Atlantis

 

These stones hold memories

of captive fields and skies

before the land took flight.

 

Their coral eyes wink up,

reminding us that earth,

like time, is borrowed.

 

Ghost hands reach out to where

waves toss and fret; fish flit

aside like startled ghosts;

 

while overhead the spectre

of an ark floats by

in search of certainty.

World's First Joke

 

There was silence when I’d finished.

Imagine, the cave full of smoke

from Boglog Junior’s last attempt

to invent what he had termed ‘fire’.

 

His blackened bones lay strewn about

among the steaming turds and dust

mixed with titbits of mammoth fat,

which smelt exceptionally good.

 

Old Chief Boglog stared into space.

Eyes followed his hand as it tapped

his man-club (an ominous sound).

At last he grunted: “I get it!”

Shipwreck

• 

 

They said, tell us about your island,

whether you miss the palms

and mermaids singing,

rubbish like that.

 

Grant us in sound bites

some saga of shipwreck;

ignored by an ocean,

years sifting time.

 

I was unsung till they came,

armed with notebooks and theories.

Fame is when even the

dead shout your name.

 

Crusoe, they said, you’re back

from the deep;

tell us how wretchedness feels

(as if they don’t know);

 

what is it like to be saved?

I answered that exile

is stranger than fiction.

Rescue is not the promised end.

 

Loss doesn’t fade

when hope is sighted.

For some, there will always be

fresh footprints in the sand.

 

 

Return

We returned, after the storm,

to find the castle still there,

towers proud and pennants flapping.

 

Our names in the sand,

the giant heart you said

could probably be read from space,

 

Looking back, I saw

the curl of a massive wave,

green and white and grey.

 

You smiled and pressed me close.

That’s not a crest, you said,

just dolphins dancing.

 

Matchday

_{In memoriam - Hillsborough 1989}

 

Remember on the bus,

that lad from East Lancs

 

swinging a motorbike chain.

PC lass stretching her arm:

 

Give us - or else!

He did.                                                                 

 

On the way to the ground,

locals were chucking bricks;
 

almost a compliment.

Losers, you hissed.

 

We’ll slaughter them, you said,

just as the crowd caught up.

 

Stick with the rest;

there’s safety in numbers.

 

Passing the gates,

the mounted cops looked bored,

 

like cowboys counting sheep.

Crushed in the passageways,

 

that scrap of green beyond:

our promised land.

 

Heads in the stand,

parting like corn in the wind.

 

It’s just a fight, you said.

as we felt the barriers’ weight.

                                                                

Nowt happens here.

This is Sheffield.

 

Visit

Passing the barracks

in your dad’s old car,

I hit the mother of all speed-bumps.

 

I thought of your ma

kicking my chicken across the floor

(you’d said)

 

for making you mortal

and overdue

(you were five weeks late);

 

and not attending mass

since we’d met,

which was worse.

 

Bin lids were clanging

up on Derry Beg,

(once for a raid, twice for a riot).

 

Scouring the streets

for words that rhymed with home,

not bomb.

 

The sofa- jury stirred when I came in.

The TV was in flames

from some disaster movie.

 

When the Anthem played,

you upped and fled,

leaving us with the Queen.

 

As I gazed at the box, I sensed

that champagne that night

was probably out of the question.

Witness

The angels weren’t watching you

that day in LA,

just faces afraid to stop.

 

A shape by the road,

haloed in freeway smog:

your planet stalled.

 

A burnt metal rim

where distance had ruled

a Crusoesque universe.

 

She should have packed wings

for when superpowers fail,

their glass eyes said.

 

Tail-lights stretched back

to where emptying skies

still spelt out redemption.

 

Night stirred like a ghost,

and far from the stars,

the green sign read Laurel Canyon.

Freeway Song

The freeway's everywhere: it never sleeps;

clearing a six-lane boulevard in one great stride,

leaping the surface world of streets and lives,

a giant footprint superimposed.

 

Take a wrong turning here, you’re lost:

block follows block, a labyrinth of shades:

at its heart, a roar,

a bougainvillea-splashed embankment:

 

the beast is on the other side,

secret, kinetic, inevitable.

Approaching it, the humanoid plays god,

crossing a continent unconsciously,

 

accepting cities we will never know,

landscapes that make us a stranger.

When angels tire of waiting they abandon place,

take to the freeways.

 

Without the gift of flight, you're nothing here,

a fragment in some windshield gaze, a speck.

Prometheus gave fire, but man dreamt up the wheel.

Only through flight can we placate desire.

 

The bridge in the distance, is a blur

with traffic flowing in a phantom stream:

headlamps and tail-lights, sparks from cars,

the apparition of some monster truck decked out in stars.

 

A vacant on-ramp takes an age to walk:

white shield on green, ‘Hollywood Freeway. South,’

The other side, its fatal echo, red:

‘Wrong Way. Do not Enter.’

 

Above torn skies, a brash Pacific moon;

below, an underpass: a listening chamber -

grime on its columns, trash, graffiti scars -

eavesdropping on America.

 

Fool for You

This April,
you told me
love sees all:

 east is west,
lightning strikes twice,
time doesn’t count.

 Rome can be built anyday,
you added.
There’s only one fish

 in this ocean,
your new eyes said.
By morning,

 I was hooked,
convinced that
all that glitters is gold,

 we should put
our eggs in one basket,
look after we leap.

We did,
forgetting that space
has no limits.

 

Prometheus

The gods don’t give much,

just dreams and heartache.

But here, for once,

was something we could trust:

a torch, passed on by generations,

consuming and preserving.

Watching time burn,

I think of your sacrifice:

deprived of warmth and laughter,

far from the sun you loved.

End Game

Planes on the tarmac spread 

like crosses on a chart.


Watching you go,

 

I sip my fate, and taste

the sourness of the grape:

one final glance,

arms raised

in crucifixion.

Buyuk Londra

for Piers

I see you still

in the Londra Hotel,

charming the parrots

with your polly-phonic skills,

conjuring times before travel was tamed,

when Stamboul trains disgorged magnates and spies,

poets and femmes fatales,

into Sirkeci Gari.

The crowd at the bar practise lines

for parrots to recite

among the fading prints: Old Pera

and the Bosphorus; gilt and Edwardiana.

Your laughter fills the space that language lacks;

gazing up from a glass at cocktail hour,

reflections intact, despite the years:

shaken not stirred.

Alias

I thought my life was my own

till I found you in it,

like a wasp in the jam.

I look in the mirror and see you.

I could almost be you,

if it weren’t for the hat

and the specs,

and that spot on your nose,

or is it mine?

Skype

For Eve

Today or not today, will you be there,

surfing the wilds of cyberspace?

Electrons can’t feel, yet somehow bring

you into the room, a pixelled Giaconda.

Your smile says more than any voice,

its prescience reminding me

that, somewhere beyond telemetry,

all true lines meet.

Camera Obscura

Whose idea was the skull?

Only a party mask,

put on for fun.

Still, you were dying

and we didn’t see:

hands clasped tight,

as I took your photo.

Travelling incognito,

you remain

wrapped in mystery,

leaving us fixed

in your gaze.

Leaving

There’s a lost sense

to this reach,

as if time, not just tide,

has retreated.

A hulk, half sunk,

stares from the mud,

ignored by the estuary birds.

The train struggles on

through sandstone bluffs,

to greet the bay.

Waves break

and you’re a kid again,

daring the cold.

An image pressed

against the glass,

salvaged

from memory.