The Warrior Race on Bath Street
first a girl on
a boy’s back
out
of their heads
laughing glass
smashing five or six
piling in
with fists boots charging
up the hill not seeing
the shoppers
hiding
against the walls of
banks lawyers bistros
the zenith
of civilisation
letting them
steam past booting
roaring throwing
each other to
the road stamping
one face
as it melts in the centre
the vortex
people
silent behind
their two-way mirror watching
a primal fury
take shape letting
them get on with it
at the back of the store at the far
end of the aisle
at 8.13 in the morning
with no-one but me
the lights muzak
to see
between
the breakfast cereals on one side
fairy liquids tie handle bags
on the other
something told me
he stretched
for a box
on the top shelf
tilted shook crumpled
to the clean floor
without a sound
without a
muzak soothing the flakes
I could have left
I ran
told an assistant
a security man in a blue jumper
who ran I didn’t
want to be alone as he slipped
into unconsciousness dark
a complete recovery
with his loved ones at his side
for all I know
I had to go
and pay for my milk
hold my head talk softly
the ambulance is coming
The Tarot Cards that Ginsberg Touched
In Baader-Meinhof black
and armed with
a shaggy black beard
Allen Ginsberg
sometime in the Seventies
as all the hairy kids
sat on the floor
gaping in awe at
his shaggy black poems
and swaying about with
their hairy mushroom eyes
and Timothy Leary ears
and you asked him
back to your house
and gave him cold beer
to make his head spin
and hot pizza to fill
his streamofconsciousness tummy
and the chance
to not have to be
a howl-performing monkey
for just a little while
before the next gig
or Berwick-upon-Tweed
as he played karma poker
with your bumper pack
of Aleister Crowley tarot cards
and left his hairy DNA
all over the magician
and the sorceress
and the fool
and death and cheese
in his transcendental beard
The Death of Fergus on the Kitchen Floor
During the Very Hot Summer of 1976 Then my dad is lying on his back
still on the linoleum with his eyes
open milky not seeing
or seeing clearly the kitchen he’s left
the door into the back garden
the light they say you see the corridor light
I’m inches
close to his face his lips another
colour than normal I can see
the lips colour his eyes his breath
coming out quickly like he’s just run a race
his sleeveless pullover no glasses on
he always wears glasses
he took them off as if he knew
the television in the background
our neighbour trying to give him mouth to
mouth but not pinching the nose I tell him
to pinch the nose calm the middle
of all the eye
eyes the ambulance arrives
and the men do some things on their knees
and shake their heads look at me
as if to say do you
think you should be here? of course the end
of the love that made me linoleum where he
stops my dad heart nose the only kitchen I
hope to go whatever I’m trying to find
needing to give a beat of strength unable
to send a good breath into
the biggest day of my father’s my life
mum said
he came to her a few nights later
and a voice not his said he
wasn’t able to speak but was doing okay
Could Be a Ford Cortina But It’s Hard to Tell
there’s a skeleton in the ravine picked clean of wing mirrors headlamps number plates nodding dog to the local beauty spot set light to shove over the top to watch it settles in place the remains pushed in long before a work 
