Poem 145- The Price of a Season Ticket

The Price of a Season Ticket

I have often wondered about the

National past-time, pontificated the

Obsession and now as I sit

In the permanent continuum of

Fear over league placement and as

I interrupt coffees and films to

Check the app on my phone for

A minute by minute. I contemplate

The amount I cast in to the

Endless void to gain a season…

With you.

I write with one glove off to

Hold the pencil steady as I

Huddle in this North London

Hinterland to watch you excel, in a

Cell, as you exhibit your manly

Prowess and commitment to

Not just watching but participating

In your life’s focus.

I am freezing as I freeze my

Cynicism to show my support and

Empathy to something, until recently,

I was happy to know nothing about.

You are brave and handsome and 

Clever and strong.

You surprise me by how completely different

A person could be to me.

You enrapture and enroll me

In to the fraternity.

You invite me to rejoice in your

Joy and to wriggle in your dissatisfaction as

You journey to watch the boys occasionally disappoint.

I am consistently pleased to be included

And to watch my fingers turn blue and

Form a claw around the pen

And to journey to the

Outer Hebrides to indulge in poultry

We could eat moments from my

House.

I could never have predicted you.

I could never have expected to want

To match your match expectations.

Even if its only for a season, and maybe an international

Championship, I would be happy to

Get hypothermia, empty my petrol and clear my

Emotional bank account.

Poem 144-New Children/Old Children

New Children/Old Children

In the months since we were

Untimely ripped from one another,

When the long, expansive summer

And the modulation of expectation

Far from home worsened and the angry

Face of the tyrant and the tiny woman

Sharing my domain took our last hours.

No one could have foreseen a recovery.

But, the fact remains- I love them.

Not in the way I fell in love with

Their smiley faces as they came in

That first day or when they played in the artificial  

Floral haven, the realistic quotidian environs I created

For them to pretend to be old in. the way I felt my

Heart splinter as I was shuffled blubbing in to the

Back of the car

But in a real way, nonetheless.

I love lizard face, and singing French songs,

I love “him a told me a do it” when talking about a girl,

I love eye of the tiger tricky word challenge, I love can I stay

With you, here in school where you live. I love “who

Are the helping hands?” I love the noise monitor  and

Cats sitting in the lavatory. I love secret holiday homework and

Fifteen year old mums. I love how sad you are when the bear was

Abducted by aliens and how even though the noise breaks the sound barrier,

You always know

What I said.

The love is pure and incomparable.

Poem 143- Sitting on the side

Sitting on the side

It’s been six month since I started

Coming here. Since I was welcomed

In to this group of fit, flexible athletes

Despite my obvious inadequacies in that department.

In that time everything about my life,

Except myself, I suppose has changed. I

Have swapped locations, people, skills,

Companions. Trading it all in, ever

Embracing change as a key to

Happiness and empowerment.

“I have succeeded”, I think on most

Journeys to my new daily habitat,

“I have succeeded”, I think as I struggle,

bi-weekly, in to my sports bra.

“I have succeeded”, I think as I transport

myself to all locations.

“I have succeeded”, I think in an embrace

with you.

Doing a switch of this magnitude

And all the intense, engulfing excitement,

Sleep depriving, arm aching it incurs

Serve to remind me of the scars I received

Each day of the year before.

I am so proud of my escape… even

When I sit at the side of the class spectating

On what has been modified and all

That I no longer feel, listen to and encounter.

Life is different now, life has adjusted to the tempo

Of the atabaque, each song is different as is its out come,

And even watching from the side… I have succeeded.