Dominic James, Smudge

Saint Bride

The Embankment, down from Waterloo
where many skyline spires include
St Bride’s own bell-stopped spike of stone

beneath which I could smoke a fag,
take coffee breaks on afternoons
escape grey Fleet Street’s drag, oh,

many years ago…  Another churchyard
that I knew, St Giles-in-the-fields,
after long hours on the phone, Richard,

fresh from Amsterdam, Brighton Radio,
regaled the bums with drinking songs,
an irregular charm alarmed them all,

I watched his corduroys, flight bag
through the scrawny summer rose,
heard his voice, so rich, knew his look

so well when he moved in on the drunks.
One came up to me and said: That guy,
you know he’s fucking nuts? I know, I know.

I have left too many friends behind.
Today I’m lost by Monument, winter’s come,
new renovations puzzle me

from Waterloo East then all around
the haunted stones of London town;
their dismal symmetry.

Further details

Sarah James, Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic

Admitted Nov 30, 1981,

age 6: diabetes mellitus

The glass syringe is heavy.

I teach my fingers to force

the needle deep into an orange.

Then I press in the plunger’s

citrus sting of cold insulin.

First an orange, then my leg.

The world shrinks, small

as this sphere: soft flesh

and sharp jabs, pitted sweetness

and growing a thicker skin.

Ten, twenty, thirty years:

daily survival’s still weighted down

by non-stop needling.

Blood sugars rise and dip,

creating their own syrup,

slowly squeezing

all the juice from me.

Further details

Gordon Meade, In Transit

Birds and Air

After he passed away,

for a while, my father was a heron.

From time to time, I was able to watch him,

standing at the edge of the sea, awaiting

the arrival of some sort of fish.

Then, he somehow changed

into a buzzard, soaring only so high,

not quite a golden eagle, but more impressive than

a hawk. It is so long since he died, that he is

no longer either of the above. He has

dissolved, like morning dew, into

the atmosphere. Not a bird anymore, he has

become that which they fly through; invisible like

the wind, a passing thermal, that I can

no longer see, and yet, still feel.

Further details