Angry Sam!

Sam Berkson is a poet who has been performing round the UK and abroad since 2005. He reads a lot and attempts to rework the stuff of experience through the models of past examples to create poetry for the future. He is a Brighton Festival Slam Champion and Liverpool Capital of Culture Slam Champion.

100 Greatest

The 100 greatest butterfly wing patterns.

Yeah but the best one is the monarch,

My sister seen one she said …

It had the most delicately vivid beauty

that dissolved her whole self in its trace-thin finery

colours curling from the binary choices

of complex improbability

and reminding her, she said,

of the reds of gently descending sunsets

Like what she read about in books.

Among the dirt-coloured houses of Hastings

a boy pulls the 100^th greatest BMX trick,

bunny-hopping between bollards.

He wears a hoodie that is the 13^th most likely to intimidate strangers.

His friend, Stefan Gilmore, is now officially

the Youngest Person Ever to be tagged or to be slapped with an ASBO

for being too clumsy in the expression of his 12 year old unhappiness.

He’s off to Exeter for a while until he can finally forget what it ever might have meant to have been loved by someone.

Back in Hastings,

giant-sized gulls scrap for high-salt scraps

and the sea crashes on passionlessly.

Far away, in another stretch of ocean

the moon is in motion

under our feet

as the salt stars sparkle round your hardening nipples

and the sunshine dances in the paths of our ripples,and I hold your full human intensity

as we laugh out our sadness into the widening immensity.

Another Veteran with a Head Wound

An ex-squaddie: “All misery and all lightness,

Council born and bred, scum of the Earth, me.”

Scum of the Earth: Not worth the lice his ma’ combed out of thick curls

(The third of five)

Not worth the flies that bothered his head, now shaved, in Kuwait,

And not worth much help after he had served his time

And now he salutes me:

“2-7-9-1-9-7-2, King’s Regiment, Liverpool and Manchester”.

On a mission to heal. Blood on his hands

And the death-mark of swallows tattooed on his arm.

“Time for talking”

Came back from Kuwait in ’91,

Stood by his mate through a brain tumour,

3 years for stabbing someone.

 Wife done the dirty behind his back,

Lost his job, lost his house, lost his kids…

“I’m all truth, me. You know why?

Cos it’s in me. It’s in you and it’s in all of us.”

The voices talking through him as his voice talks through me.

5 years back, caught a man earwigging outside his house

Smashed two panes of glass to get at him

Met the police when they came for him.

“I’m anarchy, me. I’ve done working. I’ve been there, believe me.

I’m English, proper English. Celt.

C-E-L-T.

I’m English, me mam’s North Walian, half me family’s Irish –

and me name’s Scottish.

This is the longest I’ve had me hair…” – rubbing his crew-cut,

Carrying the crosses of his nation on a back that stood straight for

teachers-officers-wardens.

Part of what I understand (which isn’t much) I wish I didn’t,

And I keep quiet but he’s talking to me.

He’s spotted me as a fighter and I say I try not to be.

“I’m no wordsmith, but they …” –

Pointing to the football fans he’s just been talking to –

“…don’t understand a fucking word.”

The way it is, the way he sees it,

It’s not long before someone gets off their arse and does something.

Left Kuwait in ’91,

38 years a football fan,

Done working all anarchy built buildings enough

Another veteran with a head wound,

“I’m here to heal - know yourself, son.”