poem

Fag Ash

/ The Wombwell Rainbow / 2 Comments

closer towards her.

Another three o’clock morning

 

drink together on the couch. Between fags

Move away from your mothers?

never understand till you do.

Cans/ fags grow

 Our feet covered in ash.

We

kick empties
grey mist rises.

Her hand caresses my thigh

Don’t know!

She sighs. The music too loud.

l owe my mother.

We cough hold our ears.

 Lose each other in mist

Sup again to wet our throats,

 clatter down grey hills.

What do you owe her?

She saved me from debt.

Emotional blackmail!

Stand up to her!

Lager and menthols between us

 

stereo muffled,

lifted by rubbish.

Her legs cross away

I’m trying to help you!

I know

We made love this time last night.

The Linen Town

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March/April
In well drained soil sow flax seeds
watch blue bloom, then die

30 Days
seed bolls ripen, warm sun packed day
harvest, hand pull plants
bundle, stack root side down
Side a fence, turn by turn

 ensures even dry

Leave
Till firm stemmed, boll rattle

Rippling comb
dry plant pull

Chuck seeds
 
For 3 days retting
Water drowns plants
swells inner core
tautens fibre

Total rinse
spread out in fields to dry

Flax brake plants
for breaking
quick blows remove
inner bloom

Scutch
remove last boon
traces
chuck boon

Hackle bed comb
long fibres from shorter tow

Chuck tow

Total card
draws out fibres

Draw fibres
to even slivers

Rove
adds first twist to yarn

Spin
Sow, pull, dry,
ret, break, scutch, hackle,
card, draw, rove,
spin

bleach, weave, mend,
crop, mangle, wash
calender

Pack warehouse
Plain weave,
three/four leaf twill
huckabacks, dobby,
Jacquards, sheetings,
ticks, damasks,
towelling, ducks,
fancy Hollands.

Clean river Sough,
Clean air
Bright sun.

Two heraldic shuttle memory

The Home of Breath

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Her breathing place

 is at home sometimes.

familiar furniture,

pot plants, pictures.

Her conversation easier.

No annoying silences.

Her stomach chums,

especially when someone knocks

on door

phone rings

Especially when she recalls

his threats on her

childs life

echoes off walls

she wants 

 cannot afford to paper.

Front room window-frame crumbles

one day pane will fall out

her house open itself

to wind

 here family is close

 friends minutes away.

 

Tret

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It’s how she treats people
how she feels she must be tret:

Soeaks

to Mike,
libido disabled by drugs;
wound up on a Saturday night in the pub by wisos dropping their keks ;
avoided

 a Ieper
by people on the bus
she sits by him
aware that he’s tempted

but

subdued.

Old man returns to his lonely house
she wishes could go back with him, 

give him company.

Has her own family chats to him
in supermarket

longer

than she should.

Says she’s old-fashioned.

Likes a bloke to buy her drinks.

Treat her right.

I’m used to lasses
‘I’ll buy me own thanks.’
I feel it’s better if we share the price. You’ve no money so it makes sense.’

Old-fashioned is new to me.

 

She’s never made love to gentle.
I called it sex
Didn’t know any better.
She’s never been tret like this before.

‘Town Without History’

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How
in 1969 to commemorate the centenary of the towns incorporation
the Naturalists association Antiquarian collection
was emptied onto the feet of young boys who kicked the stuffed birds down Eldon Street.
And how
in Locke Park'{victorian memorial to Joseph, local
ironroad engineer who made inrails to respectability.)
was stolen by cold miners in a strike.
Old beams became warmth, stuffed birds became play, linked in a medieval tithe barn dismantled and stacked
 becoming
links in belonging;
a new arriving
home to find you have not moved but it’s a new time and place

NOTE: This was published before the brilliant ‘Experience Barnsley’ was installed in Barnsley old Town Hall

The Artist

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At Eleven years old
opened Dads teenage sketchbooks

Cows sat down in pencil
His Dads backyard full of tools
preliminary pencil sketches

Triumph motorcycles,

part oil coloured portraits

his Dad, his sister hangs

out washing in 1950s skirt.

sexually awakened by
his female nudes,
drapery hides modesty

extremely detailed Clwydian hills, mountains, landscapes,
rotting stump colours ablaze yellows, ochres, greens
I wanted to draw, sketch,
inspired.

India to Ceylon Blue Funnel, 1950s

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White, steaming big neck
Swinging like sail in full
Horns razor sharp Madras cow
Clanking down metal aisle
Of three funnelled merchant ship

Dad, up from hot boilers
His mate behind the beast
Hit it with sticks herd it
Back to its wooden corral
Above the hold.

Heat, more flies than sweat
Dad knew white monster
Was coal blistered face
Nostrils hissing air
Steam screaming water
Through pipes, pistons.

Knew caressing its flank
Every flinch, flick, strain
Yawn of engine below
Only way to get there.

Indian cow sacred,
So are ships boilers 

Crow Scare

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Out your old, raw eyes
Between thin crows’ feet
Their walking hunger
Sees black fallow fields
All meat and feathers:
Crow parliaments
Mouthy parent birds
Guillotine stray seeds
Divorce husk from flesh
Strewn men and women
Holding back hardship
Broadcast dry fresh seeds.
Black birds snatch and eat
Food for sparse winters
Starved you enter a village
Are greeted, feasted
Given best shelter, clothes
Food, women, friends.
A short year revolves
To scare preying birds
The village men and women
Hone edge on blades
Cut short your visit,
Place you in a field
Tied to seasoned wood

Windows Are Single Eyed

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Windows are single eyed.
We move the back projection,
Make clear the eyes corners.
What lies ahead, what lies in wait?

Enter house with hollow eyes breathe
Fragrant as bad breath, a dead leaf
Delicate structure crinkly soft
Wet pealing wallpaper

Doors were mouths,
Mothers polished,
Lovers humped over,
By which decisions entered or left,
From which dead leaves were brushed aside

Home

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Where the linnet calls
It breaks big white back
Of winter; craggs out
Grey veins dry stone walls
Of territory.

Cock Ring Ouzel calls
Cock Lapwings tumble
Short Eared Owls hunt
Wasteland: incomers.
Birds come upstream bones
Moved by these false springs.

Then the Curlew calls.
Spring staggers from brok
en white shells, tubers
Unsteady or sharp
Suck out hill’s feathered
Underside.

There the Golden Plover
Takes fledglings across
Warming ice: snow broth
Whispers down to crack
The river’s quiet
Hibernating voice.

Copyright Paul Brookes, i.e. Me. Published in broadsheet 1993