hello_rosie.wmv

Held by your father
First me then you
He is shaking
Part of himself is ready
I can’t capture it properly
Zooming in on your mother’s face
Completely overwhelmed
The warm glue of love without end
Although I can’t know it
I can see that’s what it is
Hospital gowns and nervous euphoria
Crumpled clothes and no quiet
It is the moment an hour after
In a clean room full of cold coffee
Just before everyone else gets to see her
Neither mum nor dad can control their faces
Your mother’s holding me now and
Dad is cradling you in very weak arms
That are doing their very best
Not knowing you’re the focal point
Making everyone’s eyes itch
(Apart from mine, of course)
Wrapped in blankets and sleep
Welcoming whispered prods
There were other machines there, too
Mother turns me on herself and says:
‘Hi Rosie, we all love you very much.’
She says more words but I’m soon to be rightly stopped.

Prose bit about a washing machine, probably

Whilst in the midst of spinning we are to find a new clarity, a momentary lapse in the blur

where all objects in spite of their individual, infernal movement congeal and coalesce into a 
greater shifting living being that pulsates and writhes to beats unfathomably fast and 
unrelenting revolutions. Concepts and general entities are sucked into and enveloped by 
the great warping carousel that dances and wobbles and regains itself shortly only to risk 
dividing and splitting in the next exact second. To be ensconced is to then perpetuate, 
initially innocent, imbued with spirit and thrust, becoming fuel for the great whirring fire with 
hot bloody hands pushing the mass on ever faster.

On the Tube at Night

In the belly of the underground
I long for the space
Within a chasm of brick.

Scuffed shoes, boarding trains
Wishing feet were really
In the small room.

With basking cracked window
In vestiges of sunlight
And incense.

Overcome creatures in the dark
Who eat people from
Out of their vehicles.

Heard those impressionable
Forced to grow immediately
Wise and leave fast.

Reinstating myself as human,
As human wanting both
Distance and proximity.

Forgive Me

Forgive me,
For over ground much trodden
Do I venture, and yet
My childhood fidelity, as clear
And as magnetic as the communal Earth
Over which we as specks rule, corrupted,
Beckons me to sing of those without voice,
To be a reluctantly corrupted
Mouthpiece for all who grow and breathe,
But speak not.
Those welcome to share my
Dimly lit view possess:
A boot that strays,
A muddied sole,
A soul that buckles under the weight
Of thoughts spoken to those who cannot reply.
To those who share an empirical belief
In the triumph of air and muck.

Charitable are the ears of
The forever fragile inhabitants,
Perched receptively on modest twigs
That even the allied breeze
Dare not stir.
Listening too are the true owners of this land,
Whose roots exceed mind’s blind dominion,
Whose bodies tower not condescendingly,
Their heaven scraping more
Severe with each brow their branches
Unravel.

Each branch and blade and coat
And living leaf that bathes
As it is dapples and
Each deadened leaf that raises
The height of the ground on which we tread
And the Earth under which we bury our dead
And the stem and flower which we
Sever only to whore out to drip
On un-quenched minds,

And the fields and hills which
With a mere sliver, star crossed
Land and sky grow bolder, remaining
Yet co-dependent for those prodigious offspring;
Those who roam grasses, shores, roads or forever ambushed
Street must thank
Both a mother mortal and
A mother eternal,
For without both, who would ever be?

Deadened Grass

On the crest of Autumn break
Is when my soul does seem to wake
Out of slumber long and sparse
And down I lay on deadened grass.

From tempting shades do seem to run
Tiny animals fired as if from a gun
Yet in fact from gun shot loud
The scattering does not seem so proud.

Here in the park beneath greyed skies
Is also where my love does lie
With she I come and lay beside
In case it is her way to hide.

But still she lays, unmoving yet
Among the blades long since wet.
Contented, soft, rest up now,
Knowing neither scream nor howl.

How proud she’d be to see me there
Knowing that I still do care,
Though through summer I saw her not
We can now be one, thanks to final shot.