Tag: death

Once More

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

I picked up two dozen shards
from a splintered bottle – pale
ale [or something equal] & laid
it in my open palm – too close

to my favourite vein for you? I
would not – although I think of
it – of course – you would too/
I loaded up one self-help book

Audible & untouchable – & laid
it in my head/ I played back a
song from Leonard – maudlin?
I miss opportunity & old love’s

filthy ways & indiscretions/ My
heaven has been dropped – a
beer bottle unstopped is mine
for now – sweet dreams do me

[whilst solitude quietly gnaws]

On Brighton Pier

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Spun sat – a gamble of co-ordinates
[wrist-rolls a cruelty]/ We steer silent
journeys – then instant guffaws as if
this pier screams – Roll-up & ride! A

bob – Ogle our fat fubsy lady! Once I
saw a mermaid [her lustrous breasts
were lifted by a sea lion] & I paid for
a closer look – via a penny telescope

A lifeboat landed an inert man – we
were spat at – Turn away from it all –
he was oily [slumped] with whiskers
& stared eyes [I paid him 2 pennies]

I walked from our empty family car –
from silence – a sat-nav directed us
here – don’t look – it will show more
rides to turn me on to bewilderment

[one last time – I wish] as Ivor reads
my tarot cards in his caravan up on
Brighton Pier – I see a mermaid & a
drowning – hindsight equals a quid

these days – we shove our modern
florins – no Britannias rub in purses
before being placed in an arcade’s
agape slot – drop a ten pence coin

then nine more to find less fortune
under a hundred cheap songs – our
greed sees gold in lit-orange rows
of one-armed bandits – we’ll go on

& climb aboard their doubtful ghost
train – a slam & shunt of mechanics
on a loop of terror – fondles & feels
were taken here by mods & rockers

until such pleasures waned/ I turn a
pound telescope back on to us – we
are now ghosts as we point phones
at rides [we long forgot how to feel]

I have never known such

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

I have never known such loneliness
as this – I have my radio playing – a
streaming selection – my stomach’s
delicate lining was knifed [I sit alone
with my switched-on-kettle]/ This is
a cold space in which I live – & never
will I fill – with this one human form/
My broken parts rattle when shook/
I have never known such sadness – a
slippage of loose dunes [formless &
in motion] – forever – never settled in
this landscape/ I was a resolved rock
until pebbles were cast – a relentless
shower of fuck-ups & fucks [fuck off]

Weddings & Funerals

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

There will be weddings [& funerals]
I will not attend – because of word-
inversions to ease senseless greed/

See me counting out my money? I
am disposed towards vanity – but
not full-on [I’ll not fuck over such!]

I walk towards a sunrise – blinded
by ugly sights of burns [if you pull
back blisters & skin they’ll ooze to

a clear fluid – blood’ll follow later]
See – a splinter bursting from my
palm/ It was sunk a week before

whilst clearing a wilted flowerbed
that never took – some plants will
die rather than entertain us/ See –

it has left a scar – laid to fade – as
if a photo [or irked recall] of hated
families in hats & drunk on tables

& all will be gone/ I will wait for it –
a digging – here earth is exposed
& rich – we will attend committals

of tears & shaking hands [when &
if we can]/ They’ll speak of stuff in
low voices/ Please bury me quick

you make me sick – but nothing’ll
kill me now – death is that escape
I cherish/ See – my scar has faded

& my mind is now cleared/ Refrain
& do not consider that past or that
future that is never here [an analyst

advised me]/ I told that woman all
about those lies on sheets – paper
not silk/ See – we are too common

to know anything other than soaps
& slugs from bottles/ Your body is
not yours [less so after obsequies]

& other kinds of petite mort [we all
squirt if sliced – warm ichor & guts
will spill & our weddings will wither

without wine & kindness] – just like
a man I once knew – his dignity sat
him straight & sure [of his essence]

until he heard what she had denied
[he cried bent-doubled]/ No hint of
a gospel ever uttered [again] to him

in lost vows [or rum negotiations]/ I
walk under trees to avoid hard light
from high [my days are shortened]/

There was a compass in my shoes –
it knew magnetic north but nothing
more – I was about six – it was mine –

before it was dislodged – or stolen?
There will be weddings [& funerals]
I will not attend – because of words

 

Remains

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

This now [our hopeless place]
reminds me of it/ It is time to
cut back tarrying at long haul
stuff – a life-bled mortgage &
such charges [folks’ll get done
in by old banks & institutions
speaking about rate cuts] – &
debts compound/ We are too
long buried says that old man
[Johnny C knows who]/ Here –
it’s a six-foot trench calling to
swallow me whole [& I’ll fall –
less a few rich organs]/ Lower
my box into a quiescent place
of slow-earth silence & divide
what remains across memory
sticks – that’s all we will have
once our funerals are paid up

Gloss Black

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

They repainted tall railings
set around a granite tomb
[but left metal on gates to
to curdle to flakes of rust
in old layers]/ Here Lies A
Father & Husband/ Loved
By His Family [lies – damn
lies]/Born & Died & other
worn words read less well
what with rain & pollution
ingresses ‘tween palisades
retouched by a servant of
our parish – paid well by a
priest who cannot lift any
tool or know how to begin
[except in Genesis & other
fairy stories]/Give it winter
& a cruel spring & we will
see those gates limp as if
St Peter was superfluous/

Dead to Me

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

dimes on eyes

Mercury dimes in fools’ silver
to weigh my ghosts down [so
I’ll not rise – & other dangers]

Lost Phrygian caps doffed [no
sex – kicked-in manhoods] I’m
manumitted by Liberty’s kiss

Marianne spoke about such –
& then Paris turned on itself &
saw disgust – at failed royalty –

whilst on my eyelids lay twins
in metal shrines bearing dead
models – a poet’s wife? – Elsie

posed for Weinman – turning/
Liberty won’t release me from
my resting place – no last toss

of shiny coins to decide on my
fate beyond all – la petite mort
& other foolish points of death

settle among equal cold casts
of her coins & my cadaver/ I’ll
remain dead [& blind forever]

Fish Knives

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

See those emptied fish on
their brine-washed blocks
sitting gutted – white flesh
worth cashing in – net sale

captures – now is my quiet
time of gasps – in my slow
drowning [in bracing air] &
gulls will stab over insides

& guts picked from foams
in this trawler’s wake/ Eye
me up once my blood has
been rinsed & returned for

a final sea-watering down/
Quick wing-dipping-on by
plummets & calls in flight/
This is our hauled removal

as we tip into ice-packings
among others equally split/
Slit of knife sang a’sweetly
among rough sea shanties

A Nice Spot

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Some’ll bait [little empathy –
spit indifferently & she did]/
I want to bed down [now] in
these woods & never get up
[but I fear my dog would not
sit still for long enough] – no
outdoor decomposition – rot
not yet – no decay in peace?
No choice? Please – a minute
spent between bared roots –
let me lie wet & cold – shake
to exposure’s severe hold [&
then dream of dew & no lies
to face] Her kiss dries on her
mother’s forked tongue – old
tarts pet under full moons &
blow sour breath – both ends
stink of decaying meat/ We’ll
return to addled quiet spots –
once affiances are corrupted
& there unearth a low place –
this hollow is ample for me –
don’t put down my loud dog

Blood Spots

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

All cells come from cells
& other facts rub at me/

Our place is layer-thin &
ready to cleave [cut out

such thoughts] while we
carry this bag of bones/

Quick-ish siestas muffle
pain’s deviations – those

bruise-lows/ Blemishes
itch with ingrowing hair/

At fifty-six my fun seems
to have run to summer’s

stained trough – rust ires
& cannot be rubbed off/

Spots of blood – imprints
sat in my back catalogue

have faded into that red –
they will never be erased

News at One

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Time will not be adjusted [to suit
your needs] – that’s my assumed
forecast of less-assured futures

Histories – that slip of shadowed
kisses & us [such burden of love
is brief – emptied skies less rare]

My cadaver has a fixed contract
in ink [& yours too] – parchments
are furled close – like a clingfilm

stretch on & as gripped/ Oxygen
will be kept fresh [for three days]
& then my watch will turn to rust

[in your rivulet my timepiece rots
to orange – do not drink it up]/ Sit
at your gloss of pool & prod fast –

to ferrugo my cogs & pendulums
‘neath running spring waters – so
decrease my minuted remnants –

[watch parts] sink in Jarvis Brook
& fritter more – in no time – at that
confluence with R Medway’s rush

off – via printed tidal timetables – &
with a nod to rainclouds – forecast
flood – reports read – News at One

 

Bob Mortimer is Dead

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Episode 5 Desert Island Discs [2019]

When Bob Mortimer is dead
he is off to some fantastic place
[& James Moir will fall apart]

Bob will renounce his home –
one last time – unless he gets
to be laid beside other long-

loved pets – down his garden/
Looking’ll come to be a hobby
‘cos his stare will be sooo hard

in his head [slept upon a moist
pillow]/ Fools ease [secluded]
& are left alone for a festering

until putrefied/ Haul ‘im off to
Poets’ Corner when well-soft –
just to annoy every reverential

buff of well-received wordage
& verse – clowns are required/
Fools missing Footlight’s glint

will [eventually] be recognised
as poetic-gods – we will pray –
such adjustments are needed

Christmas Island

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment
Their trams still ran [in
Hiroshima] – among all
of their loss of 1945+/
As if precise modes of
public transport would
[still] rotate in a flawed
country like ours/ Time
has moved for Britain’s
schedulers ever since –
since a bomb dropped
on Christmas/ One-nil/
We twitched – us kids/
We saw a darkness [of
life] sat outside a bank
[a shock – of imprecise
truths – of hitokage no
ishihi]/ There are grim
shadows on our maps
of cooled off craters &
green atolls/ As kids it
was a joy to ride trams
in Manchester – delays
forgiven – never forgot

Dead Singer

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

There’s an online rumour
that Elliott Smith is dead
& Elliott’s serving Elvis in
a five-to-four bar job – I’m

whistling my high chorus
[I’m wiping my blunt blade]
My pipe-cold water pours
to bathe his blood away/

Portland is tracks & paint
& Nick Drake isn’t dead/ I
turn up Elliott’s stereo [11
is now 10]/ A blade is my

first choice [sliced skin to
pay rent – not callin’ on an
artery] Elliott is now dead

So tell our online ‘papers –
God’s mistakes arent few
He was waitin’ on Costello
[in Largo – his front room]

 

VE Day 1975

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

No family clues to Gran’s
husband’s death – his life
was not a part of us/ Dad
took his ever-old mother-
in-law off to Runnymede/
We were dragged without
any explanation – a rub of
three boys [as she looked
for her husband’s rank &
recall on marble]/ A slight
woman – with her Geordie
beat – flagged by Player’s
fags sucked on scant lips –
not tall enough to read all
those dead – Dad helped –
his rozzer-height one lofty
ambition for his sons [our
desires were to be as high
as him – to descry in ease]
I now aid old-aged people
[in need of my set height]
I reach for tins in Waitrose
reading out those names –
Heinz Beans [low in sugar]
sat far up like her wor lad
who met her last on stone
below a war memorial flag

 

Takeaway in Uckfield

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

There were lights & sounds
late last night in our funeral
home – busy on newly dead
[quick-quick] as subfusk inks
wet let awry on diary pages
& penned onto calendars &
thumbed into ‘phones – Tick
to remind me [alarms set for
his not-attended ceremony]
& has anyone told Uncle Jon
& other missives texted out
to those who knew our Jim/
Facebook reverberates with
grief – Jim had locked them
out – Try CFC1964? – Yes! Of
course – his words [in posts]
say nothing of worth – they’d
been liked fifty times before
& are left alone – revelations
have been read/ Timeline off

 

Plots

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Gavin reads an enamel plaque
on a concrete birdbath below
four blue clocks – true north is
implied by one of those faces/

God is too far to register every
minute marked over lead paint
& see countenances [his angle
set by our old misdemeanours]

In this churchyard [alongside a
stone set to recall a long-dead
missionary] my pain redounds
on a thought-chiselled bench –

In memory of.. a soul loved too
much to forget/ A yew denies
seeing anything as it watches
every headstone tilt over time –

witnesses to a wearing away of
names & dates & rarer refills of
flower pots by bent mourners &
then observed left alone – bereft

in this acre of dearly departeds –
I wait on time to halt – four faces
to stop & squeeze on my breath –
to take my life [my full measure]

but it passes – hour-kept treaties
of scribed plans keep me alive &
a cog in God’s plays [impromptu]
one stage for us indigent actors/

Perhaps Gavin fed birds here – on
this bench he would sit & scatter
crumbs to [now rare] sparrows/ In
time we’ll be him – a worm feeder

Also on Medium

A Prayer

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

You’ll have to get
use to these every day
adjustments of feelings –
now unequal & unnamed –
no numbering of sequences –
except dead or infected totals –
more or less – your view is framed
by your windows & your bright screens
Solitude is a rehearsal for death – practice
is good – as days run out into that fact of life
& you then fail to recall decent & dull normalities
[you’ll fall out of love with your locked-in companions]

Watch The Road

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

I had exhorted myself
not to watch –
but my capacity to let
myself down
wins old momentum’s
slow ways/
A four-times-father-of../
More times
worse with [or without]
four of my own
on an uneven grey road/
I am alone –
having left her ring from
my limp finger/
She exited - from home/
I wait [bare]
without a firearm on us
[in my palm]/
No weapons left - apart
our deaths/
On that road from home
breath tires/
Pull - breathe out & watch
The Road

A poem about ‘The Road‘ – a film based upon Cormac McCarthy’s novel. I had promised myself never to watch it, but recent events have dulled my sensibilities

Also on Medium

Christ’s Body Double

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

They nailed James Legg up as J. Christ
[flayed – undressed of skin – purified]
Carpue found employment – scraping
They pinned Legg up – pinned him for
artists in life studies – to see him still
& then moved to their pegged sheets
[shifting corpses from gallows works]
He is held high – Christ’s body double

Mustard Seeds

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

There are no barriers
to our slaughterhouse
There’s an easy way in
Our course will not be
blocked – it’s true – our
entry is eternally sure –
a repository of breath
where our sighs shrink
You’ll slump & I will be
next in line / None have
left!! / Not yet!! Gallows
stuff tween a hangman
& a stun gun operative
I will suck your floated
mist – that last piece of
you – mixed together &
then you will forget me

Also on Medium

Shyness

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

In ’84 it was dire to live with
my so-unendurable shyness
I thrived when unheard – hid
behind a re-bolted fire door
& my off-the-hook landlines –

it wasn’t as if I’d veer – spin &
hit head-on  /  James B. Dean
did it first & last  /  No return
from a crash of startling light
No more – no one still insists

on their self-destruction – not
without writing an awful note
Back then I used leaked pens
& pads & ripped clear sheets
or a self-addressed envelope

A singer poured his lyrics out
to us – a crush of hot punters
We fingered each sleeve note
until we seeped & transferred
in whorls – inked fingerprints –

& I hid from provinces of cold
looks – regards – until fearless
pretence found me still extant
but with no shy ways  /  A lost
modesty in my last songbook

A Diversion in Calais

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

It was intrepid Dunkirk as
our only solution to avoid
300,000 on-beach deaths
Enough then to refill every
C of E graveyard in Sussex
in rootish wooden crosses
but for our inexact convoy
of a minimum 30ft. vessels
as forgotten fighting men
died – a diversion in Calais
of given bodies and blood
for those withdrawn from
a bloodied slip of lost land

Scattered indicators matter

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Scattered indicators matter –
The Census at Bethlehem
offers a dozen cartwheels
Each is set with thirteen spokes
turning fortunes for one unborn

You play Gustav Mahler’s
Symphony Number Five
in C-sharp minor
at a rolled-up volume –
to entreat my bloody senses

A record of your being here
will eventually be found
under wrist-spins of microfiche
by sharp-eyed descendants
who never knew of you –

but they will itemise your turns
of date born and date died
and try to fix found gaps
between registrars’ comments
to know your place before them

Passing Off

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

[F.F.S. NOTE: In memory of a part played by J.K. This was written after an actress had passed away – but really in memory of the character she played in LOTSW – so an extension of that character into death – after the actress playing her had died: An exercise in stretching thoughts on a dull and lonely day made slower by reading of others’ misfortunes. The character I am ‘grieving’ for was a hen-pecking (Northern) wife chasing down her feckless husband – god only knows what effect it all had on her fictional family (never seen). No more misdirected anger if it gets misappropriated, again, please.]

 

Being a matriarch
was propounded as her

Greatest-ever-role

in their first draft
of an online obituary

Mourners hovered
and affixed false posts

marking up an ever-altering
wiki

Her kids had been suckled
under a tarnished scent

and they never lost their
fear of men

Again – Another Fall

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Again –
it is that time of year
of carcasses picked apart
by visits of daggered beaks
of leavings
of black stains
of crushed-to berry juice
of later felt stomach aches
[spread like buckshot pellets]

A stag is stretched –
set upturned –
laid out of the way –
dead parallel to passing traffic
with its legs rigid
in its last-struck gallop

Roadkill –
it is that time of year
of car strikes
between Uckfield
and Halland
in Sussex
Again –
another Fall

Decade Measures

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

RIP Chris Bell d.24.08.87

A decade mislaid since his
lingering disappearance
then Latin’s alphabet surfaced
across a white stone – struck
below a dusty Israeli suburb

Ness Ziona stands over him
He had jumped his rusting ship
another twenty years before
leaving a trail for investigation

How he ever got to Tel Aviv
ending up an eager volunteer
only him and God now know
sharing – as they do a bench
slumped – stalbet – in a cemetery
under high apartment shadows

 

 

Like Bookends

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

In another waking moment
with five AM forcing light outside
my conscious breath found
an angel’s littered question

How many of my earliest
friends are still alive?

Coruscating queries – lit fears
address us slightly older men –
of loss of crowning thick hair
oh – and recent deaths of muckers

Bill baulked at Paul Simon’s song
of ‘old friends sat on a park bench like..’

I had one pal hang himself
and another fall from a height
whilst others have taken to tumours
and less humorous routes off

My hairline is still a low-set feature –
light verse on such matters suits me

Ageing is that earthing and digging
forcing us all to bend under groans
as we push on equal spade widths
on that same cost of soil to everyone

No dead human kept his riches for long
They will clear your grave of treasure

A wise Israeli once advised me
Do not make it your precious métier
to outlive everyone in your world
No one will be left
to be impressed – לילה טוב*

*Goodnight

Driving Lessons

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

A car ahead of me
clipped a pigeon
which spun upwards
in recoiled flight –
it exploded
showing pink flesh
where belly feathers
were plucked
and then blown by
confetti’s law of dispersion

My father instructed me
in his squeezed art
of sporting kindness
after his blasting –
often winging –
grain-gorged vermin
My air rifle’s muzzle
there – softly planted –
then – a lead pellet
for a quick death

There was time to turn
my steering wheel
and put my nearside tyres
correctly in line
with what remained –
what moved –
what was once a bird –
off my racing line
to feel a hard – then a soft
hump of tyres and death

Memory Fields

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Behind Chiddingly’s
mouse-crept churchyard
a still minute’s silence
was being observed
by two dozen plus
quite brightly-dressed
stoolball players

A quarter-hour chimed
from high and behind me
as they rained
a polite light shower
of applause
and then took to field
for their ageless game

as a slumped family bent
beside a turned soil mound –
under helium love
for Her – recently lost
They also met silence
before that rung reminder
of time’s impatience

Into Candles and Soap

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Inhale those odours within
la Ville Lumière – of corpse wax

found among her exhumed
Draw on le cimetière des Innocents

An old miasma off rotting flesh
lingers in time’s stillness

above French Empires of Death
atop her levelling grounds

Citizens sought
salubrious solutions

as well as judicial balance
by opening wide old books

by breaking cracking spines
glued by their learned dead writers

Thinkers took routes dug through
others – now equal – as bones

Inert citizens will never stop
troubling the living of Paris

Blown

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Throw them ever higher
into blue skies
to become black smoke
and blown particles

and do not care
about age – infirmity
or status of anyone –
just soaring margins

She turned into flight
as sooty confetti
A working lift?
Is this Heaven?

She saw London’s
sawtooth lower jaw
How cold she felt
dropping as ash

In her new lightness –
before wet dousings –
was a brief release
from profit seekers

but it wasn’t on her list
of urgent repairs and fixes
Those in high places
never read her misgivings

No Eyes

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

It was not a pup seal
rolling at slow play
but a shingle-ripped
medium-sized dog
without legs or face –
its muzzle stripped
to uncooked meat –
a loose hanging jaw

Each short wave
was enough to turn
its sodden carcass
for further observation
by my macabre eye
to guessed-at details
and a whole back story –
lost at sea – a drowning

A Thankless Task

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Here fifty-six lichen-dipped
granite bodies sunbathe –
some lean – some almost swoon
in April’s upset of unexpected weather

Here clippings
and rolled stripes of grass
mark long-sunk slopes
under headstones

A cartographer
had taken up mowing
and looked back
upon his day’s work

as a map folded open –
to be figured out
For him
that thought was wasted

There are no travellers here –
all trips are done
Quarter bells
serve no purpose

except to drown out
tinkling-bloody-wind-chimes
and
always ignored car alarms –

no one moves far
from these landmarks –
we are all within earshot
of cuttings of blades and spades

between those engravings
dead endings expose our half-thoughts
about stuff like
Crematorium or lawn cemetery?

The Colour of Spring

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

There a flash – yellow –
clowning in mid-February –
our foolish
fault – a false overwintering
for spring-tricked innocents –

bringing slow recalls
of others’ tales of good luck
indicated by such arrivals –
or was it about good times –

or was it about
a sure proximity of death?
Leviticus found leprosy
in yellow and thin hairs

The inopinate-insect dared
loops of dead brambles
as an unexpected daytime
show of colour in London –
before a fatal frost by night

E170219

Mind The Gap

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

They’ve got a Dead Cupboard
in this Underground station –
hid from swilled passengers –
a Central route to Heaven

Behind those locked doors –
they hide the fresh body –
where the platform-removed
is stored temporarily

There the dropped dead
waits for the official –
to pronounce upon
this stiffened individual

The zipped-up fallen
is bagged – airtight –
he will not be required
to tap his ticket tonight

Not Dead Yet

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

(For Clive James)

Old Chiacking Larrikin
dropped eight foot –
his fall rope-halted –
then he jiggery-choked

They hang the committed –
but won’t kill the watching –
who steal from the swung
at the public hanging

Clive laughs with death –
as he eyes the loose noose –
his readers misled
by his maple-red truth

Old Larrikin waits
for the swing of the bard –
He’s stood Mr. James
a beer at God’s bar

Cold

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Believe in your child’s ghost –
but then let her spectre run
from the road-kill shock –
from the flare of the
body-struck headlights –

those halogen matches
will ignite her terrified flight
into the woods –
But don’t eye that place
where she first learns to haunt

in the permanent night
of tightly weaved birches –
where Nan Tuck flies afeard
of her burning death throws –

where the recently
spilt spirit runs
from the quick-kill road –
Who let the trees take the young
from our arms?

The wounding country lanes
kill our flightless birds
with too much winding speed –
She will be cold tonight

This Parish

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We stick to the leaf-kicked route –
a parting of the dry sea of leaves
cleared by dog-following boots –

We tack down its meandered drop
to the time-softened abyss –
plugged not by God – but drains –

where a watercourse once hollowed
the hillside into this shallow dean –
before the slugs of tarmac upstream –

Here the irregular plots of silver birches
ignore the fallen old lady in lime green –
this is the parish of ineffectual giants –

these natives – a copse within the woods –
are a finger-daubed fearful tribe in white –
chary – waiting – as if standing ready –

listening for the infected invaders
from other places – for intruders
who will bring other such followers

to spread the canker and pestilence –
which was not the way things changed –
not until we changed the weather

Repose

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The granite markers have tipped forward –
angled over the settling of in-filled earth
where the boxes and bones collapsed –
the stones remain whilst other things fall –

The once beloved’s burial is long forgotten –
but not the slab’s patience over centuries
of bearing – the carved words mumble
a worn-down remembrance of years lived –

The mason’s refined font is rubbing thin –
almost erased by the wear of the world
which has re-touched the carved surface –
even death cannot claim shelter from time

The Fly

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The fly hummed her old song of death
as she jacked in the room’s still air
in a quickened patrol overhead
of absurd dashes and acrobatics

I considered my chances of a kill
but her own sense of time saw me
in slow motion – a sweated animal
of missed flails and wrong swats

Then she was gone from my space
because death was not here – not yet
But she will endure and then retrace
her plotted flight to my last warm breath.

Widdershins

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‘The realm of the dead below is all astir to meet you at your coming’ Isaiah 14:9

I have turned against the world’s clock
and her perpetual request for following
and found myself with my back to her sun
My shadow’s stain laid like the Long Man

I am that untouched layer which obscures
but which time will shift again and again

I am part gnomon – being so subdued
that a blackbird lands in my cast of darkness

This shaded life is mine to command
as I take on the correctness of watchfaces
and counter the arguments for my decline
which are under the thin mantras she sings

I will cleanse with the Rephaim around me
in the baths in which my brother washed off
his own reductions in the last of his living world
and I will not take on her sour sung calls.

A Son

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A son: Thomas Howard,
Fourteen years old,
Was lain, hardly checked,
To enter the cold:
“My son, my son,”
Rust-kissed and crushed,
Left pitch-side, to die,
By a force we trust.
Sleep well young man,
With a beautiful dream,
A lad, a child,
Just supporting his team.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/features/uk-england-36103823/36103823

Updated reporting on the inquest here – http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/all-about/hillsborough-inquests

Michael, Not Me

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

– Looking nice Michael,
been somewhere special?
– Funeral. In the bloody rain.
Two pints of bitter, froth flat,
stand alongside the boozers,
as they then chat about showers
just passed and bloody penguins.

One of them, not Michael,
has the look of Rupert Murdoch.
Pints are refilled, the urinal next –
it takes more visits these days.
– Michael, you dressed this well
last time you was wed.. hahaha.

Ceiling beams, once chiselled
by equally beery men,
prop the roof of the bar
and threaten the non-stooped:
the timbers are black-slapped in gloss,
they ooze a shine like a ship’s tar.

Old age brings advantages,
and shrinkages and breakages.
A handshake, another drinker,
greeting Michael, not Mike (too old,
not Mick, too straight)
all to the hubbub, ice-chink,
bandit-complaint and clink
of glass and bar. Michael smiles.