Samara

Anemochory takes this seamless child
of these immigrants – landed from Europe –
and urges her to fly

We named her Samara because of her wings
and the hope that she will carry
our future further

Her family has been resident here – four centuries –
but historically are the dark foreigners
among landscape and cities

She is Anglicised among childhood memories –
kids awe at her presumption to fly –
We call her spinning Jenny

At Anfield

The scouser outside
the pub gave a stare
at our unashamed
blue and white colours

from behind
his circular eye glass –
with it’s stretched froth
and shallow backwash –

he spied our short cut
through the car park
and called out –
Six-Nil !
before he dragged

his fag into his lungs
to chase his beer
into that strain
of shirt and buttons

On our return
to the parked car
the only difference
was his demeanour –

that and the fresh pint
and a virgin cigarette –
Ey! One-nil –
Not bad –
Good on yer!

His beer was held high
above his thinned hair
as he tipped a glass
to the Albion’s lost game

The Butchers

There – baited by the thump
of traffic several times –
it looked more than dead
with its striped pelt ripped open

There between the rush
of commuters and trucks
magpies took greedy pleasure
from the brock’s speedy kill

There the spill of pink inners
across the black tarmac
was a shiny reminder
that this pile was once alive

Here on my return journey
the carcass is less – now bated –
but not by the mischief of birds –
instead by a compaction of cars

Shortcut

Dream holes and desire paths –
those spire views and bared routes –
those modern urban lay lines –
guiding light and human shifts –

letting sound and choice drift
until the unbuilt gets put down
and our tracks are lost to tarmac –
when our reveries are blocked up –

once the empty churches are sold
and the open parks are enclosed
by signs halting walking on grass –
we will lose the ways we made

Zero Four Thirty

For a man who has done his natural duty,
death is as natural as sleep.
GS

Here we meet again –
you are no longer a friend –
you the jolt – the waking itch –
the drug’s portend

This unnatural discontent –
which sleep is for me –
it is a sickly thing

It is as if rest itself
is my disease –

It is as if my register
of a simple expectation –
of a longed-for sopor –
no longer allows its admit

Yet I will drift in daytime’s
impolite light
with eyelids weighted
by the night –
just enough
to stop me seeing things

This puzzle of so many pieces
which darkness has become
You my new foe –
my agonist – my bedlam

County Lines

There – incongruous in khaki
among the lurid colours of youth –
two sallow lads sat by the tunnel
at the love-etched bench

as if recovering from a hundred years
of trench warfare with their coughs
whilst the younger troops are bound
to school desks and repeated tasks

The soldiers’ drugs are sweet perfume
above the sour rot and kicked mud
of the early hints of a winter campaign
across county lines with bunched fists

New England

They will soon take command
of the scattered pill boxes –
those red brick squatters
sat above river crossings –

built for strategic purposes –
and to fool the nescient
of a Maginot Line in England –
to withstand our invasion

There will be working parties
to restore the squat outposts –
drinking tea and sipping gin
as the last of Locarno evaporates

The new guard will take to parades
under friendly church hall beams –
taught to guide the landing parties
into concentration camps in Kent –

and you will shift the weight of anger
by reposting others’ indignant shouts
from your padded cell of social media –
which is how all of this begins

יין אדום

I don’t believe in God
but I think she hears my prayers

I can only hope to touch her face
if she deigns to ever care

We don’t talk much about politics
it bores her more than sex

We drink red wine and compromise
on what is truly meant

I woke to judgement nightmares
and a terror in my heart –

with an empty wine glass by my bed –
that brittle bodyguard

Loot

So she dug up my soul –
I have a price on my head –
she pulled it from my skull
because of what I said –

Quoting Aristotle –
in accordance with virtue –
she showed me my old failings
as they formed a ragged queue

Jealousy and mistrust
once mine to sculpt with ease –
I’d struck at our confidence –
I’d cut her blood with tears

She placed her prize on scales –
held high by a blinded hand –
and claimed the inside of my head
was hers to now command