It's that time of year; when I publish my cheery Christmas poem.
Season's Greetings
Hark, the postman's at the door!
Cards fall on the hallway floor
Sent by people we don't see
from January to January.
Wise old Magi, magic star,
red breasted birds - sent from far
and wide - and now the date
has passed to send one back! Too late.
We forgot our Joan and Bill, but still
we were never going in their will.
I wrote this at a Poetry Business workshop in March 2019. I've been revisiting old drafts and decided to tidy this up and give it an airing.
Inspired by the theme of the illusion of human power, a topic covered brilliantly by Shelley in "Ozymandias" and by Imtiaz Dharker in "Tissue". They cleverly mocked the vanity of the powerful, but those in power now are still leading privileged lives while they exploit those without it.
Power
Tantalising, it slides and slips
just beyond our reach. Elusive,
it squirms and wriggles
in and out of slick, shining towers,
feeding as it goes, absorbing,
gorging on the secrecy,
the handshakes, the manipulation.
It winds around the limbs
of the friends of friends,
their husbands and wives,
the people who are "like us"
and whispers money into their ears.
It opens its jaws and drips venom
on the poor.
Some pause their labour,
look up to the sky
and chase the meagre coins
that shower down on them. They
scramble and weep in gratitude,
only glimpsing the Serpent as it
Written at a Poetry Business workshop in 2019. Re-worked several times. With thanks to John Foggin for some excellent advice to tighten it up.
Unknown Soldier
He lies in the sun, a map
in his outstretched hand.
Music, a song in unfamiliar tongue
drifts from a nearby house
and flows through a haze of heat.
It washes over him, entering
deafened ears. The sun-baked
sand shows no noon shadow.
Static from his radio scatters
the languid flies that buzz
around the blood-black pools
around and beneath him.
The crosses on his map
mean nothing now.
He is blind and cannot feel the insect
crawling on his reddening face.
Even in this blazing heat,
he is cooling.
The music stops, the radio cuts out
and the insect is still.
Everything is dead.
Everything.
Tim Fellows 2020
Written after a workshop on Imtiaz Dharker examining the subject of childhood and poverty.
The Long Rows in Clay Cross were where my mum grew up.
Click here to hear about the Long Rows
Long Rows
Here they come, ragged pullovers
smeared with dirt, snotty-sleeved,
pushing and fighting.
Basin haircuts, running from the rain,
scrapping for playthings. Old boxes,
a burst casey, metal rods.
Always hungry, wanting to play
but wanting mam's tea more. Gulping
it down like dogs.
Waiting for their dads to come home
from the pit. Some with joy,
some with fear.
And it'll be them too, after the grubby days
on the crumbling roads, doors open,
in and out.
Here they'll come, booted and black,
smeared with dust, throats on fire,
shattered.
Aberfan, Cymru, 21 October 1966. 144 people, including 116 children died when the spoil heap colapsed and slid onto the village, engulfing the school. The cause was the collapse of a spoil heap from the colliery that was undermined by spring water. Despite the subsequent enquiry putting the blame squarely on the NCB, nobody lost their jobs or was even fined, let alone imprisoned for clear negligence. Lord Alfred Robens, chairman of the NCB and clearly part of the institutional problems that led to the disaster, went on to become the chair of a Health and Safety committee. Originally a Labour politician and union leader, by 1979 he was living a luxurious lifestyle and had aligned with Thatcher's Conservatives.
That Other Child
Derbyshire, 1966
mum dropped me at the school gates
wrapped against October's chill
She made sure I wasn't late
Another Friday for that boy,
in the shadow of the mine
closed down just the year before;
the pit head stayed, a kind of shrine
or monument to colliers past
the slag heap hill was out of bounds;
too dangerous to climb back then
but meanwhile, as the clock unwound,
other children laugh and play,
sitting in their tiny chairs
never saw their mums again;
just an accident of birth
that they, not I, died on that day
in that pit village, far away.
Tim Fellows 2020
Images from Wikipedia
Written on a flight back from Spain in August 2020
