On Having (and not having) Hair

No hinges; hard hat heads you can knock
On like nuts that have split up from husk
And fringes; psychos and babies but maybe
That’s when you become a man, when you’re
Bald; with no second thoughts or chances
Or cotton wool left, fluffing your lineage, no
Thing but a proud erection of skull and skin;
A detachment from the nest material, the fairy
Stories all abounding with it like treasure, tying
Timeless hearts together in its threads, its strands
Like mothers hands draping around happy faces
Forever and infertile princes, princesses; precious.

John

Are you in there John?..
should we be worried?
is he in there?.John?..
stubbornly stuck in his egg
as if he was unborn, up to his eyes
in some form of porn or other
just how long has John been in there,
incubating..?..
and why should I care? Does he sell
much behind that shell with the
soft yolk of the internet now in
everyone’s dipping eyes? Or
is he on a journey to the core
to get harder and harder
in a life time siege cocooned
by enough supplies to tantalise
an army, going all the way,
seeing out a sentence
there stuck in his books in his shed
behind boards blanking him off
by the side of the road; how far
does he feel he has to go before
he can show his face again?

 

 

Salford

Market Cafe

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Dam

Well I will be damned and packed in
With broken beginnings, promises all
Bitter sediments if I don’t unfold into
An embrace of the space I try to deny;
Then true love can go through me any day
I won’t stand in its way and be a block
Or a gate, give memory more opportunity
To grope away when I/we are better than
That. My side is my swamp, I can crawl
Out of it onto land blessed, into a new dawn.

Birthday Boy

How do I feel?
Shaky. Bruised. Bitter. Knackered;
Like I always did on my birthday
Maybe. Who wants a war? Nobody.
This isn’t poetry. It is diplomacy.
I am tanked up and mobbed with clumsy
Blood stamping around me overriding
Vague placards for peace; I can’t read
Right now or hear those calls to step back to
Stability and see sense; stupidity is a loudhailer
Prevailing, forming a force to regain a birthright.

Guy Ropes

We can laugh at it now but once I didn’t know
What rain was. Geographically I didn’t know how
I should move between A and B and believe me
I had never looked like a bird at a map and understood
My terrain; you turned me into a native, at last, aware
Of my Earth, even when the world appears man made,
Neutral, non-sense naturally, I’m thinking about levels
To do with sea and sky; valleys, melting glaciers and gradients.
Now I know it wasn’t cool to get kicked out of Cubs
For not being able to salute my Sixer or hand over subs
Or go climbing hills like Pen-y-gent with a dog but no
Dog lead or outdoor equipment. No mister Guy Ropes,
You have shown me the bridge; the best places to go fishing.
You have shown me the Earth; everything that I’ve been missing.

Scammonden Homestead

Homesteads taken down by time and returned
to quarry, back to lie in grass like tokens;
broken walls, lintels, living parts; scattered and mounded
rough and smooth lumps and slabs
still shaped to connect blocks of energy residual; loyal,
waiting to be weighed in, claimed on ancient farmland,
be walls again and shelter like they were once;
the dwelling place for hill farmers,
families and livestock; cut off
like their tongues now, no trace or story
that tasted and told of that time just
cut off and tethered to that area only,
life cramped by remoteness, never seeing over just
overseen by their grim god and hiding out
here in their age in their hills

 

Parachuteacher

Bright lights; big city. I’m sucked out of home
By a vacuum of sun and whirring little teeth; wind
Drags in my ears as I fall into my place, alienated, in
Transit; a parachuting pixel, a blurring world coming at me
With my brain my rudder, my phone my radar,
My hair all over the shop; I’m on it, homing in on
An X marking todays spot, magnetised
I see the monstrous school. I pull the shoot, come
To land in a class. I unharness, feel the fit, find resolve…
Good morning 10F. My name is Mr Greenwood.