The more our heart’s quarantined.

The more closed we become,

The darker our heart,

The more closed we become,

The more apart.

The more territorial,

More terrorist.

Open all borders, break down all walls.

Shred all birth certificates, burn all passports.

Open all doors, windows and gates.

Open all access-all areas, open all records.

Open all fields, open all curtains.

Open all memories, open all galleries.

Open all fears, open all dreams, open all.

Cure all maladies.

Open all educational facilities.

Open all secret services, open all doors.

Open all senses, open all defences.

Ask what were these closed for.

Open all family secrets, open all trap doors.

Open all dark passages, open all attics and cellars.

Open all battles, open all secret wars.

Open all, and unlock interstella . . . The interstella.

The possibilities of light.

The nature of trust.

The strength of the unassailable

US.

Night Mails

Night Mails

This is the night mail crossing the border,

And oblige, bark the bailiffs, by order,

Letters from providence, letters to the poor,

The lot on the corner, the girl next door.

Pulling out tears on debt’s steady climb,

The grades are against her on poverty’s line.

She carries the past like it were a boulder,

Shovelling screams over her shoulder,

Snorting noisily as law passes,

The children like wind bent grasses.

Some turn heads as invisibility approaches,

She stares on the sideline at blank-faced coaches.

Seems no one can turn her course,

As she stumbles, broken by unspoken laws.

In disquiet she passes yet no one wakes,

And shoulders in bedrooms gently shake.

Dawn does not freshen, her climb is undone.

Down towards depression she descends,

Towards thugs yelping in shades of shame,

Towards fields of statistics and furnaces.

Set upon the dark plain, like giant chessmen,

Her family waits for her.

In the dark of them, beside pale steel locks

Men long for news.

No letters of thanks, nor from the banks,

No letters of joy from the girl or the boy,

(But receipted bills and citations

to inspect new stock or their relations),

Nor applications for situations,

No letters above declarations,

Of her illegality and complications,

And gossip, gossip, plans for nations,

News substantial, no ring-fenced financials.

Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,

The breakdown uploads, the bailiffs charge in,

No letters from uncle, cousins nor aunt –

They too locked in the same dance.

Letters of demand delivered by hand,

Letters of law delivered by claw,

Written on paper of every hue,

I think the violence is fighting you;

The cold and official pouring,

Into the breaking passage of falling.

Clever, stupid, short and the long,

The typed replies spelled all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep,

Dreaming of increasing demands,

Of disappearing in the quicksand,

Or invisibility like Branston’s and Crawford’s.

But we shall continue our dreams,

Shall wake soon and long for letters,

And no one will hear the postman’s knock

Without a quickening of the heart,