the FUPress Blog

The Gap Years – poems

YOU DID IT.


You did it.
You didn’t care
I didn’t care 
When they lay there at night
Alone 
Scared by the loneliness
Scared of the past
Scared of a future
Where everyone was hurt
And nobody cares
You don’t even know their names.


You didn’t care for them
But there were staff on eight hour shifts
And it was not
The secure centre
Where they ended up 
With a long night ahead 
Thinking it through 
All the things that happened
To these children of ours.
You have no excuse.

You didn’t care enough
To be able to do one thing 
To stop that terrible 
Spin down and thoughts 
And conclusion
That made splashes 
In the cold river
Over one hundred feet
Above was the bridge
From where they fell.

You don’t care enough to cry
For these girls from the centre
Left lying in their room 
To weep when the videos plays
Their last steps out in 
Their track suit bottoms and anoraks
Out down the road
Excited and together
Before you are left with news reports
And coroners inquests.

You don’t care 
No-one cared 
But in the end 
They found something 
When all seemed lost
Do you hope that 
They found love
That swept over them 
And that’s how they went.
You did it.




NINE  ELEVEN.


English though I am
I dared to write that
A year and a day later
When they fill our senses
With the scenes prescient of
A total collapse uncontrolled.


Always there is this humanity stark
In the face of fear
So deep that moments from death
They stay true to an ideal
Beyond and above mens gross
Exploits of free dreams for evil.


They were trying to do good as
They raced to their deaths
On the broad tenders of the Fire
Department of New York who
I saw flinch as the jumpers
Fell when they carried out their father.


They are always now above us
And it seems that we owe
Only to their humanity a due
Not to debase the truth of man's
Aspirations beyond the mortal
With uncertain actions of violence.

2003

It’s been a year

Another year I guess for those

Who lost out on the life

Lottery and were above eighty seven

Unable to do anything but

Burn or jump –

Don’t go there the young say ,

Don’t deal with the mess in the desert

Or in the courtyard where

They say flesh lay in parts.

Its all one war –

Blood in the sand or on the glass

And whether it is oil or not

Or  three faiths in one city,

It’s a violent and bloody headless

Torso of  civilisation

Isn’t it

Where we all together make

This pact to die

Your turn or mine.

Who Are They ?

The green roll of gentle hills

Beneath a grey scudding sky

Where there are multiple levels of

Clouds within squalls and rain coming in

And here we play with horses

Jumping and trotting and held

Close pulsing to me

Alive and life so strong.

It seemed so long from that time

When we lived with fear of sickness

The sun broke through

And then was swallowed

As I asked the mother

How things were

And we acknowledged that there was a sign

Of change in her.

The horse breathed and the breath was sweet

The beast was muscle and flesh and clean

The rain rinsed off the grass

Wind breezed through the skies

It was a long far way

From the room

Of machines

Making men breathe.

Air on flesh

Damp on your face

Life so far from the numerated deaths

Where they worked

Night after night

Twelve hours after twelve

Holding hands

Against the viral overload.

This is the story I heard under the billowing clouds

Of what went down

One day

When a man was gasping breath

Death coming

Who is here ?

What was he saying ?

They all tried to hear

And called for interpretation

Sounds unclear on breath

Hard fought

It could be important.

Gather round

Sssshhh is it a message?

What do you call the men and women

Who did these shifts

Whose comfort was the final humanity

What do you say In a breeze by the hill

What was he fighting to say ?

It was this – a “thank you”

To the Angels.