old boots

Amid an

otherwise

pedestrian

day a small

iambic

metaphor,

as though

a sentry's

attention

had wandered,

as if a

gardener'd

given up

shallots and

gone down the

pub for a

pint or three,

stood beside

a lamp post

beside an

allotment

a pair of

unoccupied

old worn black

workingmen's

boots.  

On the horizon

On the horizon

church tower and radio mast

spiring to heavens and beyond,

needles that scarcely scratch the sky.

The view from here

The view from here

I Fog

Newcastle has gone,

and Gateshead. A fragment of Tyne

locked like an anchor in mud

a few blue-grey roofs some

street lights and steep houses

chain it to me and separate us,

buses form themselves from air,

vanish to nowhere; memory

is myth.

II Lucid

It rained overnight. Black ashphalt

sparkles with pleasure at being

walked upon, wild buses play tag

to their destinations always

leaving because they've arrived.

I can see distant green-brown

bounding hills streaked with houses

and imagine tiny people

imagining us.

III Nocturne

Brighter at night against the dark

the wealth and lunacy of the city

reflected on the surface

of the empty river, still

great crack, laughter, an argument

with my face in Fenwick's window

till, by uneven steps, I miss

the final metro home; home

is fiction.

IV Sight

We are as ants and less than ants

scrawling our sentences like

scent trails over dust

each I a monarch

in its own domain;

quod scripsi, fecit.

Cadenza

Cadenza

hunt
          feast and famine

farm
          ridge and furrow
          the long cycle

books
          labyrinths

internet
          infinite
          centre-less maze

song
          blood, seed, hope, lost

Between

Crossing the Millennium

Bridge suspended from

twin cities separate inseparable

we pause

               an unreliable

unrecreatable childhood

memory recurs stepping

plank to plank along Ryde pier

neither sea nor land and

watching the turbulent

threatening water beneath

disturbed

                a cormorant

settles on a floating boom

an artificial island in the Tyne

she and I momentarily

fixed for ever above

between  

  © Copyright Chris Downer and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Borders

The boundary's
moved through the years
north south, south north -
people, sheep don't
care: guards, thieves look
much the same by
any compass -
but at night the
lights destroy peace.

When no-one looks
borders vanish.

Thanks to all supporters - more needed

There is another article in the Newcastle Chronicle today about Leonie and Stacey.

Leonie said she was lured into coming to the UK in 2008 with promises of a better life. But when she arrived, the 29-year-old said she was forced into prostitution.

The UK Border Agency and Immigration Tribunals turned down her application to stay in the UK. Now we are campaigning to ask the Home Secretary to use her discretionary powers to allow Leonie to remain.

The response to the campaign has been wonderful:

Campaign organiser Chris Carroll, from the Brunswick Methodist Church in Newcastle city centre, said: “The response has been fantastic.

“We’ve just posted another 100 letters to the Home Secretary to ask her for compassion with more being sent every day.

If you would also like to help letters and petition forms are available here.

Thank you.

Hundreds back asylum seeker to stay on Tyneside

Leonie and Stacey in their flat

Under the headline Hundreds back asylum seeker to stay on Tyneside the local paper, the Evening Chronicle, had a full page feature on Leonie and Stacey and their fight to stay in the UK.  Lots of petition forms and a good number of letter have already been sent.

From the article:

The 29-year-old was fleeing her African homeland when she was lured into coming to the UK in January 2008 with promises of a better life.

But when she arrived penniless and unable to speak English, she says she was forced into prostitution, locked up and raped repeatedly.

Smuggled into the country on a false passport, Leonie says she was imprisoned and abused – her child being the result of one such incident.

After escaping, Leonie, from Cameroon, claimed asylum.

The claims she made were investigated by an immigration judge, who ruled against Leonie. However, her supporters on Tyneside, including specialist counselors, have backed her story.

If you have been one of those who have given your support, thank you very much. Please continue to pass on the information to anyone you know who might also be able to help.

Help save Leonie and Stacey Mendo

 

Would you help keep Leonie Mendo and her daughter Stacey in the UK?

Theresa May, MP, Home Secretary

This is just a brief summary - there is more information in the letters.

Leonie Mendo is from Cameroon. She came to the UK at the invitation of a man she met over the internet. He locked her up, abused her and forced her into prostitution. When she became pregnant she was discarded. Only then was she able to ask the police for help.

But she had no papers. She asked to stay in the UK on the grounds that she deserved humanitarian protection. The immigration court did not believe her account, nor has it accepted the expert witness reports of a midwife, a psychologist and a rape crisis counsellor.

I have known Leonie for over two and a half years. She is a devout Christian and a woman of deep integrity. There is no reason why she should invent a story which is, in practice, so self-denigratory and so harsh as a history for her daughter. She has been entirely consistent in her account since I have known her and I believe her entirely.

Leonie wanted to leave Cameroon because, after her father died, other members of her family took her father's properties by violence. Recently her mother has been killed by those family members. Leonie only learned her mother's death when a friend saw an article in a local newspaper.

She is terrified about being sent back to Cameroon - because her family will find her and are likely to attack her too, because she is a single mother, because she has a visibly mixed-race child who has no father.

With the help of specialist counsellors Leonie is beginning to recover from her ordeal and to build a life for herself and her daughter, Stacey. Leonie is able, hard working, honest and purposeful. She would like to be a pharmacist and would only be an asset to this country. Her daughter is a delightful and intelligent 2 years old.

But now Leonie has been told she will not get humanitarian protection in the UK. She must go back to Cameroon. All legal routes have failed not least because each one has built on the judgement of the first hearing that Leonie was not credible - and by the nature of things there is no way to get evidence of when she arrived in the UK or of her abuse when she got here.

The Home Secretary has the discretionary power to allow a person to stay. That is now what we are asking for.

Would you help? There is more information in these letters below and we are hoping for local media coverage this weekend. If you email me at work I would be happy to address any further questions you may have.

If you can, please sign and send these letters, and ask people to sign the petition and send it to the Home Secretary:

Letter to the Home Secretary (email) ~ Letter to the Deputy Prime Minister (email) ~ Petition to ask for permission to stay

thank you very much in advance.

It would also help if you let us know the actions you've taken.

Winter hearts

finger-written on
a rear windscreen
in the snow:
      I 
 





   you


still visible next morning
though slipped a bit
sagged by gravity
and a slight thaw:
a metaphor 

Two poems by Chris Carroll

I

One enters sleep

with a sliver of hope:

that fragile childhood thread

still connected to the wobbly tooth

and wakes to find it gone.

II

Fragments from a lost heart

Life simpliciter

Glimpses of passion and purpose

From another world

Fall as shadows

Around the walls of this prison

Deportation

Colnbrook Immigration Reception Centre

Deportation

Sunday morning early

most homes still curtained-blind

I saw a pair of shoes

gaudy-gold giddy

night-out for fun shoes

some dozen yards apart

a half-pint bitter glass

abandoned unfinished

a lost thin silver ring

unconnected except

by my morning walk.

Tuesday morning later

I recognised a shoe

a grubby once-gold shoe

footloosed but not free lost

some distance from its old

place quite unconnected

except in my telling.

This morning early

homes still hard-blinded shut

against the dawn your door

exploded dragged vanned you

forcibly flew you back

not-home disconnected.

Plus ça change

I remember when Margaret Thatcher entered No. 10 with the words of St Francis of Assissi and Tony Blair to the sound of Things can only get better. Both in defiance of reality.

This time it's strong and stable, working arrangements, and new politics.

Ludo

Ready. set,
hundred metre dash, off
before you know,
ready,
ready,
hit-drop-run-run.
wait,
wait
run, run, home. Again
hit-drop-run-caught
out,
oh,
but, angled for though
a surprise,
on the board
playing chess from the inside
not sure where to move
or when, or why,
or whether there’s pleasure
in another piece captured
till, didn’t see that coming,
kicked feather-flight so high
I can see the whole game now
every racket ready to
smash me into the
Netball! Yes!
Game! Match! Tournament!
Victory! in fantasy –
in fact I find
whist too slick for me
I knock,
lay my bones down,
quite dominoed now
told each card to play
in my final cribbage.

Pen

A pen is
not a word

a word is
not this shape

the shape is
not a sound

the sound is
not a thought

a thought is
not a pen.

Fountain

Fountain




Described by stylus into the

parterre, a fountain: in design

quatrefoil, lilypads perhaps,

the waters of creation held

by a low concrete wall, its eye,

a double Janus-head, addressed

the four corners of the round world,

stone-blind. Its north face was carved as

a child, the next a chimera,

the third was that of a soldier,

and the final was agèd, each

spouted limpid water as though

it were given truth, the life-cup,

the tale of wealth and bought vision,

as though it were cheap as bone, and

all the splashed blood were washed away,

forgot, and each hour o’ the clock

a watchman’s shout, a phallic plume

declared time’s subjugation,

the Sisyphean victory.








.

Boxing Day

Boxing Day


The future of flesh:

bitter chocolate

and sweet regret.

Passed

sped past, trop vite,

a boy, 10 or 11,

white shirt, worried

face anxious, perhaps,

to be home.

Moments later

a disturbance of the air.

A death and a wake.

Against the prevailing

When the wind drops

body lightens,

steps lengthen,

home quicker, warmer

but, except to draw breath,

feint, and come back

all the harder

the wind never stops.

Quietly

Hinges oiled.

Doors no longer

semaphore

every movement

around the house.

I leave you

and return

unnoticed but

the floorboard

betrays me.