I did my maths after we spoke
inside Waterstone’s –
Eighteen
years for her –
Levodopa took
after seven =
eleven+ years of
poisoning by side affects –
I’ll
not give in –
her husband well
enough to push her ‘round –
I
envy that staying power in all
encounters with still-couples
as I walk –
inconvenienced –
I
do well
[all resolves doubled
by circumstance & multiplied
by stubbornness] –
She spoke
with this condition’s murmur
[but enough to still be heard]
Tag: PARKINSON’S
My Name Is?
I’ll never start with a title – I was just innominate
spawn [we’ll tag those delivered in a ward] & my
home birth – end of New Road – it was less label
& more unexpected – my fleet drop [’round four
o’clock] & then back to tea & cakes [once blood
& parts were mopped up by Aunty Betty] & my
youngest was born at home – in a birthing pool –
such ridiculousness – apes don’t float!/ & a rude
indignity for my eldest in a [Soviet-esque] ward
in Croydon/ That midwife’s slice was not love or
care – we were left alone [without a vade mecum
after her knife was wiped] Latin will still fail me
& [please God] do not steal my recalling names
until I’m ready to return [being labelled by a tag
will do for me there] – none will know my name
Bid Them Gone
You’d think – by now –
I’d have worked it out/
But that luxury favours
those who sleep & do
not dream/ I will wake
with a sour taste from
slept conversations &
cinematic sweeps [Are
remainders well worth
recalling?] That replay
& memory-fools of my
waste of numb’d years
[my night mixes them
into bitter cocktails]/I
shake more these days
They still hurry ahead
of me [so it goes] – not
seeing how my legs &
limbs give up/ Loss of
sight? Bliss if you don’t
want to know/ & that
recall? It disconnects –
jigsaw-scattered parts
undone – it fades/ But
my memories [verities]
remain – Google it! A
sad-now photo gallery
cannot correct fictions
or restore am image to
your reverie’s eyesight/
Bid them gone – Mike!
[so it goes] it is undone
Tell Me
Being male – white – southern
& sounding as if my schooling
cost – & you assume a degree
& connections eased my ways
through life/ So tell me it – that
my life is made easy [& tell me
how to do well – with a disease
& no work] or refrain from such
There My Second Home
I’ve found my second home
due west above Erriff’s coils
[north o’ Galway’s gut] – you
take a road over Glennacally
Bridge & find it up a sloping
track of cinder & stones – I’ll
not be lost with my hearth &
songs in poems – possibly by
poor connection – no WIFI in
Niflheim/ My days will drip &
drip with rains & mist sent on
from an Atlantic hater of men
& women – sideways delivery
of precipitation – there will be
no lurking from God’s tests &
no obligations to remain sane
in hell – County Mayo’s belly –
that wet underside – by Erriff
& her casts of salmon stories
[for me to reel]/ I’ll rewrite it
I know every bench in Uckfield
I know every bench in Uckfield
& its rigid offerings [too honest
in framing my sittings] but I’m
a blank study to sell as they put
latest prices on my head [Hey!
Have you heard? & other bets –
He is colour-by-numbers – He is
dot-to-dot – He is easily tricked
& Sudoku-fooled]/ Cruel prices
re-layer – homemade-caked – a
thick piling-up [of sharp psycho
stuff] – brown sugar [sweet-ish]
Do not pay for any hand-made
bakes – unwrapped & delicate –
until tasted – in each bite took –
wait – wait – for poison’s hooks
[I’m on every bench in Uckfield
& await one cook’s cut by knife]
Chefs in white smocks gather to
carry off starters/ Chef – yes – &
Yes Chef – too many – they spoil
stuff/ Three is a crowd – soured/
Throw brown sugar to quell – to
sweeten & stiffen resting places
where varnish is treacled across
giving timbers – my bench – here
I’ll sit – on sugar-wood [screwed
& washered to aid my recovery]
They rape ancient woodlands – a
seat is axed & my ill-rest is stolen
Where my stick is angled to prop
[& not fall] – for studies I have sat
to watch birds walk [a bare cook
at work – that rook with her gloss
of feathers] – our greedy gatherer
of sugared ingredients at my feet
& still we cannot speak of truths –
as if my self-portrait is too untrue
between my charcoal sweeps – in
each digging-at I spoke of snaps –
break of burnt stuff [of cooked art
& too much time given to studies]
All this is mine [my view – my type
of words – my phrase-pots]/ Don’t
[do not] try to know my hauls/ You
thick-set fools who’ll look too hard
for gold in barren seams/ Sit back
& wait – wait for fuller explanation
of meaning [of verse]/ Word-soup
is one view/ I will watch cars piss
up Brown’s Lane – speeding – fast
to homes – quick to conflict/ Here
remembrance for long-gone-dead
& others rested on empty benches
Loneliness is not tolerable
Loneliness is not tolerable
for any family man loosed
from spokes & tensions to
limp [forlorn] along uneven
roads/ Laws of motion will
be left unread [if nothing is
left opened]/ Seizures fill a
vacuum & clotted love will
stick between sore valves/
Care – a four-lettered word
blunts by anger’s revenge/
Asks for consciousness of
locked rooms – lost if keys
aren’t slid into blind doors
[& turn! – unfasten a lonely
soul bent under by reverb]
I have stiffened – sat alone
& so unaware/ Shut down
[I’ll ignore egotistical calls
left gelid in my empty hall]
How I Am Doing
A red heart beats in my tall bin
it trots out subtle thud-a-thuds
[no one will die tonight]/ It is a
struggle to talk about ‘how I’m
doing‘ – I attend a playground-
bait of held-back & brave boys
don’t cry – hold it off – greeted
endings won’t happen – as that
[round battery] raps descants/
I had plucked it from my pup’s
toy & left it to wither [& expire]
News at One
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
Imponderabilia
My pain has removed [My pain has added to] my one sense of self - but without pain how would I work? I gather more fallen blossoms & count out what has been dropped / My chance crop sucks space into trees [No shade today over my splitting back] There is no held scent & my arms ache with such weighty petals / All you see is beauty's opportunity in vases - They'd look great here! But I cannot grip their rough stems to make studied arrangements / So I work & fall again
Isolation
I shift in my coffin – to allay stiffenings
without complaint – they did a fair job –
although boxed air thins – that miasma
of parlour hasn’t paled/ Laid out 6 feet
under [all tidied] wasn’t high on my list
[no before-I-die tick of once-in-your-life
thing] & then my killing ache – heated &
immovable/ Leave me here? At least til
I’ve had enough/ I’ll long [my paradise’ll
not reduce for now] under broods of sin
[of taste & memory] Then sex & ale call
out to my stuck lips/ My burial now not
for me/ Dig me from my pit [& be quick]
Coppicing
See – a cut stump is a record
of age [in concentric rings] &
a blade has altered readings
My limbs ache – by disease’s
ill-conduct [new desire to lop
off my legs crawls into me] –
in better times I’m fine – not a
raspberry ripple ready for PIP
or to give up/ My daily mood
dithers from life-is-good to a
fuck-off-you – excuse my foul
language a malady sours me
when pain is engaged by my
body to remind me to delay –
Do not listen to that bastard!
& other encouragements – a
word to our well readers – no
illness is reversed by prayers
& I count its rings but am led
astray by a chainsaw’s scars
& resign to guessing games –
of age & time & late histories
written of in coppiced woods
[where I set my walking stick]
Sunset & Rozzers
I’m stood trapping a sunset
on my phone – I will tell any
rozzer that – I have stopped –
Officer – ‘cos my limbs ache –
Yes – My Parkinson’s can be
confused with drunks’ ways
but you’d need a drink too if
you had this kind of ailment!
Our laughter lightens his ire
& that kind sergeant’ll leave
me to take a photo of God’s
beauty [I’ll stick him a finger
as he strolls back to his car]
Self-isolated
Every day I pace not one less
than ten thousand footsteps
[as documented on my Fitbit –
it syncs to my smartphone] / I
have no other duties – except
to write one poem & a charge
to entertain & pay for my four
kids [& to walk my small dog]
I feed myself & avoid excess –
but booze [& grass] shout out
alongside my bottled rattle of
my prescription timer app / I
keep myself clean / Domestic
chores tire me but now define
me – my work no longer does –
I used to be important [in love]
Also on Medium
Recycling
I am walking backwards [untrue]
after hauling recyclable bags of
Reduced Now [Oh – how we live]
up to my hill-high home erected
above floods [but still fearful of]
I cried on pain’s prompt outside
Cinque Ports [my affable orders
placed there for beer & friends]
because my payload of shopped
stuff [to bake & to cook] clipped
me – homemade bread obligates
carrying pounds of [a finer] flour
When my cold loaf is divided by
my [prudent] knife it re-balances
me – my crust of too deliberative
junk – cutting off hungry concern
Off Time
On some days my prescription
is missed [on purpose to tease
this condition] Not very clever!
But you don’t know how good
it feels to let go of notifications
& ignore my piling medications
It’s a fleet distraction [so let me]
enjoy befuddlements [For once!]
Let me take my illness – denuded
& stripped of drugged make-up –
let me wake up & walk [naked] to
her house – shouting – See – I’m ill!
But – still – she will suck maternal
teets & lie about my miracle cure
Roundings
I am dreading how this
bout will [now] play out
as my stability stiffens –
as notions & conscious
steps re-hire – unloosed
Every inhale is a severe
noose looped to my neck
[pulled] – so swallowing
[or gulps of air] crumple
[choked] Now conceded
so let me abdicate to my
ways of sipped red ales
Let me fall slow without
doing me in /Settle now
[Michael] to an outcome
E120220
Walk Under
I do not think enough
[but what do I know?]
Do not urge to things
Time is an urn set to
boil / I have elevated
my unaware body up
& down to my stomp
[I do not know much]
in wood lands – but a
month of rainfall has
ruined paths [here I’ll
rest & rewrite lines to
coppice my hobbling
thoughts] My writing
[I do not know much]
diminishes [by rained
engineering] washed
by a bowing stream’s
volume / My throat is
of that choir – its hold
turns down my levels
[I don’t know enough]
But what I still know –
when breaths expires
we’ll be glad for more
until it sucks from us
tight Parkinson’s calls
Pain Management
Stepping out
into traffic &
not leaving a
note – RTA &
not a suicide
[eased facts
for my kids?]
My tendency
to stop & cry
is drying out
I cannot drop
under any car
Not any more
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
And if I could remain upright
And if I could remain upright –
as I do on this drop-down seat
with my bowels hanging open
& my dog slumped at my feet
[being of that post-crunch age
of never-offering-another-f*ck]
I would be so happy / And if it
was possible to never have to
wipe & so avoid pain’s leak of
tears – made by turning – then
it would be good to stay here
overnight & on waking rise to
warm water in my hot shower
to remove my air-dried faeces
Ich mach’ Feierabend
Me: I am calling it a day
Not a thing to offer out
loud – others will argue
against my final remark
with their ignorant talk
I will translate it – then
& fewer souls will spew
their complaints aloud
about this last decision
Me: Ich mach’ Feierabend
These Alarms
A howling car alarm – It isn’t mine
They will pound on house doors –
‘Oose that fucker disturbin’
our fuckin’ peace
It does not need carrying –
Fuck you!
& other words travel outside
under a disturbed grind of voices
I cannot keep eight hours sleep
anymore – & four is not enough
They will not let me drive –
because my grip has gone
so that mechanical disturbance
is not my concern – Fuck off
Reading Lights
I have slipped into being
one who staves day wear
& who’ll settle to waking
up with Bacalov & books
in his sitting chair below
his reading light – within
reach is his worn remote
My grandfather tuned in
to waves @ distances on
a glowing horizon – other
places – medium & long –
measured in x-kilometres
We both return to voices
on another old continent
But no newspaper barrier
Perhaps a remit for print?
A walk to a newsagent &
my reason to get dressed –
before settling – it is easy
under my long diagnosed
excuse for ageing quickly
I don’t really know
I don’t really know
my reset rationale
could be one way
to try to & decode
such heaving fugs
of chronic thought
in my rented place
with no rowdy kids
in a silenced room
I will keep making
money & take time
& sit at my window
Outside is another
way of being there
& finding existence
Pottering will save
me from my ill-hell
Attend an Evening
Class & take up art
Renew one’s library
card & hang out in
Romance & Poetry
Or find Love online
It has struck me so
I don’t really know!
My blood rubs
My blood rubs
partly explains
my old disease
Hourly beaten
without seeing
my aggressor
A fucking awful
tiredness – sleep
no longer works
A rattled alarm
for medicine to
still my tremor
Enough to fool
those who eye
my demeanour
Holinshed’s Chronicles
Your brief candle will light
my abdication – write it down
Please – remove my crown
before its weight crushes me
Fatigue feeds on my blue blood
Pain gifts me my hangman’s name
Those two princes of discomfort
underscore their dungeon games
in a discord of old tower songs –
far too loudly at times for my liking
Let me walk from my obligation
of parades – of polite conversation –
of waving and doing dull functions
Let those two would-be kings loose
upon my sex-ensnared queen
and leave me to tighten my noose
A DX
It is as if
every clock
is set to
other zones –
subject to
singularities –
hours mooned
by round faces
and seen from
wider angles
by those
qualified
A diagnosis
does not tell
you at what time
all will be right
A Bench Without a Name
My core temperature
has dropped
a few points –
Yes – I do allow for
seasonal differences
All the while
working timepieces
make veridical turns
between here and there –
ever evenly placed
like fixed hard chairs
in another time-sucking surgery
Sit with me –
It’s cold outdoors –
Stay – before my reminder to move
to face a dog-tired doctor
sat in another swivel chair
He / She will be leant forward
squinting – screen-reading
throughout my consultation
This giving wooden bench
faces due south
as if aimed by a pagan
rather than – truthfully –
at that required angle
to watch a ghost-stepped
amateur football match
After sitting in so many
bright muzak rooms
my huge catalogue
of Chairs Used
in Waiting Rooms
is now complete
[cancer wards excluded –
touch wood!]
I am ready to be published
Stud imprints in dragged mud
and ball-thumping boots
have mashed this playing field –
churned those naked goalmouths
with a good old-fashioned kicking
Standing is not too easy these days –
my cold bones
and low moans meet
Let us get to another bench
to talk some more about life
Medication Due Notification
My medication-taking
app’s notification rattles
as if shattered bones
pummeled in a bag –
like marbles shook
in school uniform pockets
to test competitors’ nerves –
as sudden as foul complaints
in response to
an unexpected doorbell –
it hits out – shattering at
a kid-tipped glass of panics –
like a parent’s blunt trill
of oft-repeated commands –
and it is a wake-up-to-me alarm –
sometimes fresh maracas in year six –
and then its repeat is more equal
to all of that mentioned before
Marbles
Dignity is my now tattered flag –
white by surrender’s tradition –
a message to my sworn enemies –
now limp over my fallen nation
You rolled unbroken like mercury –
vermillion in my palm – as poisonous
and ungraspable as quicksilver
You then scattered as if flick-struck
in a bent-to game of clicking marbles –
a crackshot with one eye open aims
to split our glass constellation
and to win with a swift ball bearing
My treasures rattled in an old sweet tin –
now my drugs settle in a smaller one
There are games set to be unwinnable
by that first spread of an opponent’s hand
Noted
From our solemn mediator’s
lined notepad – Just a cheap thing –
he referred to his underlinings
He instructed you to observe
Some basic ground rules
now he knows how you are
Do not put aside your husband’s
neurological condition
His Parkinson’s cannot be ignored
It all went wrong weeks earlier
as you pulled out your own pen
when you wanted to Strike a deal!
It all went wrong when you roomed
not for love – a family trait – equalled by
sisterly disruptions of vows
I could not fix that drugged damage
when you stumbled from Brighton
Off your tits and smelling of builders
Our mediator knows who you are
as he gives me a look of concern
and says Are you able to carry on?
Selflessnesses
Do not be sofa bound
by reelings –
by spasms
off muscle contractions
under that uncommon label
of dystonia –
a low waiting room
for our stiff unknownings
Lift a half glass fully
to your lips
without occasional
spillings
Try to sleep for eight hours
without rum disturbances
and rise to daylight with ease
without drugs – without slowed fears
of standing upright and all
alone
again
each morning
Do not be afraid of night
or day
as your unseen naked pain
rides tight on your skin
First Person Singular
From my Mass Observation Notes 12th June 2017
I am both fully awake and in pain at seven-forty AM
I am now learning a new word – Imprimatur
I am feeling a rough poem coming on
I am taking the rake of our stairs with care
I am making two teas in the fitted kitchen
I am climbing the stairs with two mugs of tea
We are drinking cooled tea in our double bed
We are discussing how much the day will cost
I am reading the headlines on my smartphone
I am now stiffly rising from our double bed
I am now stood showering
I am singing loudly to Clair from the shower
I am checking my emails as I dry my body
I am dressing as Clair showers and talks
I am listening to Clair’s words
I am listening to Clair’s tone of voice
I am watching Clair dry herself
I am telling Clair that I love her more than chips
I am leaving our house in a sudden rush
I am walking with my stick to the high street
I am at breakfast with four other husbands
I am ordering a Full English Breakfast and latte
We are talking about last night’s comedy show
We are talking about imported lawn mowers
Glen is now paying for all the breakfasts
I am walking back to the house on my own
I am now stopped at my favourite park bench
I am on my smartphone checking my emails
I am now standing up and turning to home
I am now back at my emptied-out house
I am suddenly greeted by our small dog
I am walking the dog up and down roads
I am sorting the recycling bin on the drive
I am lending Otto my Karcher pressure washer
I am walking up the garden to my shed
I am sat at my desk in my shed
I am sending and receiving emails on my PC
I am doing kid management on my smartphone
I am redesigning Cars3 experiential space for Goodwood
I am re-rendering FatBoy Slim’s DJ booth in Lumion
I am reading a new brief for a design to be completed today
I am walking slowly from my shed on uneven slabs
I am eating a rushed lunch of cold beans and toast
I am walking back up the garden to my shed
I am being hassled by clients by email on my smartphone
I am Whatsapping our kids to sort childcare tonight
I am opening my shed door and stepping up with care
I am sitting at my high desk whilst waiting for a reboot
I am listening to The Archers whilst working on my PC
I am hassled by another text on my smartphone
I am hassled by the wife to get to personal trainer at four PM
I am managing and meeting my design deadlines
I am rendering out 3D models in Lumion
I am designing an exhibition stand
I am listening Gardeners Question Time on Radio 4
I am making more more changes to Cars3
I am postponing the personal trainer on my smartphone
I am thinking about tomorrow’s poem
Clair is now back from her hair appointment
I am commenting positively on the change
Clair is setting me a countdown to theatre-leave-time
I am finishing what I can to meet my deadlines
I am now shutting down my PC
We are rushing to get out the house
Clair is driving our car
Clair is worrying about her mum
Clair is not saying much
Clair is filling up the car with petrol at Tescos
We are now in Eastbourne
We are watching the first half of the play
We are now sitting outside in the interval
I am watching a smoker light up
We are discussing the show
I am conscious that my legs are hurting
I am checking social media on my smartphone
We are now heading back in to the show
We are leaving the venue after the show
I am now stuck at fifty-three
I am now treated like I am eighty-three
We are looking for our car on the seafront
I am being driven home in the dark
I am trying to find out more about Clair’s feelings
We are now arriving home
We are entering the house in silence
We are being greeted by the dog
I am locking the back door
I am switching off the last light
I am climbing the stairs
We are now in bed
We kiss goodnight
She is turned from me
A Price to Moor
You have found
a preferred supplier
My observance
is contracted out
Small service
is true service
he said –
but for you
it was always in doubt
You took that
online attention
and confused it
with some kind of love
Now you live
in your house by a river
where mirrors
reflect your old doubts
I found your profile
beguiling
but then found
that you lied to us both
Serpentine Paths
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
Pension Planning
When this gets real bad
and we will not see that –
not for quite some time yet –
ten years was said to be
a good guide
Now half my path
left to that X-marked place
then it will be time to book
a Swiss or Dutch room
and neck a small glass
if my mouth still works
and find my best sleep
Do not live a whole life
less – that will kill me
Traveling Through
For DS
Soft disturbances by a welcome breeze
have woken me – along with crept daylight –
as my room’s weighted curtains dance
Rise – like Stafford – and write before
another day has been sucked of words
No slow verse
will earn me enough to labour to such
But on my back – my normality is a rush
of common complaints – not that difference
shown by my drags and drunken-ish ways
What would Mr. Sangster do in my position?
He would be up and rolling with his kids –
but then Mr. Sangster has secret superpowers
And another daybreak in my hand – as this device
brightens – clever sensors inside meet sunrise –
Another call to get up from my sloth’s slept pit
This ragged imagination of mine has risen
before my body – that is where errors are made –
too much thinking – William E. will expand
Lift Me
Cure me –
please –
of fatigue
If of nothing else – if you can –
without causing side effects –
leaving me somewhat replete
Climbing three runs of stairs
is now enough of a bind
to find me seeking out lifts
In this moment is my submit
to half-slept nightmares –
but I have to be awake to work
Lift me –
please –
from this curse
Quietly Robust
Quietly robust –
my self-diagnosis
Seeing trees
and feeling light
where shadows
would not shift –
and other such stuff
of verbosity
But still quietly robust
on this day
Before An Alarm
I am abraided at five AM
to another sung summoning
of loud bird light beyond
my night-bared sash panes –
but was thankfully deaf
in those dark hours earlier
to returning songs of drunks
on their way back from clubs
with their waved polystyrene
trophies of spilling chips –
that mayonnaise trail of fun
runs drip-drip-dripped away
Let me slip from this long itch
and find release from stiffness –
as it was in my lost night
of splendent working dreams
Instead – only a cooling rinse
under that wide shower head
and then a return to this bed
and cold emollient for my skin
Fluxus
My heated tears contain stomach acid –
piteous shit – feeling sorry for myself
having thrown my empty gut’s content
into the piss-plated Made in Italy bowl
They will not scar my face – we only fear
such long-term effects on our throats –
heightened instances of – that is enough
for now –
Sit with me as I pop my evening’s dose
of slowers and helpers – shaped as pills –
and pray they stay long enough to kick in
and get me through a night I need
I am still sucker-punched – struck as such
through this day – but needs must
so let me sleep and find a brief peace –
I am sorry Son for saying I want to end it now
It comes and goes
Stops
Another thirty-ish minutes of life
lost to indecisions
By my lethargy
By her rough mis-reckonings
of tightly wound watches
and bare clock faces
You will never get it back
Did I ever want it thrust upon me?
Did I ask for that rum half an hour?
You have no choice in time’s ways
That furled-up woman was also held –
stilled – by a sudden summer downpour –
without coats – they were anchored
as rainwater oozed into a tidal rush
down Crowborough’s shined tarmac
The butcher called out to them –
I’m taking the canopy down! A joke
I won’t buy pies from Him again
Under library clocks her heart stopped
for a few seconds – even her pulse –
and no breathing – nothing was working
But it was a mistake – merely a pause
Another thirty minutes of unaccounted
being alive will be inexpertly multiplied
becoming a whole day – a whole year
of slumbered nothingness
and then turned to sleep
once time is tamed by her old age
Measured Life
Under a stiff corrugated sheet
was a lizard king – an envy green –
coloured in by me of your wild place
hidden by your bungalow frontage –
Bungalow is a foreign word
replanted a century ago in this country
Your garden is an eyed up tunnel –
what the Scottish call a howk –
dug out by regard to your gate to Sussex
Your offered photography competition
places me in my last century Surrey
of huge distances lain in eyed safaris
when we met insects in squared up inches –
propped on our grass-moulded forearms
Such measurements were lost – until now
And then a sumptuous dragonfly stages
her circumnavigation of your soupy pond
to bring me back from my I-Spy enquiries
Estate Agents
Your virgin fence panels went up
on both sides of our scored land
as flimsy ramparts to mark
your own extents and hard edges
before our house – our home – was split
by an auction – of sorts – of blind bids
You tipped complaining barrows of earth
into a hired skip and into low indents
as you oversaw each shored footing
for fifteen freshly hewn fence posts –
and at least a thousand splinter risks
You put everything into place
after your tie-knotted estate agent
had advised you on such necessary repairs
to achieve the best price possible
now that you no longer wish to live
in this haunted house with me
and with my unmet Ghost of the Future
Yet Under Stars
My beer-slipped schemes drift
from under me – from my legs –
as if my intentions are blown
whilst I am at my high helm
of hard rope pulls – without her –
in my pain-clinkered craft
and it shifts to starboard –
now translated into my
Cornish-Sussex parlance
but it is a one-man adjust
of no more clean oar lifts –
dizziness and lost time steer
my walk before a freeze over –
I will not be stuck in her frost fair
Not locked in a once-flowing place
Yet under stars – we are our equals
with no cold differences
Under such light nothing matters
as my dead man walk continues
back to our flights of stairs
and drawn curtain stories
The Stick
There are re-tightened circles
within my bind – my condition
of well-rounded concentric ripples
Feel them grip – feel with me
He laughs at my stick and walk
because he’s so very drunk
before an unequal fill of booze
ferments inside my empty gut
thickly – as if a dreadful influenza
but none of those highbrow fevers
Like when your own infected body
had been rammed flat by it
Now you expect me
to lift myself up from this floor –
out of spilt beer – for inspections
and more qualified interventions
all the while our state and yourself
still owe me back payments
for every too-long worked day –
which weigh on me as tired eye tolls
For those – and your destructive love –
put down a deposit to secure my loss
Pay out against my final demand
for a resilient stick to abet my steps
No Cure
That bore – by auger –
into one’s own skull –
known as trepanning –
has never appealed
until this too-long day
of blindness and pain
Such drilling to mirror
by my resting tremor
has hashtag fail
typed quick-by-others
to my sapped at selfie
Best left to sicker men
His Last Leaf
Frank Ormsby rarely writes –
only now by medicated spurs
set quick to the side effects
and his drugged obsessiveness
which are my nowhere-near-equals
to his northern placed verse
No more lined up by his diluted voice
Loud Frank left it at school
He opens up his vowel larder
of self-affirming stories
His Rasagiline’s rattle is double
of my dose – no ghosts yet
in the corner of my eye to fade
as Frank’s stand on his laid table –
then they briefly sit alongside him
until slipped back into mindful spaces
Frank works to avoid word boredom
with a poet’s fear of word silence
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
Fifty-five
Life has bleached my forehead to the bone
My alarm is set early
to nothing –
to a home solitude –
except for my youngest –
except for this word search
in my head
for that which is known –
it is known –
and then decrepit thoughts
rattle loudly
over my grunting
down
each
stair –
So – fifty-five years of age
this month
but already the ghost
whom I fear
Four Years
Five-zero-three-fifteen –
my DX anniversary
of a ‘phone consultation
upon basal nigra’s role
in my slow-witted downfall
and other explanations
that Google had offered
over the previous few
years of not-knowing
how many search results
were not sponsored
by quacks and sawbones –
Now it is uneasy sleep
and dreams of running
which keep me turning up
to this annual event
The Word Cowboy
Out with no phone –
out without
that device which is
my ready-coiled rope –
a slack spiral – a bracelet
looped into a throwable
lifeline – unknottable –
loose for when needed –
for my amateur attempts
to lasso my lawless
thoughts –
Each born-weak twine
twisted over many
weak-born twines –
into a thousand strands –
into one unbreakable line –
Verb-spun into itself –
into a readied tethering
which will bear
me – my word weight –
which will tighten
without a tug or hanging –
There is a knowhow
to such coiling –
which was my first
apprenticeship –
which now –
is my last attempt at art
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
And Disorderly
He visits lost priests
to mumble-in-vain
for what?
His loose-lip prayers weave
over tremble-woven fingers –
This is the church –
this is the steeple –
look inside
and see the people –
God’s gatekeepers
cannot force the bolts –
not slammed
gavel-struck ones –
so he carries his sentence
out in public spaces
as drunken stumbles –
Ready the stocks –
they mutter to others –
He is a convict clapped
in cold iron hobbles –
Of his own bad choices –
manacles left visible
to every untrained eye –
they see another barfly
Valentine’s
I just took a taste of my waking breath –
it is no wonder then that we do not kiss –
The ugliness of my rum state
places bitter tilts upon our old arousals –
I lay whet by a glaze – an unwelcome stain
on this pushed back duvet of night sweats –
My chest gives birth to salty pearls – loosened
by gravity – set to roll down my bare sides
as trickles – as if wept from woundings –
like precious piercings – but not five holy jabs –
though I do feel pinned by a carried cross –
Do not glance at my nakedness – how I am fixed
by the invisible itches and riveted scars
on my legs – I draw up the bedding – my body bag –
and let my skin rest from your listless look –
instead – I shall watch you dress first – then
I will rise alone and not take in the looking glass
until I have washed off the vilde oozes of blood
which I have picked under the night’s disturbances –
those red fruits of my rough sleep’s self-harm
Utter
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
In Earshot
I stopped – I heard the playful howls –
the breaktime hollers from a school –
but my ear-to-the-past
was then frittered by the wind’s shift
which rudely imposed on my
awareness the speeding hum
of rubber treads on the sunken bypass
and flat warnings of vehicle reversing –
further dulling the innocent revels –
I lent on a wall – A much-needed breather
I would explain to anyone asking of
my unsteady condition –
To lift the cramps from my legs –
and still – the shouts were blocked –
now by a car’s revs over rumbling humps –
but – as quick – the wind dropped
and I turned my head to the past –
once more -with closed eyes –
the blind man’s map – which had shaken
itself as if it were a sail unhitched
from eyelets –
was now doldrum-flat for me
and my sensed route
returned – I do not need to see the road
to know the course for me to rove –
in reverse – over five decades
without this shortened gait of illness – of mine –
I was never – then – one of those sick kids –
The schoolyard was set silent by the whistle –
then to giggled-at-desks – it was penny plain
as I took to learning and then to believe
that our futures were guaranteed to be huge –
I looked up at the vast blackboard and was lost
to calculations and big new words –
that succour has been ignored for too long –
my concocted life has left me without
a belief in learning –
And if my first school was heaven – my chance
gone – then I know now – just by listening
that I can find the gates
and find my desk – again –
with my name etched by a held compass
till kingdom come
Parousia
This second life was ordained
by a drawn-out judgement –
an almost-expected epithet
for the quickened reductions
under my ever-thickening skin –
on dragged heels and hands –
Add Old Age’s uneven stockpile
of his enfeebling irritations
and so my time was reset –
And in this slowing restate
I cannot make any mistakes –
I cannot afford to fall heavily –
do not expect me to pick myself up
as quickly as the still-blessed do –
as I did before this epiphaneia
Übermensch
I will wake and fail to find my eased flux –
not without pushing up into discomfort
over breaths of ground-voice-as-grunts –
these announcements vex my tired wife
who needs sleep in my odd-roused hours
I sit upright – off the bed – to test myself
in the sweated night – I almost always assay
in the woken hours – contrasting the past –
adding to a never-published paper
about this ill-judged illness – it will devour
My recent history of being her own overman –
able to embrace all with gusto and gratitude –
has been powered down – pathetically cut –
too much for either of us to truly construe
We wake to a slow down – no more superman
#Guinness is God For Yer
I am – now – that Old Boy in the bar –
he who nurses an anchored pint –
who has time itself as a luxury
of sips every fifteen minutes –
those slow draws of his lifted Guinness –
that drinking match of dark mass
and white-topped hair-on-head –
‘Youngsters take this tipple ironically’
Then the in-house mumbling alcoholic
stirs me from my reveries by my name
to ask about my illness – and Christmas –
both are twisting inside me – like candida
The quickened swill in my gut then blooms
to a weighty obligee to her seasonal beliefs –
and those of my degenerative stuff –
each then rinsed down by my cold stout
Blunt
These day-in day-out mis-typings
of small tap-tap-tap screen pokes –
which I commit as my bad habit –
weightless stabs in this landscape
to stall that mental keel
warned of by my desk-set consultant –
My thoughts are in a dark waiting room
without a fixed appointment for entry –
sat for a last hurrah
before the freeze
I greeted her breezy – How are you?
with an unfair response –
I use this screen – my handheld shield –
for honest words – about everything –
I’ll always dig for verse
in this spade-blunting field
Broken
And these awakenings roll
from stones into movement
of cruel stretches to unlock
my fixed hands from the straps
of an accelerated illness
as my skin crawls with insects
within the scratched at tingled layers
and no tablet on earth can fix
the inner unrubbed itch
no cream can offer emulsion
enough to bleach the nettle beaters
except for her mouth on mine
and a foreign breath to confuse
No More
My stiff hands
no more
give the grip
I once held –
my legs
no more
step well
in this world –
my mind
no more,
is to be left
to rest –
this body
no more
is the one
I can trust.
E120219
Fear of Climbing
I have my inner tremor,
my lower jaw mumbles,
my right hand joins in,
connectedness concurs
to plot, and I cannot
easily climb the stairs,
instead piss in the garden
the less-stepped option –
until this house (for-the-fit)
is re-made, is bomb-proofed
to the extents it can be,
because I cannot live
like this and still be,
I’ll not let inched timbers
and imperial bricks unsettle me.
This
This disease,
this being,
this sitting,
this watching,
this fucking,
this waiting,
this flickering,
this shifting,
this longing,
this counting,
this reflecting,
will not cease.
The King’s Speech
My old voice – fragmenting – along with my teeth –
speech patterns are broken – immutably creased –
pouring decay out my thought-cavities –
spoken in youth – such mendacities
They arise again on bile’s chest-stab –
My speechless dictation a keyboard-gab
The therapist pointed – a turned beige chair –
his notes – table-placed – his hands held in prayer –
Deliver me patients, who’ll speak much more –
Or something like that – his held-silent lore –
Sheets ticked – penned by his half-deciphered scrawl –
The speech could be lost under PD’s draped pall
The heartburn – easy – just change everything –
but my speech will ne’er be that of a King –
I left with a list of life to elude –
Diluting a risk of slow-death through food –
Air-way – gullet – they won’t work so well –
my banqueting less and thus choke-risk quelled
E070119
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 