Christ – have you seen Mum’s arse?
Her lockdown cakes have gathered
round her lower half – Imagine that
hung on us? Dad’ll have a ball/He’s
got more bits to grab! He’ll be like a
pig in.. Is mine that big? Ha! not yet!
Yet? Bitch!/ I feel sorry for our girls –
I’m hoping it skips a generation/Ah!
Ours – or theirs?/Ours of course – &
you agree/You eatin’ those biscuits?
Tag: parenthood
A Dry Gully Lies
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
All He Hears
One of mine messaged me
& I cried – his honesty stays
What’s bred into his bones?
I claim him as my own – his
ear is clipped by other whip
of tongues [& soured looks]
but he recovers from his fall
& his failing timbers/ I’m not
here to tell him to be kind to
those who use foul words or
froth over lies & coffees/ No
I am here to one day tell him
all that he half-hears [all that
background babel – clucks –
spat dislikes] – all that is fear
There Is Less
There is nothing missing in her life now –
no racists at family lunches & snobbery
about whose house is best [& no Brexit-
justifiers with their Mail on Sunday wide
open with its offers aimed at dull bigots]
& kids who are not allowed to be extant –
snapped at/ No simmering [fugly] anger
[thick as brown soup] – stirred by Farage
as he sups on another pint of mistruth/ It
won’t be regretted [there’s plenty of fish
to catch – ‘Cos fishin’ rights matter now!]
Hold briefly your peace [she tells herself]
No more driving off with carsick feelings
[as her kids deride a xenophobic relative
with laughs] Those days are not missed/
Blood Lies
It was a lifeless marriage –
once she openly admitted
I only married him because
he had a promising career –
but her honesty was never
shared out to her husband
just to her sister & mother
[their unhappy triumvirate
of frothing coffee stirrers]
& decrees will be served &
stuff divided – broken kids
sidelined-ed – roll on Xmas
& less son-in-laws to feed –
Mummy has her girls again
& she’ll be loved [no doubts]
Divorced Dad
I will not sense those rising sibling tensions
with me far from home routines/ My chronic
status has me this side of Falmer’s twists of
roads & visits – my connection as your father
will knot me up – our living distances will not
be fixed by [or fall to] any sterilized contacts/
Remove my anchor of liabilities & seek in me
my lineal way/ I am ever your living presence
still available as a parent – albeit one stuck by
old choices [forgive me for my disconnection]
DBS
[For DS]
He was always just holding on
well before his loosening was
wired by composed workers –
He was fitted out in the smoke
by a huddle of rarefied fixers
of minds & boulder-ish skulls –
fine line runners of pinstripes –
each hand-threaded between
his head & a re-setting within –
He’ll sleep for now in his so still
body – & he will be slow at first
& slow to know if all his moves
are all his own / He is fettled
in bedded days – recuperate &
be re-tuned [his dreams know]
He sees his agog kids on Skype
at a distance – his dried-mouth
words are haltingly delivered –
a rare chance of infection – & his
missus looks around for a data
cable / Re-connected – just so
Two Treehouses
On my circular dog walk
there is a tidy treehouse
with no way to climb up
It is likely to be reached
by a foot-propped ladder
lent by someone’s parent
It has been made to last
by some eye-aligned tools
It is not my younger prop
of wood hefts – sly thefts
off a builder’s dry bonfire
by our ever-hapless gang
to make our cobbled den
of swiped timbers – to lift
us – half a century earlier
above wired private land
in our splintered cockpit
of near-balanced planks
But this one has fat bolts
to hold – and a guarantee
of an adult’s supervision
On my circular dog walk
there is a tidy treehouse
with no way to climb up
Fatherhood
I am a tightrope walker
with my filled wheelbarrow
steered – nervous weights
before me – held dead-straight
You act as if you are
just another Harry Houdini
balanced above Niagara
for a long bet against gravity –
quivering inside – all of us do
when stepping so high
Such is fatherhood on days
of bowing mistakes
We have no diplomas
just higher circus learning –
without safety nets
Grandpa? Not Yet
Look! Waking white etens are tailwind-struck by onshore gusts. That tall flock of unfixed turbines. Into Kemptown they will march by France’s orders beyond La Manche ..
A readied Grandpa story – not yet –
not now – not pinned – not aligned
above high tides by unseen wordy fixings –
by birthdays – yet again – by cakes with candles
blown out – Once more – and finally out
Those one-legged giants were plummeted
into cedings – by borings into seabeds
through lost layers of petrified trees
into our once-forests washed off-shore
Let me tell giant stories to your children –
about hundreds of acres before this began
Our grandchildren do need to learn
that history is scribed beyond this land
Outside Argos – Lewes on a Sunday
Dad balanced a slab
of a cardboard box
on his head
Like they do in Africa
his kid said
after being told
not to bounce the ball
at which point
their shine of buying
was in a shaded place
And both dropped
into a self-aware
two step home
Touchscreen
Here grandparents struggle
with screen-deprived kids
unsure of the new-fangled rules
on both sides of such fist fights
during lung-asking tantrums
whilst forever doing term time cover
for absent parents – out there –
sipping lattes and checking phones
under nice parasols in London
The Riverside Cafe – Lewes
That water-spinning hum
in The Riverside Cafe –
of draining dishwashers
and coffee machines –
is a prized white noise
needed by me to settle –
along with the welcomed
departure of a too-loud family
of urgent asks – of walking plans –
to wear their little monsters
down – nice and early
before unscrewing the wine
Counting clouds passes time
My children are left behind
and all my responsibilities
are dropped – as sticks off a bridge
Like letting go of wobbled bikes
Of not having to have an answer
Perhaps this areads my ageing
among us beige men of Waitrose
Perhaps this is my highest point –
aged fifty-five – twice divorced –
waiting at cafe tables to be served
by staff worth much more than me
My stick is impossible to store
in such places – a hook is needed
to hang my support – to stop it tripping
up those young bucks in aprons
Or I may lay it out at a reasoned angle
to trip those smug fuckers up
Competitors
Our house complains
of his heavy feet overhead –
quick as excited heartbeats
but then still-stopped
to my gone voice in our play
of Grandmother’s Footsteps
once commanding my son
to fix and freeze under
my quick look – that thrill
in his lost childhood – testing
his parents by such stealth
was an unplanned rehearsal
for these sometimes-days
of eggshell steps around us
We players of an adult game
without a joyous winner
A Moment – Now
In bed – laid on the edge of tears –
but we all are deteriorating –
so these are self-pitying tears
barraged by
this slow use of bagged words –
and you hum a short phrase
as the mobile phones light
our thicker faces
before drawn curtains –
still excluding the morning
and holding back the rush of time –
then
a text showing our daughter skipping
atop The Hoover Dam – she is lightened
by the scale of the world
as we discuss how this
truly affects the state of things –
once the daylight is admitted
The Best a Man
Let boys be damn boys
Let men be damn men
@PiersMorgan
Let our quick fists and sly cocks
damn us all –
Let young men sport superior
sneers and hate –
Let our sons expect the birth-right
to high esteem –
Let our male egos distend under
our close-shave chins –
Let our wives – our mothers –
our daughters –
Let them down by
letting ill-bestowed egos rule –
Let me not be damned
Students Don’t
They don’t throw parties
like we did –
no sleepovers in puddles
of puke and-or-piss –
or found shagging bareback
their best mate’s lover
They don’t sink pure vodkas
for breakfast –
no acid – nothing dropped
without a full appraisal –
googling its providence
Unlike their bad parents –
who took to partying too hard
with only the letter E to look up –
They don’t throw up like we did
The Gift
It is as if
you were delivered to us
to bear witness
You brought a book
about fatherhood –
which I read
I cannot hear your words
because you murmur
more than speak –
but I see how you shy –
even at six foot two –
you are still a child
Emptied
There was a tin of Swarfega
under the kitchen sink –
its opening the notification
of Dad’s tinkering
His wrenched weekend battles
with ageing Austins and Fords –
as an amateur mechanic –
were his ongoing wars
He was sometimes frustrated
by metrication’s foray –
and I was equally stumped
by his imperialist’s ways
He became a man of peace
as he stripped his oiled guns
with no sprung swear words –
loud expletives unsung
He would put his bearded cheek
onto the cold wood and weigh
the heft of barrel loadings
and teach his lungs to wait
The engineering of Brownings
he’d refit with no complaint –
in his hands and soft breaths –
he exhaled and taught aim
At the farm – with my boys –
I put up targets with care –
There I taught them how to shoot
and shared my Dad’s zephyr
The Dark Room
They appeared on my phone
in a series of texts
those photos of photos
you unearthed in a drawer
of our kids fifteen years before
we announced this ending
I wanted to steal those times
which chemistry had made
in the development of them
into glossy
but now cracking captures
My childhood remains
in one school photograph
alongside my brothers
one dead
one not talking
And in one other print I keep
of my father
holding me upright on a pony
His hand (for once) holding on to me
Slap
My father had thinning hair
and ever thinning teeth
and a quick temper
no fists
once a slap
when my year older brother
sliced the bathroom sponge
with Dad’s shaving blades
There had been general punishment
until us boys
the muted quatrain
then gave up the culprit
A loud slap
once
which never healed the sponge
Snip
For you
a minimal
love poem,
because
my seeds
are no
longer
sowing.
The Ritual
The extravagant white bathrobe,
bagged from a boutique hotel,
her remains of a left-behind weekend,
just the two of them, her and him,
sunk in love, a deeper love than now.
That thick gown hung guiltily
on the back of the bathroom door.
She took it down and wrapped it around
her shoulders, careful not to knock
the tall knotted towel, her damp crown.
The application of creams was next,
and then, only then, she was ready
to be a wife again. And a mother.
Always a mother, no matter what.
She then saw herself in the mirror.
Cradle
Speaking with my mother,
after phone disconnections,
not-getting-throughs,
and of unreturned calls;
then, again, her anger rises,
a spiked, child-sick bile,
reflux-like, but not mine,
still before we stop talking
I tell her I love her,
but I am once more muted
by the receiver’s placement
on her telephone’s cradle
Park Football Parents
Sunlight momentarily exploded
from behind fleet clouds –
then was gone [sleet-showered] &
a return to mourn-shift-shrouds
Seven days before [without dropped ice]
our team was crushed
in a one-sided match –
so in training our stick-kids are bellowed at –
– On to the ball
– Off the ball
– Down the line
– Mark-him – mark-him
Their coach never mellows/
Bunched fathers & mothers
[now soaked] are hardly talking
as long minutes dribble
to that longed end-of-session
Murmurs in our wet-stood section –
– Is it ten, does he know?
Eventually – after extra time
their coach lets them go
We parents are first in the cars –
door-slammed – venting at nature/
Our dripping-kids stare at the sky
& wish for release from failure
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 