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      Home Lifestyle Poetry

      Steve Pottinger: You Ask Me Where I Want to Live, My Love…

      This poem is from Steve's fourth collection More Bees Bigger Bonnets.

      Jimmy AndrexbyJimmy Andrex
      24-10-2020 09:19
      in Poetry, Region
      Photo: Unholy Racket

      Photo: Unholy Racket

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      You Ask Me Where I Want to Live, My Love…

      by Steve Pottinger

      it can be the tundra, a desert, a forest, a boat

      high on a mountain or out on the coast

      an apartment, a terrace, a van or a castle,

      a tent, yurt, or igloo, it really don’t matter

      but it must be somewhere 

      where commuters stop and stand

      to marvel at another sunset

      and breathe for the first time that day

      making a mental note to phone in sick in the morning

      where the Daily Mail declares its compassion 

      knows no borders

      champions the rights of asylum-seekers

      elects a teenage single mom as editor

      and proclaims the benefit system 

      is the mark of a society

      not afraid to offer help to those in need

      when she hears this news 

      Katie Hopkins looks like she’s swallowed a wasp

      where politicians start speeches on British values

      by saying they spent yesterday watching the grace

      and beauty of swallows hunting over summer meadows

      and they lost themselves in it for hours 

      and the speech never got written

      and sod it, it was worth it

      and what is this nationalistic flag-waving bullshit anyway?

      and when we vote for them they say no thanks 

      they’d rather be watching the swallows 

      and why don’t we crack on with sorting things out ourselves

      we’re more than capable of doing it without them

      it can be a farmhouse, a mansion, an empty plot

      a hot-air balloon or a racing yacht

      in Lundy, Fastnet, German Bight

      Trafalgar, Dogger, Cromarty, yep, all right

      but it must be somewhere 

      where we never forget we pass this way but once

      and every day is another shot at redemption

      where the old and the weak and the dying

      are wheeled out each evening 

      to feel the rain on their cheeks 

      in case they do not live to see the dawn

      and each and every news bulletin starts

      with images of the miracle of birth 

      to remind us what we’re doing here

      where kids learn about poverty and homelessness 

      in history books and ask 

      Was slavery like dinosaurs, miss?

      and when the teacher asks them to imagine 

      what it must have been like to bed down 

      cold and hungry and alone

      Year 9 find it so distressing she has to send them out 

      into the playground to burn off their confusion

      and over by the bike sheds 

      Sally gathers the others round

      and makes them swear that if the grown-ups 

      ever invent a poverty again

      they’ll give them extra double maths with Mr Jackson 

      till they promise to behave

      and then they get back to playing kiss chase 

      and the playground rings with screams and laughter

      it can be Glasgow, Cardiff, Westward Ho!

      wherever it is, and wherever we go,

      north-east Norwich, south-west Ayr

      hell, Hull, Halifax, I don’t care

      but it must be somewhere 

      with a bee-loud glade and a pub at hand

      where we drink by firelight, sit with friends

      talking laughing making plans

      where we’re up every morning at dawn 

      walking through dew watching the sun

      burn the mist off the gentle flowing river

      or the rain hit the windows

      or the snow fall

      and all this won’t even cover the half of it

      because we’ll be lying at night on grass 

      under a blanket

      listening to cicadas, 

      feeling moths brush against our faces 

      looking up at stars so numerous we can’t begin 

      to count them

      and you explain the big bang theory to me again

      and I nod and say Uh-huh in all the right places

      but we both know there’s no way I’m going 

      to get my head round it 

      I just think it looks fucking fantastic

      where the world is filled with music 

      and the symphony of silence

      for an audience of millions and an audience of one

      where Simon Cowell is on gardening leave, 

      indefinitely

      where we will make love every day

      in the morning in the afternoon

      whenever we bloody well want to

      make love with tenderness and passion 

      and howling abandon

      and lie in the cooling sweat of each other’s bodies

      and want for nothing more

      it can be the tundra, a desert, a forest, a boat

      high on a mountain or out on the coast

      an apartment, a terrace, a van or a castle,

      a tent, yurt, or igloo, it really don’t matter

      but it must –

      and you’re right 

      I haven’t mentioned house prices

      or the mortgage tracker index once, my love,

      and I haven’t a clue whether the market 

      is bubbling, booming, or about to burst

      but the truth is that every time I try

      I feel a small part of me go belly up and die

      and yes that isn’t very grown-up 

      and no it probably isn’t going to change

      and all I can say in my defence

      is that with a handful of cable ties  

      a couple of rolls of gaffa

      and a modicum of judiciously applied brute force

      I can fix pretty much anything

      and in my world that make us quits

      because it’s watching each other’s backs

      and nurturing our abilities

      and covering each other’s blind spots 

      that makes us strong

      and that has to count for something

      and this is where I want to live, my love,

      with you, eating impossibilities for breakfast

      growing old together

      with time passing so slowly we barely notice

      in a world we love still more each passing day

      and where, when they wheel us out 

      into the soft gentle rain of our last evening

      the memories will jostle and tumble

      over each other like water

      and when we close our eyes that night

      we will believe that  

      we will wake next morning

      to do it all again

      that we’ll be laughing 

      and dancing 

      and dreaming

      forever.


      Steve Pottinger studied at Leeds University in the 1980s before embarking on a life making events happen and performing poetry. This poem is from his fourth collection More Bees Bigger Bonnets. His new collection Thirty-One Small Acts of Love and Resistance is out now and available from www.ignitebooks.co.uk.


      More poetry and spoken word:

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      • Yorkshire Rose reacts poetically to Covid-19
      • Yorkshire Rose reacts poetically to Covid-19

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      Jimmy Andrex

      Jimmy Andrex

      Jimmy is a Wakefield poet who performs all over the UK. Co-founder of Red Shed Readings, he is a presenter on ELFM’s Love the Words, where he writes and produces the Jimmy Andrex Outside Broadcast, as well as co-curating their Writing on Air Festival. Cartoon by Hamley Jenkins.

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