Coming Back or Chatham, for Stef

Great grey streets of Chatham,
with your cold damp Autumns
that knew my relatives better than I did
and watched me as a child in the High Street
as I watched you back,

kicking the yellow leaves

and the long leather pods of the honey locust trees
I fell for the trick of the adults, of my parents
so strong and sure but just as confused as I was
I feel their panic now looking back
panic for themselves and for me
what was this strange thing, me
never knowing or made to know what an angel I was
perfect spelling tests and bright blond hair
right into my teens
kissed and loved but still distant even now
no joy for a child who ran in the woods

swinging sticks

read every book

ate every meal

and guarded fiercely the gifts of his Mother

I tell you I could not have been more
and insist to myself that I still could not...

Chatham I feel the bad luck of your winters

I cried in your schools for my Dad

I fell down your steps onto my face
I gulped prescribed malt extract
from an enormous spoon
into my underweight body

I was pushed in your snow and wrapped in my coat

I split the white light of my brother

into every beautiful colour of the mind

and experienced the world through him more than anyone

I felt above and below everyone

envious and pitying in equal parts

full of love and hatred and questions
that I know now could have been answered

I prayed in your assemblies

never seriously

I could spot the shortcut at five

forgave the adults at six

and played the angel Gabriel at seven in a long white robe

bare feet on the school hall in December
voice of a little white bird
I could tell a blackbird from a starling at any distance

I watched for endless hours

the birds in my Grandad's aviary
zebra finches
gouldian finches
love birds
feathers on the sandpaper

and the smell of the Pentagon bus garage

like all smells also a memory

still stirs in me the weekend trips to Weeds wood
to his house
to the tobacco stained fingers

on his heavy hands

to the afternoon conversations with my Mum that bored me

to the rubber tubes on the taps in his bungalow

to the choc-ices in the freezer

I never forgot to say please or thank you

but in your streets Chatham there is no please or thank you

there is no good or bad

the good is the bad

the poor are the rich

the ignorant are wise

the old are young

the unjust are just

the selfish give

the calm see red

and I never was a part of it

though I feel more at home in your High Street, Chatham

or stepping off the train at your station

than I do in any house in London
I, with the translucent skin of the prostitutes

the empty Dockyard and the language of the High Street,
a part of your landscape forever
your river my blood
your streets my bones
your pigeons my thoughts...
Allowed out on my own
I ran over damp ground in the woods
looking up at the soaked oaks
their cracked barks slippery in the driving rain
that falls also on the names in the War Memorial
and your cemeteries
where once over my Nan's grave
I held on to my Mum
and cried tears I did not understand
as a child wrapped in the fog of childhood
we changed the stinking water
in the marble flower pot and left...

Chatham,

in the step of your Spring

with your demons slain by heroin

crushed under the starry white blossom outside the library

I, thinking myself apart,

plunged the sword of the Classics

up to its ornate hilt into each carcass

and the flushed blood blushed from those supine spines

like the proud white swans 

into the mud of the Medway

I alone am your saviour

we few, my friends, are your only pure hearts

you, who have given nothing to the world

and deserve even less

have had love and consciousness growing in you

like a virus

under your nose

unbeknownst
and you held them back, you tried your best
you took my Grandad's leg, a cruel twist
you hung a nil by mouth notice
on my Nan's bed in the hospital
I'll never know what you did with my uncle Kenny
or his beautiful confusing son
who once ran away from a beautiful day
kicking snails along chalky alleyways
in Prince's Park
turned up later at a home of a friend
Was it a broken heart?
An overdose on schizophrenia medication?
left with himself in an unsafe house
like all your little children
in breach position
with the umbilical cord around their necks...
I had an arrhythmia today
a strange tug and a pull where a beat should have been
I've been crying like a jealous baby
over my Dad's plan to foster
and my best friends' band
What worlds have I left?
What hearts have I broken?
Chatham, in your sickness
in your likeness

I have thrown up your hangovers in a wild disease

the acid globules scorched my throat

shedding the skin of the roof of my mouth
looking into your bathroom mirrors

seeing my pale twitching stomach

self and reality losing each other

in the twisted colours of a grim rainbow

I have watched the slow dance of blood
from my bleeding gums

spat twirling red in the toilet bowl

I have paled in your sick beds

a thin wash of nightmare

and thoughts of menace repeating repeating

kneading my brain in the dark light

through drawn curtains

my blood as clay

my sweat as cold as clay

and I ashamed

ashamed for the children I have come to know and love

whose futures will be smeared onto your streets

whose efforts will be in vain

who will work for you

who are sacrificed for you...

You are the shiftless hordes

you are the cerberean barking
you are fag ends in the street
you are pigeons' shriveled feet
you are spots of blood on the playground
you are violent eyes
you are prams weighed down with Tesco bags

you are bomber jackets on Summer days
you are living fists
you are crying babies
you are frightened women
you are the bus stop at the hospital
you are noises in the night

you are the man outside my window four am

showing a prostitute a picture

of his girlfriend and his children

you are her response
and the actions that followed

and will always follow

you are above all

the platform and stage for our dramas

you are the empty bottle

you are the scars
the broken teeth

you are the sleepless nights

the dead leg

the swollen lip

you are all of this and more

And you were dispatched and no match for

the softness of my Nan
the music of my friends

the might of my Father

with them I had no need of violence or of God
and in them I found something better than I am...

Chatham,
who brought me to you Stefania
with its dirty hands

whose pavements fell at my feet when you did not.