In search of lost time

I’m sitting on Bute street
In my head the French bookshop
And French bakery Bonne Bouche
Are still here, smelling of books and
Bread, livres et pain

I’m still sitting on Bute street
I open my eyes, I can smell Mama
Pho and it doesn’t go with my
£pp3.50 flat white

I’m looking at a shop called Blanc
With towels and a sign ‘Fashion doesnt
Have to Cost the Earth’ instead of
Books in French

Now I know how old women feel
The ones who talked about the
Old days as if they were better
Now they’re gone

I will not come here again to
Look for the past, I will not
Find it, I will go somewhere
Else to remember.

Birthday Past

Dark cake and a pair of shoes
On the grave outskirts of Saint James’s Park, just outside the gates, in fact,

On a grey paving slab, quiet clean, but
For the crumbs and smear, like dog shit,
In its roadside homelessness, nowhere

The sweet kitchen that supported it, we presume, before it got led astray, wandered from the safety of the

Picnic blanket, perhaps taken by these shoes..
But they lost their way, neither shoe can tell tales to passing

Strangers now, both are mute.
Was she Happy when she left?
We can only guess and hope she got some new shoes

Cinders

12 o’clock and BANG,
The carriage, the horses, the gown
go.

BUT the  slipper,
an ember from
Time, like a speck from Space

Proves transformation real.

Burglary

He realised he had

Never heard silence

Until he closed the door

Behind.

 

His life shocked

Back into something

He couldn’t see,

They had taken everything.

 

 

Ballad of Will Killingsworth

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]

Morning adulterery

She meets him every day at 8,
An hour of illicit company
Over pain aux raisins

This one is pounds heavier
Balder, better at looking her
In the eyes,

They get the chance, before 9
Strikes their lives dumb,
To another day

In the city and another night
Waiting for the time
Between 8 and 9

When he can see her
And she can see him who
Is not hers.

Love’s phases in uneven metre

1.

He throws his hands

Up like as if

Painting a self portrait

For her to judge.

She blows him bubbles

From lips that have hugged

Many forks full of

Cheesy spaghetti

Flattered with pepper.

 

The talk is of

Chatter the chat

Is of less but

The eyes watch

It all wise in

Quiet waiting

For later to

Be laid bare.

 

The legs relax with

The wine the young knees

Find a nice place

To play while the feet

Discover the other

Side and pretend each

Touch is accidental.

 

Above the table

The first valve

Of chilli splits,

Veins feel heat

Burst bubbles

Paint curdled –

Two gives up and

Fizzes as one-

 

They leave,

She forgets

To pay the

Umbrella

But he pulls

Out his fingers

And they depart

Bound in hand.

 

 

2.

Apart, the light

Was glorious.

Beach-ball-bats glistened.

Together, it was

Different.

The bench was their

Stage and all the rest

Scenery.

 

3

 She was there in the night

She was with him in the day

Through thought’s dry vapour

She shone bright dew while

Wet in the rain she waited

At the traffic lights

Filling time with him.

 

4

He was the deep and

Gentle rise and fall,

What’s that he said? That

Thudding like the ebb in

 Warm deep water,

Refuge for the frenzied waves.

 

She was a tree-like place

Of rest and love, the

Deep shade to shelter in

 and heal  blisters with

 her leaf-balm touch.

But it twisted into something

Rough and cut in squares,

Something he had seen in

Other people’s wives and

She had felt as her roots rotted

In the dark, something neither he

Or she could see but both

Knew was there, the fruit had soured

In the heat .

 

 

Part 5

Later, recovering,

She thanked him for holding her and

Kissing her hair’s grease,

Finding the eyes she’d dropped ,

Washing them Clean

With Salt love,

The best kind:

Rock

  

 

Part 6

 She found herself

Asking him

How his day

Went.

 

He liked how she

Bathed his stories

 In warm water

Before bedtime.

 

She liked his way

Of being the

Full stop to end

A long day.

 

Together their

Effort made a kind

Of prose, as yet

Without a plot.

Crime, Non Fiction, On Petherton Road, 3:30 am, 24th of July

 In the morning I walk

Up one side of the street

In the evening I sometimes

Try the other, but

Sometimes not, habit grates.

 

Half 3 am is like the strip of

Grass that runs down the middle

Of my street, a place

For robbers to walk on

Avoiding dog-shit, just like

The day would, carrying

Bats, ready for the night.

 

His hood was down, his

Head was out, his walk

Was fast, his bat was

Long beneath his sleeve,

I didn’t see it or his accomplice.

 

I looked on, walking

Two were upon me

Bees out of air, with

Stings I didn’t believe in-

Would I get hurt if I

Wouldn’t find my purse?

 

‘Give us everything,’ they said

Like kids for sweets, ‘or whatever

You’ve got,’ I took them seriously,

 Like a teacher playing along.

I threw some first class

Stamps in with the other goodies.

 

They didn’t think the stamps

Were kind or funny but bless

Him, he stuffed them back

In my little red bag, lips

Open, bemused.

 

They were blind to my lap-top

They ran off – like bats

Out of Hackney, I walked

On, thank god or the greatness

For twisting my fate just

Enough to wake me,

No pinch to my heart.

Next time I’ll take a taxi,

There’ll be no blood from

Me for bats dressed up in

Tracksuits.

 

Lunch with William Killingsworth

Homeless in New York

2:10 was late but

He waited, knowing

I’d said ‘If I don’t show,

Consider me dead’.

　

In a bistro we

Drank wine next tabled

To secure couples,

Tangible assets

Hanging from cool ears

He misfortunes told,

His grandness thinned to

A grey T with black

Cotton rough-rimmed to

His dry throat and wrists.

Fading from his eyes

Down; stolen, buried

And forgotten, left

Drop bruise scratched, kicked up

By a fox or wolf .

I finished quickly,

He sipped his slowly,

Kept it real, fitting

Calm along lines of

A life that is thin ruled.

Killing time, over a nice cuppa

Sitting cold next to Arthur,

Tea brewing strongly.

Tied the knot in 1952, now

Tightened too flat to tell knot

From rope, you pop out to shops,

You pop back to tea, he pops

Upstairs to find his crossword. You pop

Out again for more tea from Maggie’s cups –

Same bags but the milk’s not

Not gold topped. Still, there are plenty of biscuits

Arthur couldn’t eat.