Collected Poems Read online

  held high

  The world at night with my little eye

  I spy

  The moon close enough to touch

  I try

  Silver painted elephants have learned

  to fly

  Giants fence with searchlights

  in the sky

  Too soon into the magic shelter

  he and I

  Air raids are so much fun

  I wonder why

  In the bunk below, a big boy

  starts to cry.

  Bye Bye Black Sheep

  Volunteering at seventeen, Uncle Joe

  Went to Dunkirk as a Royal Marine

  And lived, not to tell the tale.

  Demobbed, he brought back a broken 303,

  A quiver of bayonets, and a kitbag

  Of badges, bullets and swastikas

  Which he doled out among warstruck nephews.

  With gasflame-blue eyes and dark unruly hair

  He could have been God’s gift. Gone anywhere.

  But a lifetime’s excitement had been used up

  On his one-and-only trip abroad. Instead,

  Did the pools and horses. ‘Lash me, I’m bored,’

  He’d moan, and use language when Gran

  Was out of the room. He was our hero.

  But not for long. Apparently he was

  No good. Couldn’t hold down a job.

  Gave the old buck to his Elders and Betters.

  Lazy as sin, he turned to drink

  And ended up marrying a Protestant.

  A regular black sheep was Uncle Joe.

  Funny how wrong kids can be.

  Snipers

  When I was kneehigh to a tabletop,

  Uncle Ted came home from Burma.

  He was the youngest of seven brothers

  so the street borrowed extra bunting

  and whitewashed him a welcome.

  All the relations made the pilgrimage,

  including us, laughed, sang, made a fuss.

  He was as brown as a chairleg,

  drank tea out of a white mug the size of my head,

  and said next to nowt.

  But every few minutes he would scan

  the ceiling nervously, hands begin to shake.

  ‘For snipers,’ everyone later agreed,

  ‘A difficult habit to break.’

  Sometimes when the two of us were alone,

  he’d have a snooze after dinner

  and I’d keep an eye open for Japs.

  Of course, he didn’t know this

  and the tanner he’d give me before I went

  was for keeping quiet,

  but I liked to think it was money well spent.

  Being Uncle Ted’s secret bodyguard

  had its advantages, the pay was good

  and the hours were short, but even so,

  the novelty soon wore off, and instead,

  I started school and became an infant.

  Later, I learned that he was in a mental home.

  ‘Needn’t tell anybody… Nothing serious

  … Delayed shock… Usual sort of thing

  … Completely cured now the doctors say.’

  The snipers came down from the ceiling

  but they didn’t go away.

  Over the next five years they picked off

  three of his brothers; one of whom was my father.

  No glory, no citations,

  Bang! straight through the heart.

  Uncle Ted’s married now, with a family.

  He doesn’t say much, but each night after tea,

  he still dozes fitfully in his favourite armchair.

  He keeps out of the sun, and listens now and then

  for the tramp tramp tramp of the Colonel Bogeymen.

  He knows damn well he’s still at war,

  just that the snipers aren’t Japs anymore.

  Bucket

  everyevening after tea

  grandad would take his bucket for a walk

  An empty bucket

  When i asked him why

  he said because it was easier to carry

  than a full one

  grandad had an answer for everything

  Smart Railings

  towards the end of his tether

  grandad

  at the drop of a hat

  would paint the railings

  overnight

  we became famous

  allover the neighbourhood

  for our smart railings

  (and our dirty hats)

  Tramp Tramp Tramp

  Insanity left him when he needed it most.

  Forty years at Bryant & May, and a scroll

  To prove it. Gold lettering, and a likeness

  Of the Founder. Grandad’s name writ small:

  ‘William McGarry, faithful employee’.

  A spent match by the time I knew him.

  Choking on fish bones, talking to himself,

  And walking round the block with a yardbrush

  Over his shoulder. ‘What for, Gran?’ ‘Hush…

  Poor man, thinks he’s marching off to war.

  ‘Spitting image of Charlie, was your Grandad,

  And taller too.’ She’d sigh. ‘Best-looking

  Man in Seaforth. And straight-backed?

  Why, he’d walk down Bridge Road

  As if he had a coat-hanger in his suit.’

  St Joseph’s Hospice for the Dying, in Kirkdale,

  Is where Chaplin made his last movie.

  He played Grandad, and gave a fine performance

  Of a man raging against God, and cursing

  The nuns and nurses who tried to hold him down.

  Insanity left him when he needed it most.

  The pillow taken from his face

  At the moment of going under. Screaming

  And fighting to regain the years denied,

  His heart gave out, his mind gave in, he died.

  The final scene brings tears to everybody’s eyes.

  In the parlour, among suppurating candles

  And severed flowers, I see him smiling

  Like I’d never seen him smile before.

  Coat-hanger at his back. Marching off to war.

  Bars are Down

  When I was a lad

  most people round our way

  were barzydown.

  It was a world full of piecans.

  Men who were barmy, married to women

  who wanted their heads examined.

  When not painting the railings,

  our neighbours were doolally,

  away for slates.

  Or so my dad reckoned.

  Needed locking away

  the lot of them.

  Leaving certain McGoughs

  and a few close friends

  free to walk the empty streets

  in peace. Knowing exactly

  whether we were coming or going.

  Self-righteous in polished shoes.

  Picking our way

  clearheadedly,

  between loose screws.

  Sad Aunt Madge

  As the cold winter evenings drew near

  Aunt Madge used to put extra blankets

  over the furniture, to keep it warm and cosy.

  Mussolini was her lover, and life

  was an outoffocus rosy-tinted spectacle.

  but neurological experts

  with kind blueeyes

  and gentle voices

  small white hands

  and large Rolls Royces

  said that electric shock treatment

  should do the trick

  it did…

  today after 15 years of therapeutic tears

  and an awful lot of ratepayers’ shillings

  down the hospital meter

  sad Aunt Madge

  no longer tucks up the furniture

  before kissing it goodnight

  and admits

  that her affair with Mussolini


  clearly was not right

  particularly in the light

  of her recently announced engagement

  to the late pope.

  Hearts and Flowers

  Aunty Marge,

  Spinster of the parish, never had a boyfriend.

  Never courted, never kissed.

  A jerrybuilt dentist and a smashed jaw

  Saw to that.

  To her,

  Life was a storm in a holy-water font

  Across which she breezed

  With all the grace and charm

  Of a giraffe learning to windsurf.

  But sweating

  In the convent laundry, she would iron

  Amices, albs and surplices

  With such tenderness and care

  You’d think priests were still inside.

  Deep down,

  She would like to have been a nun

  And talked of missing her vocation

  As if it were the last bus home:

  ‘It passed me by when I was looking the other way.’

  ‘Besides,’

  She’d say, ‘What Order would have me?

  The Little Daughters of the Woodbine?

  The Holy Whist Sisters?’ A glance at the ceiling.

  ‘He’s not that hard up.’

  We’d laugh

  And protest, knowing in our hearts that He wasn’t.

  But for the face she would have been out there,

  Married, five kids, another on the way.

  Celibacy a gift unearned, unasked for.

  But though

  A goose among grown-ups,

  Let loose among kids

  She was an exploding fireworks factory,

  A runaway pantomime horse.

  Everybody’s

  Favourite aunt. A cuddly toy adult

  That sang loud and out of tune.

  That dropped, knocked over and bumped into things,

  That got ticked off just like us.

  Next to

  A game of cards she liked babysitting best.

  Once the parents were out of the way

  It was every child for itself. In charge,

  Aunt Marge, renegade toddler-in-chief.

  Falling

  Asleep over pontoon, my sister and I,

  Red-eyed, would beg to be taken to bed.

  ‘Just one more game of snap,’ she’d plead,

  And magic two toffees from behind an ear.

  Then suddenly

  Whooshed upstairs in the time it takes

  To open the front door. Leaving us to possum,

  She’d tiptoe down with the fortnightly fib:

  ‘Still fast asleep, not a murmur all night. Little angels.’

  But angels

  Unangelic, grew up and flew away. And fallen,

  Looked for brighter toys. Each Christmas sent a card

  With kisses, and wondered how she coped alone.

  Up there in a council flat. No phone.

  Her death

  Was as quick as it was clumsy. Neighbours

  Found the body, not us. Sitting there for days

  Stiff in Sunday best. Coat half-buttoned, hat askew.

  On her way to Mass. Late as usual.

  Her rosary

  Had snapped with the pain, the decades spilling,

  Black beads trailing. The crucifix still

  Clenched in her fist. Middle finger broken.

  Branded into dead flesh, the sign of the cross.

  From the missal

  In her lap, holy pictures, like playing cards,

  Lay scattered. Five were face-up:

  A Full House of Sacred Hearts and Little Flowers.

  Aunty Marge, lucky in cards.

  Casablanca

  You must remember this

  To fall in love in Casablanca

  To be the champion of Morocco.

  The size of tuppence

  Photographs show Uncle Bill holding silver cups

  Wearing sepia silks and a George Formby grin.

  Dominique

  Had silent film star looks. With brown eyes

  Black hair and lips full to the brim, she was a race apart.

  He brought her over

  To meet the family early on. An exotic bloom

  In bleak post-war Bootle. Just the once.

  Had there been children

  There might have been more contact. But letters,

  Like silver cups, were few and far between.

  At seventy-eight

  It’s still the same old story. Widowed and lonely

  The prodigal sold up and came back home.

  I met him that first Christmas

  He spoke in broken scouse. Apart from that

  He looked like any other bow-legged pensioner.

  He had forgotten the jockey part

  The fight for love and glory had been a brief episode

  In a long, and seemingly, boring life.

  It turned out

  He had never felt at home there

  Not a week went by without him thinking of Liverpool.

  Casablanca

  The airplane on the runway. She in his arms.

  Fog rolling in from the Mersey. As time goes by.

  What Happened to Henry

  What happened to Henry Townsend that summer

  still turns my stomach. Not long after the war

  when barrage balloons had been cut loose

  and coal was delivered by horse and cart

  lads would chase the wagon up the street

  and when the coalie wasn’t looking

  grab hold of the tailboard, and legs dangling

  hang there for as long as they could.

  According to one, Henry, head thrown back

  and swinging too close to the edge,

  had caught his foot between the spokes

  of the rear left wheel. As it turned

  his leg snapped in half. I heard the screams

  three streets away. Not his, but his mother’s,

  who’d been gabbing on the corner.

  Air-raid sirens to send us all scurrying.

  The driver, ashen-faced beneath the coaldust

  held fast the reins to prevent the horse

  from moving, but nervous, it bucked

  and strained and tried to pull away.

  Glad to be of use, two men unbuckled the traces,

  freed the horse and laid the shafts gently down.

  A kitchen chair was brought out so that

  Henry could take the weight off his leg.

  ***

  Those are the facts and this is the picture:

  Late one summer’s afternoon in Seaforth

  on a wooden chair on a cobbled street

  a ten-year-old sits with his leg in a wheel.

  His mother is crying, but not Henry.

  He is stock-still. Against her blue pinny

  his face has the pale luminescence of an angel.

  A neighbour brings him out a drink of water,

  cup and saucer, best china. No sign yet

  of an ambulance. Not a policeman in sight.

  Frantic, my gran arrives to chase me home.

  (Compared to his sister, though, Henry got off light.)

  What Happened to Dorothy

  That’s me on the left.

  Page-boy in a velvet suit.

  Four years old, blond curls and scowling.

  Lucky horseshoe trailing.

  That’s Dorothy, Maid-of-Honour.

  Though only three years older,

  in her long white dress,

  veil and floral tiara

  she could be a teenager.

  She never would be, though.

  (It wasn’t a road accident)

  Tin bath in the kitchen.

  (It wasn’t diphtheria)

  Pan after pan of boiling water.

  (Or polio, or cancer)

  Kids warned not to run about.

  (It wasn�
��t murder on the sand dunes)

  Only half full, but scalding

  (It wasn’t drowning in the canal)

  When she tripped and fell in.

  That’s me on the left.

  Lucky horseshoe still trailing.

  That’s Dorothy, still seven.

  The Fallen Birdman

  The oldman in the cripplechair

  Died in transit through the air

  And slopped into the road.

  The driver of the lethallorry

  Trembled out and cried: ‘I’m sorry,

  But it was his own fault.’

  Humans snuggled round the mess

  In masochistic tenderness

  As raindrops danced in his womb.

  ***

  But something else obsessed my brain,

  The canvas, twistedsteel and cane,

  His chair, spreadeagled in the rain,

  Like a fallen birdman.

  Alphabet Soup

  Whenever I went into our local library

  I would take out a book for my dad.

  An adventure yarn. Something to do with the sea.

  Occasionally, I’d bring home one he’d read before.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he would say, ‘it’s a good ’un.’

  And settling down, sign on for the same voyage.

  It wasn’t laziness on his part, but a kind of fear.

  Libraries were for educated people.

  Full of traps. Procedures. Forms to fill in.

  They would notice his handwriting wasn’t joined up