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Alan Dunnett |
Alan Dunnett is Course Director of a screen-oriented MA in Performance at Drama Centre London, which is part of Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design. His poems have appeared in several magazines including Stand, The Interpreter’s House, Pennine Platform, Other Poetry, Orbis, Envoi, The Reader and The Rialto.
I Never Knew Billy McAdams or I Wish I’d Met his Mum[1]
‘Roaming’
I look for a gap or I choose
to forage deep. I wait and move
with leg-bone and head-bone ready for
the stretching and dripping of the great jaw
as it urges itself to a seismic roar.
‘Broad-shouldered’
Try and knock me down. I will knock you down.
I run at you. I run through you. No town
is big enough for me. I have no front teeth.
Get out of my way or I will give you grief.
I am a tree and you are just a leaf.
‘A Fiery Leader’
There are others like me. Know our kind,
tall and splendiferous. We burn on the mind
of the enemy, take out the nerve centre,
blaze down the big main doors and enter
in as pagan gods, unafraid of nice censure.
‘Non-Stop Slick Action
I am a bulleter. You put me on
automatic and I do it. On song,
I do it well. Very, very effing well.
I am one tireless mother from hell.
When they stop the clock, you start with an ‘I’.
I win. My name is Billy, Nat, Stanley.
Tommy, Jim, Gary, Ronnie, John, Barry.
Peter, Phil, Sammy. I win and your name is - ?
Gotcha.
[1] Billy McAdams was a centre forward for N. Ireland and a number of League clubs in the fifties and sixties.
Rules of Engagement
Another year of siege: the priests with long beards
look twice at their acolytes. Food is scarce
and the home-made beer can blind. Your smile,
seemly, and also bland to read, still opens
for dark juices at certain hours. I look
at conjunction without the rules when rules
hold sway. New rules seem impossible. Crescent
abuse, I see, sits concealed in a gift
of sweetness. I know about surveillance
and good arguments and then you are dead.
Is this really irresponsible,
a sign to be resisted? Or does love
bear the seal? Go round again. No star
to guide. I kiss your glossy eye. Pretend
the wind lays bare your bones. You need comfort.
Mist
Wrap it round you: in the rain protection
will be yours and later admiration
will burn to envy at the white salons
from the bottom of teacups while galleons
of Spain lie underwater well-preserved.
In this land of rewards, I have deserved
you. Let us step out into autumn. Loss
tends you with cool, attentive hands. Press
your concealment upon me as we slip
between passers-by like air. No one would stop
us, anyway. We are torn from a book
and numbered by our pages. You look
concerned and almost shiver. You were this dream
and so, my love, I touch you as you seem.