Holy Odda’s day
The chapel hidden through
Centuries of wet and blood
Stones standing thick and
Bold as yews defiant of the
Floods and deaths grown into
Their roots. What Odda was,
At the edge of the darkness,
The first houses for god
He built in the darkness of faith,
So little have we learned from
The light it gave, is it fading?
These money people float
Their money makes them
So light
Their soles are not touching
Anything, they live like
Angels
No memories staring back
From the streets they pass,
The ex-
Council blocks they buy
When they come down from
Heaven.
But they never land, they
Glide an inch above real
Living
You can still hear the mortals
From time to time, they
Break out
With feet that know the old
Streets, feet that can’t float like
Angels.
(Written somewhere between Shoreditch and Hoxton)
Death and life can float up
In a second or less and fill the
Rest of Time. Rest on Time
Therefore, let hate weight
Nothing and noone, drifting off
On a tide of Peace.
Drinking sweet
Liquor rum
In my brain
Thinking of
Cuba and you,
Together. Why,
When you are
Here and now
And that was
There and then,
But somehow
Intertwined round
The same bend
Of year, this
February time
That should be
Winter and isn’t
Spring. This
Fuzzy hiatus
Before the year
Begins in earnest.
The Chinese got it
Right, ours was premature,
Christmas merriment
Still mulling
Recognition through
Old Lang Sine,
Sung too soon.
Febbraio en Cuba,
February in London;
Two thousand and nine,
Two thousand and ten.
Alone abroad,
At home, with men,
With you, maybe.
More at sea than
When the Malecon wall
Fenced me off from
Them, males with
Bright, tall sails
Bobbing, skidding, winking
Through the sun-hot sheen.
Now the year’s
Stacked up its freight.
Destined where?
No ship’s docked
Yet, while me,
A girl, a rum girl,
Waits.
An inlet four foot wide
Was made inside
A cave,
Dug out from coal
Black granite,
Hard as hail
Stones against slate tile.
For days he carved
And Hacked, blush
Sweat it dripped
Between the cracks
And creatures
Of the floor:
Dull bats dislocated
And snakes woken ,
Sensing strangers.
Soft down the road
Came she, to see
What he had done
Where hewn, the
Niche that he
Had made-
No spade or
Trowel, bare handed
He’d shovelled
Out the nook
For her to use,
A perch rescue
From the snakes
Bats and cracks
With whom they shared the cave.
[July 31st 2009:]
The house was built in 1864 or thereabouts
With bricks and mortar
In the usual way,
Set down on the street
‘Tween two just the
Same.
No, I lie. Next
Door was a shop,
Greyed out now, modern
Style, frosted windows, the works.
Behind doors to the house of
A family, bent by
Chance into odd-
Shaped rooms, tombs
For the spirits of eras
Passed, mingling now and
Then with the plates on
The rack or a glass in the
Cupboard, no harm meant.
After twenty five years
No surprise at a flying saucepan.
A family lived in the house,
Part of it, kin to it,
Whatever its freight.
Besides, after twenty five years, they
Had their own ghosts as guests,
Those former selves in former
Times living on,
Resonating in overlapping lines.
The cello practice, the barking
Dog, the sleeping dog,
The trampoline, the one that
Broke, the roller blades,
The skipping rope.
The time when budgies tweeted
In the kitchen
And Ma cooked at 6 for me
And 8 for him, again.
The time when garden’s shade
Was less and next door neighbour
Had a cat called…called….
Times gone but still present
In the ether, round the stairs, up the blocked chimney,
Or the skylight, then
Down, over mossy steps
And at the back door, again,
With a ratataptap, like a
Ghost..
No, it must be Jack
The new next door neighbour’s
Cat.
Published in Balladof Magazine, October 2009
Being Every Day 