under his eye iii

then i was home for the
first year of high school
alienated, scared,
quietly unusual
with no idea
what was wrong with me
needing people,
passions and a method of being
a year later,
on a coach to france,
i met k and c
and then p and s and g
(most of whom i fell in love with,
one of whom i am still in touch with)
who accepted me
when i rang their doorbells
every day

i am not sure how normal or otherwise it is to simply ring someone’s doorbell in the modern day. i suspect that most people now are like me now, and get the fright of a lifetime if someone unexpectedly rings the doorbell. but from age who knows eight, maybe, to at some point in midteenage, i would just go to the pal’s door and ring the doorbell and see if they were in if i wanted to hang out. even if nobody was in at least i got a walk.

also, remember to vote.

under his eye ii

crying to my mother
in the phone booth
an undiagnosed autistic
immature youth
unable to verbalise,
understand, explain
the abhorrent situation
i was in…
i had no way to pray
for succour
no deus ex machina
from the kirk

i seem to think about the pope more than most catholics. i always found church confusing as a child. jesus was a hippy peacenik sort of character. church people seemed much more stern. fundamentally uncool. it’s hard to imagine jesus ordering the burning of witches, or driving a land rover, or paying his workers a subsistence wage, or speculating in capital. or coveting wealth generally. yet so many rich people claim to be christians. like, as if they think the lower orders are too thick to spot the contradiction.

under his eye i

since the pope died,
i’ve had religion on my mind
child protection and it’s opposite,
no child’s left behind
i endured the kirk
and a ton of bunk
in the mid nineties
on a coach trip
to innsbruck
some older kids and me
i only joined the club to play football.
how did i end up here?

i’ve been on a bit of a poetic frenzy recently. i feel an urge to overproduce poetry, to give me some spare time to do other things. but then i have a spare moment and i work on some more poetry. because it’s fun. so maybe i’ll never finish the bloody novel i’m working on. it’s called ‘the san estaban mayoral election of 2016’, subtitle ‘a historical novel by n.n. benn’