In Hiding

In Hiding

In our waking
we saw the sun
through cracks and slits
in our days
we smelled sour dust
and waste
and misered out
our scraps of food.
And all the while
the hunger gnawed
and the fear clenched.

In our sleep
we heard the crunch
of boots on gravel
in our dreams
they searched for bicycles
and babies
for anything or anyone
that could be hiding
And all the while
the hunger gnawed
and the fear clenched.

We woke each day
and found our sleep
was waking
and our dreams
reality.

Sylvia Goodman

An Old Soak

An Old Soak

His criss-cut frown
an ink seagull
v-ing through those
four feet between us.
Flat faced
with a square jaw,
he stared.
I stared.
No chickening
no shaping
eye to eye solidity.
Black blink-less irises filled
each sharp angle crevice,
persistent, throbbing.
Awaiting a back down
the water cooled.
His bulbous nose
static through steam.
A motionless
charade of glaze
on that fractured
bath tile of a face.

Jerry Pike

Reconciliation Statue, Coventry Cathedral

Reconciliation Statue, Coventry Cathedral

1 don't remember when 1 noticed it first,
acceptance, creeping up like Mr Wolf.
1 had thought my senses 'frozen by the past.

Indeed, before 1 was caught by its stealth
I'd sworn to never fall for its sly charm
preferring anger to assert the self,

for how could we forget the storm
of bombers in the skies of Coventry,
the startling deaths and alarm; the fear

they'd build their sign here, in this city,
for victims to read, entering their charnel house
with the terrible lie, Work sets you free?

But it seems those who thought everything lost
can now face each other without despair,
consoled although their hearts have long since burst.

Look at these figures with a blank stare
to see a melting of the inner frost
and come to know the hatred they have nursed
has gone, and they are now no longer cursed.

Peter Keeble

Forty-Four

Forty-Four

War hung lifeless off a page,
colour plates in gloomy hues,
smudged black and white lithos
led maps to slandered enemies.
Playing on grassy bomb shelter banks
we were never lost souls,
always alive with forty-four,
whatever forty-four meant?

Chalk sports day lines
stopped abruptly in winner’s clouds,
and losers dreams.
Between egg and spoon
we swapped war cards
garish, gory but ours.
Twenty years earlier, bombs fell
single file killers
waiting their howling turn
to flatten life’s hopes
and our parents concern,
but we wanted more.
More information, more pictures,
more tales of how we…..
but listening ears were mute.
No soldier, nor mother,
nor airmen, nor father
would utter a stricken word.
Skeletons in cupboards
wailed and wailed.

Then, sudden as flick-cards
after cub’s church parade,
we’d scurry to St. Nicks back room
where our new friend,
old and always rain-coated,
would spill stories,
at first biblical, but then
bulging with fighter pilots
Spitfires and Hurricanes, before
Heinkels and Messerschmitts tangled them
in the air above our eyes,
wooden straight back chairs,
with rear hymn book shelves
hailed a prayer to our slender aged whoops.
We learned all, those few years,
but mostly,
we learned enthusiasm.

Jerry Pike

Balaclava

Balaclava

1 watch her from the sofa, holding my coffee,
the fire ablaze, an empty bottle of wine.
With nimble fingers she looks across to copy

from a pattern, slowly leads the first soft line
along to its ordained and foretold end
connected back to the needle's metal spine.

The next row follows on like a close friend,
hooked back to the start on pre-arranged hoops,
each curled stitch a little fisherman's bend:

the rest march out one by one like woollen troops.
She goes on like this for an hour while 1 sleep,
but a fault appears dashing her early hopes

and she picks it apart into an unravelled heap
dismissed as a first flawed attempt, a snake
scribbled up beside her, a cartoon sheep.

So she starts again while I get more cake
using exactly the same length of yarn
but with new resolve to make no mistakes

Clicking along, her needles follow the plan,
or should we call it a hidden design?
It's unseen in any single row's narTow span

but will be clear to all when, after we dine,
I'll unwrap it and in mock surprise proclaim it grand
knowing that out in the night, frosty but fine,
my head will stay warm and it will finally be mine.

Peter Keeble

Casualties

By night the bombs rained down from dreadful skies;
by day his blows assailed her frightened eyes.
By night it was allowed to utter cries;
by day she stifled them for otherwise

their infant and the neighbours would have guessed
and so she hid her bruises, unconfessed.
She knew his rages mainly stemmed from stress.
from weeks of nightly fear and sleeplessness

but he had lost control, continued wild
long after enemies were reconciled.
Now brutalised, he would not be beguiled
and left her penniless to rear their child.

Dorothy Pope

In Your Shoes

In Your Shoes

In your shoes, I'd have wondered what I'm like,
as woman now, and how I was at school.
Did you not ever ask yourself, awake
at night perhaps, it I was beautiful
or clever, happy, mother now to boys
who looked like you, as handsome, tall and blond,
or if, for want of funds and fathering. all joys
had come to nothing, not survived beyond
the day you left us, broke? Life was deprived,
of course, but you gave me a legacy
I prize. You left me hypersensitised
to cruelty and worth ? rare gift. I see
right through facades. Not,spared a second thought,
I'm fine - though I'm the daughter you forgot.


Dorothy Pope

The Harder They Come

Into the city for big time spoils,
five three with a ‘bop’ walk,
occasional high heels, to boost,
and that feminine voice.
He walked, talked, jumped fast,
learned to sing mento down town,
Vincent Ivanhoe Martin, fourteen and bad.
He robbed and ran so fast, no one caught him.

1938, Jam Down, Kingston resident’s court
dished him twelve tamarind strokes,
for a vicious attack.
Early 40s, burglary, shop break-ins, wounding.
Then 1945 his war began,
underworld gang monikers pinned tight,
Captain Midnight, Alan Ladd, but mainly
Two-Gun Rhygin.
Every job, he photographed himself,
a showman with two guns, to send the press.
He robbed rich, gave to poor,
Robbin’ da Hood, and the ghetto thanked.

1946, with his gang, got seven years,
that final straw pulled, he escaped in two,
and there on ratchet in his waist,
Johnny Too Bad,
gunned and gunned,
promising twenty nine un-wasted bullets.

1948, holed up in the Carib Hotel,
wearing just underpants,
shot his way free,
killing, wounding, making headlines
Jamaica would never forget.
He wrote regular letters to papers and police,
telling his next move,
how they must improve, and who was
the next nail under his gun’s hammer.
A fugitive in hiding
up Ferry Reef Swamp,
he didn’t have long for fame,
£200 bounty, rode on his head,
povertied people started spilling addresses.
While mum and dad were arrested for fish dynamiting,
his own net closing, he escaped.
Two Greenwich Town fishermen
took him to Lime Cay, but tipped off,
police and army arrived, surrounded,
and, as he always said,
never take me alive,
they shot him to bits.

Thousands went to the morgue,
to see Jamaica’s biggest criminal,
wrapped in blood and sack, but still, their hero
and future star of
The Harder They Come

I'm sorry

I'm Sorry!

I'm sorry! 1 can't write a poem today,
the signs are not really auspicious.
Life's burdens and bothers will get in the way,
so I'm sorry. 1 can't write a poem today.
It's no use complaining, for try as 1 may
the verse turns foul and factitious.
I'm sorry. 1 can't write a poem today,
the augurs are far from auspicious.

I'm sorry 1 can't write a poem today.
It's no use your being suspicious.
1 know that you think you have only to say,
but I'm sorry! 1 can't write a poem today.
1 long for a lyric, like flowers in May,
but my powers are entirely fictitious,
so sadly 1 can't write a poem today,
although you may well be suspicious.

I'm sorry! 1 can't write a poem today.
My mood is too surly and vicious?
The sun is too dim and the clouds are too grey,
so I'm sorry! 1 can't write a poem today,
Please leave me in peace, then, and just go away!
I'm giving up being ambitious.
1 really can't write you a poem today.
I'm lazy ? and surly and vicious.

John Waddell