CAMERA SHY

I bought you coffee -
always did on Sunday morning at the Clock Cafe.
We'd sit at the window people watching,
sometimes you'd mock me and say,
"Don't you have any mirrors at home",
or "Ooo don't look now, spot the gay".
My retort was just as bad,
"You bitter old queen -
they all think you're my dad!"

But that was another Sunday thirty years ago.
Today the repartee has worn a little thin,
resting on the counterpane,
the silent testimony to your years with him.

I'm in so few of those casual snaps,
fact is I took them all -
except the one you sneaked unposed,
where I was naked and stretched
across the rocks, Cretan boys were diving
from the docks and came out
blurred into the background.

An obvious eye for the boys
you'd always qualify it and say,
"you're not a flash-in-the-pan
you're up there among the men,
you're special to us". I wanted to ask
was that picture of me or them?
But I already knew the answer -
It was probably both! Such an appetite
for love. An infinite capacity
for mayhem.

I didn't quite see it like that back then.
You could say my position has evolved,
because now I believe everything
you said - the jealousy dissolved.
And I don't know if it's the medicine talking
because you ask if I loved you
equally. I thought you deserved the truth
and when I said I loved him more -
You put it down to callow youth,
"but thanks for sticking around!"

then so generously added,
"he loved you too, you know"
He gripped my hand as if his
life depended on what was coming next
"you're not in the album much
and I see why?", and you know what
he's right. "We always let you take the pictures.
You were camera shy".

For A Second I Forgot #2

I counted my achievements

there were not too many,

on dismal mornings such as this

I cannot think of any.

The ticking of the clock

at the centre of my drama

for a second i fogot

its arbitrary measure

For a second I forgot

in the expanding minute

my burden might be heavy

but there is nothing in it.

For a second it's accepted

with complete concession

the contingent and connected

empty of all mission

For a second there resigned

all urge and aspiration,

no weight or value was assigned

no number or ambition.

For a second i forgot

and there was no resistence

for a moment I was locked

within the flow of all existence

Listen to For A Second I Forgot here

For A Second I Forgot mp3

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.