The Lads of the Village

Kohl eyed and still quarter cut, I am pulsed
by proper coffee from out of fallout shelters.
To feel my way through the black mile

of back rooms and bonded warehouses
on my way back to the Baize or the Stow.
Treading out entrails and patting down

the still smoking embers of yesterday,
with cabbage leaf or column – a carpet
courtesy of Barkers counting bunce

from the barrows. Putting down markers
in those words of local value – patter,
Polari, the cant and costerslang.

Out into the culinary memories
of my post imperial childhood.
The true epic poetry (long buried),

courtesy of the plongeurs and commis,
of mercer, cooper and the mender.
Courtesy of the lads of the village.

Joseph Long

poem published in Blackbox Manifold, Iss 33, Winter 2024

The Spider and I (taken Gravesend, Oct ’24)

We are closer than we have ever been
the spider and I.

Back then, I could not bear to touch – to pick
through my textbook pages (with nerves bated),
knowing she waited inside broken bindings.

I lost many years over her. No more.
Now I am taking back hours. Now I am
making up time (since our uneasy truce).

Understand my shift, understand my life,
she said; two backs tight in a southpaw stance.
I tried, and can now put my face to her glass.

Marvelling, as she divvy’s up my space,
engraving the thermals with chinagraph.
Winning the air grab amidst wind and spit.

Smithing Queens Highways with pugilist mits.
Those stays spun from Kevlar, rebar; up, down
the compass rose – gleaming; sunlit or naught.

Increasing a portfolio which she
tirelessly maintains – every nodal point
on the conurbation; Ville to Zona.

Those distant lock-ups of feather, spread seed,
leaf litter tethered to the dragnet –
until the sunlight begins to pale.

Then, I see the slumlord and the heavy
in one. Visiting the commonweal glommed
in the gleaming corridors of her scheme.

I watch her do the rounds, processing all –
inner ring to treble twenty. Carried
on the first edition winds we get up here.

For arrears? I shall refer you to the sill
she says – one borne with bushmeat. A boneyard
for former tenants. Missed final warnings.

Joseph Long

poem published in Blackbox Manifold, Iss 33, Winter 2024

Rip Raps and Plug Uglies

To clear my head, I headed out for drink –
out, to the Kentish court of miracles.
As I shifted between shades of Lincoln, Kendal,
I heard butterflies paddling above me;

beneath the wires that divvy up their skies.
Here’s a prospect, they said, gathering
at the far end of the green chain gauntlet.
This is Medway, not the Five Points –

but there are Rip Raps and Plug Uglies here.
No striped mug and no brown derby
No shot-filled gloves, but
boy, do they have the monikers.

The Glanville and Grizzled Skipper. Brimstone
and the Duke of Burgundy. The High Brown,
the Comma – and not one single grappler,
wine bar or racehorse in the lot.

Had no time left to look for grith – the grift was on.
An apple core apparition homed in
only to pull up / away at the death.
I patted thigh, slapped chest,

lest they had lifted my wallet – because their MO
is the body check, the hand sleight.
But so what if they had rolled me like a sot?
Would I have cared? Well, I might

but I might not – for those Rip Raps and Plug Uglies
gave me blood and switched on the hallway light
in a mothballed mind. Were a tune
to thrum, in my time of quiet ruin.

Joseph Long

poem published in Littoral Magazine, Feb 25, ISSN 2752-3357

Keaton-esque

Careering Keaton-esque through the copse,
the first bullet bearing my name –
the famed Painted Lady; barrelling

from burdock to blackberry,
bedecked in Liberty fabrics.
Until landing on a sixpence

on a frost-split oak branch
with poise and pause. I watched
her expand and slowly refract. I watched

her preen in the Murano glass,
that saffron sap gibbous with frass.
I watched her exalt in herself – exalt

in her tipi dreams and shogunate silks,
before returning to her oaken holt –
leaving me stock-still and dazzled.