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1
Somewhat lost,
I came searching,
chasing words.
Blundering through puberty and adolescence.
Shy then awkward,
then blunt, then abrasive.
Anxious in a time of turbulent emotion.
In ritual step with hormonal chaos
and the process of becoming.
I stretched an open palm towards experience,
finding friend and enemy
in the common democracy of mistakes.
Finger-sifting air, soil and street,
for dictionaries and love,
just once to touch
the elusive
unifying answer
to Why?
And linger there.
2
This was Spring.
The font of all our dreams.
Where time rooted trees
and exuberant daffodil,
chaliced crocus
and rainbows distilled in dew
unfurl their colour.
Where mischievous children,
lyrical gymnasts, smile dancers,
quartz dreamers
and curious unravellers
of startling mysteries
in pavements and people,
enthrall with their learning,
exuding
wonder!
Where young women chassé,
charting futures bold with intellect and ova.
Whose dance is fluorescent shadow,
which sows confusions amongst the boys,
- rippling pollen in mountain streams -
yet stirs in old men
long stowed cargoes of memory
and desire.
Who will nod in knowing recognition
at the rite,
- the perpetual waltz of love and lust -
and smile away their wintering years.
Where mothers grin,
expectant on full granaries,
as lush shoots dust the wheat fields green
hinting at lavish aromas,
ripe as camembert on warm bread,
and tables laden
with chattering, smiling faces.
3
I bent to grasp this antique soil,
to smell the mud,
inhale the lifeblood of our dawn;
have course through me
all the tongues, all the lore,
all the customs and the slog,
since out of Africa we grew
these two hundred thousand sapian Springs;
have start the visions at initiations
in the caves of Lascaux,
and fingers know
the dirt's alchemy of dyes,
then bring forth the print
of horse,
of bull,
of unicorn;
have my pulse
the rhythm of the mattock and it's geometric arc,
the ceremonial dance
and the sowing of chants,
condensed to earth by every soul
that ever clawed and tilled
and worked this sod;
have my bones ring iron,
sounding to the hammer and the smith,
industrial
as Jack - layer of railways,
Jack - moulder of engines,
and Jack - the forger of wheels,
now seared to dirt the colour of rust;
have synapses fire,
discern the chemical equation for clay,
the compass of minerals,
basalt's subterranean heart,
molecular alphabets,
the atom's mathematics,
Earth's genome sequenced in this soil.
4
I wanted all,
The totality of truth,
- the absolute -
from the Big Bang to the Singularity
and every nuance in between.
This maths teacher's window-watcher,
transfixed in an emerald flash
as Kingfishers spear
or with fibres quickening to a redhead's smile,
craved knowledge from spontaneity
and intuition.
Not as deferred gratification
with a spring-time of disciplined study
conforming to a 'Better’s' expectations,
as calculating
as emotions learned by rote.
Nothing in my hand remained
'cept the odour of decay
sagging dank with disappointment.
And as I raised my eyes
I met Complexity, empirical and real
spinning through the universe.
That single, simple line of formulae,
reducing, explaining all
and so beloved of theoretical physics
drawing to itself
the mythic grail,
the face of God
meta-physical and superstitious, the wished for Unified Field Theory
dissolved like the meadow's shrouding mist
on a summers morning.
Knowledge and science took on new meaning.
More than Newton,
more than machine and closed systems.
More even than Einstein.
Wider than all our imaginations.
Order.
Stability.
Equilibrium
fell away.
Irreversible and constant like change.
5
So, further still I had to trawl,
find experience to harvest,
truths to harness,
and so construct a history.
Hence to the cities for summer I came.
Hiking, hitching, hoping.
Sifting air and happenstance.
Cheek by jowl sat poverty and excess.
Grime with a blood-diamond sparkle.
Soaring spires of affluent conceit
while below,
promise lay stunted,
horizons foreshortened and choked.
Diversions, abundant as adverts,
dribble life-styles most pockets can't buy.
Sophisticated comedies of manners,
historical costume dramas,
sit-coms, sci-fi and war,
cartoons, thrillers, serials and gore;
formulaic eye-candy at the flicks and on TV.
Violence on the streets,
violence on the screen;
porn's gone mainstream.
Craven papers blare envy and hate,
facts jettisoned in favour of shite.
I read my Black next-door neighbour,
and the Asian corner-shop owner,
my daughter's single-mother,
the factory line co-worker, the coal miner,
my lover,
even the lowly road sweeper;
are dangerous
and bad for your welfare.
Demonised.
Made Other.
6.
So. I am become Other.
And all feeling spoke to me of words
in the pheromone
of skin to skin.
Manifold and diverse the skin I found,
or which found me clothing others
from amongst the urban multitude.
Tender,
affectionate skin offering up bliss.
Flighty skin light as gossamer wrapped in air.
Delicious skin, exquisite to the tongue,
and hot skin,
vernal with passion.
Glistening skin burnished red-black,
pink, translucent skin,
skin all the shades between
wet in sweat and exhausted from toil,
porous and giving,
palmed to me their histories.
Skin scared, emoting pain,
screaming
of two hundred thousand bleak winters.
Clenched skin,
taut with violence condoning my own.
Shallow skin made their visitations,
barrier's to conversation and knowing,
with no questions for my dreams
nor answers to my rhymes.
Semantic, perfidious skin
crossed my path with corrupted words
and alien class phrases.
"Extraordinary rendition";
whose birth-pangs
are in the abattoir
where flesh is rendered.
"Collateral damage";
the shards of Innocent's skulls
dripping brain,
lie strewn across Baghdad and Falluja
seeding hatred;
are dismissed,
as of no consequence,
with racist words.
"I am the Decider";
these are the words of Tyranny.
Words of torture,
the words that kill!
Many were the gentle skins I met,
many more than those which hurt
or yearned and brayed to murder.
Skin inexhaustible with caresses,
emollient,
spreading balm.
Normal skin. Everyday skin. Your skin.
7.
And of all those skins I've met,
surrounding other
- of character, spirit and passion -
the best, the most
brought the essence
that is now me.
Gave me the words and the voice to sing.
The common words,
complex simple words,
honest words of class
hard wired to our collective D N A,
defining us in who we are.
Intrinsic to us as the veins too a leaf,
yolk too egg,
Moon too Earth.
Cascading words
passed on by word of mouth
beneath the covers of beds and books.
Words with stories
like tumbling autumn leaves reprising histories,
releasing memories of shared action,
social and organic,
natural to how we got to where we are today;
mass participatory
non-violent
civil disobedience
in Selma, Alabama;
sacrifice and resistance
in Vietnam,
Palestine
and South Africa;
rebellions and revolutions
a la Touissant L'Overture,
La Marseillaise
y Bolivar.
8.
Open and generous.
Equal and compassionate.
Caring and supportive.
Reciprocity and solidarity.
Sorority and fraternity - humanity.
Dialogue and reason.
Resist and struggle and prevail.
Steadfast and thoughtful.
Sensitive and tolerant.
Wisdom and sympathy.
Unwavering and revolutionary.
Lenient and warm.
Cooperate and cohesion.
Construct and neighbourly.
Empathetic and accord.
Befriend and big-hearted.
Charitable and brave.
Determined and conscientious.
Patient and purposeful.
Unprejudiced and feisty.
Tenacious and considerate.
Enthusiastic and committed.
Kind and unshakable.
Logical and altruistic.
Encouraging and bold.
Amicable and ubiquitous.
Attentive and loyal.
Civil and international.
Audacious and comradely.
Gregarious and secular.
Assured and vivid.
Positive and vigorous.
Unequivocal and courteous.
Responsible and decisive.
Perceptive and explicit.
Sturdiness and integrity.
Dignified and supple.
Analytical and implacable.
Respectful and vigilant.
Conscientious and forceful.
Accommodating and direct.
Professional and charitable.
Clarity and abstraction.
Lush and fecundity.
Optimistic and humanitarian.
Elegant and powerful.
Black and white and grey.
Spontaneous and intuitive, complex and diverse
Inexhaustible words. Copyright: Les Skeates
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