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Jan 99
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Apr 99
Displaying items by tag: selected poetry
The Illusion of Movement
The ILLUSION
of MOVEMENT
The Smell of the Coast
After our games had ended
in squabbles and in kicks
our mouths raw and garish
from too many boiled sweets
once we'd spied A to Z
on registration plates
shimmering
over the blistered tarmac
then up we would pipe
from the back seat:
When shall we see the sea, Daddy
When shall we see the sea?
Through by-passes, fields, industrial estates
lay-bys where we'd stop to pee, stretch legs,
and sip a thermos of milky plastic,
we'd hark for the cries
of gulls overhead,
desolate for the smell of the coast
and though they only wheeled
over rubbish tips
not five minutes passed
before we begged
When shall we reach the sea, Mummy?
How far is it to the sea?
Hardly any closer, she'd say,
since last time you asked. Or Dad:
the more you look forward
the longer it'll take.
So we'd pipe down, tune to the radio news
bulletins unchanged all afternoon,
stare out the window
unable to credit or count
how many seconds make up an hour
how many waysigns between here and there
and if it isn't ages until we arrive
it won't be forever until we leave
But over every ridge
behind the tree silhouettes
the sky seemed to ripple, brighten
with a marine light
and soon there'd be bungalows
with portholes instead of windows,
yachts on the curtains, toothpaste blue,
shells in the pebbledash. The street
would dip away
and between b&b's, candy-floss, tar
I see the sea. I see the sea. There it is.
Here we are.
What was it all about?
Two weeks to scour up and down the beach
dodge turds bobbing by the outflow pipe
lick sand off a molten ice-cream.
But nothing could defeat us
even at night
sunburnt between the cool white sheets
we'd cup the shell
of our ears to our heads
and drift off
to the waves milling the shingle
tide rummaging the shore
sounding like the ocean sounds
but louder
Poole Harbour
I hate the sea
not for it's salt or violence
but for it's quiet desperation
it's terrible monotony
Dad took us out from the harbour years ago
cadging for mackerel on nylon lines:
when almost by mistake we hauled one in
it just wouldn't die
thrashing in the boughs
like a slice of battered aluminium
and Dad just laughed the more I cried
He said he'd felt exactly the same
when he was my age and that
one day I'd be telling my son
the same thing he was telling me
as we lost sight of land
the mackerel thrashing in the boughs
like a slice of battered aluminium
And that's why I hate the sea
Not for it's salt or violence
but for it's quiet desperation
it's terrible monotony
The Green Belt Boy
Where does he come from
the Green Belt boy
and where can he go?
Far from his plain
vanilla heart from
his suburban soul
Grinding to a halt
around Northwood Circus,
dark in the afternoon
having spent all morning in a queue
for a waxworks or a zoo,
less frightened by the chamber of horrors
than the puce wallpaper in Crippen's room,
the Green Belt boy stares out the back of the car
face round as the moon.
Sunday evenings seem to stretch forever
like the red tail lights ahead.
The night glows sodium orange
behind high-rise silhouettes.
Soon he'll be staring out of his bedroom
Mum ironing in the kitchen
while the radio divas croon
till the forecast for inshore waters
and next day school.
He came from nowhere
the Green Belt boy
sitting in his little room in his little house
watching the sun set
over his own small world
Him and his big ideas
Once he believed Northwood Circus
was
a circus: tigers, peanuts, stilts,
a monkey photographed on his shoulder,
a Clown mask on his shelf.
For years he couldn't pass by here
without a looking for a tent.
It took a long hard education
on the roads of Outer London
before he would accept
there is no castle at Elephant and Castle,
no palace at Crystal Palace,
and no circus at Northwood Circus.
Just a traffic roundabout
(the odd pelican or zebra crossing)
a ring of tarmac and kerbstone
round a patch of dead grass
like a big top would leave
when a circus has moved on
He comes from nowhere
the Green Belt boy
so where does he go?
Deep into his plain
vanilla heart into
his suburban soul
The Green Belt Boy Comes Home
England is anxious as an airport
when fog has delayed all flights.
Passengers grin, but their smiles
are as forced as an air-hostess.
Truculent husbands, worried wives
count the minutes eating crisps.
This is his land, these are his people
this is just his luck.
On the train back through the suburbs
brambles purple, green and black
even the railway verge is maudlin
and he wishes he hadn't come back.
To think he missed it in the tropics
dreamt of rain and Sunday roast
condensation on the windows
food that tastes like boiled fog
Starting school, the Green belt boy
black-haired, brown-eyed, aged five
asked by his schoolmates if he was Indian,
thought a moment, lied.
Said yes when they asked if he was a Prince
if he rode on an elephant said yes.
Eighteen years later, he arrives in India
still apologizing for his provenance
And in Delhi he joins other travellers
selling their clothes on the street.
In Benares, hidden under a turban,
he still can't change the colour of his face.
But in Darjeeling, delirious with dysentery,
three goddesses dance around him and say:
‘See how we change, see how we change
the English boy into an Indian shape’
Till he wakes and finds himself
lying on a luggage rack
in a compartment filled with strangers
lulled by the rattle on the track
of a train bound through the night
over a continent, alien and vast,
and he like a spark burning
going nowhere going there fast
To the chill of an English station,
the quiet backstreets home,
neighbours windows on a winters evening
like tropical aquariums:
a dog with eyes like saucers,
pot-plants crying out for water,
this is his land, from which he's made
so foreign and exotic and strange
January 1994
