Poem

I moved to Tunbridge Wells.

Well, not really.

Nearly?

Merely almost left somewhere I have never been.

Clever as clogs, those sabots I've had for generations - sit grinning in yellow with a lick of a red stripe

By this new fireplace that has as much integrity as

Being born again in 1810 urns of plastic.

I have holy neighbours now, screened by propriety

And fences that barely cover my naked, unruly soul that is the garden

Back and front, for God's sake.

What am I to do with that?

Move the furniture.

Handle the air, look for signs of life. Scrag the hands on man-made hills

Of broken glass

Skirt the lanes terrified of space. And green.

A bottle abandoned, is welcome. An empty can, perhaps?

From the back bedroom window, I see figures appear like thumbs

White and bald of sentience, squimmying between the houses, tongues

Stilled by certainty.

Guilt clad, I venture noticed.

Habit of a footpath, traversed and squandered by an American Beach Cruiser.

They know I'm here now, a viper in a the Garden of England

There is a long alley to my house, cowed under ferocious green

With lampposts to illuminate the industry of tallying night murderers

Who could itemise the semaphore of the paranoid city immigrant.

When you get there, that is.

Running.

All uphill.

The potential, during that viscous trudge, of at least fifteen cars

With urban seeking missiles to locate she who wears trousers beneath her frock

And will never cease to be a stranger.

Once, we lowered our hearts onto the Thames, where she carried us off and forgave us.

We had a good conversation. We spoke to each other a lot.

Light journeys of thought bounced from ruined banks, like the fetched up angels of clay pipes

Ideas that didn't need strong calves, rested and offered their white flesh to be massaged

By the constant ebb and flow of police sirens

And the soft, black stench of drug dealer's breath as they lay dying like tar

On a Deptford bench for ten years.

Would you have me back?

I see you from the train, shining in muddy skies, a thin ribbon snagged twixt the effluent towers

Then wide as a hand running holding Catamaran and bridge –

My skin is still radiant from the pure.

I try to wave but my heart can't lift a finger.

If I could stand in you again; would I?

I moved somewhere nice, with skies and green.

A blank, left somewhere

I might have been.

A burial divided between two gardens.


By Storm

Link to me @ 10:48 pm