A London Sequence
I
The reptilian barmaid was irresistible, slithering behind the bar, pierced and tattooed, her hair like black seaweed hanging down over a rock at low tide;
dim lights cast a pall like a nicotine stain through the air, affecting every
colour’s tone: the red chenille curtains drawn, green leather benches, the pock-
marked wooden floor, the tables scratched like school-desks, brass coat hooks at intervals along the walls. You felt you’d found the perfect bar. Even the music
real enough to make you weep. And how damn harsh the whisky without water, like self-flagellation - acid stomach swirling, letting you chew on its bitter taste
before washing it away with your chasing beer. Your cap half-cocked, curls tumbling over your brow like you’re some – or you think you’re some – free
thinking non-conformist and libertine. Fuck you. How long are you going to stay before you take the slow train home and hope someone engages you in
something meaningful so you can affirm, fleetingly and drunkenly, your mediocrity? The taxi rank in the rain and how pitiful the walk across the bus
lane, vying for the next ride even though you yearn for someone to take you in their arms, let you in through their front door, into the sitting-room you look into
from the outside at its perfect order and warmth, the accoutrements of a closed, unthreatened life. You want to sit there with the fire on, TV in the background,
the worn easy-fit of the sofa, sounds of someone in the kitchen or on the landing.
You won’t move in case you lose all their warmth and promise of intimacy.
II
I drink to blunt the edge
And to clothe the naked me,
To slowly place imposter leaves
Upon the winter tree.
III
These days it takes days to let it sink in. Yet again
news of someone sick, dead or on their way:
This time both breasts cut free of her body, rectum
closed and sewn tightly, the colostomy bag in situ.
And still it spreads again. Her lungs now the fertile
ground for it to relish and flourish while her husband
calmly says ‘she will be ok’. It’s as though you’ve heard
news of rain to come or the falling pound. Until early
hours wakefulness turns up the volume of the thousand
jibber-jabber voices, unfocussed, competing, like an army
of ants crawling across your skin. Lying left, lying right,
on your back, as the street lights strain through the curtains
and an uninhabited timelessness pulls life’s rug from
under you. You’re in l’heure bleu, alone and casting a shadowless
presence over the sheen-wet street. Where might it lead?
Tomorrow? Or back then when you vilified each other in mirth
and drank away the keen edge you were all standing on.
Death is like a memory. Here it comes, suddenly to life.
IV
The years wasted in a suit:
bowels clogged, liver fat,
bags like hanging baskets
beneath the eyes, while
believing the meaningless
to be meaningful,
the stress to be
a rational transaction
for bread and beer.
The synapses dull when
once they had been so clear.
V
To assuage her guilt you spent most of your life trying to reassure her by demonstrating none of it had had any real effect, all the time burying and
pushing away the notion that it was you who needed the acknowledgement
and understanding. It was only when she, addled by sepsis, crossed the
dimensions of time and said, “Sorry, I didn’t want to put you through all this again” that you received the affirmation you had long-time forgotten you needed.
Again days later - post-stroke - unable to close her eyes or speak, she reached
out her foreshortened arm and webbed hand in a dying embrace from beloved
mother to beloved son for the first and very last time. Half a century and more
summarised by neither wanting to let go. Just as you found her again she was
about to leave you again, this time to a place beyond your mortal reach, leaving you once more to roam in search for that which can never be found. Sorry for
the day you found her unconscious, phone dangling off the hook, swaying against the cream-coloured wall, the night outside black, the whole scene hideously
inversed in the uncurtained window, no one to help you, her denture lying next to her gaping mouth. So you did the only things a five-year-old could think to do
to make life normal again – you replaced the receiver, put her denture back in and called out to her. The way you still do. She had never not responded before.
This was aloneness. Siblings boarded away, father abroad away, you left behind
with an unhappy, misunderstood drunk. Then you were the only person left, the
only security in existence gone – like a hot air balloon you couldn’t control succumbing to the wind, you had no choice but to opt for the sky and never really
came fully back down again. It didn’t matter others tried to restore order because life had changed – irrevocably, intrinsically – and the pathway upon
which your chubby child legs walked and ran, the vision of the unopened world you had until then only smiled upon, had shifted like the Earth changing its axis
as you were propelled into a new, uncertain universe that has ever since scared you with its noise, its violent blue lights and its flashing unpredictability.
VI
Marbles bouncing down the street
faster than your running feet.
A child’s hands try to gather
but they disappear forever.
VII
Hungerford Bridge in the rain I remember.
The trains heading south-east hissed and clacked
and we stopped half-way to look upon the Thames.
A tug pulls a barge through the green-grey water,
churning its dirty white spray. The river-bus
to Greenwich on its way, heading first to Bankside
then the Tower before it gathers speed towards
the Cutty Sark and Meridian Line. Let’s do that
one day, we said, before heading down to Festival Hall.
After lunch we looked at books outside the NFT,
talked of Eliot’s Four Quartets. One day my books
will be yours, you said, and I, a poet lost for words,
did not want you to go away, but also longed for
the day to end and for you to part. I could not bear
the sadness I saw beating in your heart.
VIII
The dreadlocked white boy beat the barmaid at poker dice,
so she gave him a free beer
And the ex-pro footballer, spoiling for a fight, hitting on two
women who didn’t want to know,
Cold-stares the suedehead barman half his size, who tries
to shepherd him towards the door
and gets a sucker punch upon the jaw.
Insults are exchanged behind you by two men standing at
the bar; one calls the other nigger
And is thrown across your table. You lift your glass in time,
finishing your drink in one, before
Heading out into the Soho night alone: oh, man, this is
nothing new – Chinese medicine shops,
their masseuses wanting you to stop
And restaurant waiters hanging lanterns, readying for
the Chinese new year – this time the rat.
A sex-worker, her brown skin face entirely beautiful
with laughter lines and scars,
Wearing a denim jacket, white shirt and jeans, asks you
“Hi, are you’re looking for a girl?”
You say, “Sorry,” as your desire unfurls,
“I’m looking for a cab.” She laughs, you laugh, and that
fleeting connection is like trying
To catch leaves caught on the wind - impossible to hold,
impossible to keep, she knows it too,
But puts her arm through yours and you let her lead,
trusting her, abandoning your fear.
She says, “I’ll show you, my dear.”
You step in time with her – into the void – the faceless,
scurrying human world of car horns,
Brake lights, drunks and doormen, tourists way off
where they should ever be,
An intricate pattern of strangers and strangeness. She says,
“There’s a cab office here.”
She kisses you and disappears.
Whose arms did she end up in later? Whose careless body
would have lain upon her? In front
Of whom did she have to kneel down to unzip a fly?
The Polish driver tells you that
He’s a gangster as he coat-tails an ambulance past a jam.
His red-hair number one
Reminds you of a setting sun.