Life's a story

Life’s a story

It’s always the story so far
It can only be that
You never know what’s in the next chapter

Heroic death scene in a hospital
Birth of a child
Windfalls of money or people
Emerging from history or the present

Sublime moments on a number 86
Or freewheeling downhill into Scarborough
The high tidemarks leaving flotsam and jetsam

That tiramisu in Venice
Or the early morning brandy in Rome
Or waking up to nature on the Norfolk Broads

In the end it’s just a story
A poem or a TV show
Available on Creation’s website

I'll be fine

I wrote this a month ago at Paperplanes and then left it for a while and returning to it now I quite like i:

I’ll be fine

I would love to see you again
If only I knew that it would feel OK
For both of us

But of course
There are no certainties
And it is a bit difficult
As you are dead

But I guess if you deal with your side of it
And I with mine
I’ll be fine.

What shall we eat?

What shall we eat?

Waiting for you again
I’m early as ever
And yes you’re late
Why break a habit of a lifetime
Now and for me

Ah but when you arrive
Your smile melts me
And I hardly even hear
Your mumbled apology

But this can’t be good
And certainly isn’t for me
Now what shall we eat?

Poem for Alun Turing

Poem for Alan Turing

I stood near you
Well, it wasn’t really you
It was just a statue of you
But that worked for me
And I felt gratitude for
All your gifts - to all of us
Cracking the code
And thinking the computer
And I felt sadness
At never being able to meet you
God, you could have been my teacher
But I was fourteen years too late

And I felt anger too
At how you – a hero- was treated
How can a loving act
Between two adults in private
Be called gross indecency?
Gross indecency?
Now that describes how you were treated.

Neil Tennant poem

Neil Tennant poem

What have I done to deserve this?
What have I done to deserve this?
What have I done to deserve this?
What have I done to deserve this?
What have I done to deserve this?

You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Nowhere else though

Poem: A gap in the book shelf of my life

A gap in the book shelf of my life

They’ve left your books in my room
A bit of you that can be forever mine

It’s thin pickings with just your initials on some volumes
Though one of them says Durham Xmas 87

The books have a strange and sweet smell
Which puzzles me

I can hang onto these volumes
As long as I like

But you are gone
And there is a gap in the book shelf of my life

Early morning mist over the Meadows

Early Morning mist over the Meadows


Early morning mist over the Meadows
The sun doesn’t shine through
And I’m thinking of you
Again

No longer wondering why
The bright star that was you
Has burnt out
We all think it was too early
But what is, is

I sense you everywhere
At home
At work
In the Meadows

And nowhere
And there is nothing I can do
Time takes us all

And easy talk of resurrection
Melts away
Like ice
As the sun shines through

So what is left?
‘Keep buggering on*’ is not enough

But I’ll put my trust
In the often unspoken love
And the little things we share
And if that doesn’t last - nothing else will

(* Winston Churchill's phrase for how he dealt with what he called the 'black dog' of depression)

Crossing borders - poem

Crossing borders

It’s nineteen sixty nine
And I’m still a teenager
Walking down Deansgate
Excited by my life in the big city
My new girl friend is on my arm
(Just like on the Bob Dylan album cover)
She’s an anarchist and Jewish and pretty
And we are head over heels in love
Like John and Yoko.

Suddenly she flees
Into a shop doorway
And hides away
‘What are you doing?’
‘Friend of the family –
I can’t be seen with you.’
‘Fuck but I’m a good guy.’
‘It doesn’t matter
You are not Jewish.’

And the trouble starts
Word gets out
And it messes up
Her elder sister’s arrange marriage.

She moves in with me
Into a tiny bedsit
But we are too young
To live alone and unsupported
And she misses home
And our love fades
And she moves on
And I feel like my life’s over.

But time passes
And the trees in Alexander Park
Lift my spirits
And I move on

I last see her in nineteen seventy two
And she’s not right
Living at home
She says ‘It’s OK.’
But I look at her face
And I know it’s not.

Where are you?

Where are you?

Where are you my sister?
Where are you my brother?
You turn up in my dreams
And you feel like you are very near
I can talk to you
But you don’t answer
At least not in words

I hope to see you again
Some day over the rainbow
But right now it’s raining

He's far away

He’s far away

Awake early
The sun’s not up
But I am
I’m stone
And cold
And sober
Now

And the tea’s drunk
And the milk has run out
And so have you
But you’re still here
In body
If not in spirit

And he’s dead
And wont come back
And I can almost feel him
Just out of reach

God your spirit was good

Even though they were running out of medicines to try you on
And the possible transplant was still only on the horizon
God your spirit was good

With a face swollen by steroids
And hair thinned by chemotherapy
And a swollen all but useless right leg
God your spirit was good

I came away in mourning
For the healthy man I remember
And full, not of pride, nor of hope
But of the friendship we still share
And God your spirit was good.

Truthing

Truthing

When I leave
Inaccurate stories
Will be told
About me

And I must confess
I have enjoyed
Some of them

But no
I have never
Lived in a monastery
Spent a night in jail
Or slept with a best friend’s wife

I have
Seen the dawn rise gloriously
Over the motorway
In a hitched car
Slept in a park near Calais
Spent a cold night
Awake in a bus shelter in Ramsgate
Grafittied walls in Manchester and Notting Hill

Visited people
In hospitals for the criminally insane
Scary places but mostly not scary people

I have
Failed gloriously
And not so gloriously
With some mad schemes
Like the two headed match

And succeeded
Beyond my wildest dreams
At other things equally mad
Like weirdly academic writing and teaching

When I leave
Inaccurate stories
Will be told about me

Existing for now

Went to visit the family graves on Monday. This poem turned up:

Existing for now

Standing by your graves
In the pouring rain
Having one-sided conversations
And re-feeling the pain

Death does have a dominium
And as it gets more
I am reduced
For I am not an island

But even though the sea
Is washing me away
I have been here before
And I will come again

Poem for Eva Cassidy

Poem for Eva Cassidy

Sometimes
When we see
The bright light from a star
It’s already dead.

Sometimes
When it’s dying
It shines more brightly.

You shown like a bright star
And now I can only see you
Half hidden
In the darkness
On Youtube.

Some day I’ll wish upon a star
And find myself over the rainbow.

Business or pleasure?

I was at a very dull meeting last week and wrote this poem

Business or pleasure?

We meet again
Why-do-we-bother?
Familiar phrases are uttered
The half hidden sighs
From the soul
If it exists
And I wonder
Why bother?We meet
And I wonder
Why bother?

Poem: Of boats and bikes

Of boats and bikes

You were always aware of nature
The sun rise
The sun set
The stars
The birds in the garden
And the feel of the wind

There was a sail unfolding
In your memory
So powerful
You never went to sea again

I’ve done my time
On my bike
I’ve felt the wind and the rain
And remember the Big One
Pushing pedals from Cornwall
To North East Scotland

I still feel the wind
And dream of new adventures
The West Coast of North America
Around Ireland
Or alongside the Danube

Al Stewart sang about
The sadness of old admirals
Who feel the wind
But never put to sea

I’m still sailing… for now

Haunted in Africa

I was in Nairobi in Kenya last week and I had great trouble sleeping, dreaming about members of my family now dead and feeling haunted, so I wrote this poem:

Haunted in Africa

There were ghosts in the room
Some were mine
Old lovers
Dead ancestors

But there were others
Broken victims of the Mau Mau uprising
Abandoned babies of men taken into slavery
Tribal victims of post colonial violence

How on earth could I sleep in peace?

My ancestors travel with me

My ancestors travel with me

As the buildings collapse
Into rubble
Part of my history
Part of me
Dies
So much of my past is vanishing
Like water through my fingers
And I can't hang on to it.

You move into
Ever widening life
Not knowing
You carry some of my past
As my ancestors travel with me.

Do not adjust your mind - reality is at fault

Do Not Adjust your mind –reality is at fault

Paul remembered the time he had visited Marie in hospital
Hospitals scared him,
psychiatric wards even more so.
But he had to visit her
- she was in there because of him or so he thought.
It was a modern hospital
just outside the city centre
and opposite the university.

It was clearly not a quiet place
or refuge
or asylum
but then neither were the old Victorian ones
out of town, out of mind asylums.
There was a distinct smell of cheap disinfectant in the air
masking another familiar hospital smell
- disease, fear and sweat - all three blended together.


The staff in the unit wore everyday clothes
This was a bit confusing at first for Paul
until he saw the state of the patients.
They each in their own way had a lost air about them –
if not why would they be there after all?

Marie was no exception,
in a tiny room,
(but at least she had a room of her own)
with just a hospital bed
and a small cupboard and not much else.
She was lying facing the wall,
dressed in old faded hospital pyjamas.

- Hi
She grunted in acknowledgement
- How are you? (Stupid question!)
- Ok (but the shrug of her shoulders told a different story)
- Er....do you need anything?
- No.... well some clothes... I guess
- Sure

There was a silence.
- Dywant to get a drink somewhere?
She shrugged.
- OK, OK
Paul offered her the flowers he had brought.
She looked at them
but didn't take them off him or say anything.
A tear slowly trickled down her face.
- Oh Fuck!

Paul went off
in search of a member of staff,
at least to do something.
He found one
who was very kind
and rather young
but of no real use to him.
Yes she was going to get better.
Yes she was on medication, anti depressants.
Yes she would eventually see a psychiatrist - probably next month.
No ECT was not being considered.

Well no she didn't get better
and yes eventually ECT was used
and it did succeed in pulling her back into a kind of reality.
But her lost look remained.
And there was no way back for Paul and her.

If not (poem)

On the wall in my mother-in-law's bathroom is a copy of Kipling's IF. I have often puzzled over it and played around with it. Redaing aloud everys econd word of each line etc. Last week David the Cake maker at work (He did my legendary 60th birthday cake) asked me how I was. I found myself misquoting If in reply and that set me off!

IF NOT

IF you can lose your head when all about you
Are keeping theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can doubt yourself when all men trust you,
But make allowance for their trusting too;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of frantic pace,
Yours is not the Earth and nothing that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a fool, my son!

I WANDER'D lonely as a clown
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden caterpillars;

In Chorlton did Kubla Khan
A stately organic cafe decree:
Where Mersey, the sacred river, ran
Through sewage measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

Shall I compare thee to a winter's day?
Thou art more cold and more grumpy.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And winter's lease hath all too long a date.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon Chorlton's gardens green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On Chorlton's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded beer?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic cafes?