Mid-morning Leyton, just past 1986

All wrapped up in cloth, stuffed in a box, under the stairs, smelling of must, we found him. 

Unwrapped, he stood stiffly, blinked then eyed us - one by one by one - as he wound the watch on his wrist. 

We had been looking for chapatti flour, we had not lost that, it was where it was supposed to have been, in the dustbin, with its scoop and all. No, the box was the oddity. Too large for its space, too large to have always been there unseen, with dust befitting its situation.

 . ."its time I left," that is all he said, near upending the bin in his haste, and pushed past us. He lifted his arms, as he squashed through the bikes and our junk in the passageway, as if trying to avoid soaking his sleeves while wading.

And he was gone down the street, past the bins and dead cars and trolleys. Dust devils blowing through the chapatti flour, mid-morning Leyton, just past 1986.

Little England

Posh 'ouse. 
Shit floats in loobloo. Its not mine. 
Stinking island in a springclearfresh ocean. 
Bobbing. 


On its Northern shores tiny turd people munch on giant sweetcorn chunks. 
From bakedbeany lumps they erect statues, giant characaturds of their gods. 


They dont mind the smell, they have all they have their squables to entertain them, their little wars and grumbles over the disaffected yoof. 


Odd isnt it, i think, when i find a sight so displeasing that i dont want to piss on it, defile my piss. 
I smother them with an ultrasoftcushionquilted sheet of colourcoordinated skatrag. 


A dense fog blankets down on the tiny turd folk and their winnet babes cry as the oceans rage and i flush them away. 
Bye tiny little islanders.

Killed slowly by comfort food

Killed slowly by comfort food
She just wanted stuffin, a lust for foodie loving. 
A good old plumping up. 
Shoveling it in, near gagging and gobbling every drop.


To feel full up; full to bursting with sausage rolls of love. 
A cuddly kind of loving; to have her cake and eat it, clotted cream on top. 
Just another stuffin for her lust filled, love lost, lonely muffin.


Meat and 2 veg, with gravy. 
Plum duff; 2 wobbly pink blancmanges, cherries on the top. 


It was not the fat or sugar that killed her, 
nor one last long, long, hot, glistening black pudding. 
Just one long forgotten spotted-dick.

Words again

Im growing to hate words - again... Ive started so i ll finish. 
Words get me into trouble. 
Sometimes i think i like them. I think they are saying one thing but it seems that i am not (using them write, fuckoff if you think im not). 
I used not to understand them much; and they mainly seemed to threaten. 
Bracketting my feelings, knocking thoughts into letter shapes. 
Sentencing them to pale imitations, summarised, paraphrased, devoid of ompf and ah, nnnn and grrrr. 
Boundaries of meaning, mean means of communicating not really what i meant to say.

Coppers

I found that tiny copper kettle you gave me in a box of old, forgotten, once precious things.

Its lid had fallen off but it is still full to the brim with the pennies you had collected. I don't know now quite when you gave it to me. And I can't recall what the pennies were for. I know it was about remembering and yes I had forgotten it.

I picked it up, hard and cold, and I knew how much thought and time you had put into it - and I know there was love and care though I can hardly bare to bring it to mind. I guess it was when we shared our pain, more pain that we could bare - you were thanking me and I had no words for my thanks.

It was a token of your remembering the closeness we shared. I guess its more than 30 years now since you put that pot together. Its been sitting in a box, always with me, found occasionally and soon forgotten once again.

I couldn't hold it for the sadness. There is no week that passes since that time that I don't think of you. I wonder do you ever think of me or why you filled that small kettle? And yes, when I think of you and that time it hurts - hurts for the thought of you, the loss of you, and for the pain I had then too.

I offered understanding and friendship and I see now the conditions I applied. Understanding and friendship were easy to offer and mine to give and with them I gave you an obligation that you did not accept. You left it and me far behind.

And you gave me that tiny copper kettle carefully filled with pennies. A gift for remembering and then you let me go. Perhaps I should do the same - say stop, put the pennies towards a beer and drink you farewell.

Walls

Thoughts on the splendour of things

In this land there are wonders

I have touched, tasted and devoured them – heard them call, sing and scream too

In their joy and in their sleep

their beauty and horror astounds me.

All about there are green hills and leafy valleys

Birds singing, water falling, animals calling

Life and its death all about – in the woods and on the streets

I run with all of it; time’s show

All through the land and the space

gold and brilliant painted letters tell stories about the beauty

The tales pull us in – painted on glorious shimmering walls of jewels

We gather, drawn in, and read – as fools

Like you (and me writing) through these words we learn and get to know

of all of the things that, if we would only stop, turn and look

and see all about – our words, like our thoughts, merely confine us

Turn around.

Magpies - Jack

What is that song - no not that one (Climbing up on Salisbury Hill)

Climbing up on Whitehawk Hill,
I could see the city streets, winters freezing, I stood still
6 magpies pecking at the Downs.

1 for sorrow, 2 for joy, 3 for a girl and 4 for a boy, 5 for silver, 6 for gold - 7 for a secret never to be told.

Took me back through time, and its further each time, to the day when you were born, beautiful boy - 13 magpies in Markfield Park.

Poem - thank you

Thank you for your words - your poem.
A short journey to read; life for you to seize - and it too beguiles me.
Words, songs, pictures and the smell and taste and touch of all - and your words more so - as a gift held up, a little exposed.
A little exposed; innocence in richness.
The more we see the more we may feel jaded - but thats not your way; not my way either.
There is more - follow that insistent tug; life wants you, all of us who will run with it, run faster, run slower, run.
And, thank you for the poem and more.

Light fantastical

And - oh, I just start writting, thats the plan.
In her eyes there is light - in everything there is light.
In everything, in every particle, at the heart of everything, there is light.
Thats what she said.
Unlike me, she reflected on her words, they had meaning, they could be seen and heard.
When I was asked to repeat what I had said I couldn't,
I had not known what I would say and I couldn't recall what I had said when asked to lift the things up to be seen more clearly - the words were dead before they were formed.
I think people find this unsettling.
We open a box with words, dig about, stir stuff up.
I don't know when I'm going to do it and when I am asked "why?" and "what?"
All I know is that whatever it was has gone.
I think that this what this stuff does to me.
All of this thinking, all this talking - symbols and stories fishing about for a meaning that has no meaning.
It stirs things up, words, like long spoons glooping around in the soup.
Essential things that don't fit words come to the top like those wierd fish from the ocean floor.
Bug eyed, big teeth - dying (quick - gone) before our bewildered eyes.
We always see them dead or as they take their last breath.
Like the workings of the day or the innards of a cat - laid bare, dead.
Light is light, I think - and the dark is when there is not enough of it for me to see.

Tell the children to behave

I told you to put your bottom in your pocket and leave it there!

Thanks Janet

Well at least my teeth are sorted now.

"I remember it so well, all those years ago. You were a mess!" Janet

Fear of the dark

I didn't know you knew my mum - and I'm not sure what that thought has to do with this.

Oh, the things that made me scared of the dark. Do you think its an innate fear or is that just a fancy we have, a pseudo-bollocks link to a romantic idea of cave dwelling.

The dark, it does seems intuitive that it would be scary and for good reasons. The dark is where we trip over things and step on plugs. The dark is where we loose things. The dark is where the murderers lurk; they lurk in the dark and around corners. Perhaps we should fear corners too - and hidden dips.

So a fear of it seems fine. We could leave it at that. So why do we do the other things to people? Put the willies up 'em....

When I was little I often stayed in my Grandpa's big, old, scary house.

I was scared of it in the day - there were odd people about, staff, patients, Johnny the odd job man and Mr Thing (I forget his name, he lived in a lodge up the driveway) and Mr and Mrs Other thing that lived in a cottage built into the side - she being deaf for years through shock at the death of her child.

There were lots of odd staircases and cupboards in the walls and odd trap doors in the floors. There were religious pictures and crosses and paintings of my Grandpa healing the sick - his big, caring hands reaching out... black and white photos of him with his hands healing children in callipers.


Scared the wotsits out of me... And the pipe organ. And the dead wheelchairs. And the old tellies the size of tables sitting in dead damp rooms... and the lofts with rotten beams for floors where my cousins locked me in the inky black, terrified to move and fall off the beams and through the ceiling below.

Big old scary paintings and busts, beheaded dead people, masks and the gong.... Everything creaked and went thud in the day...

The night. As a small child I was put to bed on the top floor, up the back stairs, 2 flights, and up the extra twisting flight to the old servants floor, through the narrow door. Along the long corridor, up more steps, room on the right.

In the bed under the large painting of furious charging elephants. I was about 5 mins from another human, all down dark corridors, down dark stairs, around corners... I was not even that sure of the way and not in the dark.

I loved Winnie the Poo but for the Hefalumps that filled my nightmares. They were not the lumping beasts as drawn in the books, no. Mine were the huge, furious, charging bull elephants in the painting above my bed. They seemed to swell with rage as they were picked out by the moonlight through the window with the trees and the evil faces that lived in the branches.

I wanted to come down to my parents - downstairs chatting in the warm, in the light. But I wasn't going to move. I lay there fixed with terror.

Perhaps I could have managed to trick the elephants, sneak out without being seen. Out into the dark long corridors. Past the old bathroom with the toilet high on a plinth in the middle of the room its chain hanging like a noose. The smell of cold water - Edwardian plumbing smells of lead and rust and cold.

Past all of those old dark cupboards, down all of those dark stairs. But no.

No because of the Boggiemen. They lived in the darkest deepest cupboard set into the wall of the lower back stairs. I knew they were in there. My mum told me so. She said they were in there and she said "the Boggiemen will get you".

I'd looked in the cupboard in the day light (and looked again recently after not having been there for 30 years) and it is backless and bottomless. The Boggiemen live in its unfathomable depths. The Boggiemen will get you - the fear of them seemed to crush my chest.

Perhaps when I catch a Boggieman and take him by his heels writhing into the daylight I will see that he is just as fearful as me and at least I don't have to live in a cupboard on an old mostly forgotten staircase as a child catcher.

The dark - we walked in woods once so dark that I could not see my hands. We crashed about stoned and scared dozens of screaming crows - and down on the ground we saw the phosphorescent emerald green glow of fungus. Deep in the wood in the black of the night - alive.

And, my mum, I do love her so deeply.

Ssssss

How do I write the sound of a ssssss - a sort of sizzling joy - ssssssssssss - walking in the thin rain on the Downs ssssssss chatting, walking, being. Ssssssssss - cold, rain in face, sort of joy. Ah, mmmmmm. Pxxxxxx

I didn't think

I suppose I did really, actually I probably never stopped thinking about what you and everyone thought. Does it matter?


Today I walked up that hill; I've walked up it a thousand times or more. All the way up I played in my mind the things we said - the interplay that led to things being the way they ended up - and that was 6 years ago and I still know the words and where we were and how we sat and how I could not bare to see or hear you.


And, something inside me quite deep still hates you but in keeping that hate warm (it just won't shut up asking to be brought out and stretched) I just hate myself. And for that I hate you - but you wouldn't give a fuck about that - and all along I'm just hating myself.


So take your fucking parsnips, butter up, and die when I tell you that from now on when I think of you I'm just going to try to remember your name and let that be that (but.... pssssst..... fucking hate you....).

Tongue talking

I'm going to cut out my tongue - don't want to speak with my mouth - only txt and email - only words with hands - no mumbles, no stutters, no tongue. Sharp knife, slice it through, pour on some salt, staple up the mess, sorted. Probably won't even hurt, might sting a bit - whatever.

Sleeping

Sleeping - a rich dark smell stirs me.
Alcohol, tobacco, b.o and shit. 
The man pushes his trolley along the train
and asks if I would like a snack or a hot drink.
Nope.

Mountain man - did you know David A.

I wondered where you were, not having seen you for weeks my mad and bouncing old old friend.

I missed your madness, the banter and the oddness - the last time I saw your face you could not cope with staying and then...

Then you were gone.

And today you were back; Mountain man.

And where had you been - not to London to see the Queen?

No, to New York and you had only just made it alive even though you had tried not to.

Taken all of your pills on the way, had to be restrained, caused the plane to land early; taken away.

Mountain man, thinner, grey faced - a month in a New York institution at Her Majesty's pleasure (God Bless the Queen) and then home again - broken and grown.

I just wanted to hug you but I listened to your words and I cared, thats all I know how to do - not the "right" words, I just don't play that nonsense.

Good to see you, get back to bouncing soon Mountain man.

Here - don't darken my day with your thoughts and words of hope and joy :-)

This may not be here - words are not enough to explain where and when we seem to be.
I put you in a box - stay in there you fucker!
How can I know me without knowing you and you keep getting out - I'm sealing down the lid.
In there I know you are glowing with right and truth - in there, in there I have all I need to know and to see and to be with and to have and to hold until death us do part.
I sense you in there - I may put you in a cupboard for safety sake.
I'm keeping the beauty looked up, out of harms way - stay in there you fucker.