A brief message
was enough
for the moment

but it opened old ways
I had tried to ignore

and it took me off
in less idle thoughts

and brought me a sense
of another course

I am itch-rolled

curled on my side
of our double bed

my head sandwiched
between pumped pillows

whilst you are spread wide
elsewhere

until that breakfast tray
arrives at your door

and the cooled order
is admitted

It requires great art
to fool your partner –
separation will not
come easy –
hate-forced tears
are not nearly enough
to grease the slips –
there to set loose
those thousand
or more men of war

---

E170219

Across passing minutes
his foul envy simmered,
with another’s wide mouth
taking her down,

reducing the soft layers
(those he had watched,
so dutifully added),
a removal of fashions;

putting bare hands on,
lifting her to their God:
A few hours gone
of her agreed absence,
and he set to bed to weep.

He lay flat on his back,
jacket off, the worn soles
of his buffed brogues
almost rudely exposed,
any sign of breathing
invisible at the distance,
and my mother stood
at the kitchen window
Do you think he’s dead?
It must have been 1975,
and he was an old man
who was not known
to do such hippy stuff,
like lying on the lawn.
If it was ’76 then the heat
would have been the cause.
After that day Grandad wed
once more and moved out.

God, how my reckoning
is adjusted, discoloured
by the darkened shades
in my heart, so judgements
rub, like an ill-fitting shoe,
slow, limped, true damage
unknown, until it is viewed.

That drab civic room,
where we had voted,
here the Parkinson’s
support group met:

a chesty (badged) lady
offered us coffee,
pamphlets were handed,
flicked, to be kept.

A clipboard was passed,
to take names and numbers,
and to indicate interest
in meeting again:

My wife bent down,
plundering her handbag,
pulling out a tissue,
here the ending begins.

I dropped into her
from this height,
into her eyes,
there fixed in size
from birth,
framed by lines,
burnt in recall
by now-evaporated
tears of flicked, blinked,
intimate enquiries,
here refocused on me
into an expectation,
of cross-stitched lashes,
re-knotted,
a tight press of eyelids
in each exploratory kiss,
and then untied
as she measured my heart.

There, tonight, across the red bridge,
I captured my ghost, pulled her hard to me,

under wings folded, her talons curled tight,
her fix on mine, her heart in flight,

there tamed under oak, one guarantee –
this ghost ‘cross the bridge will always haunt me.

What bravado
the boys of Sussex
displayed,

and I tried to explain
to my youngest child
after it all,

as we sat outside
the imperial brick
police station:

I spoke about
how some things are
rehearsed,

I talked about
missing empathy,
how thrusts of ego,

cocktails of drugs,
that itchy fug,
near-fungal,

under their skin,
will always
do them in.

I have danced on the stage
at the Royal Albert Hall,
sidled a swept Princess
and a hundred-like fools.

Their rules of movement,
to me unsaid,
I turned to a tune,
not that which played.

I spun below domes,
under the clouds of song,
with a woman so slight,
because ballet is wrong:

Their rules of movement,
to me set blind,
I turned from their tune,
not the dancing kind.

From Kensington Gore
dropped on to Queen’s Gate,
ripped fast from the ball
by my own complaint.

Their rules of movement,
to me mistimed,
I removed from that tune,
that which was mine.

Take me from such
dance floors and grace,
I have no true patience
to keep me engaged.

---

 

There, feel suspicion
shifting, with 
the volute of winds,
drilled, air-cracked,
this wooden floor,
almost set lifting,
with me tied-to,
in Ulysses contract,
waiting upon
a messenger’s distract:
A low across
my nervous squall,
you, my storm,
could destroy this all.

And I shall sleep
through falling trees,
as I did once before,
in another place,
where I was split,
felled to my knees
by a lover, me, cut,
redundant, disgraced
by her mis-order,
my love misplaced,
becalmed upon
her blunted bent:
I descended Leith Hill,
the storm then spent.

---

 

---

At our five bar gate,
with the quick-trap latch,
uneven in closing,
mis-fitted, ill-aligned,
is where I stood,
with a long view of your
approaching sadness,
and you stopped to talk,
after a usual pleasantry;
but then you gave to me
your knave-held cards,
a pair of bastard men,
living in different houses:
There I stood equal
to their low value,
in other dealings,
under different stakes:
I had to express doubt
in your maybe-boyfriends,
exposing their bluff,
as mine was once dealt.

---

 

---

For Tobias & Mariette

---

 

---

He can, no longer, so cannot,
handle the lock of their horns,
and so offers an abdication,
dropping on to his knees,
almost broken, reeled, cowed,
feeling beaten, to save their frailty,
to delay their falling.

---

 

I can tell time passed
by the reduction
of the contents
of the bumper pack
of cotton buds,

that one in the cupboard,
below our sink,
its product packed
so thick that patience
is needed to tug one out.

When that count is half-done
will we be half-emptied
by the rituals of cleaning
up residues of errors,
which only they can reach?

Eventually a rattled reminder
to replacements-required,
another thought about
what we have bought,
are we ever re-stocking?
Will that be when we stop?

They rode in that lift,
on their mirror-checked trip,
to the honeymoon suite,
but not to sleep;

this temporary couple,
married, untroubled,
by the weight on fingers
of their wedding rings:

Bar-acquaintance, to this,
their lift-locked kiss,
divorcing the guilt
to succeed.

It had long-passed,
but the field we walked,
as I had warned,
soaked our shoes,
and
the dog almost drowned
(in the clumps of grass).

Under a pair of beech trees
I looked up,
seeing frail silhouettes
over silhouettes,
rain-glued translucency,
veined-leaves
in forced overlaps

under a still-threatening sky:
All the time
the single rhododendron
was impervious
to the wetness suffered
by the rest of us.