TOLCHOK 79

TOLCHOK 79

got clockworked by a plod
me and my droogs we did

basically copped us
soon as we tumbled out
to play
ball in the street
just round the corner
from the Maine Road stadium

and he
ruffled our feathers, may.have
been a fat fuck
but was
really
up for it

and there we were
just out for fun
have a bil of
a kickabout
(nothing too
revolutionary)

thought
      being close to
an old bomb site, would
not be
worrying
nobody

the sky sky blue
but three of us reds
and the fourth
of us
for Arsenal

good
   that he

want to protect
this neighborhood from us
but
   we all in the shadow,
of the SS-20s

and him
desperate to take us down
cart us off
down to the station
in his tiny car

but we
      gave him the look
and a
few choice words

spelling out how that
would not
have been

a good
idea

this on the eve
of the Thatcher election
about
   to kill

that Britain of old, finally,
definitively

once
and for all

got clockworked by a plod
we did
   came so close
to a brutal tolchokking
purely
    in self-defence Your
Honour
(that Peterloo mindset
hard
   to forget)

as you sow
so shall you reap
(maxim valid
for the police and
State
      dystopia displacing
all hope of
dreamscape)

only
   wanted to
play football, national sport,
favourite pastime,
that bottle
    in blue, par
for the course
misreading wholesale,
P.O.V. skewed
completely

thought
    we were going Alex
Delarge

about to turn punk
proletarian evil

in this city
     where Marx and
Engels

saw
    the machinery of
power and profit
in what
they saw.


CITIZEN,

CITIZEN

I came across
Diogenes the philosopher
in the centre of Manchester

tight in
his barrel he sat, observing
everything,
cynically appraising
the escalation of vitriol
between the
cause of
the blue frauds versus
the red cartel as (to his
mind) it
grew ever nearer
to outright
civil
war

amused by the diatribes
and the impending
demise
    of football

nevertheless did not
wish
    to upset me by
further reminding

how much
he had
      taught me about
money and power

run
   away corruption

the curse
     of our
species

killing all
we love dear

I came across the philosopher
Diogenes
          paragon of wisdom

the Manchester Metropolitans
not yet
    got their
act together in
      moving him on.
   
   

THE AGUERO GOAL

THE AGUERO GOAL

The champagne was
almost in my mouth

when
you phoned to tell me
about the Aguero goal

four minutes into
time added on
that last
match of
the season

and me cursing and spluttering
we should have brought
that man
    brought that man

and now there is
a statue to him, and
now
   they have won everything

fairly or (yes)
very unfairly

they can whiteout
that moment in the books,
redact
     every painful
final second

but
burnt so
deep

try
as I might,
I will never forget

FREE TRADE HALL

FREE TRADE HALL

Still searching for the girl
with the kaleidoscope eyes.

Haven’t
scored for decades so I am
sure you are going
to assure me
there isn’t
much hope

and yet
I have faithfully followed
this river
running past my house
some serious miles
South West through
the cheese county
of Cheshire into
the heart of Manchester

before it
     flows past all the fab tour’s
houses to
empty itself in
the Irish Sea

and me
     my brain shaped
by their songs, as was
everybody’s

their ruffian rivals from
down South
    exercising their
undue
influence on
everything below

but here
I am now
     abject, forlorn
yet
   determinedly waiting

counting my blessings
soon to
     be feasting my soul

on theatre in
the round

or whatever
      be the delights in
the Free Trade Hall.

HARSH

HARSH

all’s fair in
laisses-faire

forget love
and war
learnt these hard
economic truths
on the streets
of Manchester

living on the exact site
of Engels’ house

but out in Eastlands
ten cents on the dollar
they built
a steel and perspex
palace of football
pure sky blue, now
horribly stained

and in its surrounds a
wheeler-dealer premium prestige
thousand and one nights fantasyland
beyond the pay grade of
poor good abiding
by the rules
souls like
me
and thee

for, in truth, nothing more
beautiful than a world, or
at least a city
refashioned in
corporate interest
striving to be the ultimate
utopia, realization of
the old
Manchester system economic
vision
     each fresh golden
foundation

strong and secure enough
to bear the weight
of
exploitation

the titanic debt to
support whatever
demonic structure
calculated to
expand to
the giddy limit

the crazy-ass overloads of
the lords of hell
(for all
that they can buy
and sell)

SYLVIA

SYLVIA

I am in the throes of being tested
examined on a poem
we have not
seen before

unless I have
unless that
was your poem
smacked me in the face
when last night skimming through
that paperback anthology

if so, must admit
a bit unfair it being
an unfair
advantage

but still
they (those in
the know steeped in
verse, figures
of speech and,
perhaps, poetic history
and literary theory)

they
whoever they are, big
wigs in the Department,
have to determine whether
I am up to
your poem
       not quite yet whether
I am human
or machine

literary scholar or
just along
for the ride
    following you observantly
for I know this
thorned fruit
have
   been bloodied as a child
seeking out the juiciest

will
    know what to do
when you take
my hand
wrench me with
your words out of
the comfort of my world
(this comfort being
unearned, here on
this lofty
campus
staring down upon
the Flats and
the Southern Suburbs of
apartheid Cape Town)

you
my polestar here, point
me any
direction and I will
feel obliged to follow

and nothing
fixed
   even for a moment
everything far
from exactly what it seems

green to
brown to
green
something raging, unbalanced,
in the seasons

something wrong
with time itself (warping in
the heat of
   these scorpion energies
can see
    in the gravity of sheer purpose
you are a late October
child

and me
thinking, talking Transatlantic,
as the berries in your
bottle feel
suddenly thrust upon me

overpowering me
in an instant, which
that whole
new critical cabal
you were
bound to
find at Cambridge

Richards, Leavis (F &Q),
Empson
     and the whole
etcetera

who
   knew instantly what
this
  style meant

but me back there
battling with the simple stuff,
basic
   putting pen to paper

hoping
   what thoughts I think
serious
magic in the
ink
beginning to flow will
just have to express

(but
damn thosr hooks clawing
at you
   same time
holding you back)

something way off-beam
getting forged
in this cauldron

as soon
     as I read the opening
lines, made
the connection
the poem
opened its maw
and duly
swallowed me

taking decades
from that moment
of seizure
to
   digest me

you who
were so badly loved
and much accounted for

and I must tell you
I heard those laureate lips
speak
    deliver the hard
cryptic truth, so-
called gold
veined throughout (I am
told) all
those crow poems,

in a cold Gothic hall
when I was
      a student back in
Manchester

place packed out with
troops of British devotees

and me
    mum about my heresy
that he
    just not
in your league

and now
    by virtue of this
technology of technologies
will be
    the death of us

I get to
chat to
   you, if
anything there is you
resurrected
             for the occasion
courtesy of
the binary brilliance
of an impersonator

and
   I recall
this first encounter

wondering how this clone
will react, what
this mind will say

seems
   I was none too wayward
making personal sense
of that
dark expressionism,
those tortured ramblings

feeling
   that you and
I

always
     to, somehow, share
this reading
all
   our readings

bound in space and time
ever to
    return though

swept away

DUCKED EVERY MODULE

DUCKED EVERY MODULE

“The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, and from without.”
 Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry (1821)

ducked every module
on Romanticism
during my
English degrees

and yet maybe
that is exactly where
my antipathy
to the movement
must have
originated from

kind of imagining myself
a poet, sort of poet, or
something not
too far from that
as I wandered down
towards the River Tame
(tributary of
the far more
famous Mersey)
stretched out
to the East and West
and South
the Pennine Moors
Bronte territory,
roughest, toughest, most desolate
part of England

still
  a ways to walk
to get there

and me for now
meandering riverward

slipping through my neighbour
crazy Gordon Shelley’s
immaculately
      mown garden

passing the tiny glade
of wild narcissi
     (dangerous lure, that
purity)

and down into the hollow
graveyard for one single
completely
    broken piano

its innards spilled, everywhere
rods and hammers
and scattered keys

leit motif
   for someone’s life
if not mine entirely

try to duck things
and they still
get to
nail you
one way or’t tother

PAR FOR THE COURSE

PAR

par for the course
par for the curse

mute the Wasteland
savage reduction of
noise
    stanza
by
stanza

you feel it in your bones
tremors under the skin
your tectonic
plates shifting

specialists mailing in
their verdict
      you on the verge
of breakdown

hanging by a thread
golden, astral silver
or maybe just
Manchester cotton

an industry booming
blackening the sky with it
suddenly
       in the wash there
is blood
much red blood
humanity split, a house divided

par
   for the course
echoes, allusions, vertigo
in the poetic factory,
foundational mythologies,

whatever
   it takes to finesse vers libre

rich resources to be mined
be inevitably exhausted

see there
    what scripture remembers
we should know,
it needs to
tell us

   a door opening, first
thought springing
to mind
  must be of awakening

so much out there
the picture freezing
in anticipation

of expected regret,
customary hesitation

step
    by guarded step

par for the course

,

MANCHESTER ON THE MOON

MANCHESTER ON THE MOON

I wanted to
return to Manchester
study its
poetry its
secret geometry

found it
buried beneath
Roman ruins
there on
the dark and
light sides
of the Moon

and digging there
found Victorian wonders
and once great
football stadiums
forgotten tales
of glory
   written in
scarlet red or
sky blue

and
    relics of the famous
Royal Eye Hospital
where I
was both treated and
(those green goddess
days) stopped
from burning

and the libraries, and galleries,
and theaters and
universities
where I once
studied
    or sojourned

and now must excavate
to find if
memory is real, my
history is true.