My Poetry: Introduced as an Old Friend

Introduced as an Old Friend

---

We kissed, a wet kiss,
The last time we met
Our lips parting each others
With practiced ease
Outside a nightclub
Neither of us wanted to go in.

You pulled me away
From your friends
As I flirted with my hands
Though it had been months
And we'd both soothed our heartbreak
In other people's beds.

I only remembered it later,
After you'd introduced me
To your two girls
And the man pushing the pram
As an old friend;
We spoke of people and
Places who'd crossed our paths
Avoided all the parts
Best left to the past.

It was twelve years ago, you said
But for a second it felt
Like yesterday since you led me
Upstairs in a student house
Before we spent two years
Swimming in circles
Till you got bored and
I got fat as I mourned.

We kissed last time we met,
On the right cheek,
When we said goodbye again
As I wished you the very best
This time meaning every word.

My Poetry: These foreign fields

These foreign fields

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These foreign fields,
Where my Granddad once
Marched behind tanks
Rifle butt under
Regulation starched armpit,
Turned green to muddy red
With caterpillar tread and shot.
Where death was
A by-product of survival.

Beneath flat skies,
As grey as a December Sunday,
An army of farmers
Hid village wives and daughters
From foreign men,
Each with sorrow in his hands
Or on his brow,
Preparing to greet their fate.
Where my Granddad met death
For the first time, as he
Refused sons the right
To become grandfathers.

Now in nursing home fatigues
He remembers what
The booze and Alzheimer's
Has not stolen,
The old gang: Mick, Patrick and Ernie
Boys left in that field,
Who just months before call up
Were tilling wheat fields,
Now lost beneath bricks and mortar,
Where they turned mud to green
With plough and tractor tread.
Soon he will meet death
For the final time,
When he goes to that foreign land
And the old gang are united once more.

My Poetry: Wildflowers II

Wildflowers II

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For Alice Denny

I do not know,
and please, do not say
what other poison rained down
upon the Wildflowers
the day the sun was lost
behind dull tongues
which spat sharp
scything words
to cut them down
where they stood.

Before that day,
before naivety was butchered
by barbed word,
I'd never met anyone whose
fragile shell was stronger
for the cracks,
whose shell was the lesser
part of the sum of their whole.
Someone for who
the war still raged
to be equal in the eyes
of those who only saw
big hands and a throat
with the kiss of Adam upon it.
Someone who fought back
as those ignorant of beauty
squashed stem and petal
under jack boot attitude
to repress Wildflower's bloom.

But we all know your heart
is stronger than fear
all seen you stood naked,
clothed only in vulnerability;
seen you retell your world
in poetic verse
with ink black words
writ big in tears across the night;
seen crowds soak them up
then applaud your bravery
as you held their attention,
while your red flower dress
kept them guessing,
because you are more complex
than poetry and fashion
or a simple word.

*This is a poem about people who are marginalised and oppressed, but who still stand up and refuse to be terrorised or kept down, people who stand proud and say 'This is who I am'.*