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
Tag: #PWP
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
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]
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
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
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
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 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
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
Small Dole
There – Careful – it takes us up
with a broken concrete offering
to David’s uneven heat-scratched lawn
of bastard grasses and inveterate weeds –
unintended God stuff
but enough to sow doubts
Still – we can cut them out
without too much effort –
for now
A weed is a flower
without a lover
a friend had said – as well as
his stern dictum of
Michael – never marry a woman
That Israeli summer of sweat
between Anat’s wet thighs
was his concern and my lust –
Michael – she said – I love your brother
Clackety-clack – they sang –
as a rattled song of songs –
those flitting overnight sprinklers
spun once our local nuclear option
had dropped to eight o’clock
David could name every living thing
as if God had passed down his crown
We walked together – he looped
with his now-trademark swagger
in his Sussex-rooted garden
of kind disregard for fixed horticulture
And there was my first instance of knowing
that a shared disease is ours to reap
Leg Work
This is it – this is falling apart
with unknown shapes of years left
having relinquished – by request –
control
by time – by illness – by love
with shins purpled – stained
under ripe scars and biting itches –
my overnight monoculture
blindly scythed by my bit fingers
They are not your concern
This is no more your upset
Smears of chemists’ creams –
slap-readied to swim La manche –
and an abstinence from drink –
neither inconvenience is a balm
whilst my consultant reiterates –
Epidermis itch is not
a common factor
in the progression of
Parkinson’s Disease
And if this spreading bren of skin
without relief – no place of rest –
if this is my forever flay
then no wonder I take sleep first
after feet up rest on our sofa
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
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
The Lungs of God
I stand under this vault
of our common church –
off-centre on this sea-girt isle
Our stone tradition of roofing
is more to do with fools’ fires
than Heaven’s weight
Here the light is insipid –
no tang of incense
only the blue miasma
off flume emissions
My legs tire – but find no pew –
no tuffet to take me
to the path’s cathartic
kneel-down call
#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
The Itch
I am riven by my overblown
irritants of untouchable
itches
and rise to the night’s
blindness to avoid your
disturbance
but fail into disgrace –
and so meet your bed roll
with my low apology –
I see some of this
from my dim dressing room
as your annoyance turns
away
The Dew Pond
I have woken to
that occasional weight
of the chain mail
of another night sweat
but now it is winter –
my cycle-kicking
of the layered sheets
has no drying effect
I lie in wait for a miracle
but revert to dancing
blindly to the bathroom
to dab my dew ponds
This uneasiness
in my places of aches –
of Song-writing Disease –
could be helped
by flicking the switch
but such light –
such selfish luxury –
would wake you
As I towel myself down
I remember in waking
that you are not here
and will not be woken
E140119
Stair Well
I tipped myself into half of an escape
to sit alone on the in-laws’ stairs –
tilted there by my uneven troubles
from imbalances set by disconnections
I was taking myself off my thumped legs
and away from my sucks of short-fix air –
which set me to stand for a brief parade
among partly-heard party conversations
of drunk relatives – spiked by marriage vows –
loosened by the briefest of infidelities –
those with a younger man whose wife stood up
to beauty’s allure – she was there for measure
I put up too – with the racist uncle’s drunk ideas
for less than five minutes – not quite a cure –
but enough to get me to stand up again
and to leave him staring at an empty step
Audio HERE
Holding
The act of opening has to be
quite deliberate –
from the holding of the tin
of polish –
in your poor hand
to then apply the finger-end twist
to the blind key –
just enough contact and pressure
to turn to prise the lid
But over time the art bends away
and becomes less effective –
The mechanics do not last long enough –
not as long as the polish
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
Laid
It was as if there was no step
or soft seat that did not force
the deep stab and grip of pain
through his frame and thoughts
He had stood well for a time
but then the ill rip-and-burns
filled his limbs with that sear
which fuelled flames in turn
Bad as it was – it was not Death –
He led The Crowd to the pit –
felt his calves lock on the path –
and then sear as if then split
He rocked on his heels to ease it all
whilst he read to them The Truth –
as laid out in the lines for the dead –
but God’s words were still no proof
As the Boxed Man was loose of his ties
and was set down in the earth
his own spine screamed for a seat –
or to lie flat on the peeled back turf
By the time the priest got to his car
all of the Dark Cast were gone –
In the cold groan of the air con
he let out a tear to mourn
That was his last one for The Church –
it had turned its arched back –
to leave him to face an ill grace
and to tear up the old contract
Cohen’s Disease
I have Leonard’s stiffness
and now no longer play
once his God decided
to make me kneel – not pray
Catching Butterflies
To catch a butterfly
takes a lightness of hand
which I try to employ
whenever I can
The reminder chimes
for the civic hall meeting
where the Parkinson’s carers
do all the speaking
Their therapy stirred
into cups of weak tea
and we smile politely
at the speaker’s ill ease
I’ll be the youngest
at this month’s farce –
still able to hold
a life trapped by glass
Echo
He was moved down
to ‘The Departure Lounge’
and we were reduced
to the daytime whispers
of his night duty shifts
as required ten years earlier
but then Dad was dying
and his bed was grounded
almost as if the next stage
was another eased lowering
Three decades on
and I now look to a room
which is equally flawed
but my expected years
are not that finite reduction
of a terminal Illness
I struggle with this shift
from first floor to ground
but it will make life easier
for all in our household
I say I struggle with this shift
Incrementals
It has been a month
of slightness and shifts
which can be described as
‘incremental deterioration’
in my overall condition
pain and rigidity are my bedfellows
and lovers
those bitches who snap
and squeeze at me in measure
it takes a toll on others
I know
my masked face shares
such small messages
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
Eye Wash
And here it crawls
almost through me
laying old lead pipes
to siphon and drain
and to slowly poison
my seed free mind
the routing of pleasure
away from my centre
to a floodwall
built high
to contain this dark wash
of rolled on tears
Fail
I do not want to see
or to feel
the place in which
you
a Light
have to exist:
Shore-washed
almost state-less
and un-returned
by muscles and
missing connections
I do not want
the contraction
of my view
which doctors
fail to fix:
a discomfort
I do not
EVER
want to
feel
Hate
I am shackled by sunrise
which makes each waking
a slight inconvenience
my movement in dreams
are not as encumbered
by this symptom I hate
Wine
The developed hills of Nerja
were not designed for me
(the me now rested halfway
on ascents and descents
in and out of the old town):
A quick trip to drink red wine
and pick at slapped down tapas,
as the silvered pensioners,
springing from bar to bar,
leave me blindly tapping.
The Mediterranean laps
on this unfinished coast
of collapsed kerbstones
and mismatched slopes,
Dali’s own theme park
of shadowy hazards.
And I make it back, alone,
with my whereabouts online,
via Google’s data pool,
for those I left at the bar
able to still pub crawl.
Note
Yes, no stick. No. More pain:
But you did not ask, although I offer
full disclosure, a guided tour of this
ever so slight inconvenience:
Just above the statutory distances,
but they will shorten along with more
outward signs which should
reduce your doubt.
But for now I will dance off indicants
you’ll never see: I will dance with them
until I die.
I am the man
I sit empty,
drained,
syphoned off,
weighted,
strapped,
I have
had enough.
I will not remain
not on these terms
not with this pain,
which tips my words.
I am drugged by fatigue.
I am often confused.
I am the man
who will reduce.
Loss
This dopaminergic
cell loss
in the substantia
nigra
of the basal
ganglia
will infect
more of us:
A relentless
condition
leading to
disability.
You did ask
what it is.
Dry Eyes
Something has set fire
to my right iris,
a voodoo needle
pricks my best eye,
and it weeps
before the pain,
really skewers,
an inflammation,
and I rub, rub, rub
and bawl without sobs,
at this inconvenience
of my mild disease.
This Is The Call
Sleep, Removed II
This eye-lined weight
takes me to my bed,
too easily, to sleep,
even then, struck midday,
when the rest of my family
is filling the[ ]gaps
left by my missing
during waking hours.
And I will lie, still, dressed,
rolled round, under the cover
of my selfish-slept discomforts.
Hurting
Our closest have lives to live and enjoy –
delayed redundancy in our sick bed-employ
Carers – co-sufferers – careers not chosen –
tend the disconnected – the mumblers and frozen
Altered – shameful – re-written contracts –
No wedded-bliss when we ill cannot act
Wives – husbands – family – relatives old –
airbrushed awareness as age takes hold
My prop – my chained-helper – engaged far too cheap –
Her offset disbursement being too tired to weep
When care is passed on – hear my atheist-prayer –
I ask her forgiveness for our marriage – unfair
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E090819
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
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MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 