Category: END OF LIFE

Addlestone Crossing

~ Mike Bell ~ Leave a comment

There to see my father,
propped-up in a polished box,
one that my eldest brother,
chose, on the basis of, what?

Death was still too sour to us,
the parlour’s air throat-clogging,
this feared place of passing youth,
ten yards from the level crossing:

Often halted by its turned gates,
and scoured spin of wheels,
on our way in and out of town,
with Dad, and his thousand skills:

he could dissect a battleship,
break apart any gun,
extemporize upon anything,
with sketch, and rule of thumb.

Now boxed-in, he tarried,
we’d leave him, lonely, there:
my brother could not stand
the shop’s execrable despair:

In that time, almost gone,
I learnt about death’s prop:
that last lesson from my father,
our paths no longer crossed.

Dad & Frank Zappa

~ Mike Bell

 

I have never enjoyed cold tea.
You know that slop-dreg inch,
lukewarm, tipped into the sink.
My dad drank gallons of it,
with swigged slurp – his sound.

By God, he could drink it hot!
Gulped down, necked red-raw,
followed by a Silk Cut drag,
until the throat cancer stuck,
and he coughed it all up.

Was it the bloody cigarettes?
He puffed over nine miles of fags,
And how many gallons of tea?
With a cooled inch left, I recall
the words from Frank Zappa:
‘Everything gives you cancer’

A Path In Israel

~ Mike Bell

 

It was a path
from another time,
Your close enquiry
of an ant-marched line.
Crossing the equally
engineered rails,
We both avoided
the steel-trip trail.

You, eldest boy,
chatting alongside,
On the rough-route,
where Ruti had cried:
Your uncle asleep,
in this blown-thin soil,
Alone in this god-land:
an empty black voile.

Unlocked the gate,
metallic complaints,
I showed you the place
where your uncle waits,
your talk is erased
by the hand-carved curves,
Our name cries out,
among foreign words.