The Eye of the Beholder

The eye of the beholder

Is there beauty in those back alleys?
Those dust-strewn, detritus-filled zones?
Nettles half-draped over piles of detritus,
fag ends and condoms discarded.
Down those muddy lanes and brick-walled pathways,
backed with slate-grey, unforgiving skies?
WINTER’S GRIP
Is there beauty in these crisp packets?
In the worm casts and dog shit?
Is there joy in those dandelions, half-expired?
Their seeds blown by the wet-exhaust-pipe wind,
mists from fag ends whispering up,
those weeds that chance in these damp corners?
The dingy stairwells where children played?
JOY
The joy of children’s voices.
Is there hope in those landscapes,
where aching poverty grinds their bones?
Spider webs bejewelled with dew drops,
tyre tracks in puddled lanes.
Graffiti-strewn garage doors, hanging open,
terraced-house hope and broken glass panes.
DRUDGERY
Is there chance in those empty syringes?
Needle-sharp and dirty pain?
Are there messages left in spray cans,
or in the bags half-filled with glue?
Was there love in those condoms,
the quick ebb and flow against the wall?
Was there beauty in those breaths,
puffed out from joints ready-rolled?
PUFFED UP
That bleak-eyed bravado,
shrug of fuck and shove ha’penny,
shame-faced and hung-dog, dog-eared smile,
creeping over those back alleys.
The early morning November mist, haunting.
Is there beauty then in those dusty corners,
forgotten or abandoned in life’s everyday woes?
And of hope, or love, or beauty?
Do we need those country lanes,
their chocolate-box, static beauty,
majestic, inspiring open dales?
THE DOWNS, THE NORTH, THE SOUTH
I’ll spend my life down those back alleys.
They’ll lead nowhere, yet give access,
overlooked and underused.
Their daily utility, rather humdrum.
Their beauty burns across your eyes,
burnt-out shells in burnt-out lanes.
PICK UP YOUR CHIN
Then is there beauty down these alleys?
No fields of corn or skies of crows,
no acres harvested or fresh-ploughed hillsides,
no gable ends or hallowed halls,
no rolling hills or country lanes,
no tea-time honey, no clock at ten to three.
Whose lilacs were they, Eliot’s or Brooke’s?
Abandoned there, in these wastelands,
only fit for butterflies?
COMPOSITION
The supermarket trolley, rusting slowly,
is just a tourist from the other world,
like some exotic migrant swallow,
here today, then gone from all.
Home to brambles and ivy,
home to beetles and to fleas.
Only schoolboys walk these pathways,
only searchers or the diseased,
dead-leaved and fly-blown back alleys,
down some broken, stony way.
DECOMPOSITION
There is life in this leaf-litter,
just as hope and joy are too.
Just as beauty sits there shining
on the shells of the dead and in the bones of the living,
discarded and forgotten—don’t-tell-mum.
Shiny wing case or speckled leaf,
paper bag dancing in the wind.
Of course we bury the dead or burn the past;
its pain too fresh to hold us gently,
its folly full of fresh mistakes,
its empty yearnings and its fist shakes.
DEATH BY WAITING
Sit then by the fire and watch.
His hand trembles, flecked with age,
withered and shrunken, like some old relic
launched from the yard that no longer lives.
His bones and beams, threadbare and open,
we can see the lie of the wood,
the grain, etched, eroded,
withered even, half-done in.
Consider Phlebas now,
look at his weariness,
not yet drowned nor dead.
Those resources will be recycled.
In the back alleys of his imagination,
atom to atom, dust to dust.
DEATH’S INEVITABILITY
Death snatches us, but our shells
lie in the alleys, home to others,
like some damp mattress, discarded,
or fag-pack, screwed and thrown in the hedge.
The hedge that bounds
these stretched highways,
back alleys leading everywhere.
HALF READ, HALF UNDERSTOOD
Those half-read, half-understood,
half-studied, soon-forgotten,
glimpses of the sun through the clouds,
busy as a beetle, or wise as a worm,
dead-torn, half-known, half-learnt by heart,
recited often in whispered words,
mumbled to the wall and then,
first out of the door when the bell rang,
remembered yet not understood.
Whose pen was the best, whose words made us frown, laugh, or sigh,
comparing blue with green, or shit or bust,
whose song was best, or worse, or not,
when everyone has the word to say.
PIED BEAUTY
Beauty stalks down those dead-end back alleys,
whispering in the washing lines,
floating like a ghost, hoping, wailing, cursing,
holding the past like a severed head.
Under crumpled leaves, life rustles,
under overcast skies and darkened eyes,
kicking those dead leaves in the joy of childhood,
like Petronius, gone to join the majority,
kicking the pathway to knowledge,
hiding its truth, such conceit.
THE CRUELEST MONTH
Pound at the door and let me in.
I cannot hold the burden anymore.
Its burning, heavy weight
bears down on me.
The toad of work,
as I join the second poor,
not good enough to join the first,
nor wise or patient enough to be rich.
Nor greedy, I gave all,
and gave, and gave, and gave,
never thought to take a bit.
Haunted by the balance, the tilt,
windmills turned and stepped aside,
like Walter Mitty, I reside
in fantasy land or firing squads.
The lordship, please, don’t hold back.
The rewards and prizes, please.
For a life of fairies and fluff!
Hand them over, please.
I’ll lie on my CV
and get promoted then!
Claim to have intelligence,
or a degree from a university of life.
Archer’s house was once Brooks’s,
whose pen was better—there’s the rub.
Arise and take the things from life,
arise from out of those puddles,
lying in the half-abandoned, empty alleys,
like some monster from the primeval swamp,
dragging forward, slopping, slipping,
dash, drown, dying, dig and doped.
Those lilacs full of perfume don’t last so long;
then brown and dampened, gone to seed.
Ghost-written and then signed by others,
claim the prize for myself.
THE LIVING-DYING
As cold as stone,
as cold a stone,
exploding slowly
in the shadows of the stones,
we lie, the living dying.
In the shadows of the stones,
disproving April’s cruelty
by the burial of the dead,
down those long-forgotten lanes
that lead to who-knows-when.
Looking down at the past through the lens
of nostalgia and wondering
why things ain’t what they used to be,
dragged back from the net, chronophage,
tasks that need to be done,
written, etched on paper,
hammered into stone.
The Beatles lied.
The love taken and made do not balance.
I stand here in the field
like some crazy twitcher,
taking photos of rare birds
that no one cares about,
like trying to own the un-ownable,
capturing glimpses on paper.
Prestige or pathos
on the wall.
“I was here.”
Like so much dog’s piss,
washed by the endless rain,
marking some long-lost territory,
given up, then lost to history,
laughed at and disowned.