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.