Pastor Po - Public Figure: Poem

Showing posts with label Poem. Show all posts

Wednesday, 8 November 2017

I heard a little girl sing a wartime song today [2014]

I heard a little girl sing a wartime song today, she sang
Words that resonate in me as a collective brave face,
As a desperate attempt at cheer in the face of death.

But that's not
How she sang it.

It was a song from the war after the one we remember
Having joined a hundred years ago today,
A song from the war fought by men whose fathers, uncles and
Elder brothers had fought the War To End All Wars,
Men who were under no illusions as to their likely fate.

But that's not
How she sang it.
______
______

The morning of Pride came to me slowly and slightly after noon.

An Eve of Pride Party had come to me hard and fast
Staying with me till some way after dawn.

It was fully light and already warm
When I fell to sleep beneath
The open window at the bed end
Of my just over bed-wide flat.

I slept soundly but only until the parade approached,
The crowd's enthusiasm rising and reaching its crescendo
As it passed along the road not seventy yards from where I lay.
______

My father, by now in generous old age,
Had been admitted to hospital a week before.

There an emergency tracheotomy had suddenly denied him
Both speech and the ability to feed except by tube for life.
______

I feel duty bound to experience the magical day
As proof of its existence and to have something to say

When I hospital visit my father, still twenty-four hours away.
______

I am hanging, a little stoned, it feels early and my mind is racing
At the finality of my father's situation and how desperately frustrating
And unsatisfying the remainder of his time will be, however long or short.

All the while I am making my way, against the flow of the crowd, toward the
Headspace I know I will find when I reach the sea and look out over what man
Has not since the dawn of time worked out how to colonise and fuck up like land.

It is my father's life that flashes through my mind while I dodge and weave through an
Oncoming shoal of unsubtly smuggled budgies and booty-shorts that shimmer in the sun.

I am not ashamed that I have tears on my cheeks at a carnival to celebrate the diversity of life.
______

I am head-wrestling my self.

It hurts as my emotions struggle
To take and hold my imagination,

Flitting as it always does between
Extremes of pleasure and of pain.

There is nothing more important in my world
Than my father lying uncomfortably in hospital.

I am today his eyes, his ears, his experience of
The world outside a sterile, single bedded room.

I cannot lie to him when I download as best I can my bedside head to his
So it is my bounden duty to make the truth of the day as entertaining as I can.
______

I have by now escaped the crowd and stand, battered sausage in hand, by the sea.

One pound and twenty pence invested in making a true story a little lighter to listen to.

My eyes are red with both tears and tiredness and the rings beneath are as puffy as puffy can be.

I am on my second convenience-store handy-pack of tissues as I now almost ignore the waves of

Sadness at projected imaginings of a time yet to be in a place or places unknown crashing against the rock

That is the reality of now, today, and all the days that have gone before to enable this one to be what it is.
______

I feel safe to lean against the railings above the beach
To look back at the land, to see how little has changed,
Then I think of the day and how much is very different.

I am hungry but can't face another battered sausage joke
So start walking back along the Promenade toward the pier.

I am thinking out now, looking around me, listening for detail
I can use to distract from my father's woes and maybe, just
Maybe, put a smile on his face when I see him tomorrow.

Three chrome-laden-Harley-boys rock up to the posing park,
Remove their helmets and as I pass by I hear them laughing,
About their bingo-wings billowing at speed on the motorway.

It’s the price of high bars and sleeveless vests and waistcoats
For all but the most Easy Rider scrawny of Peter Fonda wannabes.
______

Me, I like my arms.
They are not the finest, magazine grade
You might ever see
But you'd probably agree
They look right
With an all-over covering of skin
And that does it for me
______

I wear sleeves when I ride my bike
So as not to have to when I don't.
______

It's early evening and I am calm when I return to my one-bed wide flat.
My thoughts are still volatile but I have become used to cerebral bangs
And flashes of all the things I know not to write down in the moment.

I am not in the mood for an After-Pride Party but I will make the effort
Because that is what I have planned to do and I can't report back that I
Stayed in because I was miserable that one day soon my dad will die.

I shaved and showered, probably shat,
Making full use of all the facilities in the flat
I cooked myself something my father never would

Because he loved his son.

I never cared so much for me as did he.

I dressed and I walked the short road to the club
Where I drank and I smoked and danced to rub-a-dub dub.

It was long after dawn when I climbed into bed and
Set my alarm to leave just enough time to drive
Fifty miles into a summer Sunday afternoon.

To do my best at shutting out the shit
Of the whole sorry circumstance
And to ignore my yesterday
Insofar as I had mourned
The passing of much
Of what my
Father
Was

Yet
He was
Still there,
Albeit fragile.
______

I told my tale jokily
And raised a smile or two.

It was too soon to explain what I wanted,
That what I had witnessed the day before
With my own eyes, however blearily it was
And through however many tears of either
Sadness or of celebration, was proof positive
That he and his father had not lived in vain.

It isn't that they fought battles and won.
Instead, they demonstrated
How to do peace.
______
______

That is the key.

It's impossible to impose peace.

People have to notice how others achieve it.

If they amend their behaviour to match they achieve it, too.

It isn't about militarily suppressing revolt, anyone with firepower can do that.

Nor about scaring gullibles into brainwashed accord with outdated "divine" instruction manuals.

The best thing we can do to help those at war in far off lands is to keep doing exactly what we peacefully do.

Eventually they might notice, give it a go and discover how much easier peace is than war. If not it is their own loss.
______
______

It's not my job to save the world.
But if everyone behaved like me
There would be no religion or war.

Just saying.
_____

The song I heard the little girl sing was from my father's war.

It was his generation that wanted luck wished them
When their loved ones waved them goodbye.
______

My father was one of the very lucky ones,
He came home at the end of the war.
Having sung that song himself with
Friends and fellows who didn't,
A good few years before.

He will have sung it since in memory
Of those who were less lucky than he,
The chorus rising and rousing but empty
From those living in defiance for the dead.

But that's not
How she sang it.

The little girl sang the lyric with innocent enthusiasm,
With the broadest and happiest of smiles
She stripped it of all connotations,
She deleted its history files.
______

I wish my father had lived to hear it sung that way, too,
And that he had witnessed also Pride in Seaside City.
______

It is a hundred years since we entered the Great War
And nearly seventy since we emerged from the Second.
We have come a long way since Europe last fought.

A lot is said for the men, women and children who died.
Not enough is said for those who survived,
For those who made the changes
That enable us to enjoy
Our freedoms
Today,

That enable small children
To grow up here in peace
And in happiness
Without experience
Or knowledge of war.

Because that
Is how the little girl sang it
And because that
Made it special to hear.

Friday, 11 August 2017

Amongst other more profound one-line advices ...

Amongst other more profound one-line advices that had made me famous
When people passed them on in inns and hostelries across the land,
If I had suggested, a thousand years ago, that everyone should

Travel by the swiftest available means of transport
Rather than waste their lives on the journey

It is likely those who took my advice
Would travel on horseback,
As, indeed, would I.

And as would be noticed,
By a hang-around scribe.
______

After my death,
To make a few quid
The hang-around scribe
Expands the few snippets
Of common sense I had used
To draw attention to flaws in the
System in to a first-hand biography.

His version of me picked up a good following
So others, too, wrote their expansions of my story.

But common sense is unexciting and soon assimilates into
Everyday life and the relevance of whence it came diminishes.
______

Turn the clock forward to just a hundred and fifty years ago. I am history.
______

Scribes are ten-a-penny now and one decides to make his own fortune by rewriting
The long forgotten story of me, updating it to make it relevant for a modern readership.
______
______

If I had suggested a hundred and fifty years ago that everyone should

Travel by the swiftest available means of transport
Rather than waste their lives on the journey

It is likely those who took my advice
Would travel by steam train
As, indeed, would I,
_____

The Victorian usurper of my reputation, however,
Wrote that everyone should travel only by
Steam train on the routes he was the
Owner of and made his fortune.

He died a very rich man,
As did his inheriting sons
Until
The age of steam died, too.
_____

It is century 21 now, according to local convention,
And my advice would be the same as it always has been,
That everyone should

Travel by the swiftest available means of transport
Rather than waste their lives on the journey.

It is likely those who took my advice today
Would ride bicycles and motorcycles,
Drive cars and lorries and ride
In buses and on trains
Of any kind, on
Aeroplanes,
In boats

As, indeed, would I

According to the
Journey I
Took.
______

So why would anyone now

Be limited to travel only by horse
Because it is what a scribe wrote
I had done a thousand years ago?

And why would anyone now

Be wrestling with their inner conscience
As to whether to only travel by train
To only travel by steam train
Or not to travel at all
Because the old
Routes have
Closed
Or,
Worse,
Moved into
Public ownership
For the benefit of all?

And why would anyone now

Be killing anyone in my name
Over a mode of transport
Or route they choose
To achieve their
Destination?
______

Where on earth
Would be the
Sense in that?

Tuesday, 15 September 2015

Prism (FB 10th July 2015)

Does it help
That there's a
Device in nature
That exposes your
Every constituent part?

That breaks down what we see
Into black and white from
What we thought
Was grey

Then
The white
Becomes a rainbow
With more shades than Newton
Let himself believe
'Cause he
Was

Christian
In the old fashioned
Sense that was modern at
The time so seven was
A magic number.

We now use three,
R and G and B
For light.

You see

R G B alchemy
Is showing you me.
That's all that you see

In the shadows
That define

Me.

Close up is an intricacy
A detail without design
Just twisted fibres
Spun, woven,
Knitted and
Sewn.

Into

What?
A covering.
A hovering above
Fashion's no man's land
Wrapped in wilderness itself

Where I find myself naked and pink

At least that's what I let everyone think.

How much R and G and B make this pink that
Armour clads the imagination of others?
How bright must a light be for eyes
To avert instead of staring at,
To alight instead of
Torching the
Home of?

How!

Take a piece of pipe and
Make it a pipe of peace

Let your Grey
Be wisps from
Burning reds.

Let your living
Be what keeps
You

Let your stride
Be long enough

Let your dreams.

Just let them.

Without fee
Invite your loved ones
To join you where the rules
Of the outside, everyday society,
As outside, everyday society
Itself, has no place
Black is lace with
R and G and B
On delicate
Show
Off

Look close. See.
What constitutes me?
I'll look close, too,
At what constitutes you.

With the help
Of that same
Device in nature,

As spectacular
As spectacles
Bringing life into
Sharp focus

As it ever is
In breaking
Light apart.

Such is the magic
Of the polished
Planed prism
That lens
Itself
To

Madness
And love.

Which,

Without form
Without surface
Without reflection,

Are the

Black and the white
The day and the night
The flight and the fight

Of fancy.
Or of fear.

Am I
Making
Myself clear?

There's more to life
Than ever meets the eye

The truth is in
The light
the eye emits

That cannot hide
Hatred
Or hide
Loving to bits.

Untitled (A Gentle Rain - FB 12th July 2015)

My planned Poem Three has been cancelled due to inclement weather. I went looking for an "Indoors if wet" alternative and wrote this before I found one. It will have to do:

A gentle rain comes to soften and,
In time, to rinse away the remnants
Of food and drink, to clean the streets
Of the pee and puke of humankind and
The poo I hope is of beasts of land and air.

The sun averts its direct gaze
From the morning after the humid
Night before, bringing slowly into the very
Softest focus a few selected, carefully vignetted
Outstamatic memories of "freedom", as played out
By stags and hens under the watchful eye of their hosts,
Using cameras set high up on buildings and purpose-made posts.

I notice

A miserably damp, chill morning in Seaside City feels
No different from a miserably damp, chill morning in
Whatever part of Sarf London whence they arrived
With bulging yesterday cashcards and back to where
The Southern Railways train will slightly gently carry
Them and their newly swollen livers later on today.

Me?
I live here.

I haven't finished enjoying
My birthday weekend.

I just took a time out
To write a poem.

It's what
I do.

Job Description (FB 16th July 2015)

My current job, as best as I can define it, is:

To experience life,
To give it thought
And to take notes.

Yesterday was a good day at work.

Horse - Poem

Cheesy, West Coast, Nineteen-Eighties, Hair Metal,

A genre that refuses to die.

Why?

Horse.

In the singular:
Crazy, backing Neil Young.

In the classic movie,
A Man Called Richard Harris.

In the plural:
Crazy as The Osmonds

And because the night
Belongs to Patti Smith

I wander the streets.
_____

I'm looking for a poem to hang off the word "horse".

I self-medicated, possibly overdid it, and found one.

Only it wasn't a poem it was a horse.

It was dark, I was staring out over Dogpoo Park
And there it was, in South to South East London.
I'm no expert on horses but it didn't look happy.

Of all the places
A horse could be
Living wild and free

This horse lived on an estate

An estate of houses
Not one of flats,
Which are much better suited
To small dogs and cats,

But it wasn't happy.

Neither was it tied to a stake
Nor otherwise restrained from escape

It just stood there looking miserable
And I don't do miserable poems.
_____

I had wasted an hour
Of slowly bloating
From over consumption
Of beans over bacon
On a bed of toast.

Medical professionals may suggest
My discomfort to be due to
A Stowford Press
Chaser.
But,
What do
They really know?

I blame the bread people.

Baked beans are incapable of
Conspiratorial imagination and
Bacon rules the real world like
Cats rule the internet.

It can only be the bread people.

I looked up from my pad.
The horse was gone.
I went inside
For pint
Two.
______

Expanded by now to the point of almost rupture
I concluded my observations of all and sundry
And set off in the general direction of my
Hillside Retreat, via coffee with friends.

Yes, coffee. I was in a bad way.
______

Today came and I woke into not long after noon

I had need
Of a lead
For my guitar.

Allowing for Sunday Trading
If I were quick I could make it
There and back without being
Freaked out by members of
The holidaying public.

It was worth a shot.

I went out wearing more pockets than I would at home,
Fewer than jeans and jacketed of an evening.

Carrying adequate supplies for any
Adventurous opportunity
That may arise

But not
A
Pad and pen

I was reliant upon technology
For the recording of my thoughts

Un-edited and without Photoshopping
I paste that world here. I bring you:

Awe inspiring breastage
On the chestage
Of a man

Enough to make an
Artist's eyes
Bleed