Tag: fear

A Dry Gully Lies

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As if it is expecting to fill
[but not in summer & so
she lies] a dry dredge of
leaf-rot layers & fixing of
soil into banks – a funnel
of geography/ Split trees
languor – supine – on this
rough stick-bed ready for
floods to rise [ask Noah]/

I sit on a bough – my legs
complain – shit floats – &
other family sayings I am
yet to broach – my kids’ll
wait – they hear a falsity –
[it keeps others so-sweet
& half afloat] – shit floats/
My eldest repeated truths
aloud [I also speak them]/

A path crosses its birthing
place – a dry gully of fallen
crosses & dammable logs/
It is down from here in our
mud-winter – it’ll flow from
here/ & my year old dog is
keen to dig up water & my
youngest son is on a lake –
without a soul to save him

Serpentine Paths

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Today wary Canadian geese
avoid paddling screams
from lido-blue rowing boats

finding cooler shade ashore
and rich landed pickings
among flat pressed patches

of lawns below London planes
where an hour’s respite
was snatched
by shade-hungry office bodies

A flaked Royal Parks bench
holds a mother and her boys –
silent with ice cream smiles

Here we share recovery positions
as both boys bum-shuffle
to their right – making an old man’s
space

I see what I will again see later –
strangers’ glances at unknowns
Now at her clothes – her veil

I built this park – in my working days
I planted most of her trees
and laid clean sand for her gallops

I should be able to name
more than London planes
as my known path takes me
to David in Fitzrovia

Thrown

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Dare yourself to approach the Whispering Gallery’s
too-low balustrade and look down

Here his words
have been heard
by others
In my gut Dad’s
rum gift of vertigo
turns

It was first witnessed
by us all as we stood
before his loosened grip
up Leith Hill Tower

Now this cathedral’s
wall of death dome
kisses my ear
with a cold command
to drop

Tip yourself over to feel
that marble crack your struck head

In earlier years flying
was my dreamt gift
Sleep wasn’t a picked pit
of itches on my skin
with waking stiffness
in useless places

Throw yourself down – Michael

Now his vertigo is mine
taking my lost voice
It is not-quite heard
by my fearless children
when I see them high
on other parapets

Kids – I have my father’s old condition
and it urges me to leap from here

Utter

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I have always suffered
a mild clumsiness –
just now – trying to read
that line back – aloud –
it got rooted in my mouth –
not stuck in my throat –
not in my swallowing –
that feared future loss –

but in the lip-and-tongue
place of speeches –
I now have to think
the form of the word
to make the shape
of its known weight –
to make it heard –
this is no deal I wish
as part of my illness –

I hear the precision
of the speech therapist –
his repeat of the exercises
which I had forsaken
until now – late in the day
as my words stick
like soft toffees and cake
among my loose teeth

 

#Saifullah & Son

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Six hundred and fifty
now reduced to forty –
there the forgotten
forever prisoners

under the tight grip
of our Guantanamo’s
barbed existence –
to be kept alive –

in your own grave –
Saifullah’s words –
until the end of time –
until the buried future