Mossend (incomplete)

I was brought up in a town
Made of steel and built on coal
Work with which my forebears
had spent their lives and play'd their role

My parents are not workers they're a dawning middle class
Standing on historic effort in the shade of someone's past
We work as if we might try to restore our self respect
While knowing that it's tiny, insignificant in effect
Even a mite upon the total of their endeavour and their forfeit
So that I may live oblivious, living careless, spending surfeit

And now when I return, I see that tiny little town
I see the spec of mottled brown, with tiny houses clinging round
I see the track-marks linking specs, the fact'ries rusting in the wet
and pitted pock-marks left by fathers who mined for family bread

I see the broken white goals standing where they dug their hole
I see school mates and their kids, all, on the dole
I see the scarred grey hill with the steel work's blood red bones
I see the foundry that cooled in monstrous nightly groans

I see the school standing in the shade of the local priest
I see the railway line pervading and providing the release
The escape route, the getaway, parochial-puncture
The booze, the music, Glasgow capital of culture

And yet,

Nostalgia works in mysterious themes
the things I return to, that appear in my dreams
are rarely the city and they rarely inspire,
instead it's coal and the foundry fire

So will I return, to the town where I grew
Did it do me good? Should I expose my kids too?
Will my bones reside in the coal and the rust
Does it matter at all when it all goes to dust?

And what about my partner and her family past?
Is it mine which takes precedent, should my line outlast?
Or rather, let's go, pioneer a new line
and perplex historians in a thousand years time.

aspiration

Few things are harder to attain
heartache, sweat, blood and pain.
But once realised, pure bliss, nothing is better.
The casual hand hold, the passing kiss,
the jokes about sex life, taking the piss.

When you count what we have,
when you stand back and admire.
To have and to hold, all of this
something to which,
we all should aspire.

Sister

She is volcanic.
Satanic.
Her verses are bile
and yet, we simper,
we put all before her,
we cower and wimper.
We yearn for that smile,
that just once in a while
and it makes it seem worth it,
makes spirits chime.
That is, until she starts,
for the next bleeding time.

Couple

The morning after a tussle, a conflict ridden couple

Begin a silent battle, no single action subtle

I’m sure, this morning, she’s heavier, her heels dug into carpet

Her shower was twice as long. Her toothbrush at my head

Sputum, toothpaste, violence. Being fired at the mirror

He’s sweating on my sheets. Still lying in my bed

I need to be at work in 30 minutes he’s got nothing so important

He makes a show of getting up, doing duties out of “goodness”

Suggesting that its only she who is currently concealing rancour

He then conspicuously makes some bread

But “he’s always kneady though.”

Suddenly, she with environmental aspirations

turning off the lights to his grunts of consternation

He better have a cold she thinks, deep breathing symptomatic

He better not think his gestures make me even slightly frantic

He grumbles on and on, closing doors with swinging foot

He grumbles upstairs, tumbles downstairs, conversation moot

But there they part their ways and so the tussle ends

And by lunchtime and by text message they’ll likely still be friends