EURO '96
The largest toilet
wall in Europe.
Happiness
is the first coffee
of the morning. Then bang.
The post-box stood
guard by the blasted van.
Cordon off your
heart with scene-of-crime tape.
Do the weekly
shop then home to the news. Later,
no-one died. The
sky was Yves Klein blue. It's OK:
if I were to blow
up anywhere it would be.
Make the world
a safe place for shopping.
Where is that?
I was going to get a haircut
but I think I'll
wait till I know the score.
Let's stand round
barriers refusing to move on.
Am I the only
one didn't hear the bang? Bandaged
heads. Did us
all a favour. That morning I was
in a supermarket.
My how we've scrubbed up since.
GEOCENTRIC
Locked out daily,
pockets full of coins for the slots,
where does the
sun sleep when it slopes off at night?
One slice of bacon,
tomato and a rubber egg:
does he eat his
lunch off the world's flat plate?
Still, the forecast
rain is holding off, but do you
fall into space
when you reach the horizon?
Weather talk round
the breakfast room, lashings of –
where do you fall
to when you're over the edge?
– toast
and porridge the consistency of warm mud.
Is the world really
as flat as this town, full of
kiss-me-quick
gulls and the skrike of salt –
will we swim out
too far then drop out of sight?
The penny arcades
have opened their doors:
do the lights
in the sky revolve around me?
HAROLD WILSON
Then who’s that stepping off his plinth
like a man on his way to work
who strode all the way to Huddersfield?
My father came back for all the world
like a man out to buy his tobacco
to stuff in his little slot machine.
As if he had a purpose in life,
his hair was black as a peppercorn.
They’re making a film about cops
by the statue of our ex-PM, the theme
from Z-cars in my ears. I stroll past
to write this down. From Eccles he came,
his skin was hard though his heart was soft,
and ate whatever was put on his plate.
MY BED
Dreaming
sci-fi girls bullied by monsters
I
don't know how I passed my exams.
This
is what this country means: hills,
that
used to run mills. Mostly I read Asimov
-
their witchy shadows and fast-moving streams -
and
don't do homework. They lock up my books.
You
could fold it up and put it away.
Once,
I ran down a hill on a farm visit
and
couldn't stop. I never did but you could
if
you wanted use the headboard for a table.
I
ran down that slope so fast I scared myself
reaching
for stars from under the blankets
witless.
I should have been Robert Heinlein
but
the ground came up to meet me. Tripped.
TRAVELATOR
Will passengers have their boarding cards ready?
Changes of clothes, books, pen in my pocket,
the quandaries. No Sharps Allowed. Suitcase
packed, we enter a new country singing.
If tears were a staircase.
Does this pavement move on forever?
I’m a man it’s my job to be wrong. Love ends.
The sky is Yves Klein Blue; at the terminal I’m
lost in the map of veins. Last Chance to Buy.
We’ll take our coffee in the American Cafe.
Then we fold it all up and put it away.
To my heart: girl, you give me such trouble,
stepping on a moving pavement on a mission
to depart. I carry Lunch Poems around.
THE ALL-PURPOSE STARS
Someone’s behaviour is bothering
a significant other. Try not to rescue
everyone today. It’s a day for keeping.
You might be in a silly mood but
it feels like you’re stuck in quicksand.
A great day for haircuts, kicking arse,
if you’re feeling stuck with some ache
you need to tiptoe like a fairy round.
Someone in your life has a bee in their bonnet
where what’s not out in the open
is the tendency to blurt strange truths
at the wrong moments. The way through
is to think about the future beyond.
Something hidden will pop out. Careful.
Copyright
@ Steven Waling, 2006
