poem

Clock

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Once it took a regular twelve hour shift to walk around with a clock in Grimethorpe.
A low paid security guard of N.U.M. remains: ripped floor-tiling, dust piling up like unused coal.
You had to find the key to fit the clock to record the time you found the key to account for your existence, the evidence collected.
A set of other keys echoing their jangle into empty spaces unlocking the door out to a wasteland of rooms without walls or ceilings
so you could see a cold October sky abuzz with stars and the coke plant behind its steel fence working up a head of grind and industrial lights.
You had nowt to do but waste your time, kick up weather worn tiles of old floors, to look forward to going in, losing the fresh air from the plant, to climb creaking stairs and reenter
the security guards room where Bill ogles Mayfair and the unattainableJasks why you’re back so early, didn’t you realise soon as you get back sooner he’s out
call you ‘Dumb Shit’, take the clock and keys and leave you to the room at Three o’clock. His tales of the steel industry that let him go will remain with you .
.
You will remember this as you sit supping coffee in the Grimethorpe Activity Zone, as you wait for people to attend your jobsearch room, as you listen how the building you guarded will be called the heart of the Village.

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The Childhood Tree

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Age makes a difference

he says, remembering when their posse went too far with an old tree.

Posse were a gang called after U. S. Rappers who took it from cowboy films.

Posse found it down Lovers Lane, overarching the canal: too full to flow ancient bedsteads, glossy wheel trims.

Over a fag scratched their names

in its bark, shinned and slung a rope round a branch overreaching the water

competitions seeing who dare swing furthest without getting wet.

Then fatty had a go. Expected happened, limb snapped

 

told his mother he’d slipped in a puddle when we’d a drought a week.

Later, some of them, like him and wife courting down canal, would boast these cracks. Even then looked sorry for itself. All wrinkly and scabby wounds.

 Still, some of them, sap bleeding allover, hacked their names

 ‘LUV’

imbetween or arrow through heart.
 
Then fatty Wayne overreached

with a joyride. Took
collectors Chevvy dumped, set it alight.

 Bugger had it too close!

 angry now.

His childhood tree went up.

Lately, him and wife, take steady strolls by water find younger couples carving Lovers hearts in wood remains.

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The Rules for Occupation

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The rules for occupation: take the military road across the river.

The long stride over flood plain to the other side.

Divide the spoils of the valley into three wapentakes, Three bureaucracies to sort and file your differences.

Unhindered supply lines will provide the frontier: the wall between decency and those that smell.

Roads will provide fast delivery of goods and policing. It is a better surface, for occupation.

 Stories half told, half received.

 Other roads not fully travelled not the recommended destination, but bad precedent.

It will be difficult for the natives

to utter ‘Never again’.

Remember victors decide the doctrine, creed, authorised version.

Alternative histories should always be considered after the camber

of the original and, if possible, absorbed. After all, every home

should have its’ midden. A place to offload the waste of decency.

 Dearne can be allowed uncontrollability within limits decided by our history.

A river can always be drained to provide improved delivery by our convoys.

The Route is decided. No deviation,

 use the terrain with respect to our aims objectives.

Aim: Exploitation

Objective: all the areas resources,

soft and hard targets.

 

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Above

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Dearne
rise Coal-age forts in new grass

Grass, new arrival, begins belong, is removed.

 

New buildings rise
locally known as Employment.

Before grass there was grass
growing on clay, above ancient forests.
Grass for long-horned cattle provide milk, meat
to calloused hands.

Quiet Dearne flowed slowly by.

Purchased grass removed
by miners who dig their own graves leaving soil at pitside.

Their own graves built Coal-age forts.
Purchased grass turns yellow
under canvas tents,then is removed for a line of houses all the same.

Miners provide bread family.
Their own grave they dig in shifts with calloused hands.It is hell.

Hell provides for children, housekeeping, gossip, rumour stories.

Hell fills lungs, cakes faces. Hell built Coal-age forts. Hell lives behind redundant eyes.

After funeral, Hell grassed over water clouded.

 

Ochre, iron
spill into Dearne as Dearne flows. inoffensively, by.

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Buried Treasure (1983, revised 2014)

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Industry left these hands again, circumstance marooned me here
to endure workhouse stain
accused of idleness.

In damp cellar I worked a loom,
bailing water three times a day,
candles to enlighten gloom
learn from books at my side.

Tiny window for light and air.
Water dropped from eaves.
No drain but my window there.
I did as I was due.

My creed as skilled fancy-weaver
“Give me not poverty, lest I steal.”
Now I bring up blood like fever
do penance in a workhouse.

Too many times the Ship of Linen
has left me like Crusoe castaway
to return God knows how or when.
I thought it I was my  sin.

Workhouse always reproves.
I lose my dignity ;
strip, search, old clothes
in fire, locking of the door.

Barnsleys Improvement Commission promises paved streets, clean water, drainage and sewerage system,
the rich do what they will.

When I get out it’s mine.
Some dying have the gall
To speak of  buried treasure,

Of gold beyond this wall

Barnsley General Hospital was built on the site of the Union Workhouse

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Land Is History

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Is a past pitman. Father, a nailmaker whose strong coffin nails  stout fastened the woods  grain swish as land without a skeleton to hold its’ skin.

Both, like open cast places. Redundancy has ripped old features from their faces, old skulls from beneath their skins.

Redundancy within weeks drained the Dearne from arteries, smoothed disused canals from cheeks, wetlands asset-stripped from eyes.

And children sit on father’s knee as on a hill hear how men made hills a sack of land a weight of meaning emptied.

Land no longer propped  by miners hands                               subsides

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Day the statues came alive in Barnsley

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Day the statues came alive in Barnsley
Outside college Dickie put his finger down

Day the statues came alive in Barnsley
Outside Tarn Hall soldier slumped after years of standing

Top of Kendray hill a Golden man was lifted by an angel into heaven
Day the statues came alive in Barnsley

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Signs of his Presence/Safety

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SIGNS OF HIS PRESENCE

Kitchen door dented

where your ex flew off the handle

 at the slightest.

 Your ears are attuned to strange cars moving in the cul-de-sac.

You twitch
. open the curtains and check.

 You could not
 say his name for six months

after
 you told him to go.

SAFETY 

 A dumb-bell by your bedside.

 

Under your pillow a baseball bat.

Knives on the surfaces
 lead poker on the landing,
 Or are these in your head?

 The knives are sharp,
 the dumb-bell heavy
 as the stories of his holding
 a frying-pan above your head

make his point,

 He is here
 in the household waiting

for you to be alone
 to bring him out of hiding.

Copyright Paul Brookes, ‘The Place For Breath’ (1995)
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The Need to Move

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from a state of siege,
from neighbours eyes,
from counting pennies,
from doing without

from checking windows,
from skimp, save
and charity,worn furniture

Clothes prying eyes
 from called ‘permissive’, abnormal,
 idle, sponger, mother to undisciplined kids, a threat to The Family.

to a new boyfriend
 who stays over
 without Social
 saying we’re married

after three consecutive nights,
 withdraw my book
 and tell him he’s to support us

From never depending on a man,
 his money his car, his reliabliity, his word

to a state of independence

Copyright Paul Brookes from ‘The Place Of Breath’ (1993)

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A Dad

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He loves women with walloping big breasts.
“It will not always be dark at seven.”
His favourite phrase.
An orphan. Parents could not cope. Put him away. He suffered bullies, brought up his brother.
Never went to his mother’s funeral.
His wife nags and shouts, off work with her leg.
The firm will not give her a sit down job.
Doctors can find nothing wrong.
Suffered illness all her life, all his married life.
Asked her husband to take her out.
“You must be joking!” he replied.
He only stays with her because of their son. He talks and talks of his son.
He says, “My boy when he were small used to say: ‘Me can do it! Me can do it!’
Well told him he couldn’t. ‘KICK DEE! KICK DEE!’
he would shout.” And this dad laughs away his disabled
wife.
Some psychologist might say this dad needs a mother. Why else love women with walloping big breasts?