Adrian

My Deerboy

Now I have a bin that gets a spin,
same as all the others
and you’ve gone
and forgotten my name
but once we were bin brothers.

As the machine comes through weekly
– flashing and grinding –
I salute and shout:
‘Hey up Adrian!’ but I get blank looks
for all my comradely reminding..

Do you remember a bin Adrian
do you remember a bin?

And the black art of black bagging
and our belts that were sagging
with gifts for housewives when
we peeled off a new bag or two

and the scurrying trail,
going house by house
and the humping and the dumping
of fresh piles onto pavements
to be scooped up and tossed

into the yawning back of the trawling
wagon with a button that we pressed
to bring hydraulic jaws together;
the compressing and the submitting
another week’s worth to landfill.

I’m a punter, on…

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Proper Happy

Welcome children to my buffet of drug facts,
here is a spread of the kind of things
kept under wraps;

a buffet table of simulation
-cling filmed stimulation,
every kind of dodgy fayre;
from chocoholism to solvent abuse
you’ve got to be aware-

To be proper happy; know thy props-
know what fizzes, fizzles what
snaps, crackles, pops
and where the party starts
and where it stops.

Here we have wacky-backy
donkey dust, Special K and wizz
nico-café-ketamine and
you need to know what is
a stimulant and a sedative
and what not to mix them with;
categories, tolerances, types and doses-
you need to know your space cakes
from your party samosas-
your sugar coated diazepam
from your chocolate coated marzipan-

we’ve got magic mushrooms
speed and cocaine, areosols and glue
anything that has a use is open to misuse;
tranquilisers, hallucinogens
prescription drugs and skag-
you could succumb to all of these
from the first inhalation of a fag..

to be proper happy; know thy props
know what you’re falling into
and what’s falling into you
before you take those drops;
know thy props.

Mr Moonlight

I plough a lonely meta-furrow;
like you, old fellow..
but there’s no comparison.
So far I’ve unearthed disco-balls
and dough-balls and
swimming capped heads,
the apertures of cameras
but I can’t hold a candle
up to you-

thirty steps and you’ve snapped
back to the same lane,
to do it all again. You possibly
saw me, standing all a lunar
looking at you
one evening of your leavening,
being the epitome of momentum
and stasis, discarding
the blackness of space.

There is no string
to bring us back in.
We’ve had our lot
of helium, had our scrapes,
lucky escapes.
Now we plough.

 

Learning Curves (Holme Moss Fell Race, 2017)

It’s on my doorstep;
a well-worn edge
the sky crosses over
bringing grey heavy boots home
or white socks of summer, weather
of day to day reality: Holme Moss.
And because I’ve been called,
I’m learning the code
like a tourist, picking up insights
from running a flagged route,
overseen through these wild heartlands.

Limbs are unsheathed
by the pavilion
where we gather
by the dozen at
Cartworth Moor Cricket Club;
the landing pad, where we prepare
for take off –
the mown grass
July sky, the routine checks,
where we stretch and flex.

This course is uncensored;
a 17 mile see-saw,
mainly of arduous ascent
-any decent is so indecently steep
it jars your core
and strains your thighs
until they are sapped and sore.

We go to Black Hill via White Low
and some fairly epic valley sides,
severely up and severely down,
through the bilberry brush
over technical rock,
over stile and stream.

Trudging through
the contours of a learning curve
I am cramping up, bogged down

-I could only approach taking on
something like this through ignorance-

and at the end when we’ve done
what have I learned?
You can half your cake
and eat it but you can’t
do these things by halves.

 

Queue

My Deerboy

Runners ahead
like beads on thread
travelling. We were

a din, to begin with
then silenced and off
like seed, dispersing-

an initial chord
breaking, stretching
into a narrative.

I can’t hear any glory,
my feet can’t grab the ground
fast enough to turn the page;
change the story.

I’m barred by empty space,
by my own tempo;
I can’t catch the future,
the tune that the clapping
has already started for.

I need to hoover up
the room of the road
faster, faster…

My mind is one of the first
through, but my body
has to queue, my body
has to queue.

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Private Busker

I have lowered myself to be for hire purposes
and offer my services
one on one; ‘tis a sure fire earner
and, in the words of Tina Turner-

I’m your private busker
busker for money, just as
Cat Stevens might do..

and as sure as the moth mistakes
a light at night for the lure of the moon
I am summoned-

‘Come forward strange dancer
with bass drummed back,
gleaming hi-hatted head
scarved guitar strapped up;
ye all cymbal kneed, ye reedy
harmonica blower-
do your thing.
You can rattle your tin
in this cattle market
any day. Ok I say,

just keep your hands off.

Doghouse

My Deerboy

Its back to the doghouse for me.
Sofa so good
for you; lifer. My cell
by date passing: I shouldn’t be here!
(I type frantically)
You exhale, you shed
your sympathy, your embrace
is a pick me up-
hair, dirt, skin, shit;
no bones about it,
you’re not the ideal life partner,
panting away all day like a furry
solar panel-giving something back-
something..
I feed you your daily can of meat for it,
but ignore your invites to share stupid games,
go to the gym. I call the media,
I make appeals to the wider world,
beyond the doghouse-
hear my petition, hear my cry! But I’m stuck
in this tedious, odourous, soporiferous place
with you in, in
and passed by
and left, like sleeping dogs are,
to die.

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