City Sonnets - 101

This is the last one. It's about everywhere.

I did these because …

I wanted to practice. I thought, at the start, I'd write 14 “City Sonnets”, remembering notable places I’d been to, and then write variations on the same thing a few times.

Within the first 14, some were very unsatisfactory, and I also started writing about places other than cities. I got to about 20 and thought I’d keep going. It was quite addictive.

It became an exercise in memory, and that will be the most important part for me. It emerged, not that that was a great surprise to me, that I was drawn, over again, to quite specific and prosaic memories. Not for me the flowers and trees, the inner life of beauty.

I often remembered walking and running, I remembered playing sport, I remembered cold drinks, I remembered big and powerful structures. I also very often wanted to include the names of the places and the dates (ish) in the poems. Very often the first line I thought of contained the name of the place, and it sounded good. 

That’s where I found meaning. 

I was surprised how many of them were on or near a beach, I’ve never thought myself a particularly beachy person, but there you go. I’ve been by the sea for a larger part of my life than I thought, and yet not quite lost the magical feeling it gave me when I was a London child.

Doing a series like this, so tied up with my own details, makes use of an asset I have, which is a good memory, particularly for my childhood – it is unusually good, I've been told, when it comes to names and dates; not perfect, but pretty good. It will get worse, it’s already getting worse, so this has been a very nice way to remember some things and probe that memory a little deeper.

I’ll be glad this is over, for all that it’s been enjoyable, it’s pretty limiting, writing line after line of rhyming pentameter, trying to get what you want to say into 14 lines. Sometimes that clearly has worked better than others.

I love rhyme, I think I love rhyme more than I love “poetry” (perhaps that’s obvious), but I’ve found the relentless rhyme scheme of Shakespearean sonnets hard, sometimes, to make sense of.

I’ve diverged a few times, the odd line of hexameter, the odd half-rhyme, the odd whatever else, but generally I’ve been pretty tied in to the form.

I have found, indeed, that I’ve mainly done the same thing over and over again – described a happening in a place at a time. I often started not quite knowing where I was going to go and used the writing to tap in to the memory.

Equally, there are a pretty significant minority which are made up, and perhaps triggered by a tiny part of a memory, or have almost nothing to do with the place or time they seem to. There should be more of those, really, but I’m terribly literal.

Once I’d decided on 101, I knew that if I carried on and tried to get to 101 good ones, I could go on for ever, so this is just all of them (apart from one, which I’ve left out cos it was a little mean-spirited about a recognisable event which was perfectly nice).

There we go. It took a bit over four months. Hopefully no more sonnets for a while …

WILLESBORANYWHERE

I just go places I can talk about how

I killed a scorpion with a cricket bat

When I was stoned, where I can take my bow

And say, “Aah yes, I’ve lived, no doubt about that”.

Oh, tales accrued and shared, a false index

Of pioneer spirit without the romance.

I’ll be the victim of the briefest checks

As to the valour of the circumstance.

I only go where I can escape from

Everywhere not to mention everything.

The broadening mind of a lazy long con

Leaves out the lack of the scorpion’s sting.

I only find words which are easy to rhyme.

I’ve punched in lines, now it’s punching out time.

City Sonnets - 99 and 100

Almost there ...

GMUNDEN

A sense of safety, drunk and stumbling, bold

And wired at first light from the castle gate

Over the lake and left along the cold

Hard shoulder of the shoreline, early-late

And joli-laid, a sorry state of hope

And hate combined. The hotel waits, inclined

To turn a blind eye to the whole, high scope

Of dissolution this guest had refined.

Awoken by the sunlight, he recalls

The DJ playing Billie Jean, assays

To moonwalk, oh the shame, those castle walls

Had best keep secrets for the clear, bright days

Of summer sore heads, stripped of safety nets.

The castle keeps the details he forgets.

MOMBASA

Perhaps still on Diani Beach, the grain

of spoilsport words which dye the tracks of just

another infant splurge of inner pain

writ large, somehow remain, where empires rust,

before the promised boom from that declined

empire deflates. Perhaps that scrawled vain tract

of verse best served by one straight striking line

was, in its way, his most appropriate act.

He went there puffed on mild restraint, then ate

Till he couldn’t eat again for thirty hours.

And grumbled, worked himself into a state

Of graceless mourning for an Eden soured.

In truth, no trace was left, thank god, the sand

Reformed, as, slowly, did the promised land.

City Sonnets - 97 and 98

Almost there - two different places

HAMMERSMITH

The boys who ran headlong for Number 9s

Would sometimes stumble, fall into the arms

Of unimpressed conductors, spouting lines

About their well-used passenger alarms.

We burst out from the back steps with our bags

Slung over sideways, and we cursed like gents

And watched in awe as older boys smoked fags

And muttered knowingly at our expense.

Some boys would walk, then wait for 33s,

And who’d allow those landlocked nerds t’save face? –

They never knew the thrill of trying to seize

Hold while the 9 to Mortlake gathered pace.

I don’t know what became of it, and us.

We ran and jumped for fun, no fear, no fuss.

LA CHAUX

The former servant’s quarters at La Chaux

were patterned like a blood rush to the head.

I picture myself smoking but I know

I wasn’t smoking out my servant’s bed

as lazy drunken midnight recaps tapped

my melancholy down. It was the last

summer alone. I was a wholly apt

disgrace of indolent reclining class.

I carried what was coming fast - next month

Of course, as it turned out. I knew it well

Enough, and though I danced with priests and lunched

All day, I was just waiting for the bell,

Which, when it rang, I gladly did attend.

That seamless freedman’s life came to its end.

City Sonnets - 95 and 96

As I got near the end, there are, inevitably, more in London. I did have a few possible more possible exotic locations lined up, but these places in London were more in keeping with the kind of things I wanted to write about.

These are both about going to see things. I am a little disappointed with the second half of both of them. Hope that helps!

BRIXTON

The nights we squeezed our neat selves in and out

Past touts and t-shirts laid out flat on stone

Like cheap street art, as puffed up talent scouts

Talked loud and crass at back, we’d let our bones

Turn gradually to looser lines than we,

The usual stiff squad, had believed we could.

On that slight, sticky slope, we learnt to free

Our steady feet of clay from where they stood.

So many - mainly men, guitars, I know,

I know. So many, though, that stay in mind.

Some soared, some shook, some spun, some were all show,

But those who were all heart left most behind.

They’ve lift us gently, guide us back to earth.

That was the best of youth, for what it’s worth.

TWICKENHAM

An Irish boy bedecked in English cap

Betrays his blood for glory, flits amidst

The drunken cars becalmed, caught in the gap

Between a pride and shame, though neither fit.

He prays for small things, sometimes small things do

Take place. The rest is fate, at best, he knows.

This English roar, this cross of blood to rue,

This red-faced cheek, a fake, a shameless pose.

I’m there for Simon Geoghegan, wildly wired

And born for Bill McLaren’s golden prose,

for Rory Underwood, a pistol fired

through memory, whose bullet never slows.

Collisions barely left their mark; instead

Unbroken lines of half-blood kings who sped.

City Sonnets - 93 and 94

Two more - the second one, it's not really Hackney, there's a little bit of Hackney, it's mainly banging my head on a rugby pitch too hard for playing rugby on, and the alternative life in the skipping brainwaves ...

DURHAM

A layby passing Durham, drivers swapped

for half us trussed-up travellers poured out cold

For fags and freedom. I’d already dropped

My mission - to reclaim the bag some bold

Thief (I presumed) had pinched, from ‘neath my seat,

Containing sundry vittels for the trial

By night coach budget had caused ends to meet,

Regret expanding mile by tortuous mile.

With planning and a few more pounds to spare,

I’d have my meal, uncramped, unthieved, by day.

I would, indeed, already have been there –

Revived by myriad sights along the way.

Look right for the cathedral on the hill –

Look down – this coach sits in the layby, still.

HACKNEY

Remember me, the one who loved you best,

A double déjà vu in summertime,

A single cloud, a scarred and sunburnt ghost,

On hard cracked ground, a primary colour crime,

A buried thought, a careless tourniquet,

The overpass, those burnt out shells of cars,

Your phone switched off, he says you’ve gone away.

September planes, we cowered at shooting stars,

The church half-full, the newborn babies wail.

Down by the river reading Borstal Boy

Another self-aggrandising folk tale,

A tawdry ruse the loser to employ.

Remember when I still could make you smile,

Now speak my soul, long since and lost a while.

City Sonnets - 91 and 92

I'm shaping up to finish this whole undertaking fairly soon - couple of fairly jolly ones here

WYE

The point where we’re all dancing to that song

By Jackie Wilson, and I’ve changed my shoes,

You’ve changed your dress, the floor needs to be strong

To bear the bliss of stress stored up to lose

There all at once. We’ve done it and it’s done.

Until the speeches came, the tent stayed dry,

The games were played. We’ve done it and we’ve won

The right to spin sore feet and raise hands high.

The months I’d spent obsessing over plugs

Seemed worth it as we lifted higher and higher

On wild fatigue and other friendly drugs,

a wedding to the deadline, to the wire.

The dancefloor’s full, the day is nearly done.

My heart is full. We dance. We’re here. We won.

STROUD

That New Year, we played Murder in the Dark

for hours – a lot of darkness, load of death.

It had a strong, consistent story arc

To freeze our little bones and stop our breath.

A house of many black holes, many ghouls

Sent screams and cackles echoing through the halls,

A game of fear with freshly blooded rules

Brought hordes of monsters creeping from the walls.

There’s never been another New Year’s Eve

Within a stretch of that long night in Stroud.

We spend our lifetime trying to retrieve

The first free, thrilling night that we’re allowed,

We strive, pretend, we wander far and wide,

But will not find a better place to hide.

City Sonnets - 89 and 90

Here are two more -- it might look like these two places are near each other, but it's not actually that Worthing, but anyway ...
the one below took about six minutes to write, which shows.

WORTHING

I only know beauty in memory.

My present reveres just the numbers, names

And flaws of every masterpiece I see

Until my language takes over and frames

dull instincts tastefully. As much it can.

That’s a big mountain. Oh, look, a Van Gogh.

And later, patching on great God’s wide span,

I’ll drain the most prosaic sediment off.

In paradise I hung on payphone lines

For times and totals, faraway spitting shows.

The sand was white, the sea was blue like wine

I guess – for beauty only beauty knows.

I do my best. But prose and figures win.

I count the lines and watch the square world spin.

PORTCHESTER

If records for such happenings were well kept

The Portsmouth food fight of 2001

Would, as all players present now accept,

Go down in written history as most fun.

It started, as so often, with a sponge

Down neck, well met with shock and vengeance vowed,

Then burst out with a bowl of cream, a lunge

Of wasteful mania carried loud and proud.

Some fled, their stomachs full, but short on nerve,

They hid behind what barriers they could find,

But soon the action spread, and they’d be served

With dishes not prepared to be declined.

The battlefield – a picture of decay

Where vivers turned to violence turned to play.

City Sonnets - 87 and 88

Two more

PANGBOURNE

The spirit is confusing, best ignored

For all the lifetimes you can hustle through.

I let it creep within me just before

I would have let go. I was born anew

For weeks, until my better self took hold.

For Jesus is a gambler, and he led

Me past the water, then he stopped and told

Me to be patient. I’d as soon be dead.

The spirit tore me open on one long

Awaited Easter – in those minutes I

Was timeless – God was proven, faith was strong.

But, offered life, I knew I’d rather die.

The fire briefly consumed me, sending hot

And searching questions. No, I’d better not.

STRATFORD

Our breath was taken, briefly, as we stepped

Into the sunset pressing down upon

The roof peaks where the soul of London leapt

For joy that summer … how it briefly shone.

We’d cheer the kid who’d kill his girl that night,

We’d cheer him to the sultry city sky.

All summer we were lauding oversights

And dreaming through that last and sweetest lie.

It mostly rained those months but broke on time

As if by God’s design. Oh Danny Boy

You turned them round, you made them grasp their prime

And suffocate it with their sickly joy.

We mostly misted up at fooler’s gold,

That last hurrah that oh so fast grew old. 

City Sonnets - 85 and 86

Two more, both pretty near each other

WICKHAMBREUX

I learnt about this England everywhere,

though mostly in a pub in Wickhambreux

I came to manifestly unprepared

For what that England was about to do.

He thought if he avoided saying N-

He could say what he wanted loud and proud.

He had so many other words for “them” –

And me? I sat in silence, weak and cowed.

In Wickhambreux on Sunday afternoon

You could still be as racist as you dared.

You would still hold the balance of the room

You’d meet agreement with the words you shared.

In England in the years before it broke

The Kraken caught the scent, and re-awoke.

DOVER

I could spend all day watching ferries span

The Channel. Once I did. They came and went

In state and grace, a constant caravan

Of halcyon travel, easing out of Kent

Untroubled by the haring hoards below.

At times, you could see four at once, blue miles

Apart, unhurried by the undertow,

Not slightly shaken by the splintering Isles.

When I was young, the ferries seemed so vast

I’d think you’d need to clear the stream en masse

For their advance - consuming beasts who’d cast

Their wake for strays then deal the coup de grace.

I watched them, lately, as they shrunk, all day,

To disappear somewhere round Calais way.

City Sonnets - 83 and 84

Here are two more - they're pretty similar in time and place, which I haven't tended to do all that much, for some reason.

In one of them the voice is bummed out, in the other it's happy - extraordinary to think that a person's youth was not one amorphous mood

AVIEMORE

It happened when I was in Aviemore.

Where folk were skiing, folk were fishing, I

Was doing nothing. That’s what I went for;

For two days sitting miserably by,

As life went on around me. Snow was thin,

I’m told, and didn’t really start till we

Were driven back round mountain corners in

A faulty car which skewed precariously.

We stopped at a mechanic in Dundee,

Took a bus back to make our football match.

I didn’t reach home ‘til ‘round half past three.

1571 … and I couldn’t quite catch

Each word of every message. Aviemore;

this, I suppose, was what I went there for.

DUNDEE

The taxi back from Dundee dropped us right

In front of Atholl as the next day rose.

And what a night it’d been, and what a night,

When time and time again, space freely froze.

We’d had our dinner early to make sure

We watched the football, and the football stopped

At random when it tacked to the right score.

And after we’d all watched champagne corks popped

We hopped in convoy ‘cross the gaudy Tay

And split the team for different escapades.

And twenty-two pounds was a lot those days,

Enough for tipsy ticker tape parades.

And what a night it was, though undersung …

So stupid, careless, shocked by joy, and young.

City Sonnets - 81 and 82

Two about the sacred and profane, I suppose

CRICKHOWELL

It’s thirty back in London; streams of mud

Flow through this valley where the idyll asks

All peaceniks to ignore the constant thud

Of bass bouncing off heavy mists which mask

What wonder is on offer. The sky breaks,

Then the sky closes - distant thunder, or

Perhaps sound check for Alabama Shakes

Or some band blunt enough to rock the floor.

.

En masse, the wide-eyed hordes came here for this –

The dryads, or the druids – to be frank

It’s fluid. Are those maenads wild with bliss

Or trustafarians ruing what they drank?

The evening falls. The rain stops. In the bowl,

The weekend finds its meaning and its soul.

ATHENS

They went to the Acropolis to row about

Oasis, Blur and other great ideas

Born of democracy. They raised the shout

‘cross Epidavros and the Pnyx – “Bogeys”

… a growing, boldening sound. The people will

Be heard – “Bogeys!” Aristophanic wit

At large – upon no more all-hallowed hill

Have flies so swiftly turned high ideals to shit.

And in the end, the ostracon was marked

By all against the lawgiver gone-wrong

as rank hypocrisy was smelt, and sparked

rebellion best expressed by evening song.

The chorus aired its damnatory verse –

Is tyranny or treachery the worse?

City Sonnets - 79 and 80

Two more

TYNINGHAME

There’s nothing I’d leave buried, lucky me,

Oh, lucky me. You’ll find me where you look,

In Tyninghame, still staring out to sea.

The loved ones are unhurried in their books,

And lads are playing football to the right,

While I affect indifference and dig down

With careless hands in plain and perfect sight,

All there to be seen, all there to be found.

I’m sure I wouldn’t dig a hole too deep

The sands would swallow memories of mine,

For I have built a sturdy hall to keep

All lives around me safe and straight in line.

And yet, the story’s true, I lost the ball,

I’ve never understood that truth at all.

BRUGES

There’s us, in Bruges, on horse drawn carriage, now

Entirely at ease with the circumstance

That leads in two-three years to marriage, and

That brisk in-joke, ungrasped, as our first dance.

It’s me and Julio, down by the town hall

Look, me and Julio, Miro and van Eyck.

It’s Julio and me, plotting the downfall

Of shadows we don’t need to feel alike

It’s obvious, joyful, chocolate, beer, mussels,

Lace, waffles, jokes about Colin Farrell

It’s laughing at slagroom and rhyming with Brussels

It’s New Year’s sunshine in Christmas apparel.

It’s me looking happy, you looking so pretty,

We circle till we’re at the heart of the city.

City Sonnets - 77 and 78

I don't know, I've called the top one Bloomsbury, it's not quite there, it's all the places really ...

BLOOMSBURY

I’ve heeded all the theories of the posh

Cunts in West London I was born with and

I’ll die by in their tweed suits and hot breath.

Though I edge back as best I can, they stand

As close as man can stand, and put to rights

The NHS (more privatised), my taste

In film (so bowdlerised). They fight good fights

And let none of my sweet time go to waste.

The Toby cunts are on TV, they tell

Hard truths to errant youths about respect.

They should know best. Their own brief rebel yell,

Was more extreme, my man, than you’d expect.

And their ascent was not, in fact, ordained.

It can, at length, be forcefully explained.

CHERBOURG (THE CHANNEL)

I won’t forget you stood on deck behind

Me as I puke into the churning sea,

The gust of wind, the shrug, the ties that bind.

The engine failed, you sit and talk with me

For hours outside the sick bay, while I sway

With shame, await relief, a shade of green.

I won’t forget that swirling Saturday-

-cum-Sunday, and the long night in-between.

The helicopter brought us our reward –

We glimpsed our saviours on the stairs below.

Full power, next to stability, restored …

I won’t forget and no one else need know.

From Portsmouth we drove home that Easter morn,

vacated, wholly humbled and reborn.

City Sonnets - 75 and 76

I think I'll actually get to 101 ...

Here are two more

BEAUMARIS

Some boy with shaved head holds his phone up high

For signal on the turret. Ping, he’s hit

From distance, all at once confirming why

He’s captive, hard as that is to admit.

It’s symmetry the sniper, symmetry

The tyrant too, a callous beauty built

To mock and wreck a deeper history,

And watch as all but symmetry will wilt.

The tedium of triumph haunts the years

In occupation – watch them watch on peace

and quietly hand their plan for multi-tiered

meritocratic power to the police.

No monarch ever came here after all.

The castle stands, so perfect and so small.

MONTREUX

We’ll find a way inland, we’ll see it all.

We’ll climb the mountains, watch the glaciers melt,

as money burns and civilizations fall,

Behold the halls where kings and criminals knelt

In vain, in vain – their prisoners watch them drown.

The cracks will slowly show, the dams will break.

The thieves will flail, will trip, will be held down.

We’ll stand above and look down on the lake

as pleasure boats drift free from shore to shore,

As former borders sink and slide away,

We’ll write the book of international law -

There’ll be no law, no nations, just decay.

Our progress will be painstaking and slow,

The sun will clear the clouds and melt the snow.

City Sonnets - 73 and 74

OK, I'll hide a poor one beneath one i think is ok - the second one, you can probably guess, i thought ... ok, which other places i have been to ... ok ... what happened there ... anything noteworthy ... not really ... just someone saying my name right ... is there anything in that ... well ... let's see ... erm ...

EALING

At Foxes’ Reservoir I saw two lads

Score two-eighty in twenty overs flat.

I still hold close one casual flick off pads

Into the trees, ball lethal from the bat.

Fourteen, they were, or so, they seemed like men

With mighty futures to me, starry-eyed,

A couple of years younger, even then

A team-mate bursting out with awe and pride.

One drowned a decade later trying to save

his brother in Grenada. I don’t know

about the other, if he still can play

the cut shot like an archer with a bow.

I saw the future - brutal, scything grace.

A ball lost in the woods, without a trace.

BELFAST

I don’t know why I’m not McGuffy or

McGocky, or McGaarhee, or McGoff.

I’ve been called everything you’ve heard and more –

McGregor, and McNaughty – or, they cough,

Say, sorry, Mister Mack.. erm… help me out.

I laugh, “Don’t worry, it’s Mc-Ga-hey, I

Tell people it’s a silent ug. I doubt

I know much more than you do as to why.”

I met a man in Belfast who could say

My name as easy as Smith, Jones or Brown –

No wince, no mangling, no prolonged delay –

McGaughey finally finding its home town.

I felt a pang of bathos mixed with shame.

My mystery name just, after all, a name.

City Sonnets - 71 and 72

OK, here are another couple ... there's a certain misery to both of these ... the over-stimulated nauseous disappointment of when things stop being fun ...

ILAM

Then someone threw some orangeade, I don’t

Remember who on whom – the usual fits

And flares … but something changed that can’t and won’t

Swing back. His time arrived to take the hits –

The unexpected role never became

The status he’d assumed he would assume.

Those watching could not think on him the same

As when the doors first opened to that room.

It should have been so different: endless nooks

Revealed by twilight escapades for boys

Still young enough, they thought. But poison took …

Somewhere amidst the usual bluff and noise.

A joke, a push, and someone lost their nerve.

The sharpest spike puts paid the learning curve.

NEWCASTLETON

A shamesick failed-safe underaged turntail

Tells red-faced post-hubristic truths in tears

Which twist to further fodder, serve to nail

His reputation to embittered ears

Of local bullies looking for a laugh.

He’d lightly, quaintly lied, so would be stoned

For entertainment, while the fatted calf

Could breathe again, a sacrifice postponed.

That night, fed up on coke and soor plooms, burnt

And bucked by friends alike, he dares to hope

He’ll yet be left to live with lessons learnt,

And fondly takes that last frayed end of rope.

The sirens moan, the harpies howl and wail,

You said you could -  you can’t, you foul, you fail.