Now gone
Leveled
It left a chalkboard of ashes
And like the phoenix
A brand new comprehensive school mushroomed from its blackness

Schools of students were boxed into an austere container of glass sterility
Classes of children
Boxed into a transparent tank of limited mobility
A comprehensive school built for boys
Only
The girls remained in the old fortified school
Built in 1958
Your dad was transferred to the new school
Much to the chagrin of the girls
The classes would no longer be mixed with boys
From ashes he saw
This Secondary Modern School

Mushroom

Into a modern super market
Were
His old secondary school was demolished in 198?
Unlike
Our old red fortified school
Which still stands to this day

For learning

Was a social event
For your father
School
Was a decathlon of hurdles
If he liked the subject
He excelled
If he liked the teacher
He excelled
If he liked both
He won a gold medal
Often
Like many of his mates
He dropped the baton
At the age of eleven
Plus
He failed
To connect
Or transfer
Learning to life
Was left
Later on in his life
He left his forth year form
At the age of fifteen
Leaving
The English educational system
To access his future academic potential

For the Future

The past had meaning
Our school neighborhood
Was unique because of Arnot Streets antiquated school
It linked
Itself with the terraced houses from the late ninetieth century
Built by a Welsh builder
William Owen Elias
Named all his streets from each letter of his name
I
Was born in Ismay Street
My younger sister Quennie
Lived in Lind Street
Next to my mom’s on Ismay Street
My oldest brother Charley lived on Askin Street
All close to our school on Arnot Street

I
Was the eldest of four sisters
Charley
Was the eldest of all my siblings
Eight children was enough
Which was fine for my matriarchal mother
But not for my humble

Dad

Was a Docker (when not on the dole)
He loved the horses
He loved a pint (or two)
He loved us
A diminutive gentleman with a musical smile
He would spin yarns
With his silken tongue
He would rattle his false teeth
While playing his silver spoons
He would jiggle a jig
Where he would dance around the small living room
Like a whimsical kid
Making his grandchildren laugh
Like a pot bellied pig

Your dad would love Grandma’s
Home made golden chips
And her crusty Lyle's Golden Syrup buttys
She was a sweetie
With a sweetened smile that would stretch a mile
But watch out
This portly woman could give you a backhanded clout
If you mess around
You don’t want to be around
Her small spotless home
Was shattered

On Saturday Afternoon

Crowds of chants
Echoed the house
From across Goodison Park
The Evertonian Football
Fans
Fanned the streets in rosettes and ribbons
Blue and white scarves

Passed

Her spotless window
Rattled with the roar of the football crowd
Fans
Fanned the streets in rosettes and ribbons
Red and white scarves

Passed

Her windows
Steamed with spirit
As fans fanned back home from the local
Football match

On Sunday Morning

My four brothers would replay the bloody football game
After they had a Sunday pint or two
My mom’s homey house was split
Into
Red and Blue
Two on Two
My four brothers would split
Sunday morning into a fight or two
Where they would sing their praise
If
Their football team won
If
Their football team lost
We would all hear about it

The sermon of the day

Do not contribute
To their discussion
Do not become a pious iconoclast
Because attacking football
Is like attacking the Holy Grail (Billy Liddell or Dickey Dean)
And in doing so
You will be branded as a heretic
And in your martyrdom
You will be transferred to purgatory
With a red card
You will serve your penance in a cloistered box
Traded
With insults
You hope to save the day
When the whistle blows
Thank God

End of play

Shoot out
Your opinion
If you know how to play the game
Follow the rules
Know the players
And the old boys club
Then you will be all right

Jack

My Brother
Confided
That I should not confess my opinion
On this hallowed game of football
After all
I am woman

Bless you

My brothers

Jack
And Joe
Would love to joke and tease your dad on those Sunday mornings
Sad to say
My oldest brother
Charley
Passed away
Before he got to know your dad
Jack
And Joe
Close in age
Different in temperament
Same in spirit
Passed away
In their mid fifties
Only my younger brother
Norman
Is alive today
But not so close to our family
I am sorry to say
But Aunt Dot loves him in her own way
But Norman influenced you dad
In an unsuspecting way
Because he was in the Merchant Navy
In his younger day

Family Feuds

Should be forgiven
In fairness
Your dad has never been involved in one
He is too forgiving
And life is too short
So we must move on
With

Religion and Football

Hand in hand
With a 21 carat gold wedding band
Granddad and I
Got married in St. Luke’s Church
Bricked in red
It rose from tin
In 1901 it was built on the junction
Of City Road and Gladys Street

In blue
It rose from din
Of the football club which towers over
St. Luke’s Church
Sits
in the pen of the shaded football stand
With a roar of success
The church cried foul
When the toffee nose club
Wanted to sequester the churches property for the expansion of its
Stands
To this day
In the same place
St. Luke’s is a place to pray
While others watch
Football
At 3:00 p.m.
On Saturday afternoons
Weddings would often end with a celebratory roar of the blue crowd
And of course the traditional boo of the red one

After

Our wartime wedding ceremony
We strolled back to my mum’s house
With our three attendants
We had a small reception
Of tea and sarnies
Following
Our little do's
Granddad still dressed in his Kings Regiment blue
Me in my two-piece silver grey suit
Left
My mum
Hand in hand
We circled our hand with our golden wedding band
We walked to the Coliseum
A picture house a few streets away
From my mum’s

It was on City Road
Just down the road from St. Luke’s Church
Settled in our seats
We sat under a silver screen of rising stars
Starry eyed
Like two lovers from Casablanca
We watched the show
For Whom the Bells Toll
It tolled for the young soldiers
Death
Continued to take its toll on all
Those that lived through that tragic time
The celluloid of death continued to roll
Onto the path of World War Two
Reeled back to war
My rooster returned to his regiment

The Next Day

My dream left in navy blue khaki of mist

The Next Year

My dream had arrived in a skin of blue
Our son was born in the boom of battle
The Second World War ended

The Next Year

After
My husband was back
And thousands of other worn torn sods
Return

To Your Own Father

Less I forget
To tell you
He would come home from school
For dinner (you call it lunch)
He loved his brown Heinz beans
Soaked on toast
He loved his lemon pancakes
Rolled in sugar
He reeled with laughter
While filling his face with the Film Fun
Comic book
Not Dick and Jane
He learnt to read by reading the daily comic books
Not Dick and Jane
Those primary books only pricked him with pain
To see spot run was no fun
Boring
Back to school for the afternoon

After School

He would often make a detour
To Ted’s the sweet shop
Two long blocks to school
One short block from home

Location

Across the street
From the County pub (the Blue House)
Standing on the corner
Stuart
Smiled at you
A chewy smile
That stretched
Across a long bill board of war torn debris
Like a huge giant postcard
It greeted you with its Peppersdent
Smile
See its gum
Believe it or not
It was a long narrow billboard
And it has stood next to Ted’s Sweet Shop
Since
I can remember

Location

Stuart Road
Dragged on and on
So it seemed
To a small chubby little boy
It was drawn out
To the green reservoir park on Breeze Hill Road
Half way
It was relieved with an intersection

Bedford Road

Cornered
A pub of course
A fish and chip shop of course
A sweet shop of course
And a small little grocery shop of course
Bellemy met Stuart
Morris met Stuart
Margaret Road met Stuart
And Peter met Stuart
All of those streets were topped off with (posh) Southport
Road to the north

My resentful husband
Who would not meet his embittered father
Who lived just two streets away on Bellemy Road
Not once did he visit him
Not once did his father visit
Us
Just two short streets away
So on Sundays
He sent your dad to visit his other grand father
He did not like
To go
To visit his dad’s father
Was a somber ordeal
But he did get to know
His dad’s only sister
Aunt Nelly
A sisterly spinster who spent her spiritual life
Looking after
Her ungodly father
Died
Before either one of those two fractious men
Met
Across the brook able threshold

Location

Peter Road
Joined Stuart
With his family of five
Small shops
Face Ted’s Sweet Shop

The wood shop (bamboo canes hinged on love and hate)
The cobbler shop (soles stride on the heels of love)
The wireless shop (accumulators recharge the batteries of hope)
The wool shop (spools of souls spin on the threads of Thantos)
The grocery shop (trust rations love)

Five shops sit in front of Stuart
With their back to Peter
It opposes Christ
On the opposite corner
It baptizes Stuart
Like a rock
It is the corner stone for Peter
Submerged
Under a baptismal of sunshine
Its spiral shadow
Sprinkles its shade onto a small street of shop

Keepers

Surrounded
Its synoptic lot
Of smallness
Ted’s Sweetshop stood
On a wedge of debris
Like a lighthouse
Its brilliant sign beckoned
The children to its sweet call
Sheltered
Under the striped security of its shimmering shade
Awning
Attached
To its wary worn walls
Tall slim
Cream white tins
Grip the wall
Clinging
Coughing
Spitting out spearmint
Little juicy wads
Packaged in pink
White
Blocks
Drop
Down
Down
Down
Delivered
Into the eager fingers
Of grasping children
If
The arrow points towards
You
Get two
For the price of one penny
If
The guttural delivery does not appear
Check
Up
Its open mouth
It might be gaged
Put a finger up its throat
Blocked
Stuffed
Choked with wads of paper
No gum
Chum
That’s how your dad got his gum
When he didn’t have a penny
He pulled off the same caper in the red public telephone box
Stuffed
Returned
Box
His ears
If I caught the little bugger
Blocking up the return box
Again

Outside

Ted’s Sweet Shop entrance
It stood
Like a Grenadier Guard
Standing
In solitary
Upright
Tall
Stiff
Erect
Like a helmeted guard
Its balls
Gathered in a transparent bowl
Bubbled with balls
Its head is mounted onto a rigid pole of steel
A shaft
With a hand
Hold on to it
Touch it
Hold it
Twist and turn
The handles and see the bubbles
Begin to whirl and churn
When you stick a penny in its urn
Socket
When you turn its sprocket
Watch them sperm
In their bubble bath urn
Out pops gum
You lucky chum
You won a prize too
But not a bubble car
That’s much too big
For this bubble jar

Ted’s Sweet Shop

Is in a grain of Windsor Green
Wood
Glass
Pane
Hidden
Under a screen of cream enamel
Which had started to shed a tear
Peeling
Off the darkness
It scrolled in the light

Enticed

Into its emporium
Of Dickinson delight
You enter into its bountiful
Light
Scurries and shuttles
Into the granaries of its darkness
Shafts
Sweep the sunshine into scoops of spectrum
Scrubbed of darkness
Light
Silently strokes the shop with its soft-hued sweetness
Enshrined
Into a showcase of glass
Bottled
In a bath of brilliance
Light
Bathes in a prismatic parade of bright-colored
Lemonade
Lime
Cream soda
Orange
White
Dandelion and Burdock
Scholfields Sarsaparilla
Black
As a vested golliwog
Bottles
And bottles
Lined up on the side
Wall
To wall
Stacked to the ceiling
Too tall
For the small
It was a rainbow
Shelved
With sheerness
It tiered
With placidity

Jars
And jars
Huge
And small
Stacked in
Stacked on
Top the glass counter
Crystal choirboys
Singing their sweetness
In a chorus of color
Topped
With silver
Twist and turn
Spin the sweet smell
Of sweetness from its sheen
Shell
Sheer
Delight
Filled with the fleeing fragrance of frosted
Mint
Chocolate
Sweet
Selection
Dancing
Dolly mixtures
Jitterbug with jujube
Jelly babies
Twist with all sorts of assorted licorices
Smarties
And sweeties
Tap dance with almond
Mint
Pear drops
Fall
Into a clattering cartwheel of constant chatter
A canter of color
Scooped
From their pudgy glass house
Into a silver scale of sweetness
Scooped
Into a white paper tent bag
All for tuppence
And more
If you weren’t poor

Below

The glass counter
Facing the door
Bars
Bathed in cream of chocolate
Lying under a counter of transparency
Stretched
Under a mint glass of crystal
Cream
Cadbury chocolates map the counter
Brazil
Nuts
And raisin bars
Orbit with Mars
Bars
Fry’s and Row trees
A constellation of chocolate stars
Line up
Clustered together
In a sweet street of quality
There is quantity in this Milky Way
A Bounty of surprises
From the Turkish
There is delight
From the Maltese
We have balls
Of bubbles in the Aero
Bars
Bars
Bars
Roll and rock with Rollo
And his band of chocolate stars

Inside

On the other side
Of this horse-shaped sweet shop
Counter
Displays
A Tantalus of curios filled with sweets
Nudge the nose
Smear the glass
With your pain
Much too small
You must be over three feet
Tall
Children look down
Onto a glass counter
Filled
With a hodgepodge of this and that
Satellite
Sputums of salivary swiveling sucking spectra
Spinning
Changing colors
Sitting
In a gob of salivation
Spittle
To spit out change
Lollypops
Circulate the counter in a cartwheel of color
Sticks
Of wood that chew up the day
Sticks
Of apples trickled with treacle
Sticks
Of rock centered with chocolate
Sticks
Of liquorice that smoke up the night
In a pack of play and a pack for the day
Candy cigarettes
Makes you the Daddy of the day
Everton Toffee
Jumbo toffee
Toffee apples
Toffee sweets
Toffee treacle treats
In a mish mash of rainbow boxes
All filled with assorted sweets
Mint
Pink
Flat
Enshrined
In a clean crisp cut wrapper
Gum
Enveloped
Mint conditioned cards
Football players and movie stars
A collection of cards
Sorted
Swabbed
Saved
And stored in a shrine of spearmint
Half filled
Half empty
Point
Of view
Polo
The mint with the hole
Peppermint or fruit
Lets in light
Sherbet
Packed or loose
Nougat
White as a bone
There sits Ted
On a high chair throne
But let’s leave him there
For awhile

His back to the counter

Choking up the wall
Bricks
Of cartons
Tart up the shelves with tartaric
Cigarettes
Players Please
Woodbines for the old sod
One loosey
I have a craven for a Camel
A pack of Rize love
Thank Pall
A mall of pipe tobacco
Coined in pillars
Stacked in silver
Tins
Filled with tobacco
Tins
Stored in silver
Empty of tobacco
Hidden in treasure
Tins
Lives
Stored memories
In a little sweet shop on smokers alley
Where all the shelves are filled
With Jetsam and Flotsam

Sandwiched

Between two wafers thin
Walls
Divided
It stands
Like a creamy white brick

At the far end of smokers alley

Cream
And cold
It shivers and shakes
Singing
Its song
It purrs with pleasure
Walls
Frosted and filled with the flavor of fragrant fruits
Sticked and bricked
Iced
With red
White and blue
Centers
Creamed under a glazed shell of frozen Neapolitan
Orange
Lime
Cherry
Peppermint
A penny for an ice-lolly
And three pence for a cream one

On the far side
On the fringe
Of the sweet shop
In the corner
Like little Jack Horner
The children would sit
Under a cone of comics
The wire-rusted reel
Spun with smiles
Beano
Dandy
Topped
Filled with fun
Rover
Tiger
Unfolds a prize
Filled with a bang
It zaps out a surprise
Practical jokes
With black ink plots
That blotted the books
With teachers dirty looks
Illusion

A comic a day
Five days a weeks
Fresh
Mint crisp comics
Delivered to your dad (courtesy of me)
Before breakfast
He would sit and read
With his tea and toast
For tuppence a day
He lived the Life of Riley (sorry Mr. Bendix)
Bubbles
Of characters
Floated around his fanciful head
While ideas popped out
His brain would open up
Like a chimerical can of laughter
Bursting
On cue
He would often create his own comic characters
Drawing the day away
With his own imagination
Enjoying
The whimsical world of humor
And the laughter of its message
Comics
Was a relief
And being an only child
His imagination was his best friend

Newspapers

Heaped in piles
Displayed
On the top of the class counter
Beside the counter
Under the counter
Papers mirrored the world
With the echo of the times
Sitting under the sun
Tit
Bits of gossip
Headlined the daily’s
With titillation
Nudes and floozies
Paraded on the pages of the paper
People
Did not express disgust
Times
Were different
When I was young
The press uncovered facts
Not a banner of big breasted boobs

Of course
It did not bother your father
He had seen it all
So he thought
After all he was a paperboy
Two years
Two times a day
Seven days a week
The little sod delivered newspapers
Of course
The little bugger fibbed about his age
When he applied for his paperboy job
He was ten
He should have been eleven
He worked very hard
Saved money (too bad that habit stopped)
And many a time he treated me with it (that habit has slowed down)

Who was the overlord
Of this sweet Emporium

Ted

Sweet Ted
Sat on a stool
Between the glass counter
And the bric-a-brac wall of Flotsam and Jetsam
A phantom of light
Filtered from the painted pane
Marking
The right side of his face with a bold softness
Slumped in shadow
He stooped on a stool of steel
Rotund
His body wedged the width of the little shops cozy corridor
Like an emollient walrus
His girth slumbered onto the ice glass counter
Domed
His naked head
Mooned the shape of his face
Luminous
Ted
Illuminated warmth
As he cozies into the corner of his corridor
Out of the shadow
His round face cracked like dawn
Burnished
With light
He rose from the nigrescent counter
Like a lucent sun
He emitted an opalescence of warmth
Softened
With a smile
He beamed you in
With his ephemeral world of his sweet emporium
Piped in
With a wave
Of wafting gray tobacco smoke
He would sit there
In its piquant wake
Vested
In his white shirt
He wore a blue (Evertonion) tie
Where it rippled
Onto his bay sized stomach
Where it rested
And berthed
In the lull of luxury
Sweet
Ted
Would invite you to sit
On the old silver gray orange box
Worn and warm
Sheened in the shadows
Tethered to the light
It stood
In front of the corner
Like an icon
It was a child’s delight
To sit on the saddle of its sunlight
Warm
Hearted
Ted
Teased your dad
With his endearing humor
He loved to laugh and joke
With him
They were formidable foils
Who baited each other with a barb and pip?
Until
Smoke singled a truce
Choking into his peace pipe
Ted coughed with a wheeze of whistling
Laughter
Resonated
Your dad’s belly into a barrel of bubbling tears
Swish
Pipe down
Bitterness swept in

The Lemon Face Lady

Appeared
From behind the closed curtain
Which closed off the public
From they’re upstairs living quarters
Entering
The sweet shop in a state of sourness
Puce lips
Puckered into a lemon slice smile
Eyes
Piped in darkness
She scours the shop with sharpness
Face
A cheerless oval
Scrunches and stretches
Into a red fold of frigid frowning flesh
Pellucid skin
Scoured and scraped into a rash of red
Pink
Skin
Bristled with rawness
She was enameled with bitterness
There was no trace of hair
It was always hidden under a scarf
Like a bilious turban
The scarf wrapped around her hairless crown
Tight
And taut
Like a tourniquet
Trying
To Squeeze out a smile
She would greet you with her sharp tongue
A bulbous nose
Squats onto her souring face
Sniffing around the sweet shop
She brooded like a pugnacious pug
Scowling
She haunches her five foot wiry frame
Around the counter like an unstrung ferret
Shunning customers
With her sullenness
She serves them with her sour tongue
Flicking
Stopping
Only to shunt sweetness
Into the sweet silos of her saturnine shop
Swish
Pipe up
Bitterness swept out
The Lemon Lady
Disappeared
Into the dark curtains of her despondency
Exiting
The sweet shop in a state of sweetness

To this very day
Your dad has not been informed
About Sweet Ted and the Lemon Lady’s private life
Nor does he want to know
With anonymity
He can always revisit this junction of his childhood
Sweetshop
A taste of the times
Memories
To savor
In a translucent wrapper of tinsel
He can hold onto its sweetness
And from time to time
He will unwrap the darkness
And rediscover the core of its bittersweet
Center
Of course
I know Ted and Maureen (The Lemon Lady)
Very well
After all
I was their scullion
For awhile
I also served behind the sweet counter
Much to your dad’s proud delight
And I saw
Sweet Ted and the Lemon Lady
As compatible companions
Of conflicting contradictions
That created a loving relationship
That was bittersweet

Skip

Back To Peter Road

Pass
The five little neighborhood shops
Turn
The corner
To the Baptist

Church

Where your father was submerged into a Life Boy
He wore a nice navy blue uniform
He did look smart in his flat round black sailor hat
But the little bugger
Would toss it around the road like a bloody Frisbee
Mind you
He never did graduate to the Boys Brigade
Never a soldier
Too much his own drummer
And
Him
And
His foolhardy mate
Brian
Got expelled from Sunday school
God knows
What for
But I do know the Minister
Brought them to his vestry for a sermon
Believe it or not
When he left the church
Your dad received a leather bound bible
Wine skin red with his initials embossed in gilded gold
I must confess
I did tilt the minister’s ear
With my own interpretation of the Prodigal Son
Brian
He got a bloody black plain bible
No gilt for him
God only knows what was inscribed for him
But you can be bloody sure
It will not be gilded in gold

Let’s
Ruffle the Liver Birds

Back

From their nap
Let’s take a trip to the Liver Birds home
To the Peirhead
Terminal

Looking at her grandson

Eyes
Set with a smile
She motioned him towards her
You would like a solo ride on Shu
Eyes
Closed with a smile

Open your mind

Turn on your imagination
And throttle your dreams into overdrive
Mounting onto Shus feathered green back
He held on tightly to his bronze green nape
Where his imagination

Flew

On a jet stream of impulsion
Propelled
Into a carom of driving
Force
Assaulting the air
Breaking
Speed
Racked with joy
Exploding with exhilaration
Pushed
Into shooting winds
Driven
Into chalk blue skies
Rolling
Banking
Intel corpulent cushions
Of rolling white clouds
Gliding
Spinning
On a blue baize of sweeping sky
Breaking
Colliding
Shattering the sunset with the speed of shifting
Sound
Bridges the barriers with sticks of speed
Shafting
Splitting
The shade with sunlight
Diving
Dropping
Into a descending downdraft
Falling
Hiding
Spirited into a stranded pocket of lacy air
Waiting
Praying
For a breath of air to pick you up
From your cloistered cord of stricken suspension
Shaken
Saved from his solo
Flight
Over
And onward
All of us to the Peirhead
Mount your birds
And let us fly