Each month we showcase new work by writers who have performed at recent Spotlights.
Gary Smillie
appeared at Spotlight on
20th July 2007.
Mostyn
I am starting to remember more and more
About the place where I grew up.
It might be the years, or the distance.
‘Perspective’ is what people call it.
I remember enormous trees and fields
That stretched for what seemed like,
Or could just as well have been, hundreds of miles.
We could spend whole days in them
Imagining ourselves explorers of forgotten lands
And always at the point that someone said ‘We’re lost.’
We’d find a road that led back home.
Back then it was all camping out and
Killing birds with air rifles.
Midnight patrols through the sleeping village,
‘Scrumping’ for apples.
Stream jumping before we graduated
On to hay bails and hedges.
Later, snogging behind garages:
Who could go the longest?
Football matches that had no end
And would just last and last until light failed us.
Gashes on my legs from barbed wire –
I still have the scars – and my fear of stitches.
The rope swing up on devil’s-drop
And the time that David Parry came off.
Building bonfires up from scratch
And my first drag of a spliff
Rolled out of squidgy-black.
All these things I recall,
But the main thing I remember
Is running.
How we were always running, so fast,
Away from someone or something and
Laughing in that way that is close to tears.
A heady, reckless, steaming forward
That even then we somehow knew
We could not control
And could not turn back.
September
Today the weather changed
From pale, dry autumn light
To a sky full of grey clouds
Stacked across, side by side.
My mind keeps taking trips to the pool.
Hanging sheets of rain.
The kids on our street disappeared,
Back to school.
A late 86 from Speke to Paradise Street
Its Monday morning cargo shifting listlessly
In fag burned seats
Heading down to the sea.
Where the towers full of hours
And jobs wait
To gobble them up early,
Spit them out late
In time for the indoor schedule glow
Of a hundred thousand TV sets
And a tired game show concept
With some snarling, ginger hostess.
Burgeoning cold sores needle
Countless lips
That tingle wickedly after
The first of many hot tea sips.
Not forgetting the waddling
Teenage pregnancy super market trips –
Panting and pausing,
Hands on wide, child bearing hips.
Deep and helpless slumber
In the worn arm chair
Nearest the gas fire, three bars burning
Stoically like a vacant stare.
Longer nights for terraced lives
Wrestling with infinity for a certain number of miles.
A domino course in the shape of a city
Cut out of the exact same tile.
Good advice for a bad person
Take the short route home
Past the ghost faced, shuffling pensioner -
Wide eyed, non plussed, blinking –
Alabaster mask plastered unflinching
Against the thoughtless heat of the living sun.
Side step the twenty something schoolgirl
Her bicycle done up kitsch
Her fuck me socks and skirt ensemble -
Hair trussed up like Dorothy
Red slippers like the witch.
Ignore the dough-faced flabby teenager
Following his laughing class mates
From a distance of twenty paces
Pointlessly aiming gazes
At all the little mädchens.
Resist the natural urges
To tear the impossibly sculpted hairstyle
From the prick in sun glasses
Legs lodged in pipes of denim
Like match sticks in wrappers.
Instead go straight home
Fetch the whiskey, turn the latch,
Nail up the boards and kill the lamps.
Seal the shutters on the windows.
Sit this out – each day must pass.
Simon Baker
appeared at Spotlight on
15th June 2007.
MY FUTURE
Back when I was knee high to… a knee
My primary school teacher said to me
Imagine how your life will be
When you’re all grown up and as old as me
These days I’d reply “What, 93?”
But at 7 was less given to flippancy
The instruction which followed: draw what you see
So I produced “My Future: A Study
In wax crayon, glitter and macaroni
Well I went at this like a bullet from a gun
Drew a house and the sky, this was so much fun
Drew a lovely garden where my 8 kids could run
Drew me: burnt sienna hair and un
Derneath two… big… eyes… as green as the sun
Green sun? Well, you see, because I’d begun
By covering the top half in cerulean
The yellow on top had somewhat undone
My attempt at an accurate depiction
The results of bad planning are tricky to hide
But the smiles on both of my faces were wide
I wasn’t down-hearted. OK. I lied
I sulked, I pouted, threw a tantrum, I cried
But this must have helped because later I tried
To finish my picture. Success once denied
Now granted through glue-coated pasta applied
To the sun. Added windows with curtains inside
And a face at the window: grown up Simon’s bride
As I grew up I drew a good life I guess
Rubbed sections out when it looked like a mess
Rubbed too hard at times I have to confess
Painted myself into a whole new address
The colour of my curtains didn’t always impress
Not all were so shallow, some colours clashed less
When the shades seemed to blend, well that was success
Some days were so golden it’s hard to express
Some days were blue, sometimes to excess
Plans set in wax crayon are not set in stone
I’ve a flat that I rent not a house that I own
No bride and no children – I live on my own
Bad planning again? A green sun? Should I groan?
Should I pout? Should I sulk? Should a tantrum be thrown?
Though my 7 year old self could never have known
He perhaps should have drawn himself holding a phone
Or welcoming friends to his comfort zone
Smiling because of the kindness they’ve shown
At home with himself and happy alone.
FLINT
It began with untouched food.
Each bowl told of damage underneath his fur:
The stomach, locked and empty,
Urging the emergence of ribs and frightening spine;
The yawn which yellowed daily.
The vet offered mathematics:
Hope as a percentage; double dosage;
A liver three times larger than it started.
We decided.
We heard him purr
At hands which held him ready
Held him still
Before his head fell forwards
His needled yowl wound down
And in the time it would have taken him
To saunter down the garden
It was finished.
We wrapped him in a towel,
Laid out in one last curl
So death would fix him in a favourite shape.
Behind me, as I dug beneath the rosebush,
A once-warm space was cooling, letting go.
Across the makeshift shroud,
A yellow stain was slowly spreading.
Edwin Stockdaleappeared at Spotlight on 18th May 2007.
Seal Court
(A S Byatt, Possession, 1990)
Christabel LaMotte sits in the
Winter Garden, underneath
bare trees, no shelter
for her. Coal hair trails
in a long plait down luminous cheeks.
Glancing round the empty landscape
grey eyes grave - the yew bench chill
against her bloodless skin,
knuckles on her hands show bone -
red hips and haws scattered, she sees.
Silvery fish, darting, are in the little pool
suspended under opaque ice.
She wants to reach out,
touch them, hold anything;
but she can't shatter frozen water.
but she can't shatter frozen water.
Ophelia
(Sir John Everett Millais, 1851-2; William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1600-5)
Embalmed till eternity
in a gold frame;
memories my sister
drowned in the bath.
Ophelia clutches
at weedy trophies:
Long purples, daisies, nettles.
Head and body separated,
hands stretched skywards,
brown locks of hair trailing,
white face, lips parted:
'God hath given you one face
and you make yourselves another.'
Gertrude calls it
the weeping brook.
Green reeds spiked
through muddy depths;
a robin trills
his melodious song.
My sister's eyes glazed,
hair covering her face,
surrounded by rose petals,
pinned down by me.
'God hath given you one face / and you make yourselves another' is what Hamlet says to Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1 Lines 137-8.
Memorial
I can see pink-bronze pigeons
content on spindly branches
long and thin from the silver birch
still air
dryness underfoot
scattering of leaves
pre-autumnal drop
lying on the copper sundial
faded and jade green in places
I hear a single leaf fall
as if dislodged by something
is it me
or can I picture
the vague form of a child
scrambling among the branches?
ash blond hair tangled
heightened glow of cheeks
gap in the front of his teeth
when he fell down the stairs
hint of a breeze starts
shiver at the base of my spine
crescendoing upwards
I spin round
pace towards the inviting door
artificial warmth inside
naked light bulbs
to banish thoughts
branches snap behind me
I want to turn round
but fear it
screaming
pierces my ears
I turn round as slowly as I can
I see his slight figure
falling to the ground
beneath him
branches splinter
like fragments of his bones
feet pinned down to the grass
hurts to move
I stop attempting to run
propel my clumsy arms forward again
to catch his small body
tarnished sun moves over the garden
leaving only half in light
like bleached memories
viewed too often for comfort
Lancaster poetEdward Calais appeared at Spotlight on 20th April 2007.
www.myspace.com/edwardthepoet
Learning to Kill
I stood on the battlefield
Naked at five or six, goading,
Aiming, hurling up mighty sticks.
And then counting thuds
Of the fallen.
It was as if
I had not taken food before or since.
I stripped skin with my teeth
And gnawed muscle, a vampire,
Let the wet spurt out up my nose, my grinning bite,
My pinched-eyed delight
And my mouth dripping with sinew and flavour,
Gorging, clamping, spinning, kissing,
Like a mother's sweet tit sucked, or a lover's.
My hands ran blood to elbows,
Chest sticky smeared, spattered again,
My tongue licking back its tickling,
My brothers' and sisters' feasting
And buzzards in a vortex overhead,
Waiting, descending.
I remember, we felled dozens, ate all,
Let our bellies bloat
Over their opened bodies,
Licked at my fingers, each others',
Cleaned them with spit, sucked our teeth clean,
Ran off strong, whooping, joyful.
Mangoes.
Samboo's Grave
I met him, a black man once, as myself, bearing English-tailored
Breeches and foul hair shirt they'd concealed him in. Vandalised
Unwilling immigrant, he slaved in an age when English means
Returned in sugary ships, bled from granular black flesh
The taint of ledger ink. Soon dead from TB and chic custody
He'd lived a freak of colour, an inferior hide, a head-bowed curiosity
In hectic Lancashire as monkey valet, a shuttle for errands, snideries,
Among families grown stout from the rightful miseries of souls.
He is a plaque man now, a myth remarked on in gouged brass
Under a white man's doggerel and children's mawkishness on stones,
Painted woe, an offence for a real name; misplaced in the corner of some
Foreign field that is forever Samboo.
I asked him why he wakes
On refuse shores among snowdrops, ramblers, sheep carcasses -Believing that a sail might come? He mumbled in a patois I
Did not share, something peevish, an extinct African grunt -
Then scrunched his collar tight, looked off to where hopes recoil
On empty tides among residual memories, residual love,
And instinct points him magnetised, mislaid, thinking of words like home.
From A Slow Carriage
Years afterward, as my coastal train sneaked past
For its hurtle north, tint-eyed, behind ambulance glass,
I saw you kick-start a glinty fork, arc low beyond
A thousand miles from where you'd never shear
The ragwort path.
Years afterward, as my coastal train sneaked past
For its hurtle north, tint-eyed, behind ambulance glass,
I saw you kick-start a glinty fork, arc low beyond
A thousand miles from where you'd never shear
The ragwort path.
Measuring what was below,
I stared
I stared
As you stood squinting back, smiling up with narrowed eyes
Probing for targets, as if a kid to wave to anyone, backlit, aglow;
Then I turned my head. Not a profile you'd remember
Above a barking dog, your allotment dominant in sun.
Behind, your shadow linked a blistered potting-shed,
A bench, two cups of tea, a girl in Wellingtons and tints
Beckoning to cakes, two lit cigarettes in lips, among crops
Of frames and well-supported things, some old tools stuck in,
And in a passing place where earth turned in your hands.
Probing for targets, as if a kid to wave to anyone, backlit, aglow;
Then I turned my head. Not a profile you'd remember
Above a barking dog, your allotment dominant in sun.
Behind, your shadow linked a blistered potting-shed,
A bench, two cups of tea, a girl in Wellingtons and tints
Beckoning to cakes, two lit cigarettes in lips, among crops
Of frames and well-supported things, some old tools stuck in,
And in a passing place where earth turned in your hands.
Edward Calais' first collection of poems 'From A Slow Carriage' is published by Road Works.
www.roadworkspublishing.com