Apolide ~ (For Gregg)

On Carmel beach he saunters

where turquoise meets the border,

His arms outstretched

His upturned palms

Seek signals of a different order,

Eyes the milky horizon line

For signs of calmer water.

His sullen self numb

to the laughter of companions,

neither one thing, the other or either,

Frei nor Frum, Jew nor 'Goy,'

Mount Hermon broods over Babylon.

Why does he push the bar?

What does his heart desire?

Brittle as bone char.

He's out of sorts with the desalinated state,

Where love finds it's expression

As jealousy and hate, and the fine wine

Of the purple line leaves a bitter after-taste.

Assassins dispatch, contradictions confound,

tired aspirations rake the frontiers flat.

What's the itch he can't scratch?

Golan Magic propaganda grates,

And the Jesus Trail – for Christ's sake!

From Haifa to Nice, Nice to Montone,

Where his voice wormed it's way through

One dark winter night stateless and lonely,

Somehow he knew this was home.

Mornings of defeat, the triumphs of the evening,
The ebb and flow of feeling set the tone,
Welling up of passion, advancing, retreating,
this lying down mute and alone. 
Forging our agreements, fuelling our dispute, 
exposing the raw rootless discontent -

A wound so sore it bleeds,

'Too much', he says, 'don't touch, don't touch,

I need you'.

In Haifa now he rediscovers

His life in the eye of the tempest,

He has his lover and the love of his friends,

Boundaries, edges, crises and endings. All this -

Why swap high-security for uncertainty and risk?

He calls from his confinement

Intimate and cold, waves over verges

and marches, across unbridgeable distances

In space and time – a thousand miles

and two decades if truth be told,

But we are connected, fingers through fences,

at the perimeter of his heart,

where sentries forbid entry

to his soul.

On Carmel beach he wonders

What would happen if next,

He abandoned himself to the moment

Relinquished his grip on the rest,

Let limits slip and barriers lift,

He types out a text

He holds up his phone in his palm,

But the signals adrift.

It's no cause for alarm.

My message is already clear,

For now and whatever, for love and for honour,

“My heart is a harbour

You can shelter here”


Listen to Apolide here: Apolide mp3

Camp

By the dull electric lamp

arose a vision so intense,

undimmed by squalor, stench and damp

in that Polish prison camp.

Emblems of their offence,

pink triangle and yellow star,

tattoo just below the sleeve

a hunger for tomorrow,

for reprieve. A hope that 

what began in sorrow

would not end in grief.

A fantasy, the sweet relief of human touch,

the longing that grew so much,

became so great -

the lightest brush seemed profligate.

For dignity of those involved, for all -

they did what dignity demands,

resolved that when their names were called

to go together hand in hand.

In the furnace in the flame

Each heard the others name,

And as the flames burned brighter still

their grip grew tighter

till their fingers intertwined,

tight as their desire

in the furnace in the fire,

Flesh and bone combined.

The heat intensified

then tempered, they found 
release that was denied
and they were one

with ash and embers,

and their hearts were unified.

Listen to Camp here

Camp

The Poem Fails

The poem fails

It cannot render traction

Or the queer zero,

Rehearse location

Or mine gravity.

Panic & lapse

Immune to weak forces

Arise on threads of absence

In mechanical waves,

Muted by observation

& uncertain rules

In the chamber of bias.

An adumbration transpires.

Wanton longing. Dimension

Flattened & tamped.

For A Second I forgot

For A Second I forgot

I counted my achievements
there were not too many,
on dismal mornings such as this
I cannot think of any.

I do domesticity
dusting and dishes,
bathe the babies
organise the crèches.

For second I forgot
that I was born in exile,
for a minute that my lot
doesn't turn a profit.

If my words offend
then I apologise,
and if nobody's saved
at least nobody dies.

Poetry is faux,
a hoax, a deception,
flat, forced, contrived,
flawed at it's conception.

For a second I forgot
and in so forgetting,
the burden that is my lot
is empty of all content.

I'm lazy, weak but harmless
this much I admit.
tighten up the harness
you win and I submit.

I salute the new authority
renew my vows with prayer,
mantra, thumbscrew, rosary
the discipline of work.

For a second I forgot
I was overlooked,
I'm doing well without me
In fact I am absolved.

Save Ulster From Sodomy

In the late 70s and early 80s Ian Paisley led the Save Ulster From Sodomy campaign, a largely Unionist affair, to prevent the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland. Yesterday the Northern Ireland Assembly voted against the Equal Marriage Bill. Ironically the Unionists were supported and lobbied by their old foes the Catholic Church.

Save Ulster From Sodomy

Billboard alongside Belfast Gay Pride Parade.

Papists rule out rubbers

lobby Paisley, Cardinals campaign,

petition Orange Men,

united by a great and noble aim,

odd bedfellows marry hastily.

Saving Ulster from sodomy again.

Forty-two to fifty

they threw out equality,

ranting, foaming, raving, canting,

Stormont storms. Sodomy,

my protestant Gran informed me,

if not the norm, was once a favoured form

of birth control.

Now, the laws the law

in Catholic France and Spain, but

special conditions pertain,

to a corner of the UK where

Old Women reign.

Gran will turn beneath the turf when I say

the side of the angels is Sinn Fein.

Presbytarians are arseholes so stuff 'em!

Strange unsettling settlement

upsets. Sectarian alliances crystalise

and cave, Form and fold, 

old favours, old grievances, old scores,

exchanged for what religionists crave.

What's not settled at assembly

Is delayed, until we settle.

See you in court.

Hung Out To Dry

It was a Christian minister who drew my attention to the idea of the crucifixion as child abuse. He suggested there might be an alternative moral to the narrative. I thought trying to draw a consistent or clear moral conclusions from the New Testament was as feasible as pinning water to the wall. This poem has endured a lot of changes in form, content and even title. I'll keep working on it.

Hung Out To Dry

If God the father sent Christ to die

For the sins of you and I,

Wear a crown of thorns, bleed and cry

Oh dad you've hung me out to dry,

Forsaken me, nailed me high (heave and sigh) -

Then I don't understand the truth,

Of this cosmic act of child abuse.

Where one cannot do otherwise, blame

Cannot be assigned. Judas & the Jews

Constrained, fitted up, put in the frame,

A suicide null and void. A ghastly charade,

Of holy smoke and mirrors.

What conclusions should we draw from this?

What moral has been overlooked?

What meaning was missed?

That conscience makes penitents of us

In the end? Your old man doesn't

Always attend to your best interests? 
Your friends will sell you to the enemy? 
That the game plan depends upon a whim?

That a god who made all laws is bound by them?

Pause. For thought. When it comes

To religion I'm wise enough to know

That once the cat's out of the bag

It's best to let it go.

If God is good, and omnipotent

Yet evil exists,

Then either he's not good, nor all powerful

Or he had a hand in it.


You can download & listen to Hung Out To Dry here 

Hung Out To Dry mp3

© 2013 Wreck Of My Old Self Productions

Clock Watchers In The Woods

It's my first memory of social embarrassment. I loudly proclaimed my older cousin Barry “sexy” and brought the pickled onion crunching crowd to a glowering halt. His shirt collar was open over his  jacket collar, his hair was slick with Brylcreem. It passed for style in those dismal days and I'd confused style with sexy. I have no idea where heard the word before but clearly it was a faux pas.

Years later I remember an Alzheimer's patient – an old school proper gentleman - pointing at his visiting daughter shouting “she sucks my cock”. Painfully embarrassed his daughter turned to everyone and mouthed, “I'm sorry.... I don't”.

My imagination conflated these episodes.

Clock Watchers In The Woods

Cloth ears? Her ill fitting teeth?

What did granny just gabble

at the gathering?

The voice above the rabble

Stopped the chatter and the babble,

Granny said there are cock

suckers in the woods.

Everyone looks nervous,

coughs and shuffles, muffles giggles.

Talk shifts to the weather;

Mother squirms and wriggles,

smiles politely, tugs his tresses

then to avoid his guesses,

whispers sotto voce,

Granny said clock watchers.

She gabbles often garbled.

What she mutters hardly matters

since she's lost her marbles.

Dad, who'd be watching clocks

or washing socks

this late at night?

She uttered sucking cocks.

What's it mean?

Whisked away swiftly,

unjustly and unwilling,

fluster and kerfuffle,

A tug-o-war to bed -

tuttering and trilling,

But to no-one in particular

he said -

Christ that little fucker's

on the subject of cock suckers

and he just doesn't seem to

want to let it go.

© Wreck of my old self productions