Construction

Solitude it is

Incessant silence

Save the starling’s wing flap

Iridescent sheen

Filling this new world

Of buses, trees, childhood smells

Mixing it with the old me

The ghost of past self

Who once loved

Something

Or thought she did

Someone

Husband? Partner?

The forbidden boyfriend?

Yes, my one and only eternal friend

He is life itself

Left behind in that decay

But it is his fertilizer

So he must stay

She is such beauty

I seldom forget

Her kindness with a sweet pitying

I never knew why she left

“I thought you had a crush on me”

I said

Stupidly

Back in the days when I was all vanity

And unforgivably cheeky

How beaten and humble I have become

I mumble, I chant, I hum

I pray to both Shiva and Ganesh

Destroyer, Creator and Obstacle Remover

My peripatetic days are over

There is no tragedy, just a sigh

And her and her and him and…..

Where are you, my so-called friends?

Was I merely a means to an end?

Oh how quickly it will all end!

Silly, silly children

With their silly nonsense games

A lifetime away from true and sobering knowledge

But it matters not

My defence has been restored

I am protected once again!

There’s no better way to build a wall

Than to make it out of an ocean

America Then and Now

How I hated you then

Flinging flag to the floor

“Nazi swastika propaganda hell!”

If one lived in Latin America

In the 1980s

The stupid, the ignorant

Celebrating your birth

And forgetting that it was in fact

A revolution

Get rich, live ignorantly, eat yourself to death

As the television takes the rest of your time

Yet why?

Back breaking work in the warehouse

After which a bag of potato chips

And a Coca-Cola were the food of the gods

Hot dogs and tortillas with refried beans

Were good enough for dinner

And on very special occasions

A Big Mac

 

I took that dollar mom gave us and bought myself

A soda and candy bar for lunch

I didn’t have the heart to tell her school lunch costs more

And I worked cleaning tables after lunch to earn a hot-cooked meal

On days when I was painfully hungry

Unintentionally embarrassing my older sister

By so blatantly revealing our lack of money, with my silly industriousness

An industriousness that you taught me

And I hated you then

America

 

I was taught to chase the dream, your dream

But I did it in my own style

Inevitably failing America

Inevitably failing at middle-classness

When faced with the real thing

Knowing nothing about wine drinking

Visits to the theatre

Or holiday homes

My white trash heritage could never be concealed

And part of me was proud of that

America

 

I saw your children suffering

Blunt force trauma

Guts spewed across Manhattan sidewalks

Horrific images seared, orange fireball, dust, fall

Tangling, metal screeching, burning flesh death

I hated you for letting it happen

America

With your bullshit cockiness that I never believed

But never imagined was such a facade

I hated you for your violent, petulant response

When I wanted so much grace in grief, so much spirit of your best city

How you failed

And still I hated you

 

Suddenly a foreigner

And how they despise you America

But not like I do

They despise you for the most ridiculous of things

While consuming your music, your food and your

Non-culture

They call me an idiot and a fool America

Because of you

And I resent you for it

But I begin to miss you

America

I begin to understand you more from afar

I begin to hear the beatings of your soul

In a rally in Wisconsin

In a Seattle abortion clinic

In my never successful attempts to explain

Why those stereotypes about you are wrong

No matter how much I despised you myself

And a strange feeling grows

That of longing

That of desire

That of home

And I still despise your worst aspects America

But I fight against them with the love of a patriot

Mourning the Wobblies still

Your aborted Labor Party

And this one was very late term

Though not late enough

For the most vociferous pro-lifer to object

 

And all that I am is touched in some way by that stunted soul

The heritage that is seldom celebrated

Save in a dusty Howard Zinn book

In the desire to create a better world

One that extends well beyond your borders America

In such a dialectical process

May I become your Shiva

Your simultaneous destroyer and creator

My hatred as ever encompassing my deep abiding love

New World

You didn’t believe me

When I told you of your enrapturing beauty

A gorgeous sight to behold

You never do

Damn beautiful women

You couldn’t understand

My great pleasure in caressing your naked skin

And nothing more

But to adore

Another goddess

Whose looks of self loathing

Into the ever present mirror of society

Never cease

Regardless of how intelligent

Regardless of the genius contained within

Oh why do we hate our very own skin?

Can you not see your power simply reflected in the other?

Rodin, Botticelli and yes even Rubens

Took the glorious female body

Sculpted, painted

Yet a masterpiece alone

Is her shapely flesh and bone

The creator of all life

The glimmering hope of humanity

Pushing, pushing against brutality and death

Screaming out for justice

Gripping my hand as I take away your breath

And we give birth to a new world

This Island

Remember when

From sun drenched summers in middle America

You became fascinated with this cold, grey place

When you searched in a dictionary

To find the meaning of the word “dole”

When you learned about Rock Against Racism

Heard Linton Kwesi Johnson for the first time

And you became nauseous listening to “Sonny’s Lettah”

When “White Riot” was your rallying cry in the streets of NYC in 2003

 

And then you moved to this “green and pleasant land”

And the lyrics of your favourite band became your reality

And you “queued” and “used the loo” and unconsciously adopted

An occasional Cockney accent, and maybe rhyming slang

Fell in love with a British man, then a woman, then another

Realised you would never be considered “British”

Became a whingeing Londoner

Finally understood what World War Two really meant

As you listened to the stories of homemade air raid shelters

And extreme austerity

Discovered the ceremony of tea and the community it contains

 

Reclaimed the meaning of “working class” in a place steeped in such

Hearty proletarian tradition

Nursed more than a few pessimistic Trots back to fighting spirit

And talked revolution on the streets of Westminster

Consorted with left wing MPs and protest leaders

And drank with the street alcoholics of Stoke Newington

Attended protest after protest after rally after protest

After rally

Culminating in the largest protest of your life

As if all of the people finally came out to greet their future

In the streets of London

 

And for all of the despair and hopelessness and grey months

Up rose a desire seldom felt

To never leave this place where you fought for so much

To never leave this beautiful decaying former Empire

To remain on this island and fight

For a better world

A Treatise on Depression

Tracers

Ribbons of light

Again and again

Alone in this incredible fight

Against the Black Motherfucking Dog

Tense then up then down then up

Then the growling bastard comes

Drives daggers through the heart

And never before did my tongue crave

The sweet juice of alcoholic oblivion

As it does on these icy anniversary days

 

You used the word “Love”

The first time in two years

Two years of disgusting

Snot and drool puddles

Containing the sorrow of my soul

My own foreign crying

A sombre and slow moan

Guttural

It washes up on shore

Dripping wet

Somewhere in Boston Harbour

 

Or Venice? One of those hotels

The way you used to take me so hard up the ass

That you covered my mouth to stop my cries

A domination you could only show me in bed

But a beautiful one

Oh sweet hard, swollen cock

 

Your face in the sunlight

Every curve, every crevice I can trace with my empty hand

On black bed sheets with books as my lovers now

The real ones fleeting, four or was it five?

Nevermind, they didn’t give a damn

Youthful ignorance to be someday filled with sorrow like mine

Then they’d know

They they’d know that you shouldn’t bother

Tearing more holes in such a battered heart

Fuck them for what they don’t know

 

Oh and fuck them I do

Sweet, shy yet strong women, slipping a hand between moist thighs

Dripping tongue in anticipation of yet one more juicy cunt

And gorgeous bodies, smooth, smelling of pussy and perfume

Yes you do like being fucked hard don’t you?

What power

What pleasure

 

Yet perhaps a charade after all

I am masculinity seeking the warm embrace of a mother

I am femininity wanting the be adored by a father

And everything in between

And nothing at all

And

Nothing

At

All

What is Terror? The Personal and the Political

What is terror? For me it’s something incredibly personal. The memory of my heart thumping, chest pumping, stopping and my blood running cold. It’s shouting, screaming, chaos. It’s watching people jump out of buildings twisting and turning grotesquely before hitting the ground, burning paper fluttering slowly down like a confetti parade and fireballs high above your head. It’s desperation. It’s “MISSING” notices which fill the square a few days later. It’s knowing most of them weren’t “missing” at all. It’s looking down into grey dust and seeing shoes and glasses and not remembering if I saw a body. It’s that police officer who saved my life by screaming at me to run the other way and not knowing if they perished themselves. It’s looking into the face of death and thinking “Ok, that’s it, I’m dead” and then always feeling a bit guilty that I actually made it. It’s the shopkeeper being threatened for being a “fucking terrorist” the next day as I stood there impotent. It’s the shame I felt at not having jumped to his defense. It’s the cowardice I felt at having hid my political books in a box under my bed the next day just in case they finally did make use of that file they’ve had on me since I was sixteen. It’s the fear of not having any idea which titles would be considered subversive. It’s yet another apocalyptic nightmare where I am trying to escape from more terror, bombed out city landscapes and US military jets never knowing if they are there to protect or harm. It’s the eternal sound of a screeching descending plane, PLANE #2, as it heads towards the WTC, a sound which relives itself daily, hourly in the flight path above my head. It’s wondering if the fear I feel upon looking up will ever leave or if I am stuck with it forever. It’s the inability to live without feeling terrible anxiety at low level noise, a horrendous rumbling like when they fell, a rumbling so loud it reverberates forever in my brain. It’s the embarrassment of jumping when there’s a sudden noise. It’s the shame of being unable to take a bus without a panic attack after 7/7 for weeks. It’s the shame of being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s the embarrassment of nearly passing out on the stairs during a fire drill because of having a flashback. It’s being monitored on the health registry watch list just in case we all get sick from breathing in the dust. What is terror?

What is terror? For me it’s something incredibly political. It’s the understanding that government officials on the television are telling me, yet again, that that horrible day is somehow a justification for the unleashing of shouting, screaming, chaos, descending planes onto others and that the context doesn’t matter, because it’s all to fight terror. It’s the feeling of helplessness that this appears to be accepted. It’s the mental images I get of people, people, people, huddled, scared, crying, thinking they will die, it is nightmares come to life. It is the apocalypse made real, but for others. It’s the media pumping out yet again more justification for terror. More terror, pure terror. It’s leftists telling me that they didn’t condemn 9/11 because there are lots of bad things happening in the world. It’s people telling me they shouldn’t condemn Israel’s attacks on Gaza because Israel is always against terror and the Palestinians are always terrorists. It’s my government telling me that I should support sending terror to Afghanistan and Iraq in order to end terror. It’s people calling me a supporter of terrorists because I oppose terror while using the actual terror that I’ve experienced as a reason for calling me a terrorist supporter. It’s every attempt by a regime to impose terror on its people. It’s every attempt by a group to terrorise others in an attempt to claim they are responding to terror by using terror. It’s getting screamed at as myself and other protestors stood on the streets of NYC to oppose the US war in Afghanistan because they say we support terror. It’s my great frustration with their belief that I was standing there to support terror when I was trying to oppose it. It’s fellow demonstrators yelling at me on anti-war demos because I tell them that their conspiracies about 9/11 are offensive, particularly when they don’t give a damn about supporting workers dying from the toxic dust. It’s Muslim students being harassed for being “terrorists” when they have never touched a weapon by those who have been trained in weaponry. It’s women having the hijab ripped off by racist thugs on trains. It’s people I love being considered suspected terrorists in the name of protecting me from terror. What is terror?

DC in Ten

Here it descends upon weary land
The beast of burden Tennent’s Super in hand
The strains of GaGa beating from Soho bars
The smell of chip fat and sick swoons into the air
Tinny music plays loudly and words I don’t understand bristle coldly
Against my shoulder, against my world
In this 21st century Britain
This post-apocalyptic nightmare with grey skies and drug addiction
With no jobs, only pints, to while away the hours
No need to worry though, we might all yet be saved
A sunny afternoon where people are not disenchanted and poverty mislaid
There was that final hope in such a misbegotten hour
But what’s this? Fear not, the Tories are back in power!
I embark on that eternal red bus one last time
Remember fondly the joy of the last train on the Piccadilly line
The stench was overwhelming
My identity a threat to all, but we already heard the call from all three
About how much you loathe me and my fellow immigrants
We suck that NHS dry, for nothing they say, for nothing in return
How much fun do they think it is to live in this hell and burn, burn, burn
The embers of a dead empire like a campfire that’s nearly out
Rusted lager cans tossed in for good measure
Bits and scraps of burnt food for the rats
Just fuck every attempted useful endeavor
That was ever tried on this little island
That forever believes the lie
That anyone gives a damn

Trails

Scarlet sanguine
Droplets all over the old world
Smears on cheap motel walls
Written in Cyrillic poetry
Of two loves and none
Infected vessel
Rusted hollow decks
And still
You fail to understand
Useless
Fucking
Thudding
Machine

This Train

Where jazz is playing endlessly
Where you, you, you and you accompany me
On this ride
The beautiful cacophony of the call to prayers
The bells of Venice in the wintry air
Where it does not matter that god has died
Yet we still wish he were there
As a reason for the random patterns
Of everyday existence
To watch to listen and empathise
I looked deep into the lies
You, you, you and you told me
And realise that it is I who was
The eternal enemy of my own well being
Let us go
Let us get on with this journey
Back on the train……

Lost

She was wearing my hair tie
And I her hat
The rain it fell mercilessly
With a rat-a-tat-pit-pat
The folds of my sorrow
Curled into silken ball
The last useless gesture
From the jester in the hall
The closed door never slamming
Just quietly relieved
Of its duty as the guardian
For the tear stains on my sleeve
Groaning machines rumbling
My words reduced to mumbling
The edifice yet again crumbling
Oh how easily love is lost