When I was young I would play with my brothers on the grass and my white socks would turn green We would be outside until the windows were yellow with light and the sky was black You couldn’t see the ball until it hit you in the mouth and you needed mum In the evening and night you couldn’t see her flowers so there was no damage and that was just as well If we stay out I will keep on throwing and my hand will hurt but I won’t mind
The city is my life support But I am not from here, perfectly plucked Placed in this bed of flowers I am a resident, not a citizen My growth, exists to make others Busy doing the important work Happy to see the green things Are still here holding on They came and in the name of God Took my home whilst I slept Your holy city, not mine I no longer belong Now I watch my cause Stolen by others Burn, turn to rubble All around me Why did fate lead me here With no place To love or Return? As if trapped In a bed of flowers Dislocated From home
To be made the day must break only light can cut the dark. Left behind, splinters of white haze blanket the cool ground, hovering debris the only sign something else was here. Seconds pass the sun sees that it ends. The gifts of this half way between night and day vanish, the low orbit air of night replaced. I wish it would return I know it won’t. People come from their houses into the dawn; one, two, three now all at once school, work cars, bikes moving I hear a train in the distance doing things sweeping up bodies as it goes. We begin, anew in the light of day that pierced the sky of it’s dark
The edges of your yellow brown from the autumn disembark, one by one floating with indecision one way then the next I know you want to stay next to all you have known to be right and safe your place It is here now in the beauty of this perish, in the elegant sway of decent Your only choice surrender forget your pride let go hand yourself to greater things and be lost in the echo beneath
Beaten by what we know but don’t see swirls of air somehow over years of standing still gave you that rubbery face Rich red, cracking chunks breaking, running up and down wrapping what’s hidden inside your cloak A wink. You’ve watched me follow these tracks before my young face, swift gait, fast pace driven So was he. My mothers dad, tall with a downward gaze skin like rubber that told stories of good and bad of things never spoken now seen He once had a chest experience harder fought than mine his badge, that with age, withdrew replaced by kindness to a world he’d forced his way through You remind me of him, perhaps hidden inside of you he is there, watching me as I pass on by and the sun drifts across the sky
Roots tumble From the brown Bathing her feet Into finer health Now she’s up Climbing above the eyeline Roots born From the brown Revealed by a tide gone now To the distant lake Further than can be reached Or returned Roots work Preparing her with What she needs Against the forces Of wither and Weather Roots break And bow Their fragility known Only to those Raising their toes From the dirt Roots cave When their grip has been Lost Fingers powerless to hold The coming and going Endless holding Roots stretch Under sodden silt For wealth We are blind to Singing Under us Roots search For answers that go Years forgotten Now upturned Bereft To the air
I see you now Twisting and turning in your bed A green felt, that in the light of day Savours the Sun’s breath The moment breaks and your foilage Still, until caught by wind Bellows the sound of waves Crashing upon the shore I remember life before, the small house Sandwiched between forest and sea I was too young to know you then Too old to embrace you care free A boy full of lust and longing Spikey hair and new shoes If we’d met then as we do now I would not have been any less lost Though I sense you will escape me Off into the glittering sky When for a moment It was only us Your gentle arms Onto care for another Who when they were younger Forgot to look up
Nothing glides upon thinly cut water sheet Not a young bird washing their fresh belly Or hovering flies at its fickle edge Or the timid fox nervous at night Some rest for those under the surface at last The slice that keeps two worlds apart Secrets now shut under deepening ice — The day limbers from its early rise Shoots stay clenched in their fist Twigs hang onto their aching branch It isn’t long What’s hidden will soon flirt With the coming of sun Of hope — Now it rushes with undivided mite Into a new blue, light White ice, gone, now the sound of Circling wings sing and the crisping air Reveals truth Song The coming of life
Your orange eyes are all I see when I think of Firm ice holding Your shape For it will end To melt is to know How it was to play In the winter cold Surely it is better To have sticks for arms Than to have lived Without them Though your time is brief It must be worth Joy Made You will topple and tumble To a puddle Regular and Ordinary But you will have lived Come and gone Your swift Gift
It arrived under cover of night A blanket of white as if to hide With a layer of gentle ice Misgivings from the day gone Washed away by a sea of bright Eyes blink and squint with light Better suited to summer days Of sun and fun and yellow Layers of sun kissed snow Hold events passed beneath For a brief time I will forget and play As the sound of children wake me A new world for morning As the sun rises and begins to chip And the chilly snow drips From the day Not before long or delay White turns to grey to black And back to its state of Wet cold and frozen air As if by magic this day Returns to its usual way Without snow or play We will wait
