Tonight, I went out to see James Hunter and his band play at World Cafe Live in Philly (one of my my favorite venues, at least until the new World Cafe Live in Wilmington opens up on April 2nd, 2011… just a few minute’s walk from our home).
I’ve been trying to find this picture again for ages, and I just rediscovered it as I was looking through some old pics on Flickr. I believe that I was 3 or 4 in this photo, and that it was taken in Bridlington. I actually have 2 or 3 pics taken with monkeys over the years (why do I get Peter Sellers saying “monkey” in my ear, as I type this?), and this is the one that I look the least scared in. Just for your information, I’m the one on the right!
From the age of 5, we spent 2 weeks every summer with my Auntie Madge and my cousins in Rhyl. For the first couple of years, my brother John would go, too. One year, my Dad decided that the two of them would go deep-sea fishing, and this is a story about the one’s that didn’t get away.
May 1999 found me in a strange place. My first wife and I had separated in July 1997, and after a six-month trial separation, we’d tried a trans-Atlantic reconciliation. Eighteen months later (nine good months, followed by nine absolutely hellish months), I decided enough was enough. Many of my poetry from that time is so full of pain and fear. This one is different, and I think it was more about the alternate reality that I so desperately wanted; one that years later, I was lucky to find.
My father celebrated his 68th birthday in Ashgate Hospice. He died 8 days later, after battling cancer for two and a half years. I wrote this on what would have been his 72nd birthday, and memories of that day came flooding back to me.
Poeterrorism was the name I coined (back before the horrors of 9/11 gave us all a different meaning for the word terrorist) for scribbling poetry into a journal, and then slipping it back on the shelf. I wondered what the unsuspecting buyer would make of it. Would they consider the journal ‘used’ and return it for a refund or exchange, or would the see the poem as a gift? As you could probably guess, I was the one who bought this particular journal.
My father was given 2 weeks to live, which turned into the gift of two and a half years. I turned my life upside down to spend as much time with him as I could, and this poem is about is final days and our last conversation.