakes. I can't do anything about them

It doesn't matter, I say; so did I

You are inert, on a cage-like bed

That ripples like a lake, turned to the side
The television, an electric storm

An elephant under a blanket

Your stomach, a whale mound

To you the green wall is white, like heaven

Sometimes, you see people moving behind it
You do not know if you are awake or asleep
You are staying here tonight, aren't you

Sorry, dad, no. I saw you, that night, reaching through the wall

He was nice, my father, James Leslie

Thanks for telling me. It's a bit late now
You never explained his story

You didn't meet him, did you

No, he died before I was born

You showed me his house. The stump of the cedar

That he planted, cut to the ground
He was the mayor of his town, a substantial man

We saw his garden, where chickens scratched

The privet hedge encircling his world

That was the life you seemed to want

The hedge, the tree, the detached house

The neat certainties of a small town

Sometimes, you achieved them. But you moved
Always, to start again – afraid to succeed

Was it merely to frustrate your mother's wishes?

She was a snob, I think. You refused
To acknowledge her, you were merely dutiful
But still, you could have been happier

Another hospital. Tea dribbling from your mouth

Winter in Peckham

The wind that lifts the polythene

Combs the hair of the willow trees

Playfully, it tosses packets

It drives grey pillows across the sky

And pushes a child onto the bus

The wind throws a Mexican wave

Through nature's stadium

In earth's colours, yellow and brown

In a promise of renewal

For our world, it was ever thus

We are surprisingly nonchalent

As the wind teases the shopping street

Toying with flags, turning our wheels

Busily piling the dead leaves

Choosing, though it can, not to harm us

Nottingham

My veins are full of coffee, not blood

I feel wired but dog tired.

The students on the campus look so young.

To them I am merely a delegate –

a suit: Mondeo man.

Lost in Nottingham in my car

I re-trace a fragmentary past–

the Albert Hall, the wall of Wollaton Park

Denman Street, off Radford Boulevard

where my dad bought cheap towels.

Who will remember these drab streets that formed me –

the ripe blackberries

the Hemlock Stone

and my mountains – the Bramcote Hills?

No-one. I am the last of my line.

There is a greyness in this midlands town

that even the sun does not expunge.

Hope and melancholy alternate.

I am at one with the swaying poplars

the factory chimneys and the clouds.

Bilborough Grammar School

Gulls wheel over the fields

And boys, with their trainers and low-slung bags

Slouch down to the gate

We carried haversacks – remnants from the War

Green from the army, blue the RAF

It's good to see that slouching has endured

Baggy clothes and, written in Gothic script,

The names of the latest bands

Where my school was, a college now stands

Themed for learning, it is all angles and curves

Like a high-tech shopping mall

Students mill around

The playground is gone – playtime how quaint

Games of football with an old tennis ball

Weirdly, at the edge of the site, is an estate of ‘executive’ homes

New and strange, like a clump of mushrooms

I recall Balloon Woods, Strelley village

Cross-country runs we were forced on

I bet they don't do that now

Iron filings heaving in my chest

Sketching graves in an old churchyard

The green, moss-covered walls

I can just make it out – the touchline where we watched girls

Strange, distant creatures, to me they still are

Wollaton Hall stands out

A turreted chateau, improbably close

The scrubby fields where the old pit was

More memories – experiments with gunpowder

Those strange, disreputable magazines

I feel, in one way, like the slouching boys

In another, like an old soldier

On a battlefield that barely survives

As I re-trace my cycling route from school

I recall, precisely, the pebble-dashed houses

And the faux-rustic street names

Inside, I am a boy on his bike

These streets were my patch, my Serengeti

I arrive, finally, at the house

Where I left childhood

Number one, Burnbreck Gardens

It is a brick villa, modest yet somehow smug

Pleased with its social status, its neat walls and its privet hedge

That was my bedroom window

The walls ice blue, the ceiling chocolate brown

Strange colours for a child

Roasting meat, joints of home-grown weed

King Crimson, the Moody Blues from my sister's room

Those are my memories of that house

Where am I?

You awake with a groan and cry out
Four-thirty, the light seems exhausted. I am tired.
It must have been like this before she died.
A sickly half-light, between night and day
My mum loving you, but ill
You head-strong, needy, self-absorbed.

These days, you are more like a plant than a man
Existing, ingesting food, turned to the light
Your crosswords and Telegraph are gone.
You are half-blind. The white stuff does not work.
Music does not reach you any more
Except to make you cry.

You are more distant than you have ever been
But closer. A configuration of needs, like a child.
Your needs are my needs. I respond.
You are my dad. But do I love you?
I have glimpsed your opaque world
As we watched old films and drank tea.

It is fragmentary ­– a scorched album
Leaves charred, tumbling in the wind.
You placed no value in your own narrative
Life did things to you. You did not complain.
But each hurt you turned inside.
You were a stoic. A solipsist.

In the night, you make sounds.
They are inhuman, like an animal trapped.
You do not know where you are. Or do you?
You do not know those who love you.
You are isolated. In your own world.
But then, you always have been.

Stories, companionship, the fellowship of friends
These were the things of your wife.
You did not need them.
Everything you could not see did not exist.
Even your own needs.
No wonder my mum loved bright colours.

She kept going. You barely noticed her.
You groan. Where am I?
In the house you forced us to live in, dad.
It is cheerful now. We have done our best.
You do not see the colours that we make.
The house is your tortoise shell.

Warehouse

Four-thirty. A grey light.
You awake with a groan.
You do not know where you are.

You are half-blind.
You live in shadows
These days, you barely exist.

I have glimpsed your world
Charred leaves blowing in the wind
An old album, pages torn out.

As you sit for hours
The days and nights blur
Years go by. Dark and light.

Stories and friends.
And hopefulness in small things
These were the things of your wife.

Crosswords, the Telegraph
Your moods, your needs.
She was your life.

The eye clinic June 15 2009

Come this way, said the nurse.
Which way? I can’t see.
Well – imagine
The patients, with their tumbling grey hair
Arranged in pastel rows
Their relatives close by.
There are questions in their staring eyes
Eyes that search but do not see.
Eyes that squint ambiguously.

Through the window observe
The improbably layered clouds
In logic-defying shapes
The symphonic sweep of the park
In emerald, sapphire and aquamarine.
The world is such a delight,
Look at it. Oh you can’t.
Well, picture it.

It is your language, not mine.
It’s better than nothing, don’t you think.
Now, come into the cataract suite.
It is lovely, the walls are pink.
Language is a miracle, like sight.
It is our Oracle
Through it, we learn, perceive, describe.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth
And the earth was without form and void
And darkness was upon the face of the deep
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light
And he could see.

Then there is sound.
The mystery of a minor chord
The thwack of a tennis ball
The crunch of tyres on gravel
A child calling you name.
I want to see them.
Hush, do not use your words
You may need them
And besides, I am your eyes.

Repitition

The spring manifests and

Recklessly we pass

Each year, down the

Same green parade

It is a miracle

The blue eyes of borage

The candles of leaves

The shooting grass

The sun's feathery touch

And the scented air

Bring us eternity

Each year. The same.

Monday 2 February 2009

A message is falling from the sky

You don't have to go to work

Outside, the world has fallen asleep

Snow fogs sound, time and place

People are muffled like eskimos

Cars float, in an alien environment

Other barriers have dissolved

Children, we have lost our everyday face

The snow is a licence to escape

Amazed by the harsh, kindly light

We humanise the soft, sharp flakes

And decorate them – our likenesses

Welcome Break Services, M40

Red and white lights
Dark sky. Heaving clouds
A sense of terror
Us and the great unknown

In the services
Under a great arc of tubes
Bustle and noise – ceaseless movement
Here, a sense of vertigo

Your face is hard. There is no softness
Impatient, like your mum
Out of sympathy, yet wise

So, there is this noise and scurrying
And the innefable –
That which cannot be described
Which terrifies me more?
The sky, or the inside?

Streatham Ice Rink

Learning how to skate requires
An act of faith that you
Are not going to collide

The chipped concrete and scuffed paint
Are a makeshift world
Neither inside nor outside

Being afraid is what makes
My arms flap and windmill
And this causes me to fall

The fear is self-fulfilling
I am waiting to crash
Just as I have done before

Children do not know this dread
Of an unknown future
Graceful and elemental

They circle the shining lake
There is nothing in front
As they pirouette and slide