when the wind wakes the streets

Building red submarine
From plastic furniture
Fathom depths, mermaid smiles,
Chairs of Barbies drowned.

The sun beat down as worn leather, we
Magnified ants to crisp cremation
They prayed for drifting cloud.
Bacon smell of Sunday morning
Clipped heels of weekly worshippers,
Failing to see pavement cracks.

For honour of thee bicycle
Strapped skateboards into sea,
Action was our middle names
Oh man, rusty chains wielded;
Hands the colour of
Suicide-bomber blast.

Once in a house of fire
Charred mattress post-mortem,
The father slept in the car
Slugged whiskey, regretted
The drunk cigarette.
The children danced, but the
Mother, solely she cried.

The Yorkshire Ripper lived
At end of our street,
Many a careless hour
Seen swinging a hammer.

In gasping autumn shade
Blood spots knelt on his passenger seat,
His breath a glade of tobacco & alcohol.
From our fox den, fur prints astride bramble,
Jury’ed Guilty! We prepared to hang him.
On a wet Wednesday afternoon,
We watched the removal van
Trundle out of sight.
His wife waved.


Miners Taxes The IRA Butter mountains
Brezhnev Strikes Nuclear disarmament
Colonel Gadaffi The Falklands…..
Flotilla of newspaper lists
Which passed by as ships in the night.
The TV spoke of places we had
Visited in library books.
Still teaching dogs to speak,
We settled on barking at donkeys
O’er barbed wired fields.

My first diary
As a sapling scratches the sky & earth,
Written under orangey streetlight
Sheathed in a football sock.
Titillations of breast globes
Reflections of a he(art) beating
Birth of an uncradled awareness,
Stepping over atlas skin, the promise.
Anxious in Wonderland
Who will fall down the hole?

Pic. Roger Mayne