Your presence binds lips together.

Why is it when your name is mentioned

There’s a sudden change of weather?

You’re a lift to a claustrophobic,

A witch to a priest.

You’re gushy and gooey.

You’re my release.

I wouldn’t be a bell ringer

With a face like that.

Here, see how hard you can

Head butt this cricket bat.

How can we discuss the meaning of life

When you don’t deserve it?

It’s a bad habit that, breathing,

I wish you could curb it.

It’s short and sweet,

And there isn’t much pain.

Have you ever tried hang-gliding

Without a plane?

I’d say I didn’t mean all this,

But truthfully I’d be lying,

And I really wouldn’t write it

If I thought that you’d be crying.

In fact if I was you I wouldn’t

See any need for resentment,

Because from me to you, quite honestly,

This has got to be a compliment.

Professional Black

Professional Black

Whirlwinds attract you more than the common breeze.

It’s too easy to see the wood and never the trees.

You can make a tailor-made struggle just for the stage,

And the government will fund it ’cause it’s all the rage.

And you can fool the bodies into giving you the readies,

Because only black people can define just where your head is.

When I check it out the hammer hits upon the nail.

You speak about the struggle as if it was a fairy tale.

As if it was a vehicle, your personal limousine,

With closed and tinted windows to take you to your dream,

And the only ones who see this are the ones who realise

That you’re cheating this ‘community’ with lies.

You disagree with these words and theatrically deny,

Telling me what you’ve done for black people, never telling me why.

And there before my eyes it became totally apparent

That you were never black – you were simply transparent.

Pretoria Pit

Pretoria Pit

I lived next to Pretoria,

A deformed tongue of earth,

Holding fathers and sons in clenched stone throats.

Young estate kids stole motorbikes,

Wheel-spinning on the fossilised spines of miners

Who groaned in the trips of hippies

Who plucked magic mushrooms from their mouths.

In parts, on sharp sides, silver birches scream for light

Like the flame-breathing canaries.

Pretoria bleeds in still pond pockets.

And I’d sit on this and watch the sun through

The dead mill windows; make it look

Like a church, like it was crying,

Like the whole Lancashire plain was mourning

As the souls rose through the birch trees

And suckled the stars.

Our estate hunched at Pretoria’s feet,

Fell down from there,

As if in awe,

As if running away down into the village,

Desperate to break through onto Market Street.

Uncle Tom and the 1990s

Uncle Tom and the 1990s

The way he

Bowed his head to the lilac princess