City poems

1.

There was a day of
Wasps,  I remember
As I walked to work
Buzzing in the bins

A Barboured old man
with a puppy dog in
his hands, the colour
Of burnt caramel

Today will be a good day
I can tell.



2.

The man with the blue tie
  glides by
The man with the pink tie
  points his finger
    at others
The man with the dry eyes
  looks tired
And, I with the wry
smile feel removed from it all



3.

The thing about all of
these things is
I cannot be bothered.

I wrap myself up in
Cotton wool and
Dive down under the covers

Sleep til light
Then do it all over again
Five days a week
Until the Sabbath

Forgetting all of what's gone
past as I dip my
Toes in to the future

(Hangover Poems)

HANGOVER QUILLS

I am very hungover today

And I will work on poetry

I read your poems Pooja Nansi

And they reminded me of

A time when I wore a broken

Healing wretched heart

Like a pin on my lapel

Men I couldn’t really tell

Apart fell in to my lap

Like drink spills, I

Didn’t really miss them

When they’d gone

*

I woke up with no recollection of how and why

Top half still on (bra and all)

Bottom half relegated to the floor

Lamps still on and bright white light

Flooding in from the window and at first

You’re numb from the truth which is

Oh no. It’s daylight and last night I drank too much.

Then it’s the dread of what happens next

If I move? And then it’s some odd recurring thought patterns

That flit in and out of dreams or delusions or both;

I am at a training camp where you must raise your hand

And share with the faceless class an occasion of

Heartbreak and humiliation

No body makes to move so I raise my hand and yell

Quite loudly – a time I waited for someone who never came

I get some nods of approval

I wake and I crawl to fill my glass with water and

Sup and wait and set my alarm to be back again

At that camp but it’s an assault course this time

In the dimmed dark, it’s wet like Scotland outside

Inside my friends are climbing walls and it feels

Ominous. The one I love has an accident, grisly

Head splits open and comes to sit by me

And I look at his smashed skull with brain bits but his face

Still looks fine to me and I need to wake up before

I am sick with horror and dread and fear of it all

It’s a dream you sick sad fuck

*

I will sleep on my desk

As the ticker tape rolls

As the typewriter clicks

And flags wave for goals

Ogiichan

My grandfather just passed away.

He died on the bathroom floor, my Ogiichan, that’s Japanese for grandfather. My Obaachan, that’s Japanese for grandmother, went to find him in the house because he hadn’t come back in to the room for a while. Obaachan found him on the bathroom floor. He’d collapsed. They called the ambulance but when they tried to resuscitate him he was already dead.

I was really close to Ogiichan. We had the same laugh. And once he said to me when we were silently sat alone together in the living room that ‘When Rimika is in the house flowers bloom’. My name is Rimika.

It really flares up at you death; it makes you think about life. All the things that I’d wanted to believe are not true. Like I don’t want to grow up so I don’t have to. Well no, you don’t have to but it’s inevitable. You will grow old. Time stands still for no man, as someone important once said.

What do you do when someone dies? It’s so irreversible. And life so irreverent, that you can walk to a bathroom and never return. What is that? It’s fucking ridiculous that’s what. Imagine knowing someone for the whole of your life and then they're no longer there and that’s a fact. One minute they exist the next they don’t. It’s not important why or how just that it is. Truth. Truth can change all the time we just aren't aware or want to think about it, because if we did it would destabilise you. Everything you know could alter in a blink.

This was one of his favourite poems and I’ll translate it the best I can in Ogiichan’s memory:

ただいるだけで

あなたがそこに
ただいるだけで
その場の空気が
あかるくなる

あなたがそこに
ただいるだけで
みんなのこころが
やすらぐ

そんな
あなたにわたしも
なりたい

Just By Being There

Just by you

Being there

The air of the place

Becomes brighter

Just by you

Being there

All hearts

Feel at ease

Like you

I want to become

Like that