We were not la-di-dah
We were more ooh-la-la
Chuffed with his cousins
It was a chumming time
For him to visit
And my lot was very chummy with him
As soon as your grandma would arrive
We sent your dad out with his cousins
To get us fish
Chips and mashed peas
From the corner chippy on the corner of our road
Tucked in with tea
And tethered to talk
Grandma and I would wait for the children
To come back with the fish and chips
Supper set
Clappers of laughter
Peeled into the open doorway
Children with chips
Circled with clan
Conversation
Sang
Like the Tarantella
All dancing to the gaiety of its music

After
Your grandma and I would stroll
Down to the promenade
Pram in hand
With my youngest in tow
The other children would run ahead and play in the penny arcade
Your grandma and I would watch

The white waves turn the tide into the sun
Setting
Back home
We would stop off
For ice cream cones
Orbs of white
Robed with red raspberry
Melting
Into the rippling summer
We headed home
On a red carpet of sunset

The next day
We woke up with Mr. Holland
It was the weather for Blackpool
A cheeky little seaside resort
Engraved in rock
Decked up
Sitting beside the sea
Under a Parisian tower of illumination
It sends its greetings
On naughty little picture postcards
That would embarrass the gingerly vicar of Coventry

Only a short tramcar ride from our little fishing town
She jerked and jiggled
In a coveted dress of shivering steel
Wobbling
And dithering
Like a merry marionette
On a high wire of swaying steel
She careened
And skirted in her iron glad dress
Teasing the waves
With her iridescent allure
In autumn
A fashion of lights
Illuminated her voguish dress
Turning her into a vexing vixen
Where she catwalks the tracks
With her vibrant vibration
A veteran
Of vintage fashion
She sashayed
Down the catwalk
With her lights flickering
And her sparks flashing
She translates
The darkness into light
By alighting her travelers
Onto a magical journey
Where the worlds of fantasy?
Shunts and shuttles you
Into her world of iridescence

Today
Our tramcar
Tracks the suns
Sojourn
Along the shifting shorelines of the salty sea
A lighthouse
Of lovely lights
Elevates the Irish Sea
Like the Eiffel Tower
Blackpool steals the seine
As it towers over the sea
It allures you into its cynosure
Piers
Ladder to the sea
As nylons of sandy shorelines
Stretch into a seamless sea
Deck chairs
Parade the promenade
In a uniform of red and white stripes
Watching
A legion of donkeys
Canter to the sea
Saddled to the sand
Waves
Of shrieking children stir up
The salty sand with their stirrup
Cup
Your ears with their spirited screams
Saucy postcards
And candy cane rock
Tent the shops
With a carnival of color
You see the fun fair
On a canvas of blue

Ferris wheels
Roll up to the sky
While plummeting down to the sea
On a tidal cry
You cry out to the sea
Like a seagull you are free to be

You and Me

On track
In an open air carriage
Stepping into the blue sky
Taken away
It curves and careens to the coast
As it steepens to the sky
It webs the horizon
In a winding wire of silver steel
It rolls
And slopes
To the sharp edges of an emerald sea
Open to the sky
Rollicking
To the cry of the haunting gull
Flaunting to the sea
It soars to the sky
Leered to its peak
It drops
A heartbeat
To the bottom
Down
Down
Down
To the depths
Descending
Into a distant drop
Of shrieking terror
You plunge
To the sudden sea
Falling into a wave of fluttering fear
Sinking
Onslaught
Sinking
Onrush
S
I
N
K
I
N
G
Stomach
Stops
With tears of salt
Flooding your face
With lungs of laughter
Gasping for air
You Wait

Next
To a charred black hole
Where guttural sounds echo
From it raven orifice
Fear
Mounts your face with masked bravado
Suddenly
You were in
Like a thief you enter
Into the mustiness of perturbation
Fear
Was a dubious friend?
In this heinous tunnel
You trembled with misgiving
But you were daring
With apprehension
Silence
Resonates to distant screams
Goose pimples dance onto your tremulous skin
On tender hooks
You clutch onto the edge of your wooden bench
While a casket size carriage takes you into its reticent crematorium
In
Front
An ear
Piercing shrill
Slices
Into your skittish stomach
Fear
Strikes
Eyes stricken
Onto an apparition of aversion
Flinching
Back
Terrified
You mask a grin
Your heart beats
In your palpitating mouth
Sounds
Of chains
Rattle your nerves
Menacing white skeletons
Drop
Before your blenched eyes
Bones of white
Gage your ashen face
Ribbed in gristle
You brittle with fear
Gone
A phantom hand
Greets you with its ebony touch
Ringed in blood
It motions you to pass
The blackly wall
Of its macabre chamber
Eyes wince
While the body grimaced
To the oncoming moans
Eyes recoil
Into the slinking sockets
Sheltered
You peak
With horror
While your heart
Stands still
In a sea of red
A decapitated head
Floats on a golden paten
Baptized with blood
It stems with fear
Stenched with terror
It harps onto a tormented lair
Blind as a bat
You bat your eyelids
To shifting shrieking shadows
Baited
The quivering blinds of your eyelids
Open
To the darkness
Suddenly they sweep
Streak and screech
Batting
Your matted head of hair
With their fearless wings of fluttering leather skin
Fending off fear
You ward off this revolting creature
By crossing your arms
Over your battered head
Gone
As fast as they came
Eyes open
To impaled specters
Staked to the dank dark wall
Hanging
Draped in white
Stained with red
Reeking
Blood streaks down their mortal face
Where vagrant eyes stare into your passing soul
Cat’s eyes
Follow you
Down the grotto underworld
Tunnels
Twist and turn
Where it winds
You
Into its purgatorial labyrinth of immeasurable fear
Jolted
You jump
From the mummified arms of a lurching malefactor
With shock
You bolt under the seat
Already
Without missing a heart beat
You turn into a musky black corner
With muzziness
They seem grotesque, as they got closer
Like phantoms
Muzzled in muteness
You freeze with horror
Skin ashen
To their stealthily approach
Mutated ghouls
Evoke into the eternal darkness
With withered cries
They whimper and wail
While witches watch and wait
In canting
Bewitching
Spells
Fly on an astral broomstick
Hexing chants
As sprites and specters follow
The beguiling path of the demoniac witch
Leaving
Shrills and screams
To echo into the cavernous tunnel of bedevilment
Shaken
Out of shock
The rattling carriage kicks back
Forward
You continue along the black sewer
Back filled
With shrieks and screams
The tired iron wheels screech
And scratch onto a scraping track of cold iron steel
Rolling along
Through the unearthly world of Esoterica
Near the end
Of your dark journey
You face a junction
One
Set of tracks lead to light
The second
Set of tracks leads to darkness
The rolling carriage jerks to a sudden stop
Stuck
At its juncture
You face a demonic face
Startled
Huddled in Horror
You shrivel into shivers
Cowering
Into a shudder you look
And you avoid his hermetic stare
Eyes
That shred you
Like a sharp razor
It cuts into your struggling soul
Cowering
Under its clairvoyant stare
You see your reflection
In the prism of his calculating eye
He sees your nakedness
Like lighting
Light cracks
From the shadows of the swinging door
Light ascends
From its demoniac darkness
And before long you are shunted
Through an open door of benevolence
Stepping into a lauding crowd of exalted onlookers
You find yourself
Searching
For your loving mother
Seeing you
She secures you into her rejoicing arms
As she guides you to your waiting cousins

Up and Down

We strolled around the fair ground
A carousal of colors
Circled our circuit
In a calliope of dance
We
Puffed
In pink
Clouds of floss
Sticks to our sweet smiles
Stopping at vendors
To shoot at their wares
Up they pop
Yellow tin ducks
Parade under a shower of lead
Moving along
On a never-ending escalator
Down drop the ducks
Bull’s eye
Dotted with darts
Guns
Rifle out of the air
The counter
Armed with prizes
Pop the cork and knock me
Down
Pick a price
Strike a skittle
Sigh a smile
Next time
Balls
In bowls
Darts
In balloons
Win a teddy
For little Neddy
Bump
Dodgem
Drive them crazy
Steer them like little Daisy
Helter
Smelter
Climb
Slide
On a carpet of magic
Bum around
On a spiral of silver
And get a view
Of distorted life
Visit

The House of Mirrors

Be reflective
And view life
As you would want it
To view you
As it imaged you
With its illusion
Think
In its illumination
Stand
In its imagination
Cry
In its damnation
Laugh
In its two-edged presentation
And walk away
From its two-face deception
Remember
Life for many
Is two-dimensional and one-sided
Life should be lived
Like a prism
Reflecting all points of view
So invoke its images
And be convoluted with its imaginings
Don’t be an imitation
Unlike art
Your life is a living process
So seize the day
And hold onto the moment
Don’t let the pass or the present
Distort the dawn of the day

The tides
Yawned to the open sea
Swelling into their white nightcaps
With a billowing swishing wave
They billet into the lull of the ocean bed
Where they sleep under a woven blanket of sea-green
Passing the Winter Gardens
A marquee of illumination
Lit up the stars
This week
Arthur Askey
Next week
Norman Wisdom
Coming attraction
Frankie Vaughan and Ken Dodd
Madam Trousseau
Waves good night
As waxen faces
Waver into the nodding night of a waxing moon

Suddenly
Alienated
From their trance
The children asked Great Auntie
Why Granddad never visited the seaside
With trepidation
She told the children about

Granddad

A handsome man
Dressed well in a suit
Debonair in design
Independent in style
Much like your own dad

He had always been a wild card
Never one to follow suit
With his double-edged personality
He was a diamond in the rough
Decked out
He was a charmer
With cheeky charisma
A joker
With a bad hand
He could deal out pain
If he felt he was dealt
A bad hand
Was dealt to him
From his abusive father
A mean spirited
Ass
Trader from Northern Ireland
Who imported the long-eared donkey
To the English
He was a disparaging
Arse hole
Was the name for his trumpery son?
That was the last trump
His father called
Because Granddad cleared the decks
Fed up with his trumped up insults
He decked him
Out
With a suitcase
Filled with anger
Granddad left home
To run away with Dr. Bernardo
Where he worked on isolated farms
In the remote regions of Canada
Abused and mistreated
He taunted with rebellion
Leaving
This hostile environment
And Toronto’s cold park benches

He returned

To suitor
His childhood sweetheart
Gentle lass from Merseyside
My eldest sister
Your grandma
Entrapped to this voguish ways
Disengaged his charms
He left her
To join the Kings Royal Regiment
Suitable for his warring ways
But not suitable for his dissenting discipline
Propelled into promotion
But prone to demotion
Boxing himself into a curried corner
He fought his demons in Southeast Asia
In a ring of discontent
He was knocked out of his war
He returned

To England
With a chevron of courage
A dissident
To the establishment
He boxed his tarnished medals
Into a parade of dusted jackets
Entombing them into the corners of a dark dresser draw
Left to lie in state
Like the unknown
Soldier
Enshrined in a tomb of mythical memories

Collecting

Her languorous thoughts
Great Aunty spoke with deliberation

Tethered
To his treadmill
Tied
To his temperament
Thoughts
Tensed with torsion
Tension
Turns to temporal truculence
Turbulence
Transforms into a tempestuous
Tempest
Tsunami
Dendrites of destruction
Surged and surfaced
Across the synoptic zones
Of his synaptic temple
Roused
Wrought and edged
With sudden outbursts
He strikes

Your dad
And granddad
Were often caught in a thunderstorm
Granddad’s anger was a thunderbolt
A lightning
Would break across his unspoken landscape
Shadowed
Under a threatening thunder cloud
The landscape cowered
Under its formidable foreboding
Petrified trunks
Stood
Then twisted
And bent under its fretting wind
Lighting
Striked with a haphazard horror
It bolts across the disquieted landscape
Blanched
With darkness
The landscape stiffens
Into a paralyzing silhouette
Drenched
In a dire of water
Rain pelted
Onto the ashen-face of its weeping recoil
Streaked
With silent tears
Whimpering into the wailing wind
Denuded
With darkness
Standing stalagmites
Seeking shelter under a storm of destruction
The volatile storm
Raced and paced
Upon the tremendous terrain
Uprooting
The writhing landscape
From its tender roots
A thunderbolt
Unleashed
Unearthed
The trembling trunks of the vulnerable landscape
Wrenched in splitting pain
Cracking and snapping
Into the quivering arms
Of splintered branches
Shaking
Entwined in its entanglement
Helpless
Hopeless
Knocked down
Clinging
Clutching
Under a spurious storm of tearing terror
Granddad
Was the storm?
Grandma and your dad were the landscape

Wrath
Whipped the house
Into a war zone
Missiles whistled across the room
Like projected warheads
A whirlwind of terror
Wrecked the house into a warring wake of wreckage
Leaving
Debris
Of broken memories
Shattered
In flight
With fear
Your dad would belt up the steep steps
And bolt the door of his bedroom
Fretting in fright
Cowering in the corner
Hiding
Under the coverlet
Terrified
His heart hinged
With winded fear
Whipping the narrow flight of stairs
His splenetic father bounder with fiery
Unleashing his anger
He pounded on the bedroom door
Open
Left
Tears trickled into weeping welts
Thermal trails shuddered down his tremulous thighs
His wee heart
Whimpered onto soiled sheets of warm pee
Huddled
He held onto his hot water bottle
Pressing the damp rubber to his sopping face
The comforter was cold
And the night was long
Cradled in darkness
He wept in his wake

Thunderstruck
Six planets orbited the white porch
Aligned to each other
The children’s eyes were large
Like wafers
Light poured into the cones of their communication
The two oldest had met granddad
And were delighted with his generous gifts of hearty humor


Sensing the children’s shock
Great Aunty continued
The next day
Rueful with remorse
Granddad assessed the damage
Amending
He attempted to atone
By putting the pieces together
He trolled
For redemption
His anger had been cast
And he had plummeted to the bottom of his guilt
A penitential soul
Caught in mended net of self flagellation
Struggling for forgiveness
Often
Without words
And with longanimity
Your pliable grandma
Did
Your dad forgive him
In time
With compassion
And vindication
Without malice or rancor
He would
Take into account the nature and nurture of the context
And without condoning his father’s behavior
He understood it
And to some degree he knew
About his father’s splenetic world

The children’s minds were swimming
Into an emotional stream of anxiety
Thinking
That their dad had never once
Raised a hand towards them
Uptight
Their dad could become more irritable
Snappish with criticism
Sometimes
It could be considered endearing grumpiness
But once
He did hurl a homburg at mom
It was tense
Swift and short
But not down and out altercation
Of course we were all upset
With dad
He was filled with apology
In his honest attempt to help mum
From his unjustified behavior towards her

Out of orbit
And into Great Aunty sphere
She continued on about Granddad’s

Work Day (At the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board)

Bed
Tea
6:30 p.m.
Walking to work
Catching the bus
Clock in
Twelve hours
A badger’s life
Tunneling the darkness
With arms of steel
He would leverage the world
With a lever of strength
Holding back
The pressure
He would gently push down the lever
Holding on
To the pedals
He would maneuver the lever
To hold onto
Its resolute resistance
He held onto the dead man’s Handle Night
After night
He would empty the ship’s bowel
A fulcrum of life
A hold all of hell
Sheep in a holding paddock
Waiting for the following
Day
Over at
6:30 a.m.
Clock off
Thirty years
Catching the bus
Walking home
Breakfast
Bed
A day in the life
Of granddad
At the Mersey Docks and Harbor
Bored

Granddad
In his own way
Looked after Grandma
Fine clothes
Dressed their rented house
With a new coat of paint
Every year
Day trips to
New Brighton
Southport
Chester
Otterspool
And a few extra days
For grandma to visit
Us
And my younger sister in Shropshire
Aunt Doris
Your dad’s dotty godmother
God loved her
She put up with your grandma and me
For over a week we would stay there
Without granddad
He would never stay overnight anywhere
At home he would surprise your grandma
By doing some project around the house
A pleasant surprise for when she returned
Home
Payday
Thursday like clockwork
All monies allocated
Controlled and tucked away by granddad
He even discharged your dad
To visit his father every

Sunday Morning

Only a few streets away
Your dad
Much to his chagrin
Would sit and watch
His granddad sits and spiel
Soulless
Like a prune’s gnome
Dressed in cardigan of bruising blue
He spat out sputum of green spittle
Where it drooled and hovered onto a coal spittoon of sizzling fire
Watching the clock
While his shedding old dog performed dirty doggy tricks
Blessed with a silver sixpence
Your dad ran all the way home

He even discharged your dad
To visit his wife’s church every

Sunday Afternoon

In the same street
Your dad
Much to his chagrin
Would sit and watch
The minister stands and sermonizes
Soulful
Like a somnolent knight
Dressed in a suit of Payne’s gray
He sputtered out a sermon on solemnity
Where it sprinkled and spluttered onto a bible of spurious fire
Watching the clock
While the minister disrobed guilt onto its sinful congregation
Donating a copper penny
You dad ran all the way home

In fact
Only in death
Did your grandfather
Enter either
One of their houses

Of course
In between
Your dad’s duties of the day
Your dad had the Goon Show
To laugh his Sunday dinner away

Your Granddad

Fiddled and dappled
With the piano
His right hand would play the tune
His left hand would trail the tune
He would light up the parlor
With a tank full of neon’s
Where he would watch the angles
Fight with the Siamese
A tenacious handyman
He built
A goldfish pond in the backyard
A budgerigar aviary in the backyard
A doghouse in the backyard
A hen house in the backyard
A black bike in the backyard
All assisted
With the tenterhooks of your worrisome dad
Your dad helped granddad to look after
The seven dogs he once had
The fat black hen that he named Mary
And Tippy the adorable black cat
Who had outlived all the dogs and fish that entered his house?
Mary was exchanged for Prince the half-breed dog
For awhile he puttered and puffed with
Smoking his pipes
And fixing his pipes
Which by the way were not broken
All this between taking his mixture of assorted vitamins
For his health and receding hair line
Life
Revolved around him and his eccentricities

Your granddad
Was a fatalistic old sod?
Who lived life?
As he saw it
What will be will be
And that was that
He was not a stupid man
But he was a stubborn man
Wrapped up with his own opinion
He was a living editorial for his own forum
Like all good editorials
He could contribute a daily smile
With his sardonic wit
He was a living cartoon of himself
Where he could turn the page of your life
Into a bubble of

Laughter

Came from the open French doors
Grandma
Had returned with a smile
Encircling her round face
She beamed
Granddad
Had made her laugh
From his telephone call from England
Relinquishing her tale
Great Aunty passed the torch
Back
To her eldest sister
Who by now had settled back into her own chair?
Nodding
A wink
Great Aunty
Once again dozed off
Into the shade of a summer day
Now
Her grandchildren
Wanted to know
What their dad did

When he was a Child

After the war
Sprays of soldiers
Spurted home
On the whitecaps
Of an ejaculating tide
Spawned in their spumy wake
Waves of children sprouted out
Onto the streets of postwar England
Sprigs
Suffused the streets
Suckled with spunk
Placated parents
Paraded and prated
The pavements with prams
Of prattled pride

Schooners of silver
Sailed on summer sea skies
Lighthouse yellow
Paved the roads
With beams of gold
The endless sun shined
On childhood
As my son bathed
Under the showering rays of its areola
He played
And played
Endless games
With all his street siblings
Jacks and Stones
Hide-and-go-Seek
Kick the Can
Red Rover
Nicky-Knock Nine Doors
Allalo * spelling
Chalk up the streets
With hops and skips of laughter
Hula-Hoop
Roll the Hoop
Chum up
Cherubic childhood
Caught under its celestial halo of hoopla
Rowing in the park
Football in the streets
Marbles in the alley
Fishing in the pond
Conkers in the tree
Cricket in the debris
Rounded off
With rounders
A roundelay of games
Played all year round
Seraphic childhood
Captured under the ephemeral aura of aureole

Sometimes
Your dad was a naughty boy
Not malicious
But mischievous

School

The station house
For learning
He was the little red engine
That could
If he would
Stay on track
But
Only if the station master
Could switch him on
To a broad gauge track
If not
He would be side tracked
Into a cutting grade
Shunted
Into third class
He was transferred into second class

All aboard
He became the non-standard porter
Who carried on in class?
Where his spirited hoppers
Was filled with disorder
Contained
For learning
It was imbalanced
With mischief

He crossed the gradient
Post
This system was not a level
Crossing
The mimetic master
Had reached the end of his line
Leaving
Your dad in the waiting room

A whistle stop
For milk train education
This was the terminus
For the masterful master
To alight his caboose with the
Switch

Shunted into a smile
Derailed

With the children’s enthusiastic signal
Coupled
Into their own train of thought
The three grandchildren branched out
With their own whistle-stop stories
All about
Bad
Dad

In public school

Dad
Got the cane
For being handcuffed to Brian all day
He did it for a lark
But when he was called to the front of the class
For his part in a play
He had to bring Brian with him
Both of them shared the same desk
The teacher was not amused
Some kids took the key
That would open up the old wartime handcuffs
Dad would not tell
Who else was involved?
Dad
Got the cane
For ink plot fights
All the kids in his class
Flicked ink plots at each other
Ink plots: Pink blotting paper
Soaked and covered
With delicious black Indian ink
Rolled into the inkwell
Placed onto the wooden edge
Of a twelve inch wooden ruler
Balanced
Directed
Targeted
Quick flick of the wrist
And let go!
Caught
The unsavory master walked in
Caught
Black handed
With a wet wad of black ink
On the firing end of his weapon
He would not tell
Who else was involved
Dad
Got the cane
For scraping with a bully
Who had called his Chinese friend
The Chink from China
All the kids cheered
When dad knocked the bully down
In a fist fight outside the school grounds
Hoisted in victory
He won
Miss Cross’ heart
For fighting a sneaky kid
Who was about to tell Miss Cross
About her end of school surprise gift
All the kids in the class chipped in for the gift
Of course it was your dad’s idea
All the boys in the class has a crush on her
The sneaky kid did not get the chance
Dad saw to that
And Miss Cross saw to him
She discussed his behavior with him
But Dad did not tell
Why he hit the sneaky kid

Children
Children
No more whistle blowing
Grandma hooted
While frogging onto their raillery’s
She brought it to a stop

The Lovely Miss Cross

Catered to your dad’s sense of humor
Who by the way
A judicious master once wrote in your dad’s
Report card
A cheerful lad
With a pleasant sense of humor
Miss Cross shrieked
When she saw one huge black ink plot
On your dad’s open workbook
Pushing the blot
Aside
He laughed
At her reaction
A prack
A fake inkblot
With affection
Miss Cross pinched his sweet rosy cheeks
Flushed and besotted
With her touch
She called him a cheeky little rascal

One day
He jumped out of his front seat
Other classes he headed for the window or the back of the classroom
Diving towards her
As she fell onto the wooden floor
He attempted to pick her up
She was safe
In his arms
All the children sighed with applauding relief
That year
Your dad’s school marks were very high
And he was one of the few chosen to visit the art exhibition of
Vincent Van Gogh
At the Warker Art Gallery in Liverpool
The eldest daughter shouted out with excitement
Dad took me to see the art exhibition of
Vincent Van Gogh
At the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto
An art exhibition that reflected
Their love for art
And the creative talent that her grandfather and
Her son had
Won the class award for top student
Art books
A prize that mirrored the inspired teachings of
Miss Cross

Slim
And young
With the lyrical smile
Of a smitten chord
Short hair
Pitch black
A melodic quaver
In harmony
With her low-toned
Eyes
Two dove-gray notes
Scaled onto a skin of linen
Cream
Oval face
With a noted cleft
On her chin
A natural notation
Dotted
With a dimple
It danced with downiness
Nose
Sharp
In its harmonic scale
A proportional notation
Harmoniously arranged
And scored
To the tempo of her even-tempered
Temperament
A thespian teacher
Who set the stage
With her cathartic presence
She opened up
The young minds of her ensemble
Children
Once cast as common characters
Now became children of character
Reaching out
She produced
And choreographed
Under the directive
That all children can
Learn
Without scripts
She taught them to interpret
Life
Is a role
A part to play and perform
With authenticity
You can create your own script
And become the part you wish to be
Or not to be
She was a delightful director
Who performed?
With laughter
Audience and actor
Became one
Each engaged
In the art of learning
Life
Lessons were a rehearsal for
Learning
Had raised the curtain
The watchful children performed
And the keen children clapped
With laughter
Learning was fun
And with quiet grace she bowed
To their curtain call
Bravo
Miss Cross

The master’s muse
Who taught your dad
That the art of teaching
Is to believe that learning is a wide-open canvas
Where children can create
The colors of their own
Landscape
Can be painted with a bold brush of imagination
If you are open to new horizons

The anxious grandson shouted out
From the west wing of the white
What about the apples
That my dad chucked at the teacher
Tell
Tale

Dad threw an apple
At the robust Mr Roberts
This reckless act was done
On his way home from school
With his school friend
Not Brian this time
With a daft dare
Both of them propelled their projectile
Across the busy street on Country Road
Hurled
Apples whizzed across the cars
Striking their stout master
Hitting
Their unsuspected target
Ducking
Behind Thompson’s Black motorized hearse
Buried
With laughter
Hidden behind a blond oak coffin
Out of sight
But not quite
Out of view

Next school day
Picked
From a line up
When attending the morning assembly
Jovial
And judicious
Mr Roberts
Had a gleam of anticipation in his sharp bright eyes
When he gleaned the facts from their rash and impulsive act
Not to gloss over
Their injudicious transgression
But to bend over
For their fatuous folly
He glissaded the gloating cane across their globular
Bottoms
Up
With a wink
He had made an imprint
On his impressible students
Self-assured
With an engaging personality
The perspicacious Mr Roberts
Measured his liking
With a yardstick of individuality

School days
Ended for your dad
When he failed to pass his eleven
Plus
All his classmates
In his Grade B class
And the lower Levels of C and D
Grade
A was the only class to pass
And they went on to grammar school
Your dad
Was not a dummy like Archie Andrews
Like the other children
He left school
At the age of fifteen
He had reached the railhead
For his education in England

Schools of children
Streamed from school
Shrieks bubbled into a gurgling babble of babbling laughter
School was out
Over
Simon says

Pick-up-sticks
And follow Red Rover
Hide-and-seek
With cowboys and Indians
Tag
Duck duck goose
And kick the can
With the ministers cat
Mother may I
Spin the bottle
With the mailman
In the post-office
With blind man’s buff
Button button
Jacks
Dodge ball
Catch
Hot potato
Hot or cold
Freeze tag
With the frog in the middle
Leapfrog
And jump rope
With the hangman
Stay in the prisoner’s base
Hopscotch
Under London Bridge
Kickball
With the cats cradle
Post-mortem
Who am I?

I spy
Spires of steel
Stationed
Onto steep slopes of slated shingles
Sunless
Silhouettes of steel
Stalking the skies in staggering
Assent
Wave
To the waning wake of its crackle
Band
Broadcast the cynics
Cynosure
The cracking box
Had not arrived in our street
Yet
The ethereal lid
Was still open to childhood
Now
The tramcars ride
Turned to bus rides
Cobbled stones
Turned to asphalt
The silver line had been broken
Covered
Like the Dockers discarded umbrella
It had folded up
For the last time
The last tram ran
In 195 * check date
It had reached the end of the line
Time
Weaved innocence
Into the auriferous braids of youth

Your Father

Stole apples
From St. John’s open market
And penny candles from St. Francis church
Full of beans
Pea shooting shopkeepers
With a display of catcalls
He catapulted to trouble
When a peg legged cock eyed cocky watchmen
Chased his cockiness
From trespassing on the reservoirs green hill
Him and his
Cock-a-hoop cocks
Would tie up the neighbors
Knocker to knocker
Linked together in a tug of war
Nicky-knack-nine doors would open the door
The little buggers
Should have had their heads knocked together
And that’s no cock-and-bull story

Passing
Out of a passage of darkness
Entering
A marble entrance
Vaulted
Into space
Your dad clambered
And he clattered
Up the cryogenic steps of glacial stone
Marble
Echoed the austere
Stillness
Rebounded with laughter
As he rampaged the deadened corridors
Somber space
Hushed the whispers
As voiceless portraits
Muzzled the soundless walls with muted
Death
Ears split the sounds of silence
As he raises Cain along a glazed floor of polished ice
Corridors of frosted frames
Glaciated the icy walls
With a blanch of blackness
Pre-Raphaelite
Paintings
Bathed in odorless oils
While reptilian light
Glossed over their chameleon skin
Insular
Walls framed the undertone of his animated
Pitch
To the left
Changing
His direction
He found himself
Under an arch of light
Here
He entered
Through an auricular corridor
Where the white under paint of the painting was awakened
With a canvas of color
It had abstracted life
Touched
By its sentence
It floated
On a prismatic ark of white light
Imagination
Brushed the darkness
Onto a bold palette of vivid oils
Stroked
With brilliance
A creation
A painting of passion
A concept of palpable
Vision
Looking forward
He reached
Beyond
His grasp
The dissonant guard gave out a brittle yell
Bristled with anger
Panjandrum caught your dad’s
Fleeting shadow as it ran
Through the vaulted archway
His vaulting body vaunts under the vaulting
And into the cold corridors of antiquity
He runs into the robust Ruben
Tit up
He tittered
Because he didn’t give a title
He was a titan
Crossing the toneless landing
Detonating the taciturnity
Of the unaccented rotunda
With his ear-piercing whistle
Put to flight
Down
Down
A frigid flight of echoing stairs
With flightness
He flies through the marble arched passage way
Passing
And exiting
Into a breezy passage of gasping light
Puffing
In palpitation
He panted onto the pavement

Meeting his mates
Outside the Adelphi Hotel
They passed onto Brown Street

Standing
At the front door’s entrance
Of the cities largest downtown department store
Lewis’
Looked down
As the boys looked up
The controversial man
Looked down
Onto the pedestrians precinct
Under the man’s bow of nakedness
The boys would feign that they were having a shower
Under his proud protrusion
The boy’s cheeks would trickle with tears of laughter
Astride
Still stone naked
The proud man showers the shoppers with his golden
Smile

Into the department store
Top floor
Cafeteria
Cadge a penny or two
For a drink of tea
Dilute time
With a cube or two
Granular white blocks
Plummeting
Down
Down
Onto unsuspected pedestrians
That happened to walk under the cafeteria windows
Ground floor
Out of the door
With the echo
Of the surly salesmen

Roar
With laughter
Your dad and his cocksure mates
Looked up
At the naked man
And pointed at its diminutive assets
Disparaged
With a discord of discourtesy
Disgusted
Passing people would pass them
By
By and by
Bystanders
Would bypass their by-play
By and large
The boys vulgar antics was after all
A by-product of the
Working Class
A byword for poverty
So
Let bygones be bygones
By-line
Children of the working class are less educated
Heading towards by a road

They crossed onto Clayton Square
Sauntering
Into St. John’s open market
They jangled
Jibed and Jinked into high jinks
Prepared
For a barrow of fun
Swarming the stalls
Empty pockets
Ripe for the picking
Picking fruit
In a pinch
Empty pockets
Lines with the pickings
Crunching
Through the common market
With the Orwellian calls
Teasing
The farm animals
With their sociability
They socialized with the poor
Sod
Them all
As they strutted on
A covey of cocks
Plumming and preening
In a plumage of pride
Cupping
A convoy of cornucopia
Barrows
Of red roosters
Gamecocks
Ruling the market
With a cockade of cockiness
Straddling
Out of the pungent market
And onto the putrid Peirhead

Ferry across the Mersey
Shouting
Singing
Shanties in sprays of salt
Shaking
The Shavian sea with salty sea songs
Sailing
In a mist of hearty laughter
Returning

Home
With a cargo of fruits
And flowers for their loving
Mum’s
The word

His Train Ride

Was not wizardry but magic
When your dad and his mates
Would board the stationary steam train
To the Wirral Peninsula
He was not off to Hog warts
Nor did he cross a hidden ticket barrier
The steam engine was not scarlet
But it was forest-green
And it took him
And his Gryffindor
On a magical train ride
To the countryside
Where his transfiguration
Would change him from a city scouse
Into a country mouse
Well at least for one day

Cloistered
Into a colorless compartment of coziness
Sitting
On a red carpet of silver steam
Watching
The city unfurl its canescent canvas
Into an open landscape of verdure
Spellbound
Speeding on an emerald broom of shooting steam
Chasing
After their imagination
A broomstick to a quaffle
Caught in a magical game of fantasy
There was no wand
To dispel their spell
It was their Quiddith
And they were the players
Who would fly
By the seat of their pants

Holding onto Chimera

The mettlesome train whizzed
Through a hoary haze of early morning mist
Watching
Through a reflective window
They could see their world
Change
Into a vernal field of green
Pastures
Shepherd the meadows
With flocks of soft dorset
Down
Coverlets
Cover the common
Asleep
On a world of grazing green
Hills
Steep skyward
Rolling
Back and forth
Into the gentle woodland of Windsor
Green
Hedges hurdle the horizon into herds of Hereford
Cows
Shade the skyline
Into templates of black
Angus
Digests the day
Under a tethered cloud of gray
Penned in green
The wiley old yellow sun
Fails to get his attention
As he grazes near a stricken oak of sheltered shade
Watching
Country lanes fill in
The boundaries of its tithe
Farmhouses spawn
Onto hues of mustard
While furrows thread
Its callow fields into flaxen gold
Haystacks spin
Into a mead of guild
While riparian streams
Meander through a lea of Glover

Puffing
And huffing
Clinking
And clanking
Trekking
And tracking
Screaming
And screeching
Wheels wink
As blushing gates
Rise to its whistle
Where it wakes
The sectarian sleeper from its sedentary sleep

Awakened
By its arrival
It rises to its awareness
Called
To its triumphant awakening
The timeless semaphore tilts
Its red arm
Flagged
Under a cinereous cloud of bilious smoke
All fired up
The billhead beast bolts on
Buffers pointed
Steamed with rage
It charges on
With its fiery turbulent power
Passing
Through capes of darkness
It echoes its truculent screams
Pouring
Leaden smoke
From its decanter of fire
It smokes
Into a tunneling haze of turbid blackness
It pounds
Pistons thrusting
Rods of steel
Shafts of cranking iron
Back
And forth
It drives
Screaming
Hot
Oils
Melt down
Permeating
Into perspiration
It penetrates through its metallic membrane
Secreting
Its white-hot fluid
Into the hidden cavities of its glowing arch
Coupled
Its molten frame
Drives on
As the fired flame
Spins on spark of steel
Burnt down
It stutters into syncopation

Passing
Matchbox gardens
Filled with flotsam
It slows down
Gently
Its tender hand
Brakes into the halting station
Stops
Still
Standing
Stepping off
Steps
Stepping out
Starting up
Spinning on steel
Steaming off into the rising
Sun
Step on
Step up
Setting off
Shuddering and shivering into a shimmer of struggling
Sunlight
Shunts into sadness
Steam
Screams up the heaving hill
Shrieking
Goodbye
Leaving
The children to watch

It disappears into its unknown itinerary
Lost
From their point of view
Detached
Into a distant fog of descending mist
Motionless
Shunning its diachronic call
The children turned away
Crossing the junction
The children walk across the line
Heading towards the fractural
Bridge
Supported with distorted pillars
Buckled
With the pressure of time
Cracking concrete
Crumbled
With the stress of pressure
Over
Towards the ticket
Barrier
Moving on
Leaving
The forlorn train
To shunt into the switchyards of sheltered stations

Clouds sulked
Behind a doting sun
Children’s faces
Laced the light
Into a dappled doily of shaded sky
Leaves
Weave and pattern
Shaping the sky into a silhouette of sky-blue
Shadows
Interlace the meadows
Into an eyelet of greenery
Captivated
The children are caught
Into a delicate web of wondrous discovery
Innocence

Marched on
With a backpack of laughter
The children branch out
In search of the elusive
Bird’s nest
Filled with their quest
They found their gold
Eggs
To be discovered
To be collected
Safe and secure
Look for more
Hedgerows
Brittles of bramble
Nestled nests
Unknown to the naked
Eye
Found one
Hidden
To passerbys
All except for the hawkish
Eye