John by Mike Jenkins

The sting of the fumes
and petrol had bloodshot his eyes
so they looked like an alcoholic’s.

‘Sir’ was a word he’d abolished.
He only stooped to tend a car.
He saw bosses come and go
with fashions. In all weathers
he took his time.

His cap at a witty angle,
breaktimes we’d crouch together
secret sharers of the showroom.
Our ideas travelled further
than any of those pampered
cars could ever go.

His Valleys voice rising
to mountain-air elation –
falling to chatty river-flow.
He spoke of the Depression:
How he’d trudged on blistering feet
grey miles, a mirage of bread
becoming real ahead of him.

Some months after I’d left,
an old workmate, cool as coins,
told me of his fatal heart-attack.
A chosen son, I walked
at his own funeral pace
from the garage towards
a rusting distance I’d never attain.

by Mike Jenkins
from Invisible Times

Additional information: Mike Jenkins (born 1953) is a Welsh poet, story writer and novelist writing in English. He taught English at Radyr Comprehensive School in Cardiff for nearly a decade and Penydre High School, Gurnos, Merthyr Tydfil, for some two decades before that. At the end of the 2008–2009 academic year Jenkins took voluntary redundancy. He now writes full-time, capitalising on experiences gleaned from former pupils. He continues to live in Merthyr Tydfil, and has done so for over 30 years. He is also the father of former Plaid Cymru politician Bethan Sayed (née Jenkins) and journalist Ciaran Jenkins.

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Dŵr by Mike Jenkins

Clouds –
whole valleys-sides covered in berries
ripe and ready for the picking,
a steep rock-face with overgrown heather,
a flock of black sheep running
to be rounded up and sheared by the wind:
water with its roots in the sky.

Rain –
the drizzly seeds of droplets sown,
the slanting sea-strewn westerlies
which turn clothing into blotting paper,
the aching storms which gravel
into bones, making you shrink and cower.

Valleys –
scooped and scoured out by laws,
people cleared away like shanty-dwellers
bossed by bulldozers, memories
left to night-writers, to bells
tolled by feeding streams and rivers,
to drought and dereliction exposed.

Reservoirs –
acid funnels of the conifers
press down soil to stop it slipping;
to trippers they seem like mirrors,
but they balance water on scales
tapping mountains for its wealth.

Pipelines –
over the border, moving like a train
with trucks of coal, like iron and steel
liquid and molten, like the feet
of all those who had to leave
muttering ‘Money, money…’ forced
against the gradient, longing for sea.

Chemicals –
a layer of aluminium the surface sheen,
the weight of lead its depths
and those substances meant to purify
unseen in a clear glass, lurking like radiation.

Houses –
the old person whose grasp of time
runs through knotted fingers and down the drain,
children whose minds become stagnant;
families knowing when it’s cut off
water’s precious as air when they choke
on the stench of their own cack,
as germs breed with cockroaches and rats.

Dŵr –
they’ve stolen the word, those safe-lock faces,
mispronounced it ‘Door’, reinforced and vaulted
below reservoirs where they’ve counted
profits from broken bones of village walls,
from a thirst which opens mouths
in fledging questions to the clouds.

By Mike Jenkins
from This Houses, My Ghetto

Additional information: Dŵr is the Welsh word for water. The line referring to it being mispronounced as ‘door’ regards a common mistake people make when first learning how to say it if unfamiliar with Welsh pronunciation. the elongated ‘oo’ sound of dŵr is ‘oohr’ not ‘or’. To approximate the pronunciation think of the word sounding like ‘dew-er’ but don’t stress the second syllable so it becomes ‘dewr’.

Since I’m speaking about Welsh pronunciation I might as well note how amusing it is to read in every Russian-English dictionary the explanation that the Cyrillic letter ‘Ч’ “… sounds like the ‘ch’ in the Scottish word ‘loch’…” since that sound exists in the Brythonic language of Welsh e.g. Chwarae (ch-wah-rye) which means ‘play’ as in the popular Welsh phrase ‘chwarae teg‘ (teg = ‘teh-guh’) meaning ‘fair play’.

Woman on Wheels by Mike Jenkins

Don’t look down on me!
I’m a remarkable invention:
half-vehicle and half-human!

Don’t joke about such things?
Well, what is there left?
God’s deserted me,
or I’ve ignored him…
whatever, it’s neither blame nor salvation.

Don’t look away or speak slowly,
I only grin stupidly
when I’ve taken too much gin.

Later, in the morning,
messages from my brain
jam in my throat.
My spine’s a street
I can only walk in sleep
or in those photos once placed
in a case too high to reach.

Running on smoke not steam,
I become the mechanic
as I take my leg from the cupboard
to put on as you would make-up.
I prefer to numb myself
in poison-clouds of my making,
rather than face a sun
shining like instruments of operation.

You think I’m not like you?
It’s true the world is full
of stairs and people climbing,
while I remain below
locked into pavement, gazing
as the building saunters away.
Yet I know some who are paralysed within,
so all they’ve achieved
becomes a throbbing, an ache
from a lost limb.

By Mike Jenkins
from A Dissident Voice

Psychodahlia by Mike Jenkins

Down in the darkest corridors of municipalia

is where the seed must’ve come from,

nurtured no doubt by a quirky computer

about the time of the Garden Festival.

.

It was to be Merthyr’s own shrub:

a plant ideally suited to the area,

only needing to be oiled every ten years,

never losing its metallic beetroot colour.

.

‘What should we call it?’

discussed the Parks committee:

‘Mini triffid?’ ‘Spike drunkard?’

‘ow about an ever ‘ard?’

.

Without realising their irony,

because a stalwart councillor, after too many beers,

slipped on his way to a spaghetti

and skewered himself on the castiron cactus!

.

‘DESTROY KILLER PLANTS!’ screamed the local press,

but law and order merchants were impressed

by its vicious leaves and bought thousands

to surround the Civic Centre, school and institutions.

.

Soon the forked flora had spread everywhere

threatening the soles of stray vandals,

so the Council named it ‘Psychodahlia’

and the computer was made into mayor.

.

.

by Mike Jenkins

from This House, My Ghetto

Additional information: Mike Jenkins (born 1953) is a Welsh poet, story writer and novelist writing in English. He taught English at Radyr Comprehensive School in Cardiff for nearly a decade and Penydre High School, Gurnos, Merthyr Tydfil, for some two decades before that. At the end of the 2008–2009 academic year Jenkins took voluntary redundancy. He now writes full-time, capitalising on experiences gleaned from former pupils. He continues to live in Merthyr Tydfil, and has done so for over 30 years. He is also the father of Plaid Cymru politician Bethan Sayed née Jenkins MS and journalist Ciaran Jenkins.

Always the Ocean by Mike Jenkins

For those us born by the ocean

there will always be a listening,

an ear close to the ground

like an animal trailing.

.

I remember one night

I couldn’t see anything of water

and I was sober as the stars,

yet below the tracked paving-stones

and gushing up through cracks…

benches tilted, clouds rocked.

I was a vessel, filled full of it.

.

This town at the valley’s head

I’ve adopted or it’s adopted me:

wakes fan from the simple phrases

and often laughter can erode

the most resistant expressions.

Despite this, I’m following the river

along our mutual courses:

.

to the boy on a storm-beach

hopping from boulder to boulder

trying to mimic a mountain-goat;

to the young man sitting in a ring

of perfumed smoke of dolphins

plucked by the sleight-fingered sea.

.

.

By Mike Jenkins

from This House, My Ghetto