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Santa, Maybe.

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I’d really love that Santa Claus
To do my shopping and my chores
Perhaps he’d even make a brew
And fill the car with petrol, too
Or maybe he could bake the pies
To keep me fat with sweet supplies
And while he’s at it he could bring
An end to human suffering
Perhaps he’ll stop the greed and hate
And start the love, for goodness’ sake
But something small would do for now:
My quiet hopes are just as loud
So now I have a single wish
I’ll whisper it, and it is this:
Oh, please bring homeless folk indoors
I’d really love that, Santa Claus.

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Where the Heart Is

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So what will all those children do?
~Don’t worry child, they’re not like you.

And what will Syrian children wear?
~Forget it, son, they’re over there.

But what will those poor children say?
~You cannot hear, they’re miles away.

It’s Christmas soon, what will they get?
~I’ve told you, kid, you must forget.

But why, and how, what can I do?
~You can’t, it isn’t up to you.

But maybe I can teach my friends
~Oh here we go, you’re off again…

Perhaps I should just start with you
~What do you mean? What did I do?

You turned away, you shut it out
~But we can’t help – we don’t know how.

And you gave up without a fuss
~But son, we need to care for US.

Oh, Father, won’t you ever learn?
~It isn’t us – it’s not our turn.

It is! They’re us – and we are they
~You don’t know half the things you say.

I know I’ll never learn from you
The things you let this planet do
You make it hard to love and trust
With all the lies you spin to us
You say we’re different, us and them
But what if it occurred again?
If we don’t help them, save them soon
Humanity will go to ruin
We need to stand up, take them in
As refugees washed clean of sin
For if we don’t, then when it’s us
Then who’ll be here to make a fuss?
If we don’t help the folk oppressed
What happens if it’s our turn next?

~Just calm yourself, child, take a pew. This will not happen, not to you. We’re fine right here, in Blighty’s arms; our King and country won’t be harmed. Now settle down and go to bed, and sleep away what’s in your head.

What’s in my head is in my heart
And when I wake, I’ll make a start.

~Not everything is black and white, you can’t win every single fight. I’m sure you see in monochrome.

Tomorrow, Dad, I’m leaving home.

The Fallen

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They took, as they tend to take.
Staking another, blood flutters another monster killed by guilty remorse
doors closing all the time opening
Hoping hearts beat as nothing and static arrives
Rhymes for our times and beds for our sorrow
Tomorrow, as they say, is another day
Way back in the future, way back when
Then all will be revealed
Concealed in masquerade
Lemonade for sale
Ale for the drunken
Thunken thoughts escaped
Placed upon life and the rest
The best is to come
Dumb it down for the truth
Rooftop-shouting
Louting and looting
Rooting and thrilling
Spilling on pages
Wages forgotten and spent
Bent out of shape for today
Shaving skin is permitted
Knitted scarves are made of veins
Games aren’t enough
Rough or smooth
Through it all:
The fallen, they fall.

Sonnet 2,152 or; The Verse that Wrote Itself

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The verse that wrote itself spilled from my pen;
No conscious thoughts of mine gave any hints;
I did not know the muse was there but then
A sudden flow of ink came; unstopped since.
The poetry that followed would reveal
All secrets which were hitherto unspoke;
For reason could no longer be concealed
In rhyme, for meter’s beats not jest nor joke.
The prose that now be published be all me;
No edits nor critique has it been through
The muse has spoken clear and wild and free;
And through this art I offer words to you.

For this new love, a poet did I choose;
And therein found my soul, my heart, my muse.

It’s Great

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It’s great that the battle is over
And there hasn’t been fighting at all
There’ve been no guns or bombs
Since the days of The Somme
When we learned our first lesson through war

It’s great that there’s nothing but peace now
And everyone just gets along
There’s been no shed of blood
Because everything’s good
As it’s been since the days of The Somme

It’s great that nobody is dying
And everyone’s treated the same
Since the days of The Somme
We have really moved on
Since our soldiers were pawns in a game

It’s great that we sit and remember
The red fields in a place called The Somme
We will have tea and cake
Reminisce of the waste
Of our men who died over the top

It’s great that we keep still in silence
And be thankful we weren’t at The Somme
For two minutes we’ll hush
And remember the pushed
After that we will just Carry On

It’s great that the world is now different
And it never will happen again
And the things that we know
Mean we’ll Sing As We Go
Since The Somme, since the war, since back then.

It’s great that it’s all in our history
And the slaughter is back in the past
Since the death at The Somme
All the horror has gone
So what’s wrong? Take a pew and relax.

It’s great that our royals lay wreaths there
And the PM will always pull through
So relax, have some wine
And just wait for the time
That they bring a new Somme straight to you.

Homeless Odyssey

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You know those viral videos of homeless people, where they turn out to be a gifted painter/wonderful musician/insert skill here? Have you seen ’em?  They’re really rather awesome and hit you right in the feeliest of feels.

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Watch this bum play the piano!
They passed this hobo a guitar – you will not BELIEVE what happened next!

What if they had no discernible skills whatsoever? What then?

But nah – it takes TALENT for a person to be deemed worthy. A video clip that makes you feel good about yourself, because y’know, THOSE ones – the ones with whom you can identify – are worth saving.

The mean old grumpy arsed stinkin’ man on the street is homeless. But fuck him – he can’t sing.

And as for that pisshead in Waterstones’ doorway? Why won’t she tap-dance for us?

Don’t get me started on that baggy old bag who sleeps under the rhythmless bridge. Can’t play for toffee.

Luckily, we will never have to see them. Nobody’d want to see that footage, so -thank fuck- they can stay invisible.

But rest assured – as not one of those people can hold a tune, so you should feel free to walk on by.

NO FLIES ON ME

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Since making the veggie-to-vegan leap a few weeks back, me ol’ grub’s been limited. By default, all my fave C’s are out: no cheese, chocolate, or (gasp!) cake.

Vegan hot dogs are floppy as the floppiest of fucks, and cheese-ish slices are essentially oily sheets of sappy, sopping cardboard.

Meatless sausages are ok, I suppose, and vegetable pâté isn’t half bad…but these are all things you need to eat with OTHER things so it’s been Bread With Everything. EVERYTHING.

From pâté on toast…crisp butties (to make sure I stay proppa Northern, like), it’s been carb-central all the way. Sunflower spread isn’t worthy of licking butter’s boots, of course – but if ya sprinkle a l’il salt on there, it’s quite possible to con yerself.

Lunch today? Baked beans and sausages on toast. Which – after plopping the lot onto my plate – looked and smelled a little dodgy, it has to be said. I was going to bin the lot, and go foraging in the fridge for summit else.

And then…BZZZZZ.

A dirty fly-bastard put me even FURTHER off, right before Bite One was even thought of.

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I’d left the window open last night (I was staying at me Mam’s with the kids – and what with her being ancient and thin of skin, the house was hotter than the sun), so the bewinged one had found his way in. And the little bugger didn’t bother bothering me until I was about to eat.

Forkful of carbs ready to be munched…until FLY. Batted it away, and back he came. Third time fucky: after a futile swat, he landed on my hand.

I didn’t splat the twat (vegan, remember?) but his landing gave me pause to think. He’d been deliberately and universally painted onto my hand, it seemed. I gawped at his little black body.

For here was mine was so white.

Clarity was on the menu then: a menu I make myself read every now and again with my peepers firmly closed and my mind wide open. Behind my eyes: flies. In my head: flies on faces.

Black flies on black faces. Faces that see SO MANY flies that they no longer twitch, ignorant to the silence…so silent that a fly’s footfall can be distinctly heard.

Apathetic hands no longer inclined to bat-away. Flies that stay wherever they squat. On face, on food, in mouth, in hell.

Black children. Black flies. Children so malnutritioned that the bigness of their distended stomachs is only balanced out by their enormous heads. Lolling heads too big for their raving scrawny bodies.

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And none of this is new to me; it’s just that sometimes, I forget to remember it. This is the same shit. The same old shit. The same old shit I first learned about in the eighties, with the advent of Live Aid (yeah yeah – I’m old as fuck). This is the bollocks that’s perpetuated by the likes of enormous corporations unnecessarily peddling their unnecessary shite when African women have perfectly good breasts.

What the actual crap was I doing moaning about shite food and one bastard fly? How fucking DARE I? How dare I complain about the state of my food when I HAVE food?

So I slapped myself in the face – and not for the purposes of insect-removal.

Then I ate a meal of beans on toast, with meat-free, dairy-free, flavour-free sausages.

From the wall, somebody was watching me.

If You Have a Floor

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imageI have this rug, right? And it’s a luxury one – to me. Less than a ton down the market, and about four inches deep.  I found myself staring at it the other day, imagining a family of six, seven, eight, sleeping upon it. It’s warm, and it’s dry.

Nobody should be homeless – and being that we are all descended from immigrants, we are they and they are us. They aren’t migrants, or infiltrators – they are REFUGEES. And if you have a floor, you have the room.

As a kid, I’d scribble my name and address down in the front of all my books – zooming further and further out into the cosmos as I went.

Wavertree Nook Road…

…Wavertree…

…Liverpool…

…Merseyside…

…The North West…

…England…

…The UK…

…Europe…

…The World…

…The Universe…

If you zoom out far enough, you can look back at Earth. What do you see? One big boat: and everybody’s on it.

We all hail from the same place in any case. Before any splitting of one great landmass. Before continents – and we – separated and divided. Before we started sinking.

You shouldn’t need 20/20 vision in order to see what’s going on – your mind’s eye should be enough. Mine shows me things I don’t necessarily wish to see, and sometimes I put those things to my mind’s back. Store ’em in my RAM for later. But other times…oftentimes…I hear a scream, yelling me back down to Earth.

So, whilst I have a voice for writin’ and a pen for thinkin’, I’ll bloody well use ’em.  I have a floor. I have the room.

I also have a rug. Come and snuggle up. And stay.

Stay.

VENI, VICI.

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It was so late that it was early. I was walking with my father – a dignified (or so he thought) man wearing an awkwardly unstylish coat and sixty years upon his face. Despite being hideously embarrassed to be seen with my old-Old Man, I liked to try and up my game for him – watching my language, standing tall, that sort of thing. He may have been waaaaay older than most dads but having been through t’mill of late, his age meant I had to tread a little more respectfully.

Not this time, though.

This was the one occasion I had the chance to become UNCIVILISED and grotty and partake in some fisticuffs with a local scumbag. This one occasion would require me to be – well, to put it mildly, unrestrained. I was at my tether’s end with bullies as I’d never defended myself before, having adhered all my life to that parental “just ignore them” horseshit and the “they’re just jealous” claptrap. I’d ignored away…and it hadn’t offered any consolation or provided a resolution. But THIS? This was going to be cathartic, plain and simple.

SHE was fifteen – the same age as me but in the year above at school. Cock of the place, she was: a title that was essentially self-attributed and against which nobody would dare argue lest they be bloodily beaten to a fucked pulp. It was all bullshit, of course – any person who saw fit to declare themselves the hardest cunt in any gaffe clearly had something missing. SHE was missing many things: wit, compassion, brain cells – and to this day, she remains absent of name – I didn’t know it then and have never since taken the trouble to find out. This chick had nasty friends in low, low places – two of whom I’d experienced for myself.

Up to me she bowled, calling me a middle-of-the-road insult in the middle of the night. I have no idea what we were doing being out at that late hour – I remember only the blue-blackness of a foreboding sky. This was also an untwinkling sky – perhaps its black-blueness helped mask a celestial observation of the imminent bloodfulness. The sky just wasn’t ready to see this. But was I? Fuck yes.

The backstory doesn’t matter so much any more – but from my nutshell perspective I can tell you the type of bullying involved. They’d picked on you if you had the wrong hair, they’d picked on you if you had the wrong clothes. They’d picked on you if you had Jaggerish lips or a bulb for a forehead. Hell – I was bullied for the way I turned the corner in the school corridors. Seriously – what in all fuckness?

It was being bullied for smartness, prettiness, or weirdness that had given birth to my quasi-empathy for HER particular breed of underdog. I don’t attribute that emotion entirely to bullies, but I can say that it definitely took me to Stockholm, where I found it extremely hard not to care about them and to wonder why they did it. But at that moment, right then, I didn’t care at all. Not for her – I wanted her blood on my shirt.

Did she REALLY speak to me that way in front of my father? Even back then, being called shit didn’t bother me – but it bothered my dad and THAT purpled my face with anger.

Me: Say that again.

She: Fucking SLAG.

She had it coming.

So I came.

I punched.

I conquered.

Just the one BOOF – and she was down. Her petrified eyes told me she knew she’d fucked with the wrong person this time, and my seething voice told her the same through gritted teeth. And after they’d grut, those gnashers bit down on my hand’s back lest they bite down into her.

I wasn’t bullied again. I box with words these days, and I’m generally an easy-going pacifist. But being called a slag for being raped by two lads from school? Yeah – that’s a punchable offence.

It’s not your fault.

It’s never your fault.

And it wasn’t mine.