This means you have me as I am now and not via the tracks I have taken and
The dust that’s fallen on former versions of myself, hanging up in
The gallery that is my life , is me,
My curation
My soul’s memories of myself and others and
I envy myself, the places I have been and the fun I have known – never alone, never unhappy,
Never a crooked smile, unless I request my deleted items be undeleted
Stanley
Peter Merer,
Architect, sailor, spitfire
Survivor.
Zoom up –
SWERVE, the tropics
And dales, war to peace:
Air to sea.
He ruled
New colours and
Shapes that could tame breezing light
Like the best
Sails and wings.
She had bright
Red papier mâché,
He, a thick oak.
Between funerals,
The years, brittle,
Wan, now mingled
With the best ones –
Dusty joy,
Shared; striding, touching,
Swimming through the wind.
He used to hoard his poems in a plastic bag –
They were heavy but the burglars threw them on their
Backs with the rest of his life – fill the cracks in theirs
With more crack.
Later, he came home and found it
Gone and worse, his poems taken, and he knew that
Somewhere, soon, they would decompose in the stink
Of rotting food.
Nothing was left, he had no insurance, he had
No chip that housed anything good he’d ever said
With dread the sink dripped and he thought how stupid
He had been to put his poems in a plastic bag that felt like money.
[To be continued]
I was stung one
Summer, I was pushed
About the hive, a drone
Who flew too high, my
Wings were snapped in
Two and I was left
For dead, stuck to the
Honey I’d help produce.
But never mind, many
Summers have passed
That honey is long
Gone and I am
Born to another life,
A new queen, a new
Day and a world of pollen
To seize.
Magic rolling tune
Song strung behind
Mine mind mule
Dashed out after
Dark and deeper
Thinking moulding
Round the days gone
By in a thick haze
Green enough to
Grow algae’s virulent spores
To touch the Future
Tinge its raw with
Green flecks where flesh
Taints on thoughts
That writhe alive
Between what is red
And fresh and clean.
Those times when we would
Walk across plains to see
A place whose face was home
For a time; a nose and mouth
In addition to our own,
A pulse whose tick was echoed
Through the day, however far.
Our wrists are severed now but
The rhythm still goes on even though
No tie but nostalgia links our veins,
Our roots are intertwined by
The strengths we shared and
Weaknesses we endured together.
I have been ill
I have been fat
I have been thin
I have been blind
I have been unhappy
I have been ugly
I have been beautiful
I have been clever
I have been slow
I have been switched off
I have been switched on
I have sufffered
I have enjoyed suffering
I have gloried in my struggle.
I have benighted my pain
Have I triumphed through adversity?
No, I have been Adversity itself.
There is no triumph through it,
Only change in direction.
I have seen my
path,been
my path, travelled
along it some then
made a new one,
In search of better scenery.
Have I found it?
Yes. Now the road
is long and I am
it and it is me
and the view is
what I allow myself
to be.
Will you treat
me to tea
and cake or
champagne or an
icecream sundae?
When I was ill treats
came bitter, through
a needle to the bum
or the radiographer’s
hum.
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.
Being Every Day 