One by one I named all of the butterflies in the pictures, some of which I had learned to identify only the evening before, from the same book; and some of which were almost as familiar as my own family. Dad’s eyes twinkled with delight; he loved it when I got things right.

“Well done, lad. Well done. Do you know, when I was a boy in India, some of these butterflies were exotic to me. Here, they’re all over the bloody place! Annie, he got them all right, isn’t that good?”

“Mmm, lovely,” said my mother, more interested in the pages of her Mills and Boon novel “perhaps he should have some pocket-money to go to the shops.” She was near the end of her book, and we recognized the expression, the posture, the small flicker of her steely grey eyes as they beamed into the pages. It meant: “Do not disturb me. Interrupt at your peril.”

“Half-a-crown,” said Dad, “and yes, you can spend it all on sweets if you like. Just don’t worry about your teeth all falling out, at least you know all your butterflies.” Dad, proud and awkward, gave me the coin he fished from his pocket.

“Can you get some shopping too, Michael?” said Mum, in a distant, faraway tone. “Give him a fiver, Viknesh, there’s a list in the kitchen.”

“A fiver? How much shopping you bloody want him to get?” and Dad walked out of the room. I stood before Mum, uncomfortably turning over the half-a-crown in my hand. She looked up at me briefly and smiled, then turned back to her book.

“Will my football kit be ready for Monday, Mum? I put it in the wash yesterday eve…” She interrupted with a loud sigh, and without looking up, said:

“Yes, yes.” And she was back in the arms of her fantasy hero once again.

“There’s a whole weekend’s shop here. He can’t bloody carry all this by…”

“Yes he can.”

“We’ll drive to the supermarket. Doesn’t look much like we’re doing anything else this bloody weekend, does it?” Mum didn’t answer, or even look up at Dad. She turned a page gracefully.

“Get your jacket, Michael. You have to help me. Come on, let’s go.” Dad took his jacket from the peg in the hall and turned to leave the house. He was angry, but he was letting it simmer down rather than boil up. Mum, she was like ice. I knew she was angry but I didn’t know why, and the fact that she held it inside her, poised and brittle, scared me.

Poetry should not live in books on shelves, all covered in dust.

From now on, it should be written on the stripes of zebras

that run on the Savannah

announced in vapour trails of aeroplanes,

engraved on the glass of morning milk-bottles,

alongside bite-sized mini-quotes on cereal boxes,

and printed, in rhyming couplets, onto all utility bills.

 

Limericks should be placed on big blue signs up and down the motorways,

sonnets onto street-maps, and kennings strung aloft miles of festival bunting,

haiku iced over cakes in the bakers shop window,

and all the morning papers should filled with the works

of Benjamin Zephaniah and William Blake.

 

But let it not be, that just published poets

should hold this worthy court:

let every scribbler and scrawler, every closet wordsmith,

be illuminated by this craft!

Or let our words appear in thought bubbles

floating importantly overhead,

while children call revolting rhymes

and rude recitations around the playground daily.

 

There should be reams of rhymes of graffiti in our cities,

and police should learn to rap to rhythms of flat-foot plod

as all good citizens uphold the law

according to Pablo Neruda, Aphra Behn and e.e. cummings.

 

in the NHS, nurses shall croon soothingly to their patients about

        " ...hosts of golden daffodils", or,

         "...rage, rage against the dying of the light”

while doctors prescribe twice daily verses of Rumi,

or Marge Piercy, or John Cooper Clark

 

while military forces are issued with arms to hug

and will shout out from megaphones, microphones, minarets,

the best works of our peace poets

while all weapons are melted down

and made into statues of Wilfred Owen, Emily Dickinson,

Rupert Brooke and Ken Saro-Wiwa.

 

This good earth will be safe and free, beneath the grace of poetry!

You think these politics absurd?

This will make our country great; or I’ll eat my words.

from 'The Wisdom of Bees' CD

 

 

Conversation

The zig-zag of their consonants
buzz and curve as if
they have sawed their language,
sharp with silver tongues.

I tell this to Ania
and she translates the joke to friends.
Laughter scatters - the same in any language.

How does English sound
to the Polish ear? I ask.

Her reply is immediate
accented by a smile.

“Like circles,” she says
“circles inside circles.”

We spend the afternoon
rippled in conversation.

From 'Immigrants, Migrants, Native Species' exhibit, Mythic Garden, Dartmoor

Volcano hot and red as lobster
Billy’s fast car gleams and shines,
beat-box throbs in hot-rod dragster
engine whirrs a throaty whine. 

Billy’s pride and race-track joy
has reputation far and fast,
icon that makes man a boy
and king, from back-street kid, at last. 

If Son-of-God was six feet tall
if Billy’s beaming grin was stars
if chequered flag was Lord of All -
the world would worship racing cars

but CO2 fumes take their toll
and oil bleeds nations into wars
and Billy wonders that his soul
should race towards a greater cause.

And how his sweetheart frets and fusses!
How her fears feed storms and strife!
She wants to buy a fleet of buses
live a cleaner, greener life.

Billy can’t give up the races
can’t give up the speed or thrills
knows the finish line he faces -
all alone. Truth hurts. Speed kills.

Unpublished, performance poem

My Grandmother in Sikkim

 

My Grandmother in Sikkim
is dust, and is scattered to the wind.
Footprints she left in mountain snow
have run to rivers, long ago.

 Those lands of her ancestral home
hold faded whispers of her bones -
and yet across time’s span I hear
and feel her presence standing near,

and moments from her life unfold
to speak in my mind, voiceless told.
They rise to thrive from hidden dark
and light a fire with vivid spark

as history within me, stirs,
embraces passions that were hers
and images I have never known
wake memories as if were my own. 

They echo like an ancient song;
call to my heart, beat to belong
where orchids spill and magnolias rise
where ice-white pinnacles pierce the sky .

No breadth of land that spans this earth
divides us, nor will death or birth;
connection to all kith and kin
belongs always, beyond the skin. 

The past is not lost, it is just mislaid
by deals that time and truth once made,
and prayers whispered long ago
still have their own force, their own flow

to cleanse the wounds that lies arranged
with tongues that speak, for peaceful change.
No Empire now, to stem that flood.
Myths reawaken in my blood.

Available on 'The Wisdom of Bees' CD