For my Mum and Dad’s 50th wedding anniversary

Something must have been there

through fifty summers of heat haze,

sunburn itching against bedclothes,

fear feeding off smoke in the nostrils

and eating salads at dusk.

Something must have been there

through fifty autumns of leaf mulch,

weak sun fighting the descending cool,

watching the first football sail over the fence

and surrendering to a fire.

Something must have been there

through fifty winters of grey wet,

clothes damp-steaming on horses,

darkness enclosing work, to and fro,

and soup-and-toasting Sundays.

Something must have been there

through fifty years of spring treachery,

winter’s skeleton dressed in summer clothes,

frost-bitten life triumphing over fading death

and all things seeming possible.

Something must have been there,

through fifty years of seasons sweet and bitter,

settling differences through closeness and separation,

learning life is not a line but a circle

and, in the end, you are beginning again.

You have the rest of your life

to tell each other what it was,

and is,

starting now.

Memories,

carefully dusted off and swathed,

packed in the boxes

along with the more trivial possessions.

Like the apocryphal cat

they can’t be left behind.

Some you will unpack immediately upon arrival

as handy conversation pieces when old friends call.

Some will remain encased

with only an occasional furtive private inspection

to check for silverfish and mildew.

And some will be ‘forgotten’,

but will only feign death

and, like ancient terracotta soldiers,

will wait in infinite patience

ready to ambush the present.

To begin to begin means beginning to end

the lives lived through others,

the boundaries of love,

the self-graven image,

the down-town face,

the magazine body,

the standard-gauge line,

the next logical step,

the leadership of the lost,

the mantle of the Madonna,

the leg-irons of the country,

the glister of the city,

the waiting for Death,

the defining of Life,

the stroking of guilt,

the denial of pride

and, the first journey.

The second journey may begin at

the Stations of the Cross,

the point of no return,

the height of absurdity,

the depths of despair

or the horizon of friendship.

To begin is to print your own poetic licence

and to drive on whatever side of the road

you damn well please.

We are all cut men.

Cut from our mother’s chord,

with its threat to strangle us beyond the womb

or tie us to a cleaner version of ourselves

for sisterly consumption.

Cut from our father’s dream for us,

our failures punished with word and hand,

our mother-love is on the list

of unforgivable treacheries.

 Cut from our partner’s love,

with its evolving, slippery conditions

fashioned in childhood and femolution

and guilting our own evolution, as if wilfully chosen.

 Cut from true fatherhood

by Hollywood fantasia

and the crushing weight on the balls

of our selfish, restless feet.

And cut from each other

by the spun-glass phallusies of prowess

and the trashing of our historical domains

and the fear of being fucked in the arse.

We are all cut men

and our lack of healing will be the death of us.

Remember causes

and affectations of effect on rain-swept city streets

and war-zones now gone five-star?

Remember anger

and maintaining rage at symbolic loss

while secretly at home with the familiar futility?

Remember sexual honesty

and fucking whoever felt like you

and confining safe sex to heart condoms?

Remember dope

and discovering the ‘real’ you

and waking each time forgetful of the revelation?

Remember music

and believing decibels were antidotes to megatons

and lyrics could shield you from the Press?

Remember death

when it belonged to rock stars

and an endless list your mother claimed to have known?

Remember revolutions

and the bloody gutters of freedom

because fascism belonged to the right? Right?

Remember social action

sitting in smoke-filled rooms with Nescafe activists

and Housing Trust women with no teeth and less hope?

Remember children

sneaking past full lives and empty wombs

to be raised in the fearful parentheses of generational skipping?

Remember parents

left on some private shelf

in case they portrayed you to anybody that mattered?

Remember party politics

and seeing neighbours become politicians

only to fall in clay-footed exhaustion at the barriers?

Remember health

when it was something other people ought to have and

you weren’t smoke-free, mineral water in hand and smiling at God?

Remember money

and how it was never going to concern you

and then you learnt the golden rule and its defensible limits?

And do you remember when the penny dropped

that the personal was the political

and you found out you had to change?

And you decided to forget the revolution?

At the Buccaneer Pub, inside the walls of the old town,

drinking with ancients like myself,

pretending to be interested in rugby,

while they pretend to be interested in cricket,

but neither of us fakes their distrust of royals

(though it must be said that the man in the top hat and overalls,

feeding his bar stool-perched water spaniel some crisps and Guinness,

is a little less harsh than his mates;

he would allow them to take their own lives come the revolution).

Drifting from a woman behind me comes:

‘I already told you what I want but you didn’t want that!’

I turn to hear her man,

all country-tied up and jacketed with leather elbows,

red of face and spaniel-eyed, shout

‘Two more of the same, thank you, landlord’

and I wonder how long it will take before he notices

she’s been in the Ladies an awful long time

and that the pub has a back door.

‘Your round, convict lad,’ smiles Top Hat.

‘Besides, we’re much better entertainment.’

For the late Sue Dixon

Nothing happens by accident;

desire is design, down to Persian rugs

on the bare boards of innocence

and a corner temple

in this turned corner, turned temple,

at which you daily worship

and give thanks for cankers conquered

and those given up.

Here are symbols stripped bare,

the peripheral and the weak discarded

on a journey which will ultimately carry no baggage;

a journey to purely selfish ends

so you can return to us for chosen company.

Your very madness permeates this space

(for you are mad to do this, you know).

Your rampant, wilful idiocy,

(unleashing forces temporal and spiritual)

mind and senses unchained,

run minor riot here

bouncing off walls, laser-like,

piercing and burning out creeping reason.

I don’t know the woman who lives here yet

but one thing is clear.

She’s got kangaroos in her top paddock

and she no longer cares to excuse

their demanding behaviour

or their menacing demeanour.

In fact,

I’ve seen her feeding the little devils.