A
selection of published poetry
Please see
below for acknowledgements
Anyway
Again another rainy day spent at
the Xerox shop:
the door stands open, and he
waits, cold, for the hands on the
clock
to register the lesser gloom of
six.
Outside, on the other side
of the rain-stained glass,
framing the crazy road’s traffic
of packed buses and choking cars -
traffic that moves thick as soup -
people dash,
rendered busy beyond call of duty
by the dull grey damp day,
pressing its hard cold fingers
to their tired bare heads:
cheeks moistened and ears
whipped around, fleetingly,
bitterly, long-seeming, like
the hours are, not one of them
ventures in.
Yawning
he breathes, rough at first,
but soon smooth. Sets
his glasses down, closes
his eyes: a glorious and brief
respite,
as the street fades into a dark
and muddy muzz. Finger and thumb
stretch, and plunge starkly
into his eyes; up, curling creases
into his forehead; back, over his
head,
into his hair. A deep breath:
better, this time. He opens his eyes.
The world’s a blur now: he squints
at the moving body of some
beautiful
girl in a red anorak, or at least
he thinks she was beautiful: too
late
for him to see anyway, as she
disappears
out of the frame of the big bare
window.
A finger rubs at a temple; the
hard leather
of a shoe relieves an itch on his
other leg.
He takes up his glasses, puts them
on, blinking:
a bus moves another yard, clearly.
She said to her boyfriend one
evening,
“Why don’t we get married?
It’s about time. We’ve lived together two years now.”
He made some excuse or other.
They argued, lit cigarettes, and she
cried.
They went to bed.
She said to someone she worked
with,
“Why can’t I get married? It seems
the men I meet are perfectly
capable
of living with me, sleeping with
me, eating with me,
talking with me, sunbathing with
me, laughing with me,
but never marrying me. They make all these promises,
but men just don't seem to want
the hand of a blonde
for eternity.” And she cried.
The man she was talking to
put his arms around her and said
to her,
“It’s not you. Most men just can’t commit themselves
to anything. Meanwhile, I think you’re gorgeous.”
“And marryable?” she qualified.
“Certainly,” he committed.
They went to bed.
Two years later she asked him one
evening,
“Why don’t we get married?
It’s about time. We’ve been together two years now.”
He made some excuse or other.
They argued, lit cigarettes, and she cried.
They went to bed.
I wrote a big novel.
I wrote it to protect me
from bullies in the playground,
and I wrote it to speak for me
the heartfelt words my own lips stuttered.
Everywhere I went
my novel stood by me faithfully,
frightening off all my old
assailants.
My big novel was an eloquent
protector.
Finally I had some respect.
People knew I had something to
say.
I asked if I could join your gang,
the gang with the biggest
reputation in town.
You were doubtful, but optimistic.
You said you would read my novel,
see what it could do.
I came along with my big novel by
my side.
At first you were very impressed
with what we could do between us,
the linguistic tricks we pulled
off,
the jokes we cracked, the
characters we sketched.
We had plenty of stories to tell
around the campfire.
You put my novel through its
paces.
But when it came to fighting with
the other gangs,
you were no longer so happy.
My novel was big and frightening
all right,
but it was so big that it couldn’t
run fast,
it got puffed out quickly, and
slowed everybody down.
And it wasn’t very tough. Cornered, it cowered,
put its hands over its face and
sank to the ground.
We were forever going back to
rescue it
and getting into even bigger
trouble.
You said to me, “You haven’t
written a big novel.
You’ve just written a fat
novel. It must lose some weight.
We need athletes in this gang, not
sumo wrestlers.”
Offended, I defended my novel,
stood up for what it was, for what
we believed in.
We left you then, and went
wandering.
My novel still protected me from
the bullies
but I had just become some figure
of dread,
walking the town all lonesome with
my bodyguard in chains.
I wanted people to see my novel’s
subtleties,
to laugh at its jokes, to take the
time
to listen to its stories. But every time they saw it
they only saw its fatness.
They ran away in terror.
No-one would come near us.
We stayed indoors then, my novel and
I,
the odd couple, trapped for months
in fear and loathing. I bought my novel an exercise machine
but it didn’t use it. It just grew depressed,
lounging its days away on the
sofa,
eating junk food, watching TV.
I tried to revise it, but every
time I got near it
it threw me off.
It was far bigger than me. I could not fight it.
So one day, while it slept,
heavy-heartedly I packed a
suitcase
and left a note on the table
reading,
“You’re a big novel now. You can look after yourself.
The future’s yours.” And I left
to start a new life somewhere
as far away from wordprocessors as
I could find.
I heard my novel ran astray for a
time -
scavenged on the streets, spent a
few nights in nick,
before it was picked up by a
wealthy benefactor,
a crapulous, clapped-out old
publisher
who used it for nefarious purposes
but kept it fat. Everything seemed to go swimmingly
and then it went out with a bang -
shooting its keeper in a drunken
orgy,
then turning the gun on itself
and spattering my best words all
over his plush interior.
The end it came to was bizarre,
far stranger than anything I could
come up with
when I was writing it.
I went to its funeral and wept at
its grave,
wept for creating it only to give
it
such an unhappy life to lead. I learnt my lesson:
novels don’t ask to be written.
Then you turned up again, you and
your gang
to torment me in the
cemetery. “Never mind,” you said.
“You can always write another
one.”
Advice
“Whether beggar
or billionaire
the most valuable thing
you own is this moment
- use it wisely”
he wrote,
then made a sandwich
and watched TV
This November evening seascape
through which I walk
is stone-carpeted.
Spattered and deafened by wind and
waves, squinting through glasses
raindropped into kaleidoscopes of
memory,
I tread unsteadily the rocks and
bricks, as they change shape and size,
colour and texture. All are different, like stars or souls.
I haven’t been to a stony beach
since those childhood awaydays,
and again I am like that child,
happy to be alone
to hunt among the stones for
collectable shapes, cylinders, hearts,
patterns, colours, something
meaningful. But there are so many.
If I take one, I must take them
all. So I’ll take none,
have done, grow up, go home. And then,
turning away, one stone catches my
eye:
like a tiger, black and orange
it’s striped,
a real find for adult and child
alike. Cold and salty,
I turn it in my palm, hold it,
grip it,
love its weight, want to keep it. Immediately, you
are there, walking beside me like
before, like those summers,
and without a second thought I
hand you my prize and smile.
You thank me. It is a small thing,
and through the oily light we head
on home. Later
you wrench the stone from your wet
jeans and mantelpiece it
against our other reference
points, the yellow-sanded snaps
of grown-up holidays. It is still a small thing, and we try and
forget about it
as we dry and warm ourselves by
the fire. As the days pass
I never find the words to say what
it took for me to hand you that stone.
I am speechless with the sheer
weight and size of the thing,
that I gave it to you so freely
after it spent so long trying to
find me.
Back in the rain though, you are
not there. So I get to keep it,
this stone, this small thing. And keeping it is harder than giving it
away.
I wish I had the guts to fling it
back to the sea
and stop walking all these salty
graves,
but it stays in my pocket,
soul-heavy,
and I see no end to this childish beach
game, scrabbling desperately
for patterns and colours and
clever shapes, cylinders, hearts,
hearts, hearts, hearts.
Slowly,
I will carefully
touch your body,
encased in cold crisp nothing,
and shining,
curving,
like a gently shifting eel
through soft water - my light
hands.
Drily,
I will stealthily
lower opened lips
onto your smiling mouth,
and the white fine hairs on my lip
register
the warmth of your breath.
Shaking,
fingertips connect,
exploring into flat palms,
down
to wrists, roadmaps
slenderly bending, yielding
strong, tough sinews,
certain of their route.
Lifting, my new hands, expertly,
take up the hard curved
small of your back,
and my thumbs press with authority
your pale, soft stomach:
clenched muscles rise, and cold,
there blossoms gooseflesh,
like rain dotting a bright, flat
lake.
In this cold room, black,
there is just us,
bright, two slow cream-coloured
figures,
our lungs fit to burst with each
other;
and though we are cold as the
night,
we would gently nod if touched
and then be still,
like tall sunflowers, silently
wonderful,
singing,
sighing.
That year Mum must’ve been in a
state.
She hadn’t had time to wrap Dad’s
present
or show it to me first like she
normally did,
but my nine-year-old eyes thought
little of it.
The three of us stood there in the
kitchen, Dad
slowly opening the bright bag with
curious fingers,
Mum tapping her fingernails on the
formica in a silence
that lasted a second too long for
comfort.
We knew from the insignia on the
plastic carrier
that it was something
culinary. Dad, of course,
had been a chef when they met,
trained for ages
in the West End’s best places,
owned his own restaurant
for years. But by now he’d stopped cooking,
bored with the whole business, and
just nothing
could get his mouth watering. Later, he called it a phase;
at the time, Mum thought it was
for good, and there was nothing
she wouldn’t try, nothing she
wouldn’t buy with the little they had
to get him back to who he’d been. It was an odd-looking thing,
like a frying pan, except flat,
heavy, with a thick base.
For a moment, it was so unexpected
that it didn’t have a name;
Dad looked strange. “A griddle?” he chuckled.
Incredulity raised his eyebrows
and Mum’s nails fell silent
as he said he’d probably never use
it, then tried to defuse it
by laughing. But it was too late, she left the room,
saying how she couldn’t seem to
get anything right
at that time.
The next morning they were to be
seen in the kitchen again,
their hands almost touching on the
griddle’s plastic handle,
working together in a silence of
communication
to knock up the best full English
breakfast I’d ever eaten.
They wore it out in the end, this
gift of Mum’s
Dad said he’d never use. But they didn’t replace it.
slowly dies and fades,
and the only sound left in your
ears
(apart from that little clock
ticking)
is your conscience:
it points you to the only place
you can go
to feel the only feeling you must
feel -
you must take your front row seat,
and watch the wind steadily push
the wisps of grey cloud
over the broken-top tree,
and in front of the snags of
bright fire dashes
torn up from the horizon by the
setting sun.
You notice, as you climb towards
the summit of the town,
clods of young couple families,
huddled in teashops,
warm;
and then steam gusting from an unexpected steel-grey
steel wall vent.
And the only thing you can’t feel
is the warmth
of tea-surrounding china cups,
smooth as the clouds you know
you’ve seen before,
but which you still can’t wait to
embrace.
And you stride on up the hill,
and the sunset orange-pink crimson
hits you like
a wave of warm water -
and suddenly the most you can do
is look.
© Richard Cooper 1989-2001
Anyway first
published 1990 by New Prospects
They Went to Bed first
published 2000 by The
Affectionate Punch
Advice first
published 2000 by Iota
I Wrote a Big Novel first
published 2000 by Breakfast
All Day
The Beach Game first
published 2000 by Island
Discovery first
published 2000 by Tears in the
Fence
The Gift first
published 2000 by Brando’s
Hat
Confrontation won first
prize in Kingston Young Poets
Competition 1989