5 Poems by Nick Toczek
Nick Toczek is a British writer and performer from Bradford in Yorkshire. He's published more than forty books and, as a writer in schools, has worked with pupils from many thousands of schools throughout the UK and in dozens of countries worldwide. For more info please check out his wikipedia page.
DUSK
While day shuts down
its leaden heat’s
like taking breath
through winding sheets.
The air’s that thick
it clogs these streets
as blood strains veins
fat-filled from meats.
When last light dies
its stilled heartbeat’s
horse latitudes
which hold whole fleets.
Birds hush. Work stops.
Brief life retreats.
Think Chatterton.
Think Shelley, Keats.
AFTER PRAYING FOR SUNSHINE
When weeks of clouds finally cleared
There were suddenly dozens of suns.
They’d arrived together, the way long-awaited buses do
Or unwelcome hotel guests. They’d set the whole of heaven ablaze.
On the morning poolside, plastic sunbeds began melting.
Midday shade became unbearable, drove us all indoors.
Then was when, closing our curtains to lessen the glare,
We briefly glimpsed fallen birds roasting on our balconies.
Slow afternoon soaked us in skinfuls of sweat.
Steam poured from taps. Imagine how we thirsted.
Dusk couldn’t come fast enough.
Sixty suns were seen to somehow set simultaneously.
Ours then became a deeply darkening world,
One grimly aglow with fiercely burning trees.
A full moon soon appeared. As if dazzled by secondary light
One wide yellowed eye stared faintly down
Blinking blind astonishment through dense drifts
Of risen smoke and the saline dust of evaporating oceans.
Sleepless, we thought of ourselves as dinosaurs.
Last of our species, we were dreading dawn.
NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
I’m wholly at home to the stride of our street,
To lamplight all night and my echoing feet,
The wind-bite all winter while waiting for heat.
Insipid December sees colours deplete.
We line up at bus stops like slabs of raw meat,
Coat-collars upturned against rain, snow and sleet.
How brutal our brickwork. How cold our concrete.
The cut of each corner where thoroughfares meet.
That death in the park: the memorial seat.
Soon January, February deepen defeat
With promises broken and tasks incomplete,
Their days doused in darkness we cannot delete.
Leaf-waste clutters gutters like troops in retreat.
Through gates wait our gardens with grass to groom neat.
Come April we’re forking in compost and peat.
But green shoots and marriage both fruit bittersweet.
We’ve only each other and slugs to mistreat.
From May we lay poisons. We bicker. We cheat.
We’ve weeds and we’ve wives and we’ve children to beat.
Yet June, July, August prove fickle, move fleet,
Their mythical sunshine a shallow conceit.
While autumn hosts harvests of apples and wheat
Our neighbours close curtains to keep life discrete.
They’ve stains of their own on both carpet and suite.
LOVE POEM
You wed for life
you love your wife
years pass you’re still together
you own a cat
a black cat that
blames you for lousy weather
he killed a bird
and sat and purred
then licked thick blood from feather
of collared dove
his gift of love
as soft as chamois leather
the body warm
a sorry form
teeth-marks to neck and nether
you show your wife
this loss of life
and maybe wondered whether
another death
at dying breath
would let love slip its tether.
INSOMNIA
Your days contact. Your nights expand
Low sunlight slanting, fiery, fanned
Soon fades and steals all sight of land
Your living space turned contraband
You lie awake as time, like sand
Slithers through glass while hours disband
Still sleep eludes you, strand by strand
Like language you can’t understand
The minutes scattering, unplanned
You’d buy good rest if it came canned
You’d pay to have the finest brand
But proffer just this cashless hand
When brief sleep comes, it’s never bland
All nightmares gothic, ghoulish, grand
With demons you can’t countermand
You shake awake. Your lungs demand
Fresh air! Each organ, blood vein, gland
Convulsing more than flesh can stand
Your brain, bone-bared as if trepanned
Finds tumours where your past, re-scanned
Plays back like one long loud crap band
