THE LONG ROAD TO KENTUCKY

for GR

It was a long road back to Kentucky
and I did not know the landscape,
if it was all scuffed, mud-frost fields
with the occasional white clapboard church
or if it was oil towns. I do not know the States,
by capital and flag. Some gasoline was drumming
round the trunk and I was filled with hatred.
I'd heard the Bible belt was tight here,
heard that blacks and fags still swung from rope.
I tuned the radio to catch the sermons
between the static. This was Leviticus
and I was nervous. There is no religion.
The sunlight is wide and unforgiving,
no shadows, no soul that hides, no man in the sky
to shout his truths. Just us. Let us be reconciled. 
And here I was, in God's own country, alive.

THE SILENT MAJORITY

I went for them in working class towns,

where I'd heard their curtains twitched

at the sight of an asian or black man

bicycling through the main street.

Were they a whisper? Because I couldn't

hear their complaints in the kebab

shop or curry house, the drunks

were more focused on Bhuna and rice

and the police were untroubled

by women (whose husbands were out

at the rugby club dinner) in fear

of their vaginas being penetrated

forcibly by Polish migrants with vodka

laced breath. Their lights went out

at 10 and 11 pm and they went to bed.

Silence descended on the town like a shawl

on the shoulders of a sleep-dead aunt

and the majority snored.