terraced houses gone square-eyed from looking
too long at the homes opposite, while people
lug their lives to bus stop, chip shop, chapel.
From here, I could reach down
and fuck with them. Look, here comes my sister
with her latest bloke. Watch now as I take
his hair between thumb and forefinger and gently
pull: his eyebrows rise in shock, as if
to compensate. From here,
you feel the way God feels if God is
lonely: it’s all wind blow-drying the grass
for its big night out, radio-friendly birdsong,
sheep doing their thought balloon impressions.
From here, I could destroy everyone I know
by blinking. From here, I could step off
the world. My father comes out of the shop,
cracking a rolled-up Argus against his hip,
doing the walk I nicked from him.
He lights a cigarette mam can’t stub out:
from here I’ll see him safely home,
scan miles around for speeding cars,
watch his breath rise through the air,
disappear before it reaches here.
View of Valleys High Street through a Café Window
Out there, policemen in attention-seeking
fluoro-vests eye up a single mam
pushing a pram, her head down and her face
so much a frown, it’s like she’s trying to mow
the pavement. Brollies bob above each head
like thought balloons, if everyone were thinking,
Fuck me, it’s raining. They’re not thinking that,
these lovers who hold hands at just the height
of shopping bags, or this girl who smokes a fag
and rides a bike past, like a really crap
steam train. A man with a cumulonimbus
beard enters a phone box and I wait
for him to emerge as Superman. He checks
the tray for change, as his hot-water bottle
wags its tail. In this window, our ghosts,
those silly sods, sit at the pavement table,
eating cake from their left hands and getting
soaked. A board outside the travel agent’s
puts a price on the sun. The democratic
rain falls on it, on them, on everyone.
Colliery Row
That’s it, with the bloke at number five,
whose days are driving buses, nights The Crown.
To watch him walking down the street at night’s
to forecast how his bus will be next day:
if he’s wobbling, then you’d best stay in the house,
but if he’s walking straight, you’ll be okay.
At number six? The terrace’s Don Juan.
At the first sign of sunshine he’s half-naked
on a deck chair out front with a beer can.
His belly over his shorts is a landslide
which traps for days a hillside family cottage,
a school, a church, an entire alpine village,
but no women. Not even her across the road,
our lady on the other side of the curtains,
who’s been walking around beneath a cloud
of dark hair since she watched her husband go.
Her car is parked outside all summer, pointing
away from here. She looks out through the window
at skateboard kids, who run rings round my childhood,
making ramps of bits of brick and wood,
so they can take off, shake off this old street
for an instant. They land outside number three,
Jasmine Cottage, all Neighbourhood Watch,
all No Parking Here Please and untouched
daughters. The bloke at the other end of the row
carried hods and now he’s carrying
his unemployment. In his garden grow
For Sale signs. Today, he’s out back, burning something –
his smoke signals to neighbours translate,
roughly, as Screw you! At number eight’s
the stately home of a terraced princess,
whose fake tan really turns her into someone
from somewhere else. She lets down her hair
for a Friday night hero, an ear-pierced bloke,
a handbrake magician, all mouth and sound system,
whose car disappears in a puff of smoke.
The terraced houses, semi-detached lives.
What is a street for? Wind picks up, tonight,
and a bus driver sways towards his home.
The stars come out above Colliery Row,
as far as stars from anywhere on earth.
Look up at them now. Imagine living here.
USA Family Kebab House, Merthyr Tydfil
Only the counter stands between them:
on the left, Gloria, shifting her fatness
from hip to hip, as if it were a baby,
on the right, him. She knows each move by now:
his body tight as he reaches with the knife,
slices the pole-dancing doner, dips his fingers
in the needless salad. Customer service
is love: Have a good evening, pretty lady.
She knows his shifts, his favourite football team
and where he lives. Back home,
she can’t wait for knives and forks,
shuffles some bills into a table mat,
lets chilli sauce drip down her chin.
Tomorrow’s his day off: she’ll need to be up early.
She opens a can, raises it to him.
Owen Jones
You’ll find him standing sentry outside the bookies,
his reflection in the Oxfam window:
a roll-up and a cup of plastic tea.
His dreams are scribbled on papers in his pockets.
Or you’ll see him, nights, in the kebab shop:
he swallows your drunk chat, counts your money
carefully into the till, ladles chilli sauce,
ekes out enough for the next day’s races.
Some remember the boy he was:
how he could play off scratch at seventeen,
the trial he had for Cardiff City.
Others mention his best mate and his missis.
2.15: he flicks his fag out, goes in again,
where his clothes, his cars, his years have already been.
No one would notice his smile as the door swings.
A crisp packet rustles its applause in the wind.
Raskolnikov in Ebbw Vale
I was with my missis when I first spotted him,
down Festival Park, doing some shopping.
In his whole wardrobe, on coat-hanger bones,
he looked like some survivor of rationing
or the grunge generation, and when he spoke
there was a taste of something European.
His face was a mess of guilt and tension.
The next time was down the Rugby Club disco.
He seemed to have moved on to Joy Division,
spasm-dancing to Wham! in his coat –
his hair, cut shorter, made him look taller.
I didn’t cop off, so followed him home.
He gave me the slip around by the station,
but by then I’d invented a life story for him:
how he’d survived existential angst
and a Siberian prison camp
to come to Wales, drawn to our hills –
a welcome escape from industrialisation –
and our more moderate socialism.
It was obvious to anyone who looked at him.
The next step was to have a word with him.
I was given a tip by my mate Parker,
who’d seen him come out of a flat by The Star.
I filled up the flask and tobacco tin,
parked the van in
a discreet location
and settled in. It was almost morning
when he got back. I walked towards him:
it was then I felt the rock in my pocket,
my hand becoming a fist around it.
X16
The 7.54 to Cardiff is a dream.
In his shop window,
the bus driver is an ugly mannequin.
I take my seat among the regulars:
him who wakes five minutes before his stop;
her who’s reading Anna Karenina for breakfast.
I fill in the blanks, write their lives:
she does tae kwon do on a Thursday evening;
he does the washing-up while listening to Bruce Springsteen.
That girl who got on one day
with a goldfish in a plastic bowl –
this is the third day she hasn’t caught the bus.
A Bless you, a borrowed tissue.
At the station, we walk away from each other,
flicking cigarette ash, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.
Chartist Mural, John Frost Square, Newport
This tunnel is the way from one place
to another: short-cutting from the station,
you pass these men, flattened by history
to a buskers’ backdrop, marching for centuries
towards a Westgate they will never reach;
and bottom right, these three, forever dying,
are bleeding from their mouths, their hearts, red tiles.
This tunnel is the way from one time
to another: the school-trip boy who stares
for a morning at the unmoving men,
their fault-line features and their jigsaw jaws,
makes sketches in his head he’ll never finish –
king’s men firing the slowest bullets in the world
at those whose screams shatter their faces into pieces.
This tunnel traps the wind, makes catwalk models
of the men chasing Monday morning through it:
bank workers, weekend deserters, with long memories
in their laptops. Now this tramp, his duvet
growing from his chin, wondering how he got here,
wakes face-to-face with a universal manhood suffrage banner.
These bits-and-pieces men look at each other.
Capel Celyn
No one was killed here.
A military operation:
clipboards, walkie-talkies,
radar, body warmth.
They took away the gravestones.
A kind of utopia
where every shop sells fish,
public transport is scuba diving,
the crime rate zero.
Humane Pompeii, bathetic Armageddon.
In the lake, this drowned town
I would have been born in,
I see this other me, trapped, forever drowning.
And, in Liverpool, there must be something –
some taste as vague and definite as water.
In John F. Kennedy International Airport,
a toothy blonde, whose name tag said Lucille,
served me at check-in. I showed my ticket, was surprised
when she said, ‘That’s been cancelled. Sorry, sir.’
‘The flight to Cardiff’s off?’ I said. ‘It can’t be, can it?’
‘No sir,’ she said, ‘you don’t quite understand. Wales
has been cancelled. It no longer exists.’
‘What?!’ I said. ‘What do you mean, Wales doesn’t exist?’
‘Sir, do try and calm down,’ said Lucille.
‘The US Government has simply decided Wales
doesn’t exist. You can hardly be surprised.
For God’s sake, you guys never even made it
to the soccer World Cup finals. But don’t worry, sir:
just for the convenience of clients like you, sir,
we’ve re-created the essential Welsh existence
in a small museum in Kansas. You’ll just love it.
Male voice choirs sing Calon Lân, beamed Lucille,
‘as bonneted crones serve cawl-and-Welsh cake surprise,
and there are satellite link-ups with the King of Wales,
Tom Jones, and his sister, Catherine Zeta, direct from Wales
via LA. Now, could you please stop crying, sir?’
I glanced round the airport: it was full, to my surprise,
of Welshmen, mourning their land which didn’t exist.
Wrapped in Welsh flags, girls ten times lusher than Lucille
asked each other where to they could score a hit
of cyanide, as men opened paracetamol, dropped it
into duty-free vodka, blubbing for Wales.
Dazed, I watched the next passenger approach Lucille
and her say, ‘I’m sorry, that’s been cancelled, sir.’
This guy’s suit was that quality they say no longer exists,
a daffodil in his lapel, so I was surprised,
when he heard Wales had been cancelled, he flashed a surprised
smile. When she told him they’d re-created it
in Kansas, he danced a jig, laughing, ‘Wales doesn’t exist!’
That face looked familiar – who was this betrayer of Wales?
As she told him, ‘We’ll switch you to the Hawaii flight, sir,’
I leaned in to hear and that was when she said it, old Lucille:
‘Our apologies again that Wales no longer exists.
What an honour and surprise to serve you. Please, call me Lucille.
Now I hope it’s a pleasant flight, Mr First Minister, sir.’
FA Cup Winners on Open Top Bus Tour of my Village
I was down the park with my boy, having a kick about, when it came round the corner. Even from that distance, there was no mistaking the Versace smile of the star striker, the fairy-tale jaw of the captain. And was that the manager, cheeks red as the last inch of wine in the bottle, drunk at sunset in a hillside town in the South of France, from where you could look down on the world like you owned it?
Within minutes, the village was gathered: fathers and sons chanting grown men’s names, sisters and mothers touching up make-up and cleavage. The players looked scared. The driver scratched his head, fiddled with the sat nav. Then Paul, a legend round here since losing his job, giving all his time to the Under 10s, forced his way on board, holding his son’s autograph book like a begging bowl. We watched with amazement, then with anger, as the Chilean winger – the one you’d recognise from the Nike billboard – raised his fist to Paul and floored him. Suddenly, everyone was holding something: a rake, a mop, a Stanley knife, a car bumper. We went for the tyres, then the windows.
As the judge said later, in the absence of CCTV, and given the unreliable nature of witness statements, it’s impossible to decide on responsibility. But let’s just say this: it’s easy to imagine, isn’t it, what it would feel like to hold the FA Cup over your head, then bring it down – crack! – on twenty million quid’s worth of right ankle, as the man you’ve been in love with for five years shakes and begs for mercy beneath you?
3
Girl
That girl’s the girl I mean. That one now, wearing
no-animals-were-harmed-in-making-these-
leopardskin leggings, ears posing the question
of what are ears for, really,
but bearing the weight of the biggest silver-
coloured hoops on earth? In diamanté
scarlet heels, six inch,
when she walks, everything sparkles, everything
limps. Her hair is piled up on her head,
like the kind of coastal clifftop rampart
cameras swoop in at from the sea,
in historical action movies, featuring
Mel Gibson. Up her sleeve
is a tattoo, a Chinese symbol, and what it means
is clear. Look, that’s her now, outside The Mermaid,
on a cigarette and shouts across the street,
asks an acquaintance if she’d like
some, would she? So how else
can I put it? How much clearer can I be?
That girl’s the girl. That girl’s the girl for me.
Welsh National Costume
Fancy dress? Always a laugh. My Tom Jones
sideburns-and-flares number in the bag,
we’re drawn past Britney, Cinderella,
to a rail at the back. The pleats, the hat,
the lace. Your face. And later, the text you send:
Helpless. Help. I rush round to find
you’re a ball of tartan on your carpet,
a post-match, post-pub Scotsman, so
I dress you. The rule of thumb
is wherever I see a bit of body,
cover it with rough checked rug:
where there are bedclothes, tablecloths,
put them on, until you’re mummified
by plaid. Hold it together with safety pins
and what my mother said. This is murder
on my skin, you moan, but I stick to it:
the peepshow frills, the death-bell bonnet,
tied with ribbon that makes your chin
a present. Now you’re all dressed:
your body’s imaginary, legs an idea,
and under all that cotton, what’s the self?
The only way to get you back’s to hug you
and it’s then I feel it, down past all those layers
of cloth and history, the light, the dark:
the steady thrum, my love, of your English heart.
Us
Me on a three-day crash course in the language
of rail travel – floors are called chairs
and chairs are called beds – to show up at your door,
eighteen years to the minute since you were born.
Your face, as if
you’d opened the door to a six-foot bottle of milk.
Me buying pearls till your neck smiles,
then nicking them, pawning them, going to the dogs.
Me learning your language – the textbook a spittoon,
the consonants rattling like an abacus.
You, with your ears stoppered
with headphones, a giant medicine bottle.
Me putting my mouth where my money is,
hurting my knees and showing you the ring,
My Family and Other Superheroes Page 2