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Back Gold from the Stone Save as PDF
Chapters (148)
  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. Dedication
  4. Introduction
  5. From Perceptions of the Pen (1985)
  6. Well ‘I’
  7. Mother
  8. Ain’t No
  9. Scream
  10. So Near and yet So Near
  11. As Is Life
  12. From Tender Fingers in a Clenched Fist (1988)
  13. African Metaphor
  14. Listening
  15. Nursery Rhyme
  16. Some Quotes from Neatherton Man found in Deepest England Somewhere between 1974 and 1980
  17. Negotiations
  18. Englabetween
  19. What Have We Got
  20. Moods of Rain
  21. Wasita
  22. Sing a Song of Sick Penance
  23. The Black Writers’ Workshop
  24. Understanding Difference
  25. The Day Will Come
  26. The Invasion of the Mancunoids
  27. The Red Death of Edgar Allan Poe
  28. Trying Me
  29. Dead Wood Poetry
  30. Fell Off and Fell Out
  31. Bad Trip – L.S.D.
  32. Burn My Book (Burn In Illusion)
  33. Tense Tattered Tortured Tried Tested and Torn
  34. Mother Thatcher
  35. Today Will Pass
  36. Spell Bound
  37. Gold from the Stone
  38. Everything Is Rhythmical
  39. Sleep Is a Songbird
  40. Director’s Notes (For the Daily Shun and Daily Killer)
  41. She Read as She Cradled
  42. City Sigh
  43. Spell Me Freedom
  44. Interim and Cost
  45. Ace Under My Sleeve
  46. Traces
  47. The Show Goes On
  48. From Rebel without Applause (1992)
  49. Bearing Witness
  50. Remember How We Forgot
  51. Fingerprints
  52. Occupations
  53. Boiling Up
  54. Instant Consciousness
  55. Airmail to a Dictionary
  56. The Customs Men
  57. Mind-Walking
  58. For My Headstone
  59. Love Poem
  60. Flowers in the Kitchen
  61. Suitcases and Muddy Parks
  62. The Nest
  63. Pass It On
  64. Going Places
  65. Gil Scott-Heron
  66. Godsell
  67. Flushed
  68. I Hate You
  69. Professional Black
  70. Pretoria Pit
  71. Uncle Tom and the 1990s
  72. Clear as Day Storms
  73. My Brother
  74. Children and Company
  75. Writer’s Blockocks
  76. The Black Moon
  77. Brinkley Park
  78. Rage
  79. From Morning Breaks in the Elevator (1999)
  80. The Waitress and the Nights of the Round Table
  81. Colour Blind
  82. Charlie’s Playing Blackjack
  83. Invisible Kisses
  84. Slipping
  85. Murdering Bill
  86. Immigration R.S.V.P.
  87. Fair
  88. The Repossession: Lot 67
  89. Baptism in Mire
  90. Controlled Explosions
  91. Children’s Home
  92. Walking in Circles
  93. My Dad Is a Pilot
  94. Guilt
  95. Sandwich Love
  96. The Elevator
  97. A Flock of Sound
  98. The Graduate and Her Secret Thesis
  99. The Bruise
  100. Quiet Places
  101. Mourning Breaks
  102. From Listener (2008)
  103. Let There Be Peace
  104. Rain
  105. The Actor’s Voice
  106. Patterns
  107. Laying the Table
  108. Perfect
  109. Gambian Holiday Maker
  110. Listener
  111. Ricochet
  112. Email
  113. Elephant in the Room
  114. Architecture
  115. Moving Mountains
  116. Manchester Piccadilly
  117. Some Things I Like
  118. The Lost Key
  119. **** This
  120. Magpie
  121. Before We Get Into This
  122. Advice for the Living
  123. The Battle of Adwa, 1896
  124. The Gilt of Cain
  125. Applecart Art
  126. I Will Not Speak Ill of the Dead
  127. Transistor
  128. This Train (Sing Along)
  129. Spring: Mayday Mayday
  130. Barley Field
  131. The Boxer
  132. Torch
  133. New Poems
  134. What If
  135. Whale Translation
  136. The Spark Catchers
  137. Shipping Good
  138. Open Up
  139. Night Mails
  140. Lock and Quay
  141. Listening Post
  142. Fallen
  143. Belong
  144. Rest
  145. Adventure Flight
  146. Endnotes
  147. Index of Titles
  148. Index of First Lines

Ears to the ground,

The basis of noise

Is rhythm sound.

From spoken words to ways of walk,

From rappin’ to reggae and funk we talk in.

Rhythm, rhythm

Can you

Hear the

Rhythms?

Way back in the heart of Africa,

They took our drums away,

But rhythm proved its own power

By being here today.

All four corners these sweet-sounding rhythms reach,

With treble in the speaker, even bass in the speech,

To the freezing cold and heat in heights,

Muhammad Ali did do it in his fights

With

Quick rhythm slick rhythm

bold rhythm gold rhythm

God given life living

Rhythm rhythm

Can you

hear the

Rhythm.

Sleep Is a Songbird

Sleep Is a Songbird

Sleep is a goddess to me now,

A whisper of continuous sentences

Bellowed in the daytime

Like a songbird in the night.

Tender is the pillow that soaks

My tears and wipes them from

My dreams. Consoling is the mattress

Like words of a lost mother.

I insert the needle of sleep

With a sigh of relief,

And hallucinate beauty from pain

And laughs from grief.

I sink like the tomb into the earth,

In wilful relief from all,

And lie cold yet warm,

Cushioned and calm.

Sleep is a songbird to me now.

Director’s Notes (For the Daily Shun and Daily Killer)

Director’s Notes (For the Daily Shun and Daily Killer)

Bring on the dancing juries

And cat-caressing judges.

Bring on the soliciting solicitors

With empty veins and smelly crutches.

Enter the manic newscaster.

Exit the smoke.

Audition the junkie as a jester,

Give him an arm full of coke.

Q the lights for the New Cross massacre.

Fade the lights on the heartache and pain.

Leave a shadow for the exit of the murderer.

Then bring the lights up again.

Yes . . . Black skin looks menacing in white light!

She Read as She Cradled

She Read as She Cradled

You part of me.

Every day your history,

Every tomorrow your destiny,

Every growth your mystery,

Every mother wants a baby

like you.

Every laugh your personality,

Every look your clarity,

Every word your stability,

Every mother wants a baby

like you.

Every hiccup a comedy,

Every fall a catastrophe,

Every worry my worry,

Every step you’re beside me,

Every sight you’re pure beauty,

Every mother wants a baby

like you.

Every tear wiped carefully,

Every word spoke lovingly,

Every meal fed silently,

Every cloth washed caringly,

Every song sung sweetly.

Every day I whisper quietly,

Every mother wants a baby

like you.

City Sigh

City Sigh

Move

Quick

Slick

Time

Tick

Goodbye

On a

High.

City sigh,

Got to fly,

Don’t know why.

Train

Plane

Sun

Rain

Fun

Pain

Be sane

Play the game

City rain

City pain

Here gone

Quick food

Pass on

Plastic too

Sit to brood

And look at you

Losing time

Meaning

Leaning

On the building

Of the

City sigh,

Got to fly,

Don’t know why.

Burger food

Good to spew