He doesn’t say much;
Twists his anger in his lap
His sadness settles
Around him like fog
Until
You barely see him
His mother, loud and jolly
Jollies everyone along
He shrinks a little further
Inside.
But sometimes his eyes
Flash with sly amusement
His own words puncturing
The shell he’s built around
Himself.
She only existed in anecdotes: part cautionary tale
Part role model.
“Your Great-great Aunt Hilda”
Got expelled from several schools because she
Was rude, abrasive and
(It was implied with sideways glances)
Rather promiscuous.
It was decided, therefore
By somebody; (your parents?)
That she’d be happier across the ocean.
(Or that a family obsessed with manners
Would much prefer an ocean be between them
And this young aberration in their midst)
From there
The stories stop.
Although sometimes my grandfather
Would smile and shake his head,
Remember how, (on what he called) visits home
She called the soil in England “stony dirt
That wouldn’t raise a radish”
When everybody else would nod and smile
And compliment him on his hardy annuals.
How she’d dismiss the buzzards and the kestrels
He’d point out delightedly on their walks
Contemptuously as “just plain hawks”.
She lived to be a hundred and then stayed
For three more years
But left before I got here.
I wish we could have, somehow, overlapped.
I am utterly heartbroken by Victoria Wood’s death.
The shop is closed today.
Babs stares out of the window,
Damp-eyed. Berta is sobbing
On Mrs O’s shoulder
And even she can’t imagine
What God can possibly mean by it.
Outside the canteen,
Phillipa picks at a dangling thread on her blouse.
Twinkle’s lip trembles, Dolly slams the pots into the sink
And Tony can’t look anyone in the face.
At the bus stop, Kelly-Marie and her friend stand silently
And in the pub, Tracy Clegg
Has barely touched her rum and ribena
But Nicola Battersby’s downing
Gin after gin after gin.
In her maisonette
Kitty is putting a on brave face
For the boys from flat five
But her voice is a little too fast
Her smile too tight.
Barry and Freda are holding each other
Under the covers.
Connie and Renie make endless cups of tea; nobody drinks them.
Daft Nellie still looks for her friend.
But Mrs Pugh and Martin Jones
And Pauline and Irene and Vera
Are living and living and living.
My sociology GCSE teacher.
________
“It’s diabolical! Horrendous!”
We used to do impressions
When you got into a state
About the state of the world.
You’d start: “the underclass”.
Might be the chapter heading
And at first, you’d teach us theory. But within minutes
A story of the village where you lived
Before the mines closed down.
The way your dad picked coal
Chips from his skin on bathnight
Blue flecks tattooed a night sky in reverse.
Or advertising. “What is it they use
To sell a cadbury’s flake? Yes, say it:
Sex!” And then, you’d audio describe
The sexist adverts twenty years ago.
The textbooks lay forgotten on the desk.
“Hidden curriculum! You won’t have noticed
How many of you girls chose cooking
Over woodwork? Why?
Aha you see. Now seven years ago
There was a lass. Your sister, weren’t it, love…”
And off we’d go into some anecdote.
the
I said I’d write my coursework on addiction.
And crime that pays for it
“But not just that. There’s lasses
Sell their bodies for a fix.
You find out if they get the help they need.
Who speaks for them?” In future lessons
You’d point me out to colleagues.
“I’ve this one doing drugs and vice!” You’d stagger
Left breathless by your wit.
In the exam
The asked us about Marx.
Functionalism, and media
We didn’t have a clue.
You’d hidden the curriculum so well
In stories;
It took me years to see
How much I learned from you.
MASSIVE CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR TRANSPHOBIA, RAPE, VIOLENCE, INCARCERATION, DEATH
–
–
–
–
–
Inspired by this impossibly brave woman.
–
How do you survive
In a place of forced bargains? Of heads they win, tails you lose?
You strike what you can, pretend for a second
Some choice in the matter is yours
You’ll pay for safety from violence
With something.
You say to yourself you allowed
You’ll pay in installments.
They’ll come to collect
Every hour, every day
Don’t you fret
It’s better to be forced to pay
Than to die of your debt.
How do you stay alive
In a space where you’re not
Where the person they put behind bars
Isn’t you?
Well you’ve nowhere to go
So you walk in the skin of the man
You thought you had left long ago.
And his hair starts to grow
Through your face. And the pain
That used to be his begins throbbing again.
And they’re calling you all the old names.
But it’s better to hide, than to know
You’ll never be you again.
How do you escape
From a life where you’re barely alive
Where the penance for trying to survive
Is more torture, more violent crime?
When each barbed wire fence that you climb,
Each daring and dangerous break
Means it only gets worse the next time?
How do you rehabilitate
When whatever your crime
In the end, a merciful sentence of death
Which they dressed up as a choice
Is the only, the only release?
this isn’t just about one person, but it was inspired by one person, whom I will not name.
Very sad today.
Trigger warnings for abuse.
——-
It could be anyone:
We all learn that
The guy in the mac
Waiting in dark alleys
He’s as real as the rest of them.
They’ll hide in plain sight:
We all know that.
The children’s presenter
The selfless fundraiser,
Even he can’t be trusted.
They’ll manipulate you
We all see that.
The trusted, harmless friend
Who’d never ever use
What they know about you.
But you?
Not you.
Surely not you…
You.
This came a bit out of nowhere.
In memory of Maya Angelou,
Whom no poem could do justice.
____________
I like to imagine
Her spirit ascending
The names and the faces
She gathered together
To make of herself
Something new, something better
All falling, all falling
Around her like glitter.
She’s singing and swinging,
She’s switching and bitching
Her traveling shoes
She won’t need, so she leaves them.
Her womanly heart,
Well it never stopped beating;
It just left behind
What it no longer needed.
The cage door is wide,
She still sings as she flies:
She’ll rise, she’ll rise, she’ll rise.
This is a bit late but it’s still Saturday somewhere, right?
This is a poem about a little girl I saw in Joy France’s “not a shop” arts space in Affleck’s. Manchester.
If you’re in the area do check it out!
“The world is your oyster, child!”
Encased by paints and glues,
Glitter and pens and props
You freeze, confused.
The rules are not the same here.
The art is free for everyone to make
You don’t know how to choose.
“The world’s your oysterchild”?
Big siblings smile and nod
At you, you feel included, older,
Part of the gang, it’s odd:
The rules are not quite like the ones outside
The world may well be something young and strange…
It’s alright here to take a path less trod.
Protected by an iridescent shell
Of glitterpens, and props and paint and glue,
This seabed where we listen and we tell
Our inner lives. Our secret, dancing dreams.
We take the grit the world will throw at us
And make pearl after pearl, pearl
after pearl.
“The world’s yours, oysterchild.”
This is for Gav Roberts
———
We feel the weight of this life bearing down
On us but still we rise again and sing
The songs of victory. We dream. We dream.
But still the world continues.
We choose our words. Our friends applaud and we
Rejoice. Because they heard us.
Maybe now
Something will start to change:
Perhaps today
The first blow will be struck. Our words unleashed.
We wait. And once again, nothing is said.
I feel the weight of this life bearing down
On me. I try to rise again and sing
I think of you. I know that I can fight
With you beside me. Even when it’s hard.
not so much a poem as working through some feelings.
When you are the only one
Who sees that something needs to be done.
You get so angry and so tired of being alone.
Even though you want to get it done.
But then you start to like being on your own:
You start to take some pride in being the one
Who saw that something needed to be done.
And when, at last, somebody comes along
And says “let me help you get it done.”
You do feel sort of woebegone
As if they took your thing and now it’s gone.
And that’s ridiculous and wrong.
Because all you ever wanted all along
Was not to be the only one
Thank you. It’s good to not be on my own.
But sometimes I will long
For the time I used to be the only one.
Tom Juniper Poetry