War baby

A war baby by choice,
but not your ragged terrified
road hugging, bombed, dirt faced
newsreel staggering refugee.
Not a many homed army brat,
with multiple schools of almost friends
and inconstant bedrooms
and fated participation.
I wanted war, technical seduction,
cheered black and white tanks
dust plumed and deadly
rolling across the fields of nineteen forty
long dead death dealers sitting straight,
propaganda valentines.
Watched parades and charges,
knew the enemy in his uniformed strength
and focussed fear and knew the attraction.
Played it too,
always the winner against
the younger brother nations
because history had left us clear on the score at least.
Behind our house the Golan Heights
were a meter high, grassy
and we rolled and shot and hit and lived to
fight other endless summer days.
In the ritually silenced news time living room
drab green machines quieted by voiceovers
jumped back from punched messages
that flew over desert and hill and
wrote history in flying stone and flame.
Or jungle expanded,
the slashing sleight of handfrom a deadly magician’s sleeve,
an earthward fleeing comma
punctuating with an instant ink blot
of obliteration.
I was a war child, and needed it,
until age sensitised
tough thoughts
and imagined hardness
and I felt the fleeing footsteps of fear
the unravelling edge of terror.
Now I watch, eyes trained and uncertain.

Gift

Some past poison,

dry and dead now,

while still corrupt

marked innocent eye and unwitting tongue.

Gifts are not what they are,

for I cannot take them freely.

Somewhere the taste remains.

There is always the lost second

between giving and receiving,

where I search for something,

a motive, trap, or misheard note

in friendship’s dance ?

Yet each gave, unique and rare,

unrecognised.

Now I run my fingers along memory’s shelves

and touch the keepsakes

left on my thoughts

by one lover after another.

Changes learned from another’s eye,

unwrapped afresh

when the effect fades

and perception echoes

a once familiar voice, unthanked.

Game

Can you still play in a young man’s game,

when you know that they are finite,

when you know they no longer stretch

in a golden chain of chance

beyond your vision ?

Can you still play in a young man’s game

when desire is no longer the only

force moving you on,

when you know now that it was

always only the edge

of the steel ?

Can you still play in a young man’s game

when the sweat on your skin

tastes of late nights lost

in the darkness of

filling memory.

Can you still play in a young man’s game

when you no longer believe

in winning,

but you know what losing means.

Not passed on

Fear is the curtain

I would have drawn back sooner

from whatever lay beyond,

if I had known

that what will fade, will fade

by age or use or neglect

and light will cause your eyes to narrow

and their corners to crease

but so will darkness

and no-one told me

that memory holds flare and colour

longer than shade

and imagination has no gauge

for grins and laughter,

rescued after.

Country music love affairs

All those years educating my heart

in the lonesome lore

of hopeless dusty towns

and hearts beyond broken.

Records spun by my batchelor uncle

on a wooden-framed player,

uncoiled harder lives like a thrown rope,

never landing.

Another guitar player,

tuning on the empty plain of an expectant stage.

Pinned with a spotlight’s nail,

like a dog’s skull bleached and patient,

on a iron-dry fence post.

The high open country was inside,

and the creak of leather

and the scrape of sand

and the hard slow smoothness of brass before bolt

spoke in the night

as seductive as a snake essing,

across rock hot from a day without mercy.

Desperate complications and taciturn heroes,

silent agreement

that love was a killing crazy kind of choice,

unavoidable as a river ford

or mountain pass.

In the end the songs are true and life lies,

I’ll  listen and live.

Moving

61 boxes

labelled and squared off

each in its space.

Each an ambassador of order

in a country of cold concrete.

My life stacked and bordered

to conform to the rectangular tyranny

of moving boxes,

warehoused and waiting.

It is time to discard everything

that has no use

sentimental weight,

battered momentoes that fade and rot,

that only give earlier days disloyal shape.

To chose and change,

throw away and cherish,

my future memories more important now

than past possesions.

Fatigue

I am tired,

but not the heavy comfortable tiredness

of a day in the mountains,

of a thousand meters

marched into the spine.

I am tired,

but not the lead bone tiredness

of a day worked alongside my father

hard physical labour

that cannot be faked.

Tired deep within,

mental metal fatigue,

molecule separating from molecule

and atom from atom.

Thin tight tiredness.

Rules that no longer work,

losing their hold.

Structures shedding stability

paint cracking,

continents of flaking reality,

taking other older surfaces with them

as they break away,

until they reveal nothing.

Hearing aid

I must have listened to it

a hundred times,

playing it on repeat when I met it first

like a child eating chocolate in front of visitors,

gorging myself on the sound.

Guitars fighting for space,

the bass thrashing the truth,

while the drums paced up and down

caged inside the wire of a voice

that made you want to

kick something and hug it afterwards.

But today for a few seconds

listening to it again

I knew it like I know the taste of my own fear.

I would have drained the meaning from it

when I was seventeen

but now I’m tired

and sometimes your own songs

get louder as time goes on.

Search and destroy

Find yourself.

Peel back layer after layer they plead,

and you will uncover your true nature

in all its power and potency.

The new religion, without recourse

to dark powers or unknown light.

The mystery lies within,

and must be faced alone,

as the end is.

Within, deep below the surface

where light loses the battle

and must be focussed without mercy,

where an entire lifetime

of cause and chance and choice

presses on every square centimeter of soul

and a brittle shell wraps around the core of cores.

What if there is no center ?

Are we condemned to sit

crosslegged and crouched,

a captive crippled form ?

Daubing silted experience

on a doomed framework.

Madness

You don’t fall into madness

at least not

until the final plummet of realisation.

It catches up with you

matches your footsteps

until you feel the chill

of its shadow

holding pace

just a tick behind

your movement.

Or you wake up

and taste

a sucked coin

horribly foreign

but coming from inside

from a thick cloud

over a black sea

moving slow

and slick,

heaving with a swell

of hidden power,

a distant disturbance

that will wash over you

and strip the structure

from the shore.

You long for the oblivion

of not knowing the words

to describe the storm.

Though you know

the knowledge is more

life

than the false harbour

of lying calm.