I spoke French for thirteen years
I say to him
And he smiles.

More cheese.

Soft night yields to love,
Rap is the only hard night sound,
The White man is out of his depth,
Even in French.

He leans forward and whispers in my ear but,
The first lie was mine.

We’ll count them later,
In the fullness of time.

I have always liked,
Defiant Africans,

Nelson, Patrice, Kenyatta,
Martin Luther King,

Groovy black men,
******* with attitude,

But they intimidate me,
Black men.

Freedom fighters,
Bar room brawlers,

And I rise from sleep,
Sheened in sweat,

Running away,
Scribbling my number,
On scraps of paper,

On foreheads and trousers,
On outstretched palms,

And I’m breathing heavily,
Feeling stained,

Because,
That one there,

The white man in Navy uniform,
With hair on his *****,

I know him,

-conquistador-

He smells of garlic and grease,
And my black friends call me,
******, *****, *****.

Will he take the lion tooth offered,
Will he make the tribal dance?

-I can teach him to love the earth,
Teach him to plant his feet in, deep-

I ******* from sleep, supported
By thick, colonial, muscle.

I am forging steel,
Industrial iron,

I am engineering a white lover
Beneath the sheets, whilst

Apologising to freedom fighters,
Who call me ******, *****, *****.

Evidently frogs lie in wait,

And the moon sets on stranger ground,
Than we will ever imagine,

Grey landscapes of endless twilight and,
Shifting sand,

Shadows that congeal into shapeless forms,
Gliding over dank walls,

Flowing into dimly lit caverns,
Filled with hunched figures,

Hundreds of them,
Four limbed slugs captured eons ago,

Growing wings and emerging from sacs,

Peering into neon and,
Farting occasionally,

Stubby limbs chained to,
Grimey floors,

Tubes running into foreheads,
Ruffling DNA,

Every so often we run into humans,
Who do not understand,

That they are only Earthlings,
This side of the Universe,

Night flies on computer screens,
Attracted to the light completely.

How far would you travel from where you were born?

She spends more on her dogs in one week,
Than the government provides for those in trouble.

She’s a naturally happy person.

The mottled concrete walls of the council block she’s moved in to,
Complement her pock-marked, pink skin.

For a rich person,
She’s ugly.

The doors to buildings are painted bright colours,
-blues and greens-
And stand out against the brown stone that is everywhere.

Kevin is a mousey young man with stringy brown hair,
Recovering from drugs,
And she thinks he looks like a very nice man.

They are playing football on cement outside,
-plants are expensive-
Now talking over vegetables, around a table,

About the young mothers who will be coming in to learn,
How to grow turnips -
Like growing confidence, they’ll be told.

Did you know that people move to Dundee from Warsaw?

Makes you wonder what Warsaw is like-
-who’s fault it is that people can’t eat alcohol-

She’s hanging knickers out to dry and telling me that she’s discovered,
She doesn’t need all the shoes that she has,

And would it do if she were to donate,
A hundred and fifty thousand pounds?

They smile when they receive their checks.

Their blue doors fly open,
And when they say thank you, they mean it,
The money is enough.

Round the back,
The husband is in tears.

A brook runs through my Grandmas farm,
That used to carry gold.

My Grandpa
-Benjamin-

Did not yield the land,
To the British, who wanted it dammed.

In 1968, they took him in,
To have his appendix removed,
And Grandma never remarried.

My Aunt Alice,
Was a witch.

She flew in on broomsticks
We never saw,

But heard in the barn,
Where she parked.

She brought foreign sweets that didn’t
Crack our lips,
And told us naughty jokes.

-Oh Pope the *******,
Please pass the Custard!-
We’d squeal and never tell,

And feel all grown up and,
Conspiratorial.

Grandma says she died running with
The wrong pack,

That she was knocked from the sky,
By a cross.

Later we learned,
It was a broken heart that did it, that

Grandma wouldn’t accept a,
Jewish man in the house,

So she killed herself.

Mary was dead when we got here,
Her tree is the prettiest.

It’s a large yellow poplar that
Trembles in the slightest breeze.

She was a violinist,
A frail, little thing, who

Is fading away in family photographs.

Irridescent sparrows trill,
Beautiful harmonies,
From skinny branches,

Shielded by the most delicate,
Drooping fronds.

You see, my Grandmother has three beautiful trees,
Growing in her garden,

One for Benjamin, one for Alice, one for Mary.

My grandmother used to sit under these trees.
They’re feeding off the bones she says.