DEBRIDEMENT

Quiet, for Friday evening.

No arrests, no overdoses, no stabbings, no drunks.

But early yet.

The telephone rings:

An explosion. Casualties imminent.

Hasty calls summon extra hands,

as cubicles are cleared, equipment readied.

Then we wait, standing around

while distant sirens echo apprehension.

Amid blue light splashes

the first arrival is stretchered in,

along with acrid smell of burnt flesh.

Abruptly, all are utmost speed,

minds concentrated.

Within minutes it’s a melee, an episode of M*A*S*H* -

without jokes, or commercials.

Windpipes are intubated, veins cannulated, chests drained.

Medical paraphernalia fights failing body systems:

shouted vital statistics report the front line struggle.

My job is to picture the injuries,

to see inside

beyond the stump where foot was torn away.

Blistering, its ragged wound leaks blood;

congeals to hide

severed vessels, shattered bones.

Nails.

Three-inch nails.

Nails driven into flesh,

indiscriminate of person or anatomy.

A modern crucifixion -

smeared with excrement.

Other material:

glass, and buried deep in someone’s neck,

a crumpled Coke can.

The victims are numbered,

hurried away to theatre.

There to face decisions:

what to amputate, what to leave -

balancing future disability against risk of infection.

An exercise in salvage:

over the bleep, bleep, bleep of monitors,

a cauterizing sizzle of diathermy.

Arteries are replumbed, flesh cut away

and wounds scraped, rinsed clean -

debridement.

* * * * *

‘GAY PUB CARNAGE: THREE DEAD’

According to police,

the perpetrator acted alone.

His fascist fascination made bombs out of a notion.

‘FAMILY MOURN BRIDE-TO-BE AND UNBORN CHILD’

Others knew him to be a card-carrying organiser,

inspired by U.S. race war theorists -

an ideology still at large.

No headlines in such accounts as these.

xi.2000 – v.2001

SUNFLOWER

Trampling cream waves of cow parsley,

a young tournesol reaches tall

in thick-stemmed competition with its siblings.

Sharing their saffron symmetry,

and confident of a break in the clouds.

That audience of wheeling heads

tracks Helios’ daily ride, slowly bowing

as seed ripens, top heavy.

Until face down to earth from where they sprang,

necks kyphose from weight of swollen discs, distorted.

Leaves now hang burnt-out; petals also,

the pantaloon’s well-worn ruff, are shrivelling.

Unable to look up from prayer,

still green napes exposed, wait execution, kneeling.

Death reaps a threefold bounty:

your headless corpse first fed to livestock,

then harvest crushed to spread, slickly on slices.

And sown in your grave, the farmer’s fraction,

for a place in the sun worth saving.

 

viii.2000

Poetry Salzburg Review #9, 2006

BACK TO BACK

Chimney pots are a species in decline:

made redundant by smokeless fuel,

Clean Air Acts, and central heating.

Under a Seig Heil of TV aerials

flue stains streak the rendering.

No-one’s taken down a peg it seems -

they’re left arrayed on lines,

though the washing’s long been carried in.

 

From shadow into sodium glare,

I pace these terraces through twilight,

to suck the balmy air:

it’s T-shirt time on easy street.

Open pub doors exhale their beery breath

onto the pavement;

where bored teens squat the chippy steps -

throwaway cheek, thrown away wrappers.

 

Detect the gasometer’s rise and fall:

beneath its lattice crown,

sporadic painted names

still grace the glass of fanlit halls.

From built-in bootscrapers  of the porchless,

to single bays and double fronts -

accretion here preserved

in brick and mortar memory.

 

 viii.2000

  many thanks to John Pearson for his painted skyline

To a Comma (the butterfly effect)

You stopped by and we both paused:

my weight lent on spade,

yours on overlooked nettle.

Had not seen one of your kind

for years; though I recalled the name.

But my guide said you remain,

with two broods every year,

commonplace in this neck of woods –

the punctuation of summer.

 

Still from their restless beating,

crinkle-edged wings unfold, held stiff

by scales and veins. Antennae

read the breeze: quiver with foresight.

Minded to decrypt those hieroglyphs,

dark on your orange parchment,

I had neither tongue nor time:

this torn page fluttering flies away,

unclaimed, where breath lends itself.

vii.2009 - v.2018