Friday 22 September 2017

Down the seas of my history



<Audio>

Down the seas of my history,
the dreamboat ploughs the rolling waves,
the high tiers of tears,
stinging, just there, where I used to be.

Aquamarine in dream, but grey
in reality, the slag tips and the stone
where we played, short-trousers ragamuffins,
with mum waiting at home for tea.

Little light bulb station road,
haloed in watering eyes.
When darkness beckoned, adventure bragged,
and dragged in backward glances.

Pals we were, dwarfed by the ghosts
who were there. We knew. We stepped
onwards in the flow of growing up.
The round trip of home for supper.

The wooden bridge, the slag slashed path.
Our hurrying feet, sure but unsure,
span the wide-eyed orange moon, of Dan Dare,
up there, in a spacesuit full of bated breath.

Take not the chapel path, nor by the pub.
Meet not the prayer books or the beer blather.
But tread the boys' own secret paths,
of a communion, dark in conspiracy.

Knowing there's an answering to the village,
in the mist above the moon ways.
Where the book of times was written,
recording all our sins.

Even 'ere we shun the whispered rules,
even our mothers' solemn contracts.
So runs the demon spark of youth.
Go on! It is! Go on!

I could race around and down
these warren ways, for all my days and days.
Awash with sangfroid broken tears,
and the anguished love of years.

Long gone, and yet alive for always,
when we return in thought,
to our ruin in the ruins,
on the slag tips and woe betides.

Lay the ashes of my thoughts,
where the torn pages smoulder.
Lay them upon my village times,
and sprinkle over my slumber. For

I've been back there again.
I've hugged them all again.
And I will return there again.
To laugh again, and again, and again.
Surfing the tides of my history.
Running in mystery.

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