The sun and sky, brutally quiet -

another industrial morning where

corrugated friendships gather

and sleep is wiped out the corner

of sad red eyes.

Hulks of corroded metal

hug the earth, while the

harshness of another day

is softened by comradely

joshing.

Shared crusts of bread are

washed down with ice

cold water, floaters rise

in the glass, like moths.

We grow with each other

aching arms - aching minds

and push into another shift

like mice, like men.

The Boulevard.

It was streetlight that
shone in their bedroom -
streetlight.

No stars or moon no
sunshine - the room
ached in its dull thudding.

The children slept three
to a bed, they slept in -
threes.

They wove stories
and dreams huddled
against the naked cold.

In the dark,
panelled light plays
on the nested innocence
of their eyes.


An arrowhead of
promise whipped
circularly over
their heads.

The granite of
tomorrow
still
in the ground.

Aberfan

I didn’t lose God from

theological argument

or scientific dialectics.

I lost him in Aberfan

in Vietnam in

empty cupboards

childhood hunger

bread and jam.

Here are my feet.

Here is my clitoris

you need to know

what makes me tick

own me from

head to toe

here is my clit.

And here is my heart,

I wear it upon my

sleeve its so easy

to see raw - pink

and throbbing,

here is my heart.

Here is my mind so -

so grey - see through

almost translucent

fertile - a newly ploughed

field words fizzing out

of the furrows -

here is my head.

And here – here are my

feet,

I stay - I remain -

paint them up

red just for

you -

my feet –

here are

my feet.

Aunty Pat

The weather weighted down on all of us -

the corporate suits, December tans –

indifferent others.

Her funeral just fifteen minutes,

this the very limit of her allocation.

The Vicar, his hollow voice, electronic

echo - somewhere buried beneath his pulpit

that mucky mag’ - one eye on the clock,

false tight lips.

Only half her family there - some dispute.

Just ten people present, this then, her throng.

Sixty years ago she worked those twelve hour

night-shifts making ammunition for the War effort.

Fifty years ago she laboured in childbirth pushing

new life into an uncertain, fractured world.

I had visited her in the home she was already cold

the radio still switched on, she of the wireless

generation.

And as I walked away from the ‘Crowd’ I realised

they didn’t know me and they didn’t even know her.

She lives.

She lives in a room next
to a room she lives
in a room next to a room she may
live in

An annexe she lives in an attic she lives in an
image she made she lives it for others
she lives? In a glasshouse an out-
house she lives in her mind

She lives in an idea of what she maybe
what she could be what he wants her to be
what others want her to be a mother a
daughter a lover some saint a lady
a whore a goddess - a shadow of
A fu*k - a suck - a hole

She lives in a space inside a void
below a hole under some rubbish they
piled up she lives in a bonfire in a cardboard
fu*king box under a bridge like a fu*king
troll. She lives - She lives? She lives?

She exists in every street every neighbourhood
every avenue every boulevard every where
She goes on and she lives behind the mask
she wears for him for you for them
But not for me She lives in me – in
my mind in my soul I know her I love her
and I’m fu*king angry for her!

Only coffee.

It was only a coffee -

she entered with a quiet grace,

a touch of tiredness in her eyes

a smile so young – so very young.

Wisps of blond hair on her

neck as I removed her coat

something moved within me.

Quickly added mascara on

eyes that yearn for love

somehow – somehow

I can taste her lips yet

only kiss her pale angelic

cheek, time as fragile as those

wisps of hair

sadly.....

it was only a coffee.