The book launch at Octavo’s was a great night. I want to thank Mike Jenkins of the Red Poets, Suzanne Iuppa poet and Rhys poet for their readings and support. Also Cara Cullen my daughter poet and songstress and Fiona Cullen my wife and magnificent singer for their musical contribution and support.
Suzanne Iuppa’s reading of my poem “Lament for the girl of the morning Sea” will stay with me for a long time.
Last but not least a big thank you to the listeners!
It was a grand party!
You looked out toward the sea
A cool September evening
We had planned coming
We watched an empty sea
The news dulled our hopes
It was a cool darkening evening
We sat outside silently watching
Waves riding the beaches slopes.
Hopes shattered lives challenged
And we hold each other silently
Standing close together quietly
Our love cannot be expunged.
Waiting for storms to pass
Standing under maples
Waiting for hard rain to pass
Watching iron black
Towered thunder clouds
Rise over the mountain
I remembered you
And wondered
At the reason
The memory
Was brought back
It was the day you decided
You were leaving
You told me
This place is not for me
It’s not for you either
You told me
Don’t worry
You’ll find
Your own way
That was the last
I saw of you
But the memory of your
Strength of conviction
Has been a source
Of great strength
Doing what’s right
Is all that matters
I think of your courage
A woman who knew
What was wrong
What was right
And I cherish
The memory
Of you then
The briefness
Of our friendship.
RAC
That generation of men
How long did I work with abused people
Thirty nine years maybe forty
But always that resistance and absolute denial
By that generation of men
The so called decision makers
Thirty eight years trying
To get through a wall
Of concrete doors
Of silence, of ridicule,
It seems ridiculous to me now
The ends they’d go to
To avoid listening
I’d get phone calls
From experts in the States
My boss shut his door
Stopped answering his phone
The message on his door
I’m out in a meeting
Outside my window
I could see his car
That generation of men
Men who thought abused children
Asked for it in some way
Or that the abusers were right
It didn’t do the child serious harm
After all they’re still alive,
They’re still breathing
What’re they complaining about
Forty years of listening
Forty years of fighting
That generation of men
And now I worry
Nothings really changed
Another generation of men
Are not talking about what they really think
Two children are murdered each week
One woman murdered a fortnight
The majority by men’s doing
These are things men need to sort out
Meanwhile men are silent
Sitting on their hands
Talking about sport
As if it’s the be-all of this life
This generation of men.
RAC
28 September 1932 – 15 September 1973
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, its indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
Elie Wiesel
My first collection of poetry “Uncertain Times”. A book launch at Octavo in West Bute Street, Cardiff on Friday 23rd September 2016 at 7pm. Mike Jenkins Red Poets, Suzanne Ioppa poet and Rhys Milsom poet will also be reading. Cara Cullen and Fiona Cullen will be singing and playing. Come along and enjoy! There’ll be an Open Mic.
Crooked bird
The word used was scoliosis
A curvature of the spine
That led to three days a week in the clinic
The straight backed women wore
Starched white coats and eyes of coldness
Eyes that are blank cold
Give out that signal
Eyes that told us be careful
We walked into bare white walled rooms
Yellow pine floors narrow high windows
Our mothers sat unknowing outside
The room swam with the sickening smell
Of pine maybe carbolic disinfectant
One wall was lined with wooden bars
Yellow pine bars from the floor to the ceiling
We were told
Take off your clothes
Except for underwear
So we sat silently on the benches
A line of crooked birds
We were told to climb the bars
Take our feet off the bars
And hang by our hands
And stare at the opposite wall.
It was a place to straighten out
The crookedness of our crooked backs
We were small thin young children
We did what we were told
We shared this endurance silently
We shared our bravery in silence too
Our courage with stubbornness
So we hung from the bars to straighten
Our crooked backs like birds on a wire
Hanging out stretched
Our arms aching
When the pain of stretching
Made us cry
Tears brushed away with our own hands
On to bodices and vests
There was no warmth here
The quietness of endurance
We share, fades, spills
On the floor and disappears
It was a place to stretch the curve
And crookedness out of us
We were told to lie
Flat on the yellow wood floor
To flatten and straighten
Those who were unable
Had braces fixed
To their backs
Braces fixed to backs
To straighten
Crooked birds
And so it went on
Year after year
Straightening crooked birds
The walk home was best
A wagon wheel or malt-teasers
A treat for a crooked bird’s braveness
We crooked birds observe
The world at a different angle
We learn to think
Out of the box
Straightened people
Try to fix us in
It is like a fixation straight people have
To make everything the same
And if you don’t fit
You’re just not the same
A reject?
But crooked birds have a different habit
Of turning the world upside down
Looking from a different direction
Giving something more to life
To a world that’s become monochrome
In its drabness
So let’s go on breaking down the walls of boxes.
RAC
Wound up
Two boys standing side by side
Framed sepia
Unchanged
A sunlit room and the tablecloths sheen
A deep green valour
They’d dug a level into the slagheaps side
Spoil slipped and filled the tunnel
Two boys died
A third survived
A blind sister
And a mother listen each day
To the sound of a clock unwinding
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