I Thought I Had More Time
West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2018
My tribe
my place in it
the island of our existence
and patriarchs entitled
John John
David David
Evan Evan
Rees Rees
Owen Owen
Thomas Thomas
they did not have many names
and never questioned why
it was so long ago
when there were fewer words
available to be connected
to people who had no names
who were our ancestors
Dylan Marlais Thomas
they forget the middle name
in the land where you need
three names to be identifiable
from the next Thomas
the next DT
somehow there are two suns in the same sky
the primary school yard is
overlooked by a house
in which I live
I don’t know how to like people
they are strange and frightening
I stood where the sun did not reach
I moved my feet a few feet
it took me many years
of tiny toe actions
and Herculean effort
and several changes of footwear
to see the sunshine on my toes
summoning me from my cave
the sons of the hinterland farms
were written off as “hambones”
I was probably closer to them
than I admitted
than I suspected
the clipped enclaves of council
houses replacing former tied cottages
on the edges of villages
bring back the countryside
living on the land
an end to employment
and its tyrannies
some people's furrowed brows
as the result of invisible ploughs
a half-remembered agriculture
of the mind superimposed
on meadows of skin
I was thin then
thought the wind would blow me away
him that wind
him that did not
now tries again with renewed oxygen
I am heavier
more anchored
holding on to a metal post
conveying a button
at a pedestrian crossing
I felt the cold in the days
with less flesh on bones
pre central heating
those guards in front of coal fires
what were they guarding?
what was necessary?
what was required?
what was essential?
it was getting harder to tell
keeping on top of things
or at least to their sides
sliding backwards slowly
on a sloping concrete path of ice
laden and with a hedge
for a handrail
Nature to my rescue again
the bunch of fives
always offered
turn it around
so that it faces itself
disarms itself
Mars bars
Milky Bars
Curly Wurlies
Puffa Puffa Rice
Nesquick
Corona
dandelion and burdock
gobstoppers
and Bazookas
we became the sherbet herberts
the invasion of sugar
taking over certain
hours of my life
punk came
punk rock
punks
do it yourself
be brave
with one's talent nowhere near
fully formed
or likely to ever be
bass boom lines
wafer guitar chimes
chanting
him that wind a hymn
33 or 45 rpm
12 or 7 inches of
hypnotic black whirlpool
the depths
crackling
the gems among the dust
John Peel on late night Radio 1
a Japanese cassette player at the ready
capturing the sound and its attendant
inimitable and irritating hiss
I wore the big hopeful badges
of the new sound
until it was superseded
and there was no further use for
those silhouettes of rodents and wreaths
a walking pictorial promotion of a moment
puck rock suicide Scottish guitarists
pipe me aboard
their all-steel pistols
pointing to my place in the mud
I try to accompany them
by desperately coaxing
a beat from the keys and coins
in my pockets
I am here for the equinox
preparing for equality
whilst developing into a crooner
of my own love life
my acceptance of loans
out of kilter with any other sort
of tribal gathering
an electric guitar solo strikes up
and I can’t breathe
for this epiphany
as I have outlived my heroes
and give thanks for songs that outrank
most people I have met
in their importance to me
sometimes there are glistening listeners
attentive and orderly
other times it's shuffles
and an embarrassment
of embarrassments
that loud scraping sound
of uncomfortable chairs being moved
sing something simple
for you
and for me
Top of the Pops
Pan’s People
T Rex
Showaddywaddy
The Sweet
Slade
Alvin Stardust
Gary Glitter
Jimmy Saville
Jim’ll fix it
the can-do years
the make-believe adolescence
the lack of confidence
the impudence
the insolence
the smiles of the circling hyenas
the pasted-on tinsel sneer veneer
of the promise that did not deliver
the cover story for secret domination
of one’s private madness and oppression
Father Christmas must share the blame
the anticipation of a munificence
of presents delivered by a mysterious stranger
who enters like a burglar
a thief of transactions
and of the true meaning of magic
rock’n roll summers followed
by rock’n roll Christmas
like rivers of dead polluted sharks
our little country town
a matter of two or three commercial streets
dropping down to the river
guarded by a redundant
military construction
an old man with no legs
got around there on a homemade sledge
he must have had a challenging life
to me he was something out
of a fairy tale or
an unfunny comic book
another inhabitant of that town at that time
was called Dai Split Nose
that’s all I knew of him
we lived in a house owned by a chapel
none of us knew that distant cousins
lay buried unmarried in a corner grave
around which my father pushed his lawn mower
visiting Ministers of Religion dined
in our home each Sunday
in a room reserved for that purpose
they ate alone in silence
while we had our family meal nearby
they were alien to me and a little forbidding
I wish now I had broken through my shyness
and intellectual and linguistic inferiority
to speak with them about the word of God
and how Methodism was faring in the early 1970s
the stone of chapels and their cemeteries
always rained upon or so I remember
where the sun set
I don’t recall my great grandmother
who died six years after my birth
though I remember playing
around her ancient one storey cottage
and in its orchard
I was distraught at losing
tiny blue US 7th Cavalry
toy soldiers among the crevasses
that were its cobbles
Henry Tudor had passed that way
a secret fort overgrown
the shock overthrow of the show
the soft defences of a country
that forgets its been invaded
its graves seen in the same view
as bales of hay wrapped
in their shining black plastic bag shrouds
when a target is not a target
I also don’t remember her daughter
who died when I was two
my mother missed her each day
of her remaining life
I missed her too
in the photographs she has a high forehead
she made her own clothes
including her wedding dress
my mother knitted my jumpers
until increasing income
and the widening reach of retail opportunities
made us less self-reliant
she sewed patches onto the worn knees
of my jeans creating
a peasant distressed look
that would later become fashionable
she spoke the intuitive Welsh
and the learned English of
the hollows and lanes that led to
Sunday schools and sermons
some of the words were highly localised
a language of those hedges
as were the ways of saying those words
and all other words
she’s leaning into you
the wide belt of her wedding dress
punctuating her tiny waist and that day
as you exult and fret over your triumph
and the rising sea level which will bring
coral which will invade the photo frame
the image slowly sucked away
by the salt of brine time and tears
my only surviving memory of the day
my paternal grandmother died
is her daughter in law not wishing me
to watch that night’s episode
of World at War on TV
but being overruled by her husband
I was an unplanned first born
taken shortly after my ironic birth
to the Rhondda valley
to be introduced to the family
of my great grandfather
I threw up on my grandmother’s shoulder
such was my brand new life
and its direction
my parents did the best they could
beset by doubt and lack of resources
in a landscape of linoleum
and used cars
and everything changing
all the time for people
unused to such a pace
of transformation
in my father’s car
my sister and I in the back
faces behind glass
we didn’t go far
relatives and graves
and orthodontists
a sneak view of the rises
the dips
the possibilities
the impossibilities
piggy back
bubble cars
and Hillman Imps
Esso Blue and
Green Shield stamps
those times I thought about the universe
how big it might be
how it neighboured another universe
how big that might be
how the neighbouring universe
bordered on yet another cosmos
how big they all could be
and so on
my head ached
world without end
one night as I lay in bed
I observed a shape
emerge from the carpet
growing until it became
a narrow black triangle
about the height of a man
in the street light dark
was this the Devil we had been promised
or just my overactive childish imagination?
I sneeze
what escapes?
a sneeze that’s all
my best friend and I bemoaned
the lack of homegrown serial killers
I read a book on Manson
during a thunderstorm
we got our wish
the Vietnam War
the PLO
the IRA
Baader-Meinhof
the Angry Brigade
Brady and Hindley
Zodiac Killer
The Daleks
The Sweeney
take your pick
my pet dead lacewing
surveyed through inert eyes
the end of the century
of massive killing
and felt fine
last night I dreamed my wife and I
were having dinner with friends
in the valley where I was brought up
I was distracted glancing
in the direction of the coast
a volcano had erupted on the estuary
my father appeared and we discussed
this occurrence
this may have been influenced
by reading reports of people who had lived
on the escarpment to the east of that valley
seeing the glow of Swansea
following a Luftwaffe night bombing raid
two counties away
I longed to watch two trains
racing each other
yes two trains
on equal lengths of track
on equal rate of incline
with evenly-powered engines
a contradiction of the principles
of public transport
I had never seen one due to
the effects of the first Government
cutbacks of my lifetime
but this was my very own Roman Emperor Syndrome
not Hornby
not British Rail
not Beeching
but always on time
or ahead of it
a castle town again and again
I am on the sidelines
as others journey down
their memory lanes
an odd one out
the British Empire
still in our heads
somewhere somehow
in the backs of minds
though we don’t rule waves
no English Electric
superstar test pilots overhead
when we were thinner
the past as a different hue
tonight it's 70s pink and orange
the stain of an unknown stamen
the morning after
the sun revealed
hangovers of different levels
of discomfort
with martially inclined friends
I played at being soldiers
in the woods behind our school
I made a Sten gun
by nailing two straight lengths
of wood together into a right angle
this game was called “Armies”
some of us ended up in the Army
we dammed a stream with stones
mud grass and twigs
and broke these barriers
when we became bored with our handiwork
unaware that we were imitating
the rural monumentalism
of our principality
and the tactics of those
opposed to its existence
we were chased once
by cattle that we had antagonised
throwing stones at them
producing sparks from their hides
in the thickening twilight
made a spear of a stick
a small number of us grappled
with ideas of liberation
whatever we meant by that
I thought I was preparing for a war
with known and unknown adversaries
made a stick of a spear
the heart-squeezing soundtrack
of ice cream vans
remixed in some accidental ears
as ambulance sirens
I amassed a wealth in toys in
as plastic intervened
Fireball XL5
U Boat and Short Sunderland
Subbuteo
Scalextric
Cluedo
an old cricket bat I never used
Action Men
helping me learn how to fantasise
about decisive action
without ever taking it
Joe 90
Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons
The Champions
Garrison’s Gorillas
Tom Grattan’s War
Bonanza
Lassie
Stingray
Thunderbirds
after the Magic Roundabout
there was no need to be real
no need to grow up
Benny Hill
Jimmy Hill
Brian Moore
Dickie Davies
Billy Bremner
Harold Wilson
Ted Heath
Tiede Herrema
how men were
Raquel Welch
Sophia Loren
Brigitte Bardot
Ursula Andress
Jenny Lee-Wright
Caroline Munro
Ingrid Pitt
Madeline Smith
how women were
my first day in comprehensive school
sitting on the floor in a new building
a gym with new boys
I talk nervously
and earn a clout on the top of my head
from a shoe wielded by the games teacher
I am hurt shocked and a little embarrassed
by my first lesson in
how older males are violent towards
younger males
rugby
it’s a man’s world
he can keep it
some schoolboys accused their peers
of “not having enough spunk
to shag a mouse”
I lived in fear of earning that epithet
whatever it meant
and of the milk white girls
haughty
knowing
tormenting
those times when one is confused
by one’s gender
not knowing what to do
not liking what was expected
everyone looking the same
the long hair
the soft focus
the decline of hard labour
the deflection of draughts
we grew larger and more stupid
misunderstanding what expectations
Time would have of us
on the cusp of spring
becoming summer
of a language nearly changing
into another
the handover
from a safe pair of hands
to us
the light bulb people
the people light bulbs
the neon nowhere
empty vessels on an endless train
of other empty vessels
the rolling stock
the obsessed cocks
electrified trash but not fatally so
those mules
the workplace turned out to be a circus
conjoined with a black comedy
or an off-white tragicomedy
moving paperwork and people
from one end of the county
to the other and back again
from one under-rewarded circumstance
to the next
Pompous Dick presided there
with handbags for hands
and two glass eyes that saw
all they needed to see
a bag for a bag
he joked
I got it
I got it every time
this page has some issues
kill page
your call will be answered shortly
refer to supervisor
about:blank
OK
sensitively illuminate your anus
put it on the market
sell yourself as you have always done
as you have been obliged to do
for decades at a time if you’re lucky
a micro job in the zero hours economy
the golden age of useful employment
now foreclosed
I have been a wage slave
since 1981
my father toiled between
1953 and 2002
Arbeit macht frei
the promise of a better standard
of living with little thought
of achieving much else
so where are the Celtic warrior heroes?
are they amongst us in IED-proof vehicles
or entombed in slate
that awaits the quarryman’s swing?
would we recognise them if we saw them?
the line breakers
the berserkers
shock troops
unthink tank
think big
think
the lengths of their lines
their direction
where they point to
their alignments
the Druids will return in small boats
that are not coracles
with trails of elvers as wakes
when no one is looking
landing at the mouths of minor rivers
row upstream sometimes carrying
their vessels on their backs
that are not coracles
knowing when to nod
when to breathe
when to see
when to soar
knowing when to know
they say they can now print
a viable gun in 3D
can they print new homes?
hospitals?
sustainable energy?
a cure for all medical conditions?
the truth?
I thought I had more time
but forgot to remember
and remembered to forget
