Pilgrims at the White Horizon (Valiant Razalia novel #2)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pilgrims-White-Horizon-Valiant-Razalia-ebook/dp/B00FG6JI2Y

Michael Wyndham Thomas, Pilgrims at the White Horizon (Valiant Razalia novel #2).

The Mercury Annual (Valiant Razalia novel #1)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mercury-Annual-Valiant-Razalia-Book-ebook/dp/B004C05CMK

Michael Wyndham Thomas, The Mercury Annual (Valiant Razalia novel #1).

 

'Come To Pass'

Come to pass

He has hollowed the cellar
till the mortar ledges out
like steps to a decommissioned heaven

crates of imperishables
look on each other
forward commanders keeping a steel-grey faith

a creviced box
hides silver, gold, tumbles of yen and zloty—

who knows what stake will win
once the world folds into its last imperturbable sickness?

books on growing veg in grave-deep mulch
on teasing warmth from pinholes

lie open on duvets under plastic
breviaries to be reverenced
when sores bud thick on the skin of the age

in the street
he keeps his nose up for the odours
on the wind after next

car cuts in, man shoves round man—
tidings of night-fires
calamity taking snaps of itself
in a ringing line of visors

‘Closing Down’
runs everywhere beside him—

the arse-end of a nursery rhyme
cut loose from cockle-shell and bonnet

the imperishables were tricky to come by:

blueblood and pinstripe are deep in the game

each one night nearer
he revolves down below

casts a captain’s eye
over crate, book, duvet

spreads metal and coin

so they make an unbustable flush

shivers nonetheless
as a breaching chill of new weather

finds his ribs, collarbone
his tenderly defenceless neck

In Iota Magazine 93; also the title poem in my 2015 collection from Oversteps Books (overstepsbooks.com) ISBN 978-1-906856-50-2

Piglet, I can't say...

'Pooh?'
'Hmm?'
'When we saw Kanga and Roo by the stream…why did you hide behind that bush?'
'I was worried.'
'About what?'
'Misogyny.'
'What's that?'
'I can't say.'
'You don't know?'
'I can't say. Tigger showed me a page on one of his gizmos. All about it.'
'But you can't say.'
'Tigger says that if you even say anything about it it makes you complicit.'
'Complicit. Is that like coming over all funny?'
'I can't say.'
'Are you doing it now?'
'I can't say. But just to give you a clue: no.'
'So it's a bad thing.'
'Yes.'
'Am I doing it now?'
'Piglet, honestly, it's best to get Tigger to show you that page.'
'But I'm worried now. I might be doing it and I don't know. And you can't say.'
'What I can say is that it's unlikely to happen between you and me.'
'So…back by the stream…it was to do with Roo or Kanga. Yes?'
'I can only say this, Piglet: Kanga.'
'Ah. So did you get a bit…complicit?'
'I can't--'
'Right, of course, you can't. But you ran and hid. She didn't see you. So what could you possibly have done?'
'Piglet, even saying this much compounds my complicitude.'
'I'm lost, Pooh. I mean, isn't it possible that this…thing…is something you might do by accident? So if you realise that, or it's pointed out, you can apologise?'
'No, once it's done, it's done, says Tigger. No discussion.'
'Surely not.'
'Surely not not. One mistake and you're cast into the outer Dartford. And even presuming to speak to someone of the opposite…opposite…lot…could be misconstrued.'
'Ah, so it's always to do with the…the opposite…'
'Lot, yes.'
'Now you've got me thinking about all the things I might have said to Kanga or Mrs Rabbit. Oh, what are the signs, Pooh?'
'You're not drawing me out any further, Piglet.'
'I just want to know, Pooh, in case I--'
'I know the old dodges.'
'What old--?'
'For all I know, I might not even be walking on this path with you at all. I might be in a secret and no doubt secure location in central London being filmed by undercover reporters dressed as fake milkshakes and waiting for me say something incrumblimating.'
'Pooh, it's just me. And you. Here. On this path.'
'Huh, or an illusion created by those special KGB effects.'
'Look, Pooh--'
'Not another word, Piglet. Best thing, says Tigger, is to have your lawyer on speed-dial.'
'But I don't have a lawyer, I don't have a dial and this is as fast as I go.'
'Ah, well…there it is.'

'Young Lovers in Roseville' (The Black Country, 1975)

Young Lovers in Roseville

(The Black Country, 1975)

This remains
the drab-glam three-day life

the Fifties at least were honest
turned out shallow pockets

confessed without pressing
that yesterday ran off with the paints

she still finds confetti
when she sits at her mom’s replaced dresser
curves a mirror round her nape
like a radiation gun

little land
spavined by fatman history

but pledged to cripple on in dad’s boots
hooked and eyed in a New England

his ribs are still raw
from velveteen elbows
between the lych-path
and the flock of old tin cans

Roseville is nice
carriage lamps
come early to porch-frames
before they’re suppled and dried

but the people sigh their colours
from their faces and their clothes

Instamatics catch this truly
but decades on are called cheap

he hears the chat
on the Wolverhampton bus
a job’s come up in Bloxwich

suddenly he’s travelling
with adversarial mullets

Julian is a good name
says her mother
or otherwise Christobel
as though something posh
can rout the future

Wolverhampton was
the workshop of the world
it said so on the franking
to the left of her head

just the fitments now
a bit of a counter out front
remnants at cost

the Bloxwich job
goes to a mate
who changes pubs.

Waiting at the decade’s end
something that really does mean it
heels back a little more each time
against its brittle chain.

(Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979) 

--published in Under The Radar (Nine Arches Press), December 2014.

The Old Chainyard, Roseville Square:

St Valentine's Aubergine

'Pooh?'
'Hmm?'
'Do you know if Kanga is still organising a singing festival for Valentine's Day?'
'Co-organising, Piglet.'
'Why don't I like the sound of that?'
'Tigger is on board. His words.'
'…ah….'
'It's now a Multi-Platform Lurve-Focused Chanson Zone.'
'I see.'
'Apparently he and Kanga will be facing away from each singer, sitting on space-hoppers, and if they hear a voice they like they'll bounce sideways.'
'Kanga will love that.'
'She'll be delirious.'
'By the end of it, certainly.'
'Why, do you have a particular hum in mind?'
'Well, I don't know if it would fit, but I've always liked the one by that Mr Dundas, about waking up in the morning and pulling on his old blue--'
'Oh, I love that! Marvellous hum. Yes, "Bergines On".'
'Ah, no, Pooh, it's old blue jean--'
'Nonsense! Honestly, Piglet, if you want to sing it, you'll have to master the words. How else do you expect to get your chansonicals in order?'
'Pooh, it's--'
'I put my bergines on
I put my aubergines on.'
'Pooh, it's not about--'
'Oh, here we go. Not about. Not about. Is it beyond your realms of belief, Piglet, that somewhere, somehow, full and enriching lives are led--nay, savoured--by folk decked out in veg?'
'Pooh--it's "my old blue jeans on".'
'Blue jeans, he says. Blue jeans. That is so week last Tuesday. A carrot necklace, Piglet. A cauliflower truss. No cotton harmed in the making. Velvet stripes left free to grow on their trees.'
'Pooh--'
'You did say you knew nothing about fashion, Piglet, and there's the proof. Owl's said it and I repeat it: if you want to know the world to its very core, you've got to think outside your socks.'
'Look, Pooh, I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment on the suit-and-two-veg front, but--'
'Ch-ch.'
'What?'
'Ch-ch. Mr Dundas's hum. That's what he sings in the chorus. Ch-ch.'
'Well at least we agree on that.'
'What a clever wheeze for pepping up any line.'
'I suppose it's got a certain--'
'Climb every ch-ch.'
'But I'm not sure it fits with every--'
'Somewhere over the ch-ch.'
'Pooh, if you don't sing "rainbow" it's completely--'
'And now, the end is near, and so I ch-ch.'
'Actually, ch-ch does improve that one.'
'So does stopping right there.'

Breaking news: Kanga might be Sebastian Vettel

'Piglet?'
'Hmm?'
'Do you know anything about fashion?'
'Ah, the swish of satin, the porcelain-skin-flattering broderie, the rakish daring of the postmodern line…'
'Which is an effortful way of saying--'
'No I don't. Why?'
'It was just a fashion page I came across in a magazine at Owl's. Kanga's, probably.'
'I'm going to have to stop you right there, Pooh.'
'Don't you like the word probably?'
'No, no, I sense that you're on the verge of making a big mistake.'
'Big? Oh, well, that's an achievement.'
'No, you see, you said you came across that page at Owl's but because it was fashion you immediately thought, A-ha!'
'No, what I immediately thought is that Owl ought to stop using vole-tails as bookmarks.'
'A-ha, Pooh, as in, it's fashion, so the magazine must be Kanga's.'
'Yes, but I've never seen Owl with--'
'You see, Pooh, you're making automatic assumptions. Fashion, female, Kanga--no fashion, male, Owl.'
'Goodness--I'm being as quick as that?'
'What you're doing, Tigger would say, is touch-typing.'
'Well I'll be darned.'
'You'll be more than darned if that nice Jeanne d'Arc hears you.'
'There was a motoring page, too. I mean--'
'So who's to say that Kanga doesn't harbour plans to hit the open road? Hmm? Be another Jensen Unbuttoned? A Sebastian Fine-Fettle?'
'But I thought we were establishing that the magazine wasn't necessarily hers.'
'Oh, Pooh…Pooh, Pooh, Pooh….'
'In other words, you don't know where this is going.'
'A momentary fog, Pooh, a momentary fog.'