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Nativity MonologuesIJosephThey say there are signs.Not with her.I’m no professorbut neither am I stupid.I asked her who she’d been seeing.She sat there murmuring ‘Angel’.She went north a few days- change’ll do you good.The solicitors said to forget it.‘Without proof…’ they smiled.If anything she started to brighten:‘They’ll be cousins, same age!’(I can’t be sure,but I think I saw him, too.)We left it too late, of course.The traffic was solid,some pop idol on the hire car radiomassacring ‘Hallelujah’.We stopped at a Little Chefon a B-road somewhere in the hills.Crystal midnight it was,good as daylight.Then she grew wild-eyed.Her bawling, a blunt saw, cut through me.It wasn’t like in the songs.IIThe Holiday InnNortherners. But honest.Him, hands like shovels,his eyes brimming and fish-flick.And her, well.You get used to not asking.Any space at all they said.We’ll take anything.I gave them the shedafter getting a roastingfor looking a gift horsein a recession.A booking’s not what it was.It’s where I keep the Triumph.My baby.I couldn’t help wonderingwhere I’d put the WD40.I saw his head crowning,then there he was,bruised, not an inch of pink on him.She never took her eyes off him once.The sky lit up like Christmassuddenly – a police chopperlooking for insurgentssome said, or a nutter.I lost the booking slip in the end.Got roasted for that, too.Might have fetched a fortune.Paperwork was never my strong suit.IIIMaryAt first a flutteringthen a kick, his fist pummelling my ribcagewhen I knelt to pray.They sent me away,my belly burgeoningshame on his name,his eyes looking right through me.Amazed, he took me back.He mutteredhe’d seen him toobut best not mention it in company.I sang then,hymning propheciesthat were poetryinventing themselves on my tongue.The riots and the cold you know about.The roadblocks.That donkey.Let me tell younothing prepares youfor that Ocracking your pelvis,his fists flailing in airas if from nowhere,tarnished wings of an angel.They say I said nothingbut treasured these things in my heart.Pain overruled my throatand hasn’t stopped since.None of us gives birthin silence.I was no one’s favourite girltill this.IVWhile ShepherdsUp for anythingand out of it, mostly.The Dirty Dozen?Double it.Occupy veterans,some AWOL marines,Swampy’s best mate’smate, turned informer.On tourand staying there,like secretsno campfire soothed.The searchlightswe were used to.Not desert ratsfor nothing.It was the noise,white, whole nights of it,a Christmas crooners CDturned up to eleven.Town was more ghost than quiet.That’s what a curfew will do for you.The Helmand boyscame good, to be fair.That night vision gearworked a miracle.Respect is earned, not due.And she earned it.No fence would have stopped usfrom coming.VHerodWith Wikileaks in the headlinesyou could saythe timing was perfect.Three Iraqi profs in clown-suitsclaimed they had intelon a need-to-know-basis.No one used the word coupbut it was clear what they meant.Said they’d scoured satellitesto find me. Someone’s headwill roll for that, I laughed.Not even a flicker.I cut them a deal:new Jeeps, immunity,a map of the minefieldsin return for his name.We shook, nothing in writing,everything clean.How they twigged I honestlycan’t say. They didn’t look like hackers, then who does?Special forces, probably.They were good, not a trace.If they ever do go publicI will be waiting. One thing I’ve learned,if you can’t give the orderit’s time to get out.TruceJust who gave the orderno one knew.They say there wasn't one.Stille Nacht?in no man's,its accordion leaking like gasacross the frost.One by one came stars,better to pick out limp ragsof surrender.What I remember next is nothing,if absence is what nothing is,a song into which we sang silence.Witnesses, we witnessed it.We were part of that cloud, and lost in it.An Angel comes to you by dreambeckoning from the other sideof sleep a hand across the dividepursued by a starOr stilled in trafficyou pause and hear your breathcaressing your namewith love somewhere belowyour bonesshepherding your lossbefore you even know itflightpath out and in(and in)birthof who you are The RiddleThey say it began in a bed of strawunder occupation.That shepherds sawthe sky turn whitewith aliens singingpraises to some prince.Then, nothing.Years later, a rumourspread like a windacross the lakehe’d apparently tamedby shouting. That ifyou even touched himyou got healed.Demons, cancer, anything.That he was big,knew his wine;hung out with whores,called himself The Vine;gave the rich short shrift,kissed those with Aids;loved an argument;forgave;heaved wood all dayor a man off his feetwith just a look;hauled friends from beneaththe earth with a word;had a cousin who lost his head;likened his body to a loaf;walked and wept with us. Bled.PoemLet me invade your heart.Let me into your hurtand heal where no one sees.I place a kiss, here, on your eyes.(Let me invade your hurt).Let me infect where it tearsat you, unseen, in the heart.Let me dry your eyes.Let me in. (Your hurtmight burst and invade the world).I cradle it, as a babycrying out in the dark.Let me. I come as a childcomes, with open hands,into your dark. To hurt me,let me invade your heart.ThawNow we are in the darknesswe know nothing but the search for rays we cannot gaze into, as,on grey days, we know their heatfrom how the frost retreatsto green behind a wave of light. ................
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