What You Will See

is Billy breaking out of his breeze block bunker

With a bust of Bloodaxe. You’ll see the concrete

Of his tenement crack to reveal corroded filigree -

Billy collapses in the chill air with a crick in the neck.

You’ll see dockland dredgers crossing dry land.

Yet Norse dialect survives behind sea-defences, floats

In on a gulf-stream with golf balls that were gonged

Out to sea from the eighteenth. You’ll hear garage grooves,

Chip shop gravy-trains, hinterland novels,

Horseplay with hotplates, but smart kids occupy

The Hazienda in the harbour, juxtaposed in the john

Afterwards where Billy kips crashed out.

On the links you’ll see losers drag leaden clubs

To lonely edges, loosen them onto mud below

Where mussel dredgers merge, snag gnarled

Norsemen, nail their bones to the walls of nocturnal

Noggin’-shops. Here you’ll find poets pedalling

Wordplay. Outside the quoin drops to reveal

More of that rusted filigree stuff. A silt-song lilts,

Settles out in the still-soul, the shallow-maker.

Tropical sea traffic softly bottoms bringing visitors

To a vibrant village. They hear weeping by the sea wall;

‘Why Billy? Why take your love away?’. Xenophiles

Survive. Yola survives. Youths yoked against zero survive.