held high
The world at night with my little eye
I spy
The moon close enough to touch
I try
Silver painted elephants have learned
to fly
Giants fence with searchlights
in the sky
Too soon into the magic shelter
he and I
Air raids are so much fun
I wonder why
In the bunk below, a big boy
starts to cry.
Bye Bye Black Sheep
Volunteering at seventeen, Uncle Joe
Went to Dunkirk as a Royal Marine
And lived, not to tell the tale.
Demobbed, he brought back a broken 303,
A quiver of bayonets, and a kitbag
Of badges, bullets and swastikas
Which he doled out among warstruck nephews.
With gasflame-blue eyes and dark unruly hair
He could have been God’s gift. Gone anywhere.
But a lifetime’s excitement had been used up
On his one-and-only trip abroad. Instead,
Did the pools and horses. ‘Lash me, I’m bored,’
He’d moan, and use language when Gran
Was out of the room. He was our hero.
But not for long. Apparently he was
No good. Couldn’t hold down a job.
Gave the old buck to his Elders and Betters.
Lazy as sin, he turned to drink
And ended up marrying a Protestant.
A regular black sheep was Uncle Joe.
Funny how wrong kids can be.
Snipers
When I was kneehigh to a tabletop,
Uncle Ted came home from Burma.
He was the youngest of seven brothers
so the street borrowed extra bunting
and whitewashed him a welcome.
All the relations made the pilgrimage,
including us, laughed, sang, made a fuss.
He was as brown as a chairleg,
drank tea out of a white mug the size of my head,
and said next to nowt.
But every few minutes he would scan
the ceiling nervously, hands begin to shake.
‘For snipers,’ everyone later agreed,
‘A difficult habit to break.’
Sometimes when the two of us were alone,
he’d have a snooze after dinner
and I’d keep an eye open for Japs.
Of course, he didn’t know this
and the tanner he’d give me before I went
was for keeping quiet,
but I liked to think it was money well spent.
Being Uncle Ted’s secret bodyguard
had its advantages, the pay was good
and the hours were short, but even so,
the novelty soon wore off, and instead,
I started school and became an infant.
Later, I learned that he was in a mental home.
‘Needn’t tell anybody… Nothing serious
… Delayed shock… Usual sort of thing
… Completely cured now the doctors say.’
The snipers came down from the ceiling
but they didn’t go away.
Over the next five years they picked off
three of his brothers; one of whom was my father.
No glory, no citations,
Bang! straight through the heart.
Uncle Ted’s married now, with a family.
He doesn’t say much, but each night after tea,
he still dozes fitfully in his favourite armchair.
He keeps out of the sun, and listens now and then
for the tramp tramp tramp of the Colonel Bogeymen.
He knows damn well he’s still at war,
just that the snipers aren’t Japs anymore.
Bucket
everyevening after tea
grandad would take his bucket for a walk
An empty bucket
When i asked him why
he said because it was easier to carry
than a full one
grandad had an answer for everything
Smart Railings
towards the end of his tether
grandad
at the drop of a hat
would paint the railings
we became famous
allover the neighbourhood
for our smart railings
(and our dirty hats)
Tramp Tramp Tramp
Insanity left him when he needed it most.
Forty years at Bryant & May, and a scroll
To prove it. Gold lettering, and a likeness
Of the Founder. Grandad’s name writ small:
‘William McGarry, faithful employee’.
A spent match by the time I knew him.
Choking on fish bones, talking to himself,
And walking round the block with a yardbrush
Over his shoulder. ‘What for, Gran?’ ‘Hush…
Poor man, thinks he’s marching off to war.
‘Spitting image of Charlie, was your Grandad,
And taller too.’ She’d sigh. ‘Best-looking
Man in Seaforth. And straight-backed?
Why, he’d walk down Bridge Road
As if he had a coat-hanger in his suit.’
St Joseph’s Hospice for the Dying, in Kirkdale,
Is where Chaplin made his last movie.
He played Grandad, and gave a fine performance
Of a man raging against God, and cursing
The nuns and nurses who tried to hold him down.
Insanity left him when he needed it most.
The pillow taken from his face
At the moment of going under. Screaming
And fighting to regain the years denied,
His heart gave out, his mind gave in, he died.
The final scene brings tears to everybody’s eyes.
In the parlour, among suppurating candles
And severed flowers, I see him smiling
Like I’d never seen him smile before.
Coat-hanger at his back. Marching off to war.
Bars are Down
When I was a lad
most people round our way
were barzydown.
It was a world full of piecans.
Men who were barmy, married to women
who wanted their heads examined.
When not painting the railings,
our neighbours were doolally,
away for slates.
Or so my dad reckoned.
Needed locking away
the lot of them.
Leaving certain McGoughs
and a few close friends
free to walk the empty streets
in peace. Knowing exactly
whether we were coming or going.
Self-righteous in polished shoes.
Picking our way
clearheadedly,
between loose screws.
Sad Aunt Madge
As the cold winter evenings drew near
Aunt Madge used to put extra blankets
over the furniture, to keep it warm and cosy.
Mussolini was her lover, and life
was an outoffocus rosy-tinted spectacle.
but neurological experts
with kind blueeyes
and gentle voices
small white hands
and large Rolls Royces
said that electric shock treatment
should do the trick
it did…
today after 15 years of therapeutic tears
and an awful lot of ratepayers’ shillings
down the hospital meter
sad Aunt Madge
no longer tucks up the furniture
before kissing it goodnight
and admits
that her affair with Mussolini
clearly was not right
particularly in the light
of her recently announced engagement
to the late pope.
Hearts and Flowers
Aunty Marge,
Spinster of the parish, never had a boyfriend.
Never courted, never kissed.
A jerrybuilt dentist and a smashed jaw
Saw to that.
To her,
Life was a storm in a holy-water font
Across which she breezed
With all the grace and charm
Of a giraffe learning to windsurf.
But sweating
In the convent laundry, she would iron
Amices, albs and surplices
With such tenderness and care
You’d think priests were still inside.
Deep down,
She would like to have been a nun
And talked of missing her vocation
As if it were the last bus home:
‘It passed me by when I was looking the other way.’
‘Besides,’
She’d say, ‘What Order would have me?
The Little Daughters of the Woodbine?
The Holy Whist Sisters?’ A glance at the ceiling.
‘He’s not that hard up.’
We’d laugh
And protest, knowing in our hearts that He wasn’t.
But for the face she would have been out there,
Married, five kids, another on the way.
Celibacy a gift unearned, unasked for.
But though
A goose among grown-ups,
Let loose among kids
She was an exploding fireworks factory,
A runaway pantomime horse.
Everybody’s
Favourite aunt. A cuddly toy adult
That sang loud and out of tune.
That dropped, knocked over and bumped into things,
That got ticked off just like us.
Next to
A game of cards she liked babysitting best.
Once the parents were out of the way
It was every child for itself. In charge,
Aunt Marge, renegade toddler-in-chief.
Falling
Asleep over pontoon, my sister and I,
Red-eyed, would beg to be taken to bed.
‘Just one more game of snap,’ she’d plead,
And magic two toffees from behind an ear.
Then suddenly
Whooshed upstairs in the time it takes
To open the front door. Leaving us to possum,
She’d tiptoe down with the fortnightly fib:
‘Still fast asleep, not a murmur all night. Little angels.’
But angels
Unangelic, grew up and flew away. And fallen,
Looked for brighter toys. Each Christmas sent a card
With kisses, and wondered how she coped alone.
Up there in a council flat. No phone.
Her death
Was as quick as it was clumsy. Neighbours
Found the body, not us. Sitting there for days
Stiff in Sunday best. Coat half-buttoned, hat askew.
On her way to Mass. Late as usual.
Her rosary
Had snapped with the pain, the decades spilling,
Black beads trailing. The crucifix still
Clenched in her fist. Middle finger broken.
Branded into dead flesh, the sign of the cross.
From the missal
In her lap, holy pictures, like playing cards,
Lay scattered. Five were face-up:
A Full House of Sacred Hearts and Little Flowers.
Aunty Marge, lucky in cards.
Casablanca
You must remember this
To fall in love in Casablanca
To be the champion of Morocco.
The size of tuppence
Photographs show Uncle Bill holding silver cups
Wearing sepia silks and a George Formby grin.
Dominique
Had silent film star looks. With brown eyes
Black hair and lips full to the brim, she was a race apart.
He brought her over
To meet the family early on. An exotic bloom
In bleak post-war Bootle. Just the once.
Had there been children
There might have been more contact. But letters,
Like silver cups, were few and far between.
At seventy-eight
It’s still the same old story. Widowed and lonely
The prodigal sold up and came back home.
I met him that first Christmas
He spoke in broken scouse. Apart from that
He looked like any other bow-legged pensioner.
He had forgotten the jockey part
The fight for love and glory had been a brief episode
In a long, and seemingly, boring life.
It turned out
He had never felt at home there
Not a week went by without him thinking of Liverpool.
Casablanca
The airplane on the runway. She in his arms.
Fog rolling in from the Mersey. As time goes by.
What Happened to Henry
What happened to Henry Townsend that summer
still turns my stomach. Not long after the war
when barrage balloons had been cut loose
and coal was delivered by horse and cart
lads would chase the wagon up the street
and when the coalie wasn’t looking
grab hold of the tailboard, and legs dangling
hang there for as long as they could.
According to one, Henry, head thrown back
and swinging too close to the edge,
had caught his foot between the spokes
of the rear left wheel. As it turned
his leg snapped in half. I heard the screams
three streets away. Not his, but his mother’s,
who’d been gabbing on the corner.
Air-raid sirens to send us all scurrying.
The driver, ashen-faced beneath the coaldust
held fast the reins to prevent the horse
from moving, but nervous, it bucked
and strained and tried to pull away.
Glad to be of use, two men unbuckled the traces,
freed the horse and laid the shafts gently down.
A kitchen chair was brought out so that
Henry could take the weight off his leg.
***
Those are the facts and this is the picture:
Late one summer’s afternoon in Seaforth
on a wooden chair on a cobbled street
a ten-year-old sits with his leg in a wheel.
His mother is crying, but not Henry.
He is stock-still. Against her blue pinny
his face has the pale luminescence of an angel.
A neighbour brings him out a drink of water,
cup and saucer, best china. No sign yet
of an ambulance. Not a policeman in sight.
Frantic, my gran arrives to chase me home.
(Compared to his sister, though, Henry got off light.)
What Happened to Dorothy
That’s me on the left.
Page-boy in a velvet suit.
Four years old, blond curls and scowling.
Lucky horseshoe trailing.
That’s Dorothy, Maid-of-Honour.
Though only three years older,
in her long white dress,
veil and floral tiara
she could be a teenager.
She never would be, though.
(It wasn’t a road accident)
Tin bath in the kitchen.
(It wasn’t diphtheria)
Pan after pan of boiling water.
(Or polio, or cancer)
Kids warned not to run about.
(It wasn�
��t murder on the sand dunes)
Only half full, but scalding
(It wasn’t drowning in the canal)
When she tripped and fell in.
That’s me on the left.
Lucky horseshoe still trailing.
That’s Dorothy, still seven.
The Fallen Birdman
The oldman in the cripplechair
Died in transit through the air
And slopped into the road.
The driver of the lethallorry
Trembled out and cried: ‘I’m sorry,
But it was his own fault.’
Humans snuggled round the mess
In masochistic tenderness
As raindrops danced in his womb.
***
But something else obsessed my brain,
The canvas, twistedsteel and cane,
His chair, spreadeagled in the rain,
Like a fallen birdman.
Alphabet Soup
Whenever I went into our local library
I would take out a book for my dad.
An adventure yarn. Something to do with the sea.
Occasionally, I’d bring home one he’d read before.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he would say, ‘it’s a good ’un.’
And settling down, sign on for the same voyage.
It wasn’t laziness on his part, but a kind of fear.
Libraries were for educated people.
Full of traps. Procedures. Forms to fill in.
They would notice his handwriting wasn’t joined up