coffee, smoke and smiles

embracing a cigarette

and a cold cherry coke

she confessed a young life

to old eyes

whilst dealing out smiles

like cards

until I held nothing but

hearts and aces

(For Emma)

my son, my father

The phone call.

Your grandson asked if that was you who had just called. He asked if heaven had telephones. I told him no and watched as the sadness entered his heart. I explain that you are gone. I explain that you will never return.
“I can’t speak to him?”
“No.”
He looks at me. He cries. He holds me tighter, as if trying to squeeze you from me. And as the tears finally fall from my eyes. How I wish I could make that call for both of us.



2nd February 2010

my war

the cold bit into my face

the hungry surrounded me

and distant guns echoed

but I was doused in invincibility

driving towards my war
with aid to save nobody
but myself

now I only recall

the misplaced children

the soulless grey faces

and fresh graves

graced with unknown prayers

orphans were the currency of my war

the widows with no shadows my receipts

and that romantic war that lived in me

was not a war I could have healed

there was no salvation for a broken soul

just religion tearing flesh apart

(It feels like a lifetime ago now. I took aid out during the Yugoslavian war. My father and grandfather had experienced war so I felt it was my right of passage... in the end it was my grandfather's words that came back to haunt me. He had always refused to talk about his own war experiences instead he would simply say "we have to find better ways to resolve our differences..." War is surreal and an undignified end to human life ..)

Work in progress...  within a world in progress.

eulogy

Bent double, like a closing book.
A frail grey shadow of something great yet now forever lost.
I could not look upon you.
I could not find the love I had to strengthen me.
You were gone.

Now in the early hours I mourn you.
Tears now, only tears.
The words you wrote through my pain,
Add only more weight to this emptiness.
And the photographs and film, the echoes of your life,
Fades from my memory like my childhood.

I miss you.
Yet sometimes when I’m alone I know you are here.
With a strong hand upon my shoulder and fragments of
Keats, Wordsworth and Wileman for my ear.
I loved you for all you ever were.
I love you for all you will make me be.

But most of all I miss you, Albert.




(For my Grandfather: Albert Wileman)

how to love a lawyess

seduce her with legislation
smother her with torts
then seize her precedents
and abritrate her thoughts




(originally written 14th September 1990 - when I fell in love with a law student)

haiku (at last)

big blue and dreamless
as clouds crumble and disperse
childlike without thoughts




(originally written 10th May 1990)

sarah

when you smiled
I was cleaved in two
when you spoke
I was held willingly captive
and now
even though the edge
of you memory is sharp
I would rather bleed
than let go







9th September 1990

in this very moment

when your sleepy eyes start to close

when your head sinks into the cool pillow

and when the duvet reaches over your shoulders

in this very moment

my heart will settle in rhythm with yours

and in the silence of the night

you will hear my voice say goodnight

For Madison (when she is not with me)

20th July 2010

mourning the woman you were not

as I kissed his lifeless forehead
you were not thinking of me
as I told him I loved him
you were not thinking of me
as I told him I would always miss him
you were not thinking of me
as I walked with my mother behind his coffin
you were not thinking of me
as the priest spoke of death and life
you were not thinking of me
as they buried my father
you were not thinking of me
and as his loss tore into my soul like a storm
you were not thinking of me

so now I bury your memory
and when I visit your grave
which I do from time to time
I only mourn the woman that you were not

20^th July 2008

these rooms

I have spent
will spend
days here
retracing her footsteps
placing her smiles
in every reflection
and her laughter
in the cold empty corners
of these rooms
I will imagine
her beside me as I sleep
whispering in my ear
waking my heart
warming the coldness
that now haunts these dreams

I have spent
will spend
hours here
waiting for keys
to turn
and for ghosts
to leave

I have spent
will spend
all my life
waiting

waiting

waiting