UNDERGROUND VOICES MAGAZINE/VINCENT TURNER


	UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY

VINCENT TURNER

On four remembered occasions when you confirmed your love for me

1.
With human fury the flames carved away the personality of each room.
And when just a whimper of smoke puffed from the charred remnants
from our once lazy Sunday afternoon shopping trips
You sat on a smoking oak skeleton, turned to me and told
Me without breaking gaze, that you loved me.

2.
It wasn’t your bones, nor baby weight that wrenched
My shoulders south, but the heavy pull of grief.
Selfish I admit. For when the curtains parted and the
Casket rolled from view to the sound Of “Amazing Grace”
I felt for the first time your often curbed, need for me.
Later, as we sifted silently, muted with fresh mourning
Through the curled corners of old photos, you stole
My breath with raged passion, weeping your love
Upon my bare chest

3.
Skimming smooth pebbles into a dirty English sea
My son and I ignore the rain, forming memories
We’d recount ten years later, our tongues still
Stingy with the saltiness of the air-
On returning to the car where you had stayed
You scold me for allowing our little son to
Become so sodden. He cries for he cannot
Differ anger and concern, you tell him it's
Because you love him,
And he inquires “and daddy too? ”
“And daddy too” you reply.

4.
And of course the first ever time you mouthed
Those eternal words
We had just made love, were naked and clammy skinned
I had come far too early
Embarrassed I nuzzled my face into the pillow of your breast.
I whispered apologies into your ear
You raised my gaze into yours
And with utmost conviction
Yelled “I fucking love you”
To the room, to my sorry looking, floppy penis
And for a short while
The world.

Moments of Balance

White whispers signal a change-
Blossom, like the unspoken words of lovers
Fall gently as though unwilling to leave the source.
Snow conceals the debris of man's pain
Glass shards carpeting burnt grass, sodden condoms
Shrivelled like salted slugs
Carpeted with a touch of heaven's labour.
For every slash of blade,
Every impact of fist upon a hooker's face
There is somewhere, a scarlet sky,
Or the independent breath of a premature child.
A heart may surrender it's post
And the beep of machine fall mute
As a mid morning rainbow breaks through the
Drab sky, raising questions in children
And reprieve for rain drenched road workers.
In a nameless street, in a house of unkempt garden
And splintered window
A child stares into blackness, the dull throb
Of a night long quarrel seeps through the
Floor boards, whom to love? whom to hate?
Street shadows wash across the wall;
He forges a kiss with his hands.
It’s the walk through a Child's cemetery
Reading words like “God's little Angel”
Seeing teddy bears, car toys, and birthday candles
Beside a tiny mound, next to a tiny grey slab.
till tiny fingers clasp your Cold hands;
a butter smooth nose cherried red by
the wind looks up, into you, saturating your insides
and flooding them with the balance of reprieve.

Vincent Turner resides in a London, breathing much of his inspiration
for his work from the smog stained, diverse streets that fork through
high rise estates and grandiose million pound houses. Now at the tender
age of 27 he has finally decided to scatter his work into cyberspace,
hoping it lands upon a planet that echoes his thoughts.

Vincents work has been published in Gloomcupboard, readthismagazine,
3lights, literaryreview.com.