A map of loneliness

I am occupying an empty square.

I am living where no-one goes
willingly in the game of Monopoly.
My soul is in the Old Kent Road.

Anxious dreams normally wake me
when you are taking the children to school.
Solitaire is the game for me:
I can't play tennis – or pool.

There is no-one to counter or to check
my scores on the Scrabble board.
No-one to make a meal for
or to challenge my double word.

On the Essex coast, later this year
walking along the cockle shelf
I will harvest some memories
but I will keep them to myself.

I could go on my own to see a film
I might know what happens next.
But, the thing is, who would I tell?
I have no-one to Skype – or text.

No cards are ever hung up.
There are no contacts in my phone.
Easter and, especially, Christmas
go unnoticed. I spend them alone.

A note from Ulysses

My best days are in shadow

the oars are folded and my sea bag

lies with spiders in the hall.

Why did I want to be a hero?

On days bright with promise

the water was so blue

the future was ahead of us

we watched as the sun hit the prow.

My best days are behind me now

the boxes and ropes that coil

are all that is left from my adventure.

Why did I want to be a hero?

Ageing

In those days, climbing into the loft

I rose vengefully to do battle.

I was up that ladder like a monkey.

To the rubbish dragon I was Parsifal.

I smote him but he never went away.

Like coral in a subterranean sea

each day he grew, glowing faintly.

The beast was feeding on my energy!

Eventually, the cunning creature won

a final and overwhelming victory

like the Panzers in the Ardennes.

His cloak of darkness folded over me

and I fell victim to his necromancy

in the final conquest of gravity.

Hayes Street Farm

Is it nostalgia or memory
that guides me to the stables and sheds
rusting machines, the mountains of baled straw?

At the city’s edge is an economy
where chickens can wander freely.
Once, everywhere was like here.

Maybe it’s the stories of my father
that I remember. But I often feel
that I have been here before

fixing up an old tractor
bailing hay with a pitchfork
or picking up windfalls for cider.

I follow a sign to the car boot sale.
These days, one field is a car park
another's harvest are terrible MPs

broken clocks and old crockery.
What pleasures linger in this detritus.
picked over by crows and magpies.

Perhaps I can find the perfect way
to learn Spanish, a flower pot
or a useful tool for pennies.

Fringed by hawthorn and elder 
a rutted track is drawing me
to the farm pond; its hidden treasure

strangers brought from some wilderness
bright fish, like fragments of sky
lending the dusk their icy brilliance.

Clown and doll

Once there lived an orange clown
in a white house on a hill.
The puppet man who ruled the world
spied his foe, the china doll.

‘They’re going after Jefferson

one day they will get me too.’

He shouted at at the hapless toy

‘And so you Goddam freak: fuck you!’

The doll’s skin was like porcelain

his pursed lips like a cupid’s bow.

He liked to taunt the harlequin

on who would rule the puppet show

‘Your words don’t mean shit to me

or your fucking rodeo.

Fuck your white supremacy

I’m gonna fucking kill you bro.’

The angry clown snarled back in pain.

‘Now I’m getting mad,’ said he.

‘Your word are very threatening.

It’s me who who runs this nursery!

‘I’m gonna make it bad for you

hotter than Kardashian

meaner than a rattlesnake

with fire like you’ve never seen!’

The harlequin laughed maniacally.

‘Whose the fucking loser now?

Come on boys, let’s lock and load.

Seriously, we’re good to go.’

The china doll was calm and still

despite the wailing sirens' sound

heaping morsels on his plate

hidden safely underground.

He did not fear the puppet man

or his weird orange glow.

He listened as a city burned

in a bunker far below.

Gravity

Please do not blame me for being old.
My life just happened, like gravity.

The apple that falls from the tree

slowly loses its brilliance.

Each moment should be savoured and yet

it is good for us to remember

that the past is actually still there.
and that the mind chooses what to forget.

How we feel now is how we felt –

wet fur, the scent of lavender

the leather and dust of an old car

are offered on time’s conveyor belt.

unburdening us from mere chronology.

The present lives in our memory.

Please do not blame me for being old

Please do not blame me for being old.
The apple falls from the tree.
It just happened. It was like gravity.

Once, spinning in euphoria
I rode on everything.
The horizon did not interest me.

My years are like your seconds.
Decades passed. It was not meant.

You rise, slowly, to the top
of the Big Dipper. And then ... the descent.

While I was not looking
my life seemed to fall away.

The sounds and colours that are strange to you
once were a novelty

Please do not blame me for being old.
It just happened. It was like gravity.