This has been a particularly cold, wet February. Possibly the worst I can remember. There hasn’t been much walking with the dog, and there’s been lots of early mornings and tedious commutes into Manchester city centre. I’m making headway with my FIFA series, which I hope to have finished well in advance of the World Cup in June and July. My plan is to ultimately put it out as a book, but probably too late to seek out a traditional publishing route for it.
Still not much going on fiction-wise. No time, you see. Creative writing is a slow, arduous process. You can’t just dip in and out, an hour here and an hour there. I can’t, anyway.
I did write this poem this morning. It is no doubt a raw output, in need of editing. But maybe it has some promise? It sums up my current mood, anyway.
Cold Country
This is a cold country.
Its flags wave from tower blocks as if calling for help
or clinging to life,
one rip in the right place and they’ll be gone.
They are wrapped around lampposts,
wet and beaten from the cold, wet months.
Occasionally in this country a dead person is found in a city street,
in a shop doorway, a theatre entrance, a car park,
by a canal, beside a bank.
One time a tent was set alight as a man slept inside.
Cold country.
This is a cold country.
You’ve always got something you need to do in this country,
something to battle through.
It could be a source of stress, a concern of finance,
a traffic jam, a large crowd,
a combination of all the above,
but this country never sleeps so neither do you,
not really,
you have too much to think about,
too many concerns,
and at the end of the day,
there is only you.
There is no we in this country.
Cold country.
Keep your chin up and brace it.
It is more important to you than you are to it.
Be proud of your country,
give it a reason to be proud of you.
Toil for it, produce for it, die for it.
You either will or die anyway.
Die on the street somewhere, perhaps.
It does happen, you know.
This is a cold country.
Cold country,
and yet the boats keep coming.
Don’t they know this is a cold country?
There isn’t even enough for me, and they think there’s enough for them?
I was born in this country, its mine,
don’t come to this country and take what’s mine, you child rapist.
Murderer.
You’re like vermin, the way you crawl the streets of this country,
taking up all the spare space,
while our homeless die on the streets,
frozen to death
in this cold country.
Cold country.
Always raining.
Rarely a sun, and even more rarely a warm one.
I’m late again.
I can’t get an appointment with the doctor.
You can’t get the surgery for your cancer on time.
They don’t even exist, being a “they”.
They are part of the problem, they say,
It wouldn’t be that bad if it wasn’t for they,
if it wasn’t for them,
if only it was kept the way I liked it,
though I never liked it,
but it was better then than it is now,
back in the old days.
It wasn’t a cold country in the old days.
The summer of ’75 was so hot your ice lolly would melt as soon as you got it.
You could fry an egg on the pavement in the summer of ’75.
Don’t scam me with climate change.
Don’t like the cold, then find someplace else.
This is our country and this is the way it is because this is the way it was.
Don’t be tampering with my country,
but keep voting for the people who tampered with my country.
Cold country.
Dead country.
Country of zombies.
Docile, meandering zombies.
See them with their flags.
Tattered and wet pieces of fabric,
produced elsewhere, in some other country,
shipped back and sold and bought in this country,
to be flown from tower blocks,
to hang from lampposts,
to slowly become tangled and torn and always, always, utterly meaningless,
when you think about it.
Everything is meaningless in this country.
This cold, dead country.