summer sounds

summer I open my window
it’s hot as hell and sounds like hell
hearing shrieking freakish laughter
swishing bike chain rattled railings

then lots of feet running somewhere

sirens car crash TV gunshot
sounds from a window below and
above dull thuds real life beating
a belt buckle swings a door slams

feet with nowhere to run to, run

hear foxes fuck and babies cry
and I can’t quite tell which is which
a couple argues, hot and angry
same tired lines born of tiredness

I hear a shower running, time alone

heels click on concrete women laugh
wobbling home cracking jokes and
making me smile they’ve been dancing
on feet that escaped for a while

sounds good happy feet strolling home

there is not often laughter here
gangs gather and no-one collects
the bins or opinions from us
or them so good families left

quiet footsteps echo sometimes

sound of me closing my window taking the heat

fragment #1

listen, everyone’s dads, can you stop getting ill?
stop working so hard, just lay off if you will
I know it’s not natural, you being such blokes
but, please, slow down, these ailments aren’t jokes.

today i got a haircut

He came to London in 1968, to Soho. A 16 year old boy fresh from the village. His older brother and sister had gone to Canada and he had worked summer jobs at the local hotel, he knew he wanted to travel too, to go ‘abroad’. One of his uncles on visit home suggested he come to London, and so he did.

He had two uncles living and running businesses in Soho. One of them ran a caff on a lucrative corner in Soho; the other ran many, even more lucrative, clubs and clip joints.

By the time our boy got here the latter was languishing at Her Majesty's Pleasure - an extended holiday to the one he’d been busted on in Greece, the one he’d been enjoying with the head of the metropolitan police, a long term business associate of his.

They both got in a lot trouble over that one.

For three years our boy helped the other uncle keep all the businesses afloat.

From the moment he started working, he had his suits made on Berwick Street, he was earning 3 times as much as his peers outside of ‘the game’ and he was the pet of many whores, the focus of their denied motherly leanings.

However, he was almost beaten up by a mod gang he clipped once; his aunt’s house was raided as he hid upstairs; and he was propositioned by gay men on a regular basis. He was, quite frankly, terrified for most of the time.

So, the boy never came any more deeply entrenched in that world and by the time he was 21 he had gone east - working in a clothes shop in Ilford. He still dressed sharply and was out every night, but this time it was Ilford Palais and he was the quiet one, mostly by virtue of not many people speaking Maltese in Essex.

But someone spoke to him. He met and married an Essex girl, a hairdresser from Dagenham called Sharon no less, and after a brief stint working at Fords (of course), he trained to snip locks too.

He had his own salon in Soho for a while, lost it to bad business partner. He’s a part time senior stylist at my place now - still working in Soho and living in Essex. He still has an impish charm, now coupled with impeccable english, well, Essex english with a hint of the mediterranean about it.

He's still with Sharon and they have 2 boys. The oldest, who's at RADA, is in a showcase this week - it's a play about a real life Maltese gangster from the 60s. He told his dad that he's playing this guy, turned out his dad knew him - of course.

Today I got a haircut, today I got a story.

PS Now, can everyone try to be this interesting please? I'm listening :)

For Tyrone

'Tyrone' - an evocative name
a kind of celebrity name
(Tyrone Power)
he's not though,
he's an electrician
(Tyrone power)
but he has been in
the Evening Standard



London Summer / Autumn 2011

the loneliness of the long distance w*nker

Kinky as he is
he just can't wank
wearing ear plugs
which makes it hell
on overnight flights

suggestion

i am too fragile to be around you
too easily disturbed
by brittle trite expressions
and kinetic overload
sharp elbows constant
movement not to mention the noise
the constant constant talking
suggestion crudely poised
to enter any sentence at any given
time - let me make my mind up
it’s mine it’s mine it’s mine

writing poems

So I sit here
writing poems,
using maths

Bringing order
to emotion,
counting words

And if someone
doesn't get it,
cannot see

It's just they don't
get poetry,
flow, or me.

the moribund middle class blues

(this poem is brought to you by iambic tetrameter)

the moribund middle classes
are making little lists of all
the things they have and everything
they’ve missed “oh dear what have we missed?”

now they want to own the cities
they want to own the council flats
schools for their own little people
playtime with smoothies, yoga mats

they pout and shout and stamp their feet
no money left, they fear the chop
the social ladder kicked away
no more room nearly at the top

“might have to sack the nanny, love”
so they’re losing benefits too
along with the right to feel smug
or better placed than me and you

we all now face redundancy
all face inflation and despair
when looking around for comfort
they're finding it's no longer there

their boss, their broker, their system
have all forgotten to play fair
the cracks are showing in the dream
it’s called designer-wear and tear.