10,000 POEMS – Posted freshly most days
She has our crushed boxes
of wedding pictures
and our Christmas decorations –
our cheap jewels brought out
on a shortened day –
a day requiring a ladder
to help us lug up
our November weights of Sussex
that bonfire costume crate
pushed through our knocked out
loft’s gape
and exchanged for seasonal stuff
This will be my first Christmas
without our hung reminders –
without her late anniversary card
This floor is piss-sweated
as are those swilled bowls
at Cinque Ports in Uckfield –
more beer-strewn puddles
of splattered cock misses
across slipped wet tiles
Old men flatter too-tight birds
by sleight of words of fucking –
we old fuckers are cursed
Even in the unfair fall
of rain on the night – of
discharged un-loadings –
after the torches lit
the memorial bonfire –
the three wives of war
will be still – to remain
without any complaint
about huge losses to
King or Country –
or other such standings
of the state’s manhood –
that stupidity of men –
Keep back from
the lightings and fusings
of the electrical lines –
It is as if God was unable
to save the widow wives
She lays fond recall
of burning the Pope
onto today’s
bonfires of Lewes –
but only with
late-night distance
from the day-trippers
and the easily upset –
that small army
of misunderstandings
who do not march here
or through Sussex –
at these most robust
of memorials for the dead
It is traditional
at this time
of year
to bring down –
from the loft –
the bonfire box
and for you
to sit and sew –
with those
glint-sized
needles –
It is traditional
to leave it so late
The Gardener’s Arms
smells of bonfire
of Cliffe boys and beer
of bitter-soaked cotton
but no more of fags
This is a pub which needs
that low yellow cloud
of lead emmissions
Beer gives you cancer
Soon we will be supping pints
under wooden shelters
He’s back in the village,
but alone in a field
where football posts
& dog walkers stand:
He can see the spire
in the electric light,
everything is brighter
this century later,
& closer –
the rush of cars,
unknown,
like his first met shell.
The unstable season
of rookies, fireworks,
and Sussex smugglers
has set off in Uckfield
under a sluggish cloud
of torch-raised smoke,
in imbricated ranks
to the drums and hollers
of the oddly-uniformed,
dressed for rememberance
and celebration of times
when Sussex mattered:
then the littering residue
of this lit revolution
is ineptly swept aside
by shopkeepers fighting
the wind-tipped slews
of firecracker paper.
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong
gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
Thomas Paine, former Lewes resident.
Here – trapped again –
clipped at The Swan
with a Liquidators track –
a requested song –
ska for the drunks
who cannot dance –
especially the white
low-middle-class –
and those blacked-up
for bonfire fun –
hoping to upset
everyone –
White men as black men?
Not very ‘clever’ –
please torch the cocks
and their racist feathers
E021118
With more martyrs to count –
than days in a year –
they all got rolled up
into this Christian schmear
Another scam to buy
more shite from the shops –
(once just a mask
to hide your face from a corpse)
Wear your neighbours’ patience
really thin –
as your kids make doorbells
ring and ring
Those normally just rung
by Parcelforce
and Jehovah’s Witnesses –
Ah, of course!
This excuse to eat treats
and fatty gloop
with the fasting for martyrs
lost in the loop
So roll on Bonfire Day
with no pretence of faith –
except in the Gods
who’ll make sure it won’t rain
E311019
The Caravan Club
of Fun
has arrived,
with its cliche cries,
and a still anticipation
before the first day
of generator hums,
and kids’ screams;
the big wheel,
dwarfed by other ones,
still demands
a quid,
and quick kisses.
Friday, I think, I partied late in the night,
throwing rookies with kids, to their delight:
A crafted toss of farmers’ munitions,
as parents blew cancer cloud emissions:
One screeched at her child, ‘Stand well back!’
(a danger she glimpsed through her cig-smoke-stack).
I showed a lad how to light the short fuse,
quick fingers gripped the lit-fizzing tube.
That rookie he tossed into uncut grass,
flame-furious complaint pre-empt of blast:
Exploded jump-thump of pressure on chest,
the rook scarer’s life, an explosion, no less.
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 