The stars above Joe’s Cottage

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For Joe and Kitty

 

I came from a village where Victorian lampposts hung like dying daffodils

and the milky way was outshone by automated halogen each night at four pm

there was a rumour that above us was a universe but we never got to see it.

 

The first time we saw the universe over Joe’s cottage we swirled around like satellites

and the milky way offered sprigs of stars like gypsy heather in pressed foil

over this old sky, this old cottage where pigs and men ate in the same single room.

 

I came from a village where night shift workers like my Dad never loved the stars

there nebulae were the blue and green chests of pigeons shitting on factory presses

My Dad was a bitter man, an ale man, a man’s man, a nowhere man of Lennon

 

I am a starman

at Joe’s cottage we were children with the ancients –

Orion, Pegasus, and the firework of a tossed fag exploding on the wall like Apollo.

 

Anne Frank went quietly

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“At Bergen-Belsen, you did not have feelings anymore. You became paralyzed.”

Irma Sonnenberg Menkel

 

They gave the townsfolk kerchiefs at the gate

dressed in their best they toured Jerusalem ruins –

a torched barn with obedient bones covered in frost,

potatoes sprouting roots over a moat of Jew-dug humans, yes humans.

 

Anne Frank went quietly and I believe that day a quill fell from a raven,

written on the death perfumed wind was her frail body and

typhus makes a rash like a universe of red stars on skin

if she needed water then rain was her last cleansing.

 

There was a Ukranian soldier who killed a pig for the prisoners and a

butcher from the nearby town cut it into quarts with cleaner knives

they got sick from eating fast and all the ovens were blocked

all the ovens cried Hansel and Gretel this place is godless.

 

Anne Frank went quietly and should you get a papercut on her diary,

if you feel a sting then look out for a bee pulsing on the sill

that is the last breath of Anne Frank, it is a flowers death

and do not think of Israel or Gaza, keep her pure, pure.

The Echoes

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When I was lost

I saw a V of Geese ride the eddies

one of them struggled but they kept shape

they are heading to somewhere warmer to survive

in the coldness of grief my nest is a begging bowl of emptiness.

 

Sky offers keys to escape ourselves and should you find a feather

take that feather, take that gift for the torturous current.

I read of a widower who removed his partners things

when all was done, he wept at the echo but knew

these are not hauntings, they are deaths music.

 

 

My Mother’s Pregnancy

Peace Poet Antony Owen

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I think of you in the Rhyl grey sky

pressing thread veins from your thighs

inside I was knotted into the calm audio

breaking through water like a kingfisher feeding.

I think of you watching kelp waves thickly falling

My Dad and you hugging it out stretching his cardigan

he was fretting about money, and you worried about me

what if I was like winter arriving too early and cold?

When I was born a smoke cloud came and went

they doused me in flannelette, you held me like silk

we are perfect in a single moment then never again

I was raised in a nicotine mist and working mans fog.

I think of my Mother missing her Mother long gone

it is time to stop living in Tru-print coloured photographs,

my mother is getting older to the point of bending like polaroids.

It…

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Proof that the world was made by a woman

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Remember when we sorted out the world as we walked through Wren Lane?

I said that black holes were fingerprints of drowned immigrants,

you said it wasn’t possible scientifically but it made us kiss –

I said science never made you respond with a kiss.

 

Remember when a stray dog whined when you stroked it close to its mouth?

you said it cried because it wasn’t used to being touched kindly by humans,

I said that we should leave it there and it walked away with its head down

you said we could have taken it in but I liked things how they were.

 

Remember when I was so lost and you stroked my hair until I found the remnants?

I said you had remade my whole world with letting me regrow from destroyed.

You said we were forever and I replied it wasn’t scientifically possible,

you said science never made you respond with a kiss and I…..

 

And I,

And I loved you

Until the threads of a world killing meteor.

Thank you for speaking English

Peace Poet Antony Owen

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“For isn’t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?” 

Jamaica Kincaid

When we whipped your brown skin red for praying in Urdu

thank you for begging in broken English for your life.

When crows made you sway from the lightening tree

thank you for the Assam fields in porcelain China.

When we tortured Connor Murphy for stealing bread for his baby

thank you for renouncing Victoria in Gaelic and pink spit.

When Irish bloodlines froze to white statues on gorse

thank you for the thorn in the mad lions paw.

When we soaked the atlas blood red of empire and savage gentlemen

thank you for fighting us, then in defeat fighting for us.

When we called you British enough to die for us,

thank you for…

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Thank you for speaking English

Photo by Himanshu Raj on Pexels.com

“For isn’t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?” 

Jamaica Kincaid

 

When we whipped your brown skin red for praying in Urdu

thank you for begging in broken English for your life.

When crows made you sway from the lightening tree

thank you for the Assam fields in porcelain China.

 

When we tortured Connor Murphy for stealing bread for his baby

thank you for renouncing Victoria in Gaelic and pink spit.

When Irish bloodlines froze to white statues on gorse

thank you for the thorn in the mad lions paw.

 

When we soaked the atlas blood red of empire and savage gentlemen

thank you for fighting us, then in defeat fighting for us.

When we called you British enough to die for us,

thank you for being deported, a subject of nil.

 

Thank you to the Greek doctor in Kavos for speaking English –

that night when I got drunk and cut my knee on shingle.

Thank you for translating the medication I misread,

sorry for the English lads who pissed on your floor.

 

Thank you to the Pakistani therapist who put me back on the right track.

Thank you for lighting camomile leaves when I wept about my Dad.

Thank you for allowing my frailties for becoming my strengths,

sorry for your Grandmothers exile, once British then Indian, then number.

 

Thank you to all the countries raped by England for still speaking English,

sorry for the pious Solicitor from London who thinks you speak it badly,

sorry that some of us say you’re Indian when you are from Malawi

like calling a Scouser a Cockney only you would get battered for it.

All the thick kids

Peace Poet Antony Owen

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For Rob

In maths class

all the thick kids drifted into sky,

I was too busy working out the Algebra of starlings,

one day in May I cracked the code that all of them were pulled

each weaved trajectory was a huge nest from the Tigris to Jatinder’s house.

In other sums

my Dad never worked me out right

he said Drama was Dandy with his Factory swagger.

One day fate subtracted his Father and he wept dry like men do,

each yanked breath sounded like a child inside a man going grey like highway snow.

In Rob’s house

I was myself in a chrysalis of music.

He made new equations of music remixed into dreams.

One day he became a Dad, and a Dad, and a rock star of Cov song,

he worked out all the clever kids were jailed in status symbols…

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The Years

A poem for 2019

Peace Poet Antony Owen

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Last New Year’s Eve we made the coldest fire,

lit a fire from our bones and collapsed into undealt things

they call them dreams in the real world but we exist in the realm.

On the last day of twenty seventeen I stared deep into space and me,

I can tell you how whole new worlds burst out like bluebells in black soil

I can tell you how scars of a log hiss out from the hearth like Hiroshima bones.

All of us exist in the realm with the crow fingered sky broken by its touch,

we exist in the climbing ivy wrapped around a house it cannot let go of,

these are beautiful things, haunted as Chernobyl wolves mute to moon.

This New Year’s Eve my hair is so grey its as if my fire has turned to smoke and ruin,

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