Last night I dreamt of the potato fields again.
The early Sunday mornings, the damp mist creeping over long grass
from the River Rea and finding breathing
space in the surrounding mud of the neglected bank and glistening dew filled
spider webs that criss-cross and weave
through the rusty ailing railings in which many a leather football found its
untimely end.
The Sunday mornings in which my dad would don his early 1970’s style
Aston Villa top, the era of undisguised dejection for many a fan
Birmingham, damp, soaking wet
And I feel the
Rain
Teem and rinsing at
My every pore
But welcoming me back with open arms
In greeting to a prodigal son
As I leave the bright modern station
Of New Street.
The autumn darkness shields me
Like an roughly made cloak and I remain invisible
To all who once played like I
In the Costermonger’s basement. The sound of an air guitar
Straining at the leash as the crash of a new beat
Hit our 14 year old minds.
It is not Hamilton, a place in which my granddad enthused over
In his semi-waking dreams and in which, even as a small boy, I knew
He would rather have stayed, grown old in and perhaps
Even rather have passed
Away peacefully in the comfort of a town
That he once had played baseball and swam across its neighbouring lake.
Montreal he had only mentioned as a place that he had seen once,
From the deck of one ship and then from the deck of another
When the family left Canada to come to England via
I hold you in my arms, I cradle you like a proud dad handing out cigars
As I breathe in the cold talons of winter that approaches
The Wiltshire town. Overhead twinkling streetlights outshine the unseen stars
And the vermin of life, rats, bacteria and cockroaches
Of which I try to keep you away from.
I hear a sound of people gathering round, tears in their
Eyes. let the public come near, let the ghoulish come
And see what becomes when the dream of life turns to nightmare.
They took your life
Scene: The interior of a bar in the early hours of the morning, there is the sound of laughter; the gentle sound of music floating through the air, a raised voice overwhelms the music briefly and the clatter of a pool ball being struck too hard. On set there are two people to be seen, one a barmaid cleaning glasses and occasionally pouring a drink for someone unseen off stage and to the left of the stage a man sat on a stool, leaning against a wall one hand on a glass the other reading a book. Beside his chair is a rucksack. The sound of the pool ball being smacked again too hard and it bounces once and starts to roll towards the man in the chair who for a moment doesn’t look up from his book until he hears the sound of someone shouting his name. The music dies down as the young man looks at the ball. Carefully he puts down the glass, whilst keeping the book held tightly on the page he is on and walks over to the ball and picks it up, staring at it for a moment as if in quiet contemplation. He walks over to the darkness and hands back the ball.
Dearest Mother, though I took my brother’s place at the front of the line,
I became him, I took his name
To spare the family honour, I must admit I am scared
Of being in this insane and absurd battlefield game.
In my wisdom, I believed the words they said
When for home by Christmas I would be by your side
Now as mustard gas shines like some evil suitor dishing out charming lies
Across No Man’s Land
I feel for those women who will lose husbands, sons, lovers tonight
The sound of cheap laughter flowed across the bar of Harry’s Hula Hut.
The half-suppressed sneers, hilarity and piss taking at the English
Lad who said he could earn one of the shirts on the wall,
Only resolved my focus further to own the shirt that had entranced me
Since I first step foot in the door with Geoff and Carlos as they fought back
The crowds in search of the women they had chatted up
Earlier in the day.
I had spent my afternoon taking it easy, a visit to the Marvel Offices,
The roar of the Atlantic Ocean breaks in time with Ginsberg’s words
And the woman that I laid next to on the beach stretched
Her arms out absent-mindedly as far as they would go and
Casting a shadow on the seventeenth page, making me flick tiny particles of sand
over her in disgust.
Her friend, listening to one of my tapes that I had recorded in my bedroom
Before I skipped across the pond to meet you, remarked that the batteries were running
Out and she was bored of listening to the sound of the ‘tramp,
The party was in full swing as beer and whisky were downed as if the world was ending.
I happily drank more than most and sat in the corner, the internal haze of my time
Gazing back at me through frosted glass and my smile,
Permanently plastered on this English face, for a while stopped beaming.
The noise outside the Manhattan window, the cars driving down 77th Street, the people
On the sidewalk, cheering in humour, some shouting in pain
At the arguments that fuelled the city. The sound of a distant gunshot
I squat and shiver here in a trench just yards from No-Man’s Land
In place of my brother
Who refused to fight for King
And country or for the comradeship.
He would have been proud to wear a white feather
But I got the better of his conscious and made him
Let me take his place, even though I was too young to fight.
Now I see No-Man’s Land and
Its squalor, filth and sound of death that fills my ears
As people die for a blade of grass no longer there,