The girl I wanted to be

I envied you your freedom

To wear short hair

Pierce things

I had only seen

On TV

Fall off your motorino

Breaking a wrist

With such impunity

Unafraid of the

Consequences

Approaching exams

Short skirts

Body paint

Cool for days

I didn’t see

The things that

Frightened you

Kept you acting

The social butterfly

To avoid authority

Running from those

Who demanded things

You could not bear to give

How could I?

With my own demons

To manage

In my long skirts

Flat shoes, subtle

Silent screams

Haunting adolescence

Like a will-o-the-wisp

We are similar now

Grown treading different

Yet parallel paths

Outlasting our pursuers

Ignoring our denigrators

Fiercely seeking our own truth

In a sea of snake oil salesmen

We were never friends

Yet hardly enemies

Mere acquaintances

Each wrapped up in

Our own, private concerns

On nodding terms

Barely aware the other

Existed, but rivals

For all the wrong reasons

I wish you well

Perhaps one day

Our minds may form

A greeting longer

Than the casual nod

We spare one another

From across the room

At some ghastly

Virtual reunion

Organised by those

Who peaked in high school

And want to compare

Their declining ambitions

In a club house

After dark

Like giggling teens

While the next generation

Smokes round the back

Of the toilets

Hoping a mint

Will disguise the smell

As parents pretend

Not to recognise

Their own poor choices

In their offspring

Still single?

Deserted?

Divorced?

Half dead?

Any rugrats?

Really?

Same. Or nearly.

Deep scars from wounds

Old and new

Here’s to us

And all those like us

How about it, Fay?

We happy few

Still standing here

Upon this day

Lock Stock and Blockbustered

That time I took you to the Ritzy

‘Cos all your friends were doing it

Trying to blag our way into a movie

Some unseen authority claimed

We were too young to see

And we got as far as the  counter

With our carefully hoarded coins

Then you forgot your fake birthday

But they thought I was the one trying it on

To sneak in underage,

As if!  Outrage shone on both our faces

For the three year plus gap

Yawned in the other direction

I wasn’t even that spotty

But your suave blonde dye job

Carried the can far more convincingly

At the age of twelve

Than my mousy brown timidity

At fifteen.  Stymied by

Sensible shoes and conservative hemline

An embarrassment of youth

Despite the bus pass they swore

I must have found somewhere

For once the system worked

And we had to settle for ‘Grease’

Subtitles

Your much lamented dyslexia

Was the bone of contention

You used to beat me down

When choosing between early Almodovar

And the Nouvelle Vague.

We each spoke one language

But reading between the lines

Proved impossible.

Survivor

I am right there
Surrounded by cockroaches
Squatting in the ruins,
The wreckage.
Collateral, damaged
In the fallout
Of a truly
Decadent society
That looked up to its
Graven images,
Photoshopped.
Idols, now idle.
How they glittered
In their lame, sequinned
Lifestyles.
Just me – a bunch of
Bad habits
And under the rubble,
One drug-addled
Rock guitarist.
Perhaps if we put our
Heads together
We can try
To find words
To remember.

Self-Censorship

There’s nothing wrong with ‘language’, –
To communicate’s the key
So why restrict the ones vereicht
(For many words begin with C)
Come, clarity can conquer crude
Catastrophe of cant
Through substitution of a vowel
It’s obvious what’s meant
When ranting on the topic of
Her least-admired slot
The poetry of metaphor
Reveals what is not
So obvious an object, yet
With strong component parts
Even ingenue construes it too –
What’s hidden of our hearts.
Pray, do not scold our children
As they strive to master terms
Still unfamiliar to those
Well-versed in Chinese burns
The patois of the playground
May be where they first attempt
Expansion of vocabulary
Mastery of feint
And tossing out tame adjectives
Must call a tool as speyed
With far more sense of phrasing
They’ll be that much less afraid
Of talking through their tensions
And timing out their tries
To test the twists and turns of tongue
That trip us up with ties
Inherent to our thinking
The second we’re quite grown
Abandoned truth that stank of youth
We posit the unknown
To bore for Merrie England
While chewing over fat
Discussing nothing needlessly
In stultifying chat
Quite lacking in all substance
Exotic or uncouth
Consigning dreams and hopes and schemes
To corners, dumb, aloof

25 Glorious Years

I was only seven when
The world wide web was born
Helped nurture it as it did me
Though sometimes both were torn

Now controversy jostles next
To videos of pets
And governments are waking up
To cybercrime and sexts

They talk of regulation, laws
Protecting those who surf
Such optimism gives me pause
For who can claim this turf?

How would you try to regulate
Where speech is truly free
Outside the firewalls of nations’
Charted territory

They want to sell, or tax, exploit
The assets they don’t own
Regain the power to deny
Dissent has reached them, grown

A massive haul, this data mine
To use for good and ill
Through monetising yours and mine
They hope to profit.  Still

While youth retains advantage here
Technology will grow
Though moralists may phish to smear
They will not stop the show

Out-growing

Those long-hair days of wild and free
While young did not come easily
I grew into my genes too late
To benefit from youthful state

But learned the songs with all the rest
While others danced in pants and vest
As I kept covered awkward shape
They blossomed, trawling fashion’s wake

The skimpy morals of my peers
Confirmed my parents’ base-born fears
Thus all attempts to overcome
My shyness, foiled as they’d begun

No makeup, heels, short skirts for me
No skinny jeans or baby tee
The rare events I did attend
Kid sister came to shed each friend

As chaperone she proved effective
Showering with much invective
Any mate in whom she’d sensed
My interest, until offense

Was taken by so many there
No longer welcomed anywhere
I sought my solace by myself
Content to moulder on the shelf

In preference to company
For self-defence relied on me
Until the day I’d saved enough
To leave them all to guard my stuff

I barely spoke at home, it seems
While every thought throughout my teens
Was monitored by blood relations
All in hope of revelations

Youth began at twenty-one
As finally in search of fun
I left my childhood far behind
To see what joy there was to find

Opus Number 23

You tasted pure indigo
It was all I could do to keep from
Licking at my palms
Sounds so smooth
Like chocolate, unwrapped
Lickable lines and drowsy dots
Melting into my ears
The soundwaves soothing,
Soaring and dipping
Cleansing my nervousness
As these spidery fingers kept
Stuttering their way across the keys
Klutz-kissed Chopin
Blowing through the dust
Of an afternoon’s discipline
Lost in a chessboard world
Of whirling black and white
Sweaty digits writhing on ebony
Toe curling pages
With their yellow smell
And the dullness of Instruction
Her leaden pencil marks
Numbers above the notes
Winking hide and seek
Angular strokes slashing
At my tired eyes
Teasing me with their inflexibility
A rubrik for perfection
Joints wobbling under the weight
Of the deep, deep, blue
This was the piece
The memory and the melody
My right to the slowing
Feet poised to pedal
A passage in time
This ocean of indigo
That gave me that first taste
One bittersweet number
Nose crinkling at the
Orangey tang of
Fourteen-year-old failure

Anonymous

Heroes of my generation
Without name or even nation
Having fun with all creation
Terminals of botheration

Matrix, sleek and filled with toys
To exercise big girls and boys
Generating corporate noise
Delighting in the quiet joys

Creative juices flowing thickly
Plug ‘n’ play each level quickly
Conscience rarely feeling prickly
Navigating systems slickly

Operating under cover
Lurkers pinging one another
Forum flamers doused by Mother
Teasing Trojans’ backdoor lover

Wore that t-shirt as the prize
Ironic slogans catching eyes
That hoped for glory; in disguise
With lines of code and late-night dyes

Cracker chic was all the rage
During our screen-fed dance-club days
But rebels smart in other ways
Soon turn their skills to stuff that pays

We’re middle-aged and past our prime
And chose the red pill, every time
But now a life of cyber-crime
Is overtaking yours and mine

Words and Music

There came a point in my teens
When the sounds of the world
Invaded my palate
Until I was choked
With a burning desire; to speak
What I’d swallowed; to say
Everything possible
Tear myself open
Screaming words
The world could understand
But at the age of minority
People rarely listen
So I sang melodies
Whose complexity spoke
Of a simple beauty
And we became friends
One day, the words may
Overtake me in my music
And the whole world will hear