Today the sun tipped-up
at four forty-three,
kicking cats and dogs:
it then will scathe across
the sky for sixteen hours
and thirty-eight minutes
(plus eighteen seconds),
which will be the longest day
over a liquiescent London,
before dropping out
twenty-one minutes
after nine: hated.
Heated
A few weeks back,
this summer,
and I would be stood
in a mist,
but this ridiculous
month of June
offers no such
cool sleights
as I stick-click,
lop-sided, alongside
the sucked-slouch
of the muddied Uck;
then hollered at
by the diesel’s sad call
as it sights
the unattended crossing,
and all the time,
across Manor Park,
bedroom windows are flung
in an un-English surrender
to the day’s heat
still found in bricks,
as the padding fox,
so thin,
sets off the estate’s
choir of panting dogs.
Brian Cant, Could.
Brian Cant always did,
the man who sang
for this country’s kids;
each late afternoon,
no dull school rules,
as I grew older,
he still played the fool.
Into teenage years,
then into adulthood,
I hoped Brian Cant
still did what he could.
Hate
Hate drove a van
at people again,
hate is alive in
ignorant men,
hate is spewed
at dinner tables,
hate is consumed
in social ensembles,
hate is served up,
a spat out mantra,
because hate
needs hate,
a hateful dogma.
Sleep Walking
It arrived in the night,
thickened, from within,
that sulking infection
of continental heat,
not the slimmest hint
of a breeze to relieve
us, laid out, moribund
on our double bed,
with kicked-off duvets
and a great distance,
because we are rolled
from each others’ heat.
Netflix
Do not reveal
where your chocs are hid
whilst I’m watching
box sets on Netflix.
Our Talk
I had to lie down,
having taken a bullet
from this sniper,
back flat on grass,
and you stood
over me, in shadow,
as the dog came close,
her concern simple.
Strength taken,
I struggled to stand,
to no offered hand,
and so all was said.
The Sleep
I am naked on our bed,
upright, pre-slept,
at the gracious request
of my funked body:
It asks, politely,
at first with a flicker
across my eyelids,
felt as light tremors,
then it rudely produces
enormous weights,
conjurer’s tricks,
strapped to my arms,
followed by an elephant –
it places that, too easily,
across my bared chest:
Now I am breathless,
on awkward pillows,
on those between knees;
I claim this space
for my night’s reprise.
One More
A few typed words
to fill this gap,
counting as
my committed act.
No Angel
He endeavours to be
one who ‘can’,
not a bit-part, paused,
not half a man,
not battled to bend,
with rusted mettle,
he’ll hold her at night,
unmasked and settled:
No more a young man
in the place reserved
in God’s waiting room,
which others deserve:
Grant a slow decade,
ten years of good life,
please God, he asks you,
for his kids, and his wife:
Re-set their happiness,
that for his spouse,
he won’t demand space
in your over-filled house.
