Sunday, December 18, 2022

Famous Men

One rule for us, one rule for them.
That’s how we cope with famous men.

At age thirteen, they drew a scene
of Venice with its Grand Canal.
By fifteen, they had met the Queen,
had fucked Mae West and Gore Vidal.

At twenty one they’re having fun
with Alice Toklas on the Seine,
then off they go to Mexico.
They hopped the Albuquerque train.

By twenty two they owned a zoo
and sailed beam-ends to Borneo,
sat in with Miles on Kind of Blue,
composed an oratorio.

At twenty four, they went and saw
the Hindenburg come crashing down,
then fought the Spanish Civil War;
knew Orwell, Hemingway and Pound.

At twenty eight, they found a mate.
They took a princess for a wife.
With two plays opening at the Gate
they settled in to Dublin life.

At thirty four, another war!
They’re on the beaches on D-Day.
They’re liberating Sobibor
and flying on Enola Gay.

They joined the nascent OSS,
assassinated diplomats,
beat commies at a game of chess
on Berlin Alexanderplatz.

At thirty six, they got a fix
with Burroughs at the Beat Hotel,
sold Berber jewels to hippy fools
at Maxims with Coco Chanel

and in Jamaica, took the sun,
a novelist at forty one,
a chocolatier by forty three;
they’re in the car with Kennedy.

Then Christmas nineteen sixty three,
they turn their hand to poetry.
It’s simple, fun and worldly wise
and wins the fucking Nobel Prize

and then begin the salad days,
the soaking up of endless praise,
the selling-out for millions,
the literary brilliance…

and now I turn to my own life -
a dog, three children and a wife.
It all seems petty, routine, small.
as though I sleepwalked through it all.

While others travelled wild highways,
I settled for mere holidays.
They seemed to live a hundred lives -
ten children, half a dozen wives.
They met with passion each sunrise
while every dawn I compromise.

So much time I feel I wasted.
So much spice I never tasted.
All the chances I have missed.
My whole life’s on my bucket list.

I try to think I’m happy now
and justify myself somehow;
those other men had different tools
and played their game by different rules.
They had more fun. They did more stuff
but I suppose I’ve done enough.
That’s how we cope with famous men.
One rule for us, one rule for them.

A Gift From the Sun

Your father taught you how to change a tyre
and how to fall and climb back to your feet.
The spark he breathed on grew into a fire.
I held it for an instant and the heat
rewarmed the frozen sun inside of me;
a star which spins alone in empty space,
that tiny unseen singularity:
the lover’s heart beneath a father’s face.
Now gravity is pulling us apart
and draws us back towards our hearths and homes.
Your fire flies to warm another heart
while I shall supernova on my own
for Nova always stands for what is new
and I am old and old dreams don’t come true.

Thursday, December 15, 2022

The Story

There’s a story I have to tell.

In galleries we stand alone
to watch the angels holding hands.
We finance more machine gun nests,
proclaim ourselves the self-made man.
With golden hearts in burning fields 
we talk about the gorgeous flame.
When alleycats play cards with mice,
we all pretend we’d do the same.

In blinding light toward the sun,
we search for Heaven one by one
as though our life’s a race to win
and fellowship’s a mortal sin
as every leaf shakes loose its tree
and every lonely honeybee
looks happier than you or me
but none of that is true. You see,
there’s a story I have to tell.

Your toaster says you are alone.
Your money says you are alone.
Your trainers say you are alone
but there’s a story I have to tell:
that every heart you’ve ever known
is just like yours. You’re not alone
and every hearth and every home
is somewhere you can call your own.

So let’s hold hands and try once more
to find the rose above the door.
As time unravels, we’ll ignore
the smiles of those who won’t explore
or come together; who cannot see
that I am you and you are me.

The Dream

I held you in my dream last night -
a dream of overwhelming bliss.
Two lovers in the fading light,
I stole your heart. You stole a kiss.

A dream of overwhelming bliss
that made me sorry when I woke.
You stole my heart. I stole a kiss
then watched you fade and my heart broke.

That made me sorry when I woke
and so I chased you back to sleep
but watched you fade and my heart broke.
I’d held you tight and kissed you deep

and so I chased you back to sleep
and found you there at midnight’s stroke.
I held you tight and kissed you deep
and found you with me when I woke.

I found you there at midnight’s stroke.
I’d held you in my dream last night
then found you with me when I woke,
two lovers in the fading light.

Devil’s Night

Tonight the Devil’s here and God is small -
a night for sinners who have never sinned
and out there in the dark I hear your call -
the welcome gift of words placed in the wind.
You sigh another spell, oh sorceress
whose magic echoes somewhere in the night,
and wear your darkness as an evening dress -
it falls in waves to keep you out of sight.
Yet from your throne of skulls and ragged fur
tonight I hear you whispering for me
to cast my spell, to be your whisperer
of things the lighted world must never see.
I sing this song to darkness and I pray
this devil’s night shall never yield to day.

The Mummy

Forget for once the stupid mummy’s curse,
that lame-brain bane of Egyptology,
for mummies have to deal with something worse:
our ignorance of their chronology.
I know you know in abstract that Egypt
was long ago and went on for a while
but did you know that Tutankhamun’s crypt
got covered up by flooding from the Nile
a thousand years before the Romans came?
Or that the Sphinx was more removed in time
from Cleopatra’s Ptolemaic reign
than Cleo is from me writing this rhyme?
I’m hoping that these fourteen lines of verse
might go some way to lift the mummy’s curse.

The Fox

The snow drifts down like gently falling stars
as cars illuminate a cardboard box.
I know this town will leave its mental scars
but scars become this sleeping urban fox.
His dream brings him an image of a girl,
a swirl of words surrounding her in streams;
extreme emotions gradually unfurl
and curl around them both in both their dreams.
For somewhere in the night you’re sleeping too
and you are dreaming of the urban fox.
You somehow need the fox to dream of you
those nights you want to curl up in his box.
When snow is falling from the sky above
you know this sly old fox will dream of love.

White Lunar

The more I see of you the more I miss
the hand I cannot hold, the more I see
that we shall never lean in for a kiss;
the more I see how much you’re missing me.

I am that lesser bird
who paints in blots and clots,
who paints the blood-soaked moon
upon your door.

You break into my poetry again
decode a line of sanguine semaphore.
“The more I see of you the more I miss”
then briefly, softly, sadly speak my name.

Quatrains

Her portrait forged in fog and smoke -
a dancer dancing just for me.
The gentle taps of her pen stroke
echo metronomically.

The withered leaf, the nightly pain -
November brings her some relief.
She listens and transcribes the rain -
her symphony, her masterpiece.

And in my hand I find a note
which she has written long ago:
“Don’t love me but don’t love me not.
Don’t hold on but don’t let go.”

Grace

Those lunatics who stare into the sun
or shriek at pigeons in the local park
are childhood friends who we have left behind
when all the games they played stopped being fun.
We know they wander somewhere in the dark
but keep them out of sight and out of mind.
We eye them cautiously when passing by,
say ‘There but for the grace of God go I’
as though God chose us as His favoured son
and opted for His other son to die.
We notice as the ambulances come
and yet we never stop to wonder why
we didn’t help or what we might have done
instead of looking down and walking by.

Love Affair

I write these lines as if in prayer -
on bended knee, I choose a pair
of rhymes I think will be okay
and suitable for smart wordplay.
This endless game of solitaire
is one I play with savoir-faire
and, though I see you’ve ceased to care
what unloved online poets say,
I write these lines.

I’ll call this rondeau ‘Love Affair’
and post it here without fanfare.
It’s not a prayer and yet I pray
you’ll notice your sad protégée
and understand that in despair
I write these lines.

The Fox

The snow drifts down like gently falling stars
as cars illuminate a cardboard box.
I know this town will leave its mental scars
but scars become this sleeping urban fox.
His dream brings him an image of a girl,
a swirl of words surrounding her in streams;
extreme emotions gradually unfurl
and curl around them both in both their dreams.
For somewhere in the night you’re sleeping too
and you are dreaming of the urban fox.
You somehow need the fox to dream of you
those nights you want to curl up in his box.
When snow is falling from the sky above
you know this sly old fox will dream of love.

Thursday, February 10, 2022

The Jester

The words retreat into a distant place
and I can’t find a single thing to say.
All poets must eventually face
the silence of a thoughtless, wordless day.
The bull is sleeping, quiet in his shed.
The peevish lover shrugs and folds his hand.
The great white shark stopped swimming and is dead.
My castles have all crumbled into sand.

Alone, the jester howls his madcap song
for he’s the part of me that will not sleep;
that carries on as though there’s nothing wrong,
blows raspberries at me when I want to weep.
I know he is the part of me that’s best
and yet today I wish he’d let me rest.

The Dreamer

In poetry we hide our dreams
so nothing’s ever what it seems
and though it feels this meter’s tight,
between these iambs, there’s a fight -
two lovers sing their sunken themes,
his songs are whispers, hers are screams;
she shakes him but he still daydreams
of endless lovebirds taking flight
in poetry.

She has her sensible routines,
grows bored of his romantic schemes
and yet, too often, in the night,
she dreams of fictions they could write,
her bedroom lit up with moonbeams
and poetry.

Night Crawlers

Inside my dull head
words whirl out of orbit -
thoughts buckle together
centipedes churning

parallel lines
sharp as black flints
burn as they fall
rhyming like mirrors

the gravity of you
rearranges a blizzard
builds a man from the snow
provides a fresh carrot

Ophelia

Ophelia, your burning heart
gives off more light than heat
but even though we are apart,
I hear its mad drumbeat.

Ophelia, I do not know
which of us is insane.
You beat me up with great gusto
yet know I love the pain.

Ophelia, I think you’re great.
You handed me a match
and told me to self-immolate
so you could hide and watch.

Ophelia, my burning love
gives off more heat than light.
I hope that it is just enough
for you to think I’m bright.

Ophelia, you will not drown
if you come swim with me.
Instead, together, we’ll sink down
in love and poetry.

The Contents of this Sonnet

It’s fourteen lines, ten syllables in each.
It has its turn, obeys those ancient rules
reluctant boys don’t listen to in schools
but there are many things you cannot teach -
the meanings hidden deep beneath the words,
the things which just the two of us can see,
the secret story told of you and me.
The words themselves are for the fucking birds
who only see the beads and not the thread;
who hear the meter, not the beating heart.
They only understand what can be read
and even if they tore these words apart
they would not ever see what goes unsaid:
you’re always at the centre of my art.

To Bang a Nail

I see a nail, I bang it in.
I contemplate the daily news.
A steady hand, a jutted chin,
and when I listen to the Blues,
I only hear a strummed guitar
and some old black guy wailing.
I drive a boring family car.
How I love to bang a nail in!

But now I’ve read some poetry,
deep water is disturbed somewhere -
I watch the wind dance in a tree
and find I’m thinking of your hair
and how it dances in the breeze.
My steady hand begins to shake -
Why should I stop to look at trees?
Why does the Blues make my heart break?

And in a rose I see your face,
each passing cloud’s a ship in sail.
I find I’m staring into space.
Ah, who has time to bang a nail?
For now I find I’m writing too -
at least one poem every day.
Ignoring what I ought to do,
reality drifts far away.

It gradually occurs to me,
as all these clouds go sailing by,
I’ve lost my mind to poetry
and when I hear the Blues, I cry.
Perhaps this is the poets’ curse?
A fragile mind of grief and woe
which feeds on chaos for its verse.
I think of Plath or Lowell or Poe
whose dismal stories are so sad.
What spectres were they fighting?
Did writing poems drive them mad
or does madness drive the writing?

The Birds

I’ve been in love too long
with a scoop of empty air
to hear a voice that isn’t there
sing tumultuous birdsong.

A bird poised at the edge of a wood
made everything a toy.
She slit her own throat, singing,
to beguile a passing boy.

He bent to dip a feather
in a drop of her spilled blood
but when he came to write of her
the words flowed out as mud.

I have been swallowed by my own heart,
sober and fever-less at last
and everywhere
confused crows on windowsills
contemplate tapping.

Sunday, January 30, 2022

King of Shadows

He spoke to me down where the wild thyme grows:
‘Good fellow, do my bidding in the night.
Return before the randy rooster crows
at the dismal dullness of midsummer’s light’.
So down I danced and heard a silly song
sung by an actor who seemed asinine
(perhaps I have remembered this all wrong
but he looked to me just like old Kevin Kline).
Then as I crept down past the eglantine
I spied a sight that stilled my rowdy heart:
a fairy on a bank of celandine
with something puckish troubling her heart.
I know that our two hearts should never rhyme
though we both know they syncopate in time.

Elephant

I choose the wine -
a glass of sweat between us
like Diana’s Mirror,
her sunken wrecks
the shoes kicked off by giants
in stupid violent history.

You wear the tablecloth -
‘Friends Romans Countrymen’
and my SS officer, heels tutting,
salutes the pepper pot.
My smile is carried at the speed of light.
You giggle at the speed of sound.

After the salad and tsunami,
Siamese twins joined at their junk
totter across a car park,
pirouetting around kisses,
punching puddles,
hunting tigers with an elephant gun.

In the barnyard of the night,
beneath a gibbous moon,
we become drunk piglets
between each other’s legs.
A conch mouth roughness glows
smooth with a single breath.

See how that fingertip reddens -
all blood where it belongs.
Inhaling distaff wisdom
at the true edge of the world,
two thieves nail themselves to the same cross,
broken backed and screaming.

In a pinprick of silence,
you place your exquisite hand
into the willing glove of my throat,
cradle the raw egg of my heart -
that spoonful of not very much
and squeeze.

The Omega Man

The empty streets run round me like a curse
I pinch my nose and hopscotch through the dead
to find a wall graffitied with some verse,
a still-wet message scratched in cherry red
which fades to brown as it begins to dry.
“I love you but I hate love and that’s why
I hate you and I hope you fucking die”.
Above the words a scribbled evil eye
stares down at me as I begin to smile
the broadest grin this empty world has known.
Despite the flood of vitriol and bile
the message tells me I am not alone.
I dance off down the hollow, blood-soaked street,
day-dreaming of the poet I could meet.

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

The Hare

She settles into her depression
achieves her perfect form 
in flat still camouflage

The dim farmer cannot know
how she surveys his labours
behind beaded spider webs

The fox and the hawk care not
that she has taken the earth
as her lover. She pushes against

his silence, his intransigence,
feels cold strength spreading 
to the tips of her scarred ears

The sun is lost in a barley pod
but spring will come again
with its frenzy and its terror

In the grip of her loins’ madness
she will take her place in the wind
to box and bite their necks

The farmer barks something
in his tongue and she feels right
to run, springs out across the field,

quicksilver in the jelly of his eye
sinews packed with surviving fire.
She has unanswerable questions

One night she dreamed she was an owl.
Another night, she swam in warm seas.
Another still, she grew old and died.

She lives by phases of the moon.
She holds what she has close.
Everything else cannot ever matter.

Country Sonata

The mushroom steeple bell
balls its fist
rages twice
throws larks in flight
sings brother brother
to the distant sea

Men with orange necks
suck grass
beat the earth
in time with
the inchworm
lambing
the Seaford train

Light and air -
this mountain of may flowers
come friend
take nature’s pulse
dance a bee-wing waltz
drop glad to caper
at the copse
trudge dark to spring with me
two wasps against
the lazy sun

Down among the men
they love a barefoot girl
a piglet flower
holding the moon sideways
her dance is swift magic
her rhythm 
the pendulum of daffodils
of hot pricks
Ask the ploughman for his song
he’ll sing of her
in his grave he will hear
a tambourine.

Shovelfuls of cemetery
shake off a blade
the ancient gate
rises on a rusted hinge
thanks the lost dog
the historian
the odd picnicker

The gravestones low at night
wind songs settle
on a reef of bones
a soul held voiceless
in a tree root
her pickle heart beating still
listens closer than
the living

Spring clover
borage floated in my wine
the chalk pit passes
a station approaches
with its own sad songs.

The Road Out

You ran away to get away
from all the silly things I say
and while this may not be the end,
it’s hard to write that and pretend
tomorrow’s just another day.

You must have noticed my wordplay
was camouflaging dull cliche
for when you read what I had penned
you ran away.

I’m clumsy so my mad display
of fondness sounded like foreplay
and now I dimly comprehend
how I have lost a precious friend
and endlessly replay the day
you ran away.

M23, Southbound

ahead the
traffic celebrates
with a christmas tree
of break-lights
oh fuck says
the wife fuck

heads down
the kids don’t hear
its Hotel Transylvania 2
on seat-back DVD
youngest asleep so woo

we settle refresh
deal a hand of biscuits
watch ten minutes
of lights and sirens
on the hard shoulder

on the steering wheel my
hands feel meaty
a farmers hands
sailing his tractor
up the Somme

ahead
something unbuckles
christmas is over
hand break off
tractor speed on

diamonds announce the crash
two cars have come
together and apart
a vomiting woman
paramedics kneeling
dressing a man
in medical rags
and orange peel

another man
still face down
peering through the asphalt
to a hidden world below

his untucked shirt
mouths wind words
his back is 
hairier than mine

in our unshattered
goldfish bowl
we float
across the battlefield
jesus don’t look says
the wife don’t look

go ahead kids
I say
look up
take a little taste
then try to forget

Intermezzo

Maybe in the dull heat after sweetness
your body steams, your flank cools and so much
passes between us with every touch
that we need not speak. On the floor your dress
plays murder victim, your forlorn knickers
are the white flag announcing armistice;
my shirt is Fred Astaire. You plant a kiss
in the palm of my hand. Something flickers
and the moon appears outside the bedroom
door, filling the house, exerting its vast,
crazed gravity on both of us. Above
us now, the air is filling with perfume.
I feel the present, future and the past
evaporate, condensing into love.

Lost and Found

We lose ourselves in silly dreams
and hatch far-fetched romantic schemes.
We love to love what we can’t get -
ask Romeo, ask Juliet,
those tragically misguided teens
who met by night beneath moonbeams,
explorers out at love’s extremes -
He Montague, she Capulet,
both starcrossed, both in love, and yet
they taught us all what true love means:
we lose ourselves.

As poets, we both love these themes
but love is never what it seems
for, as we sing our mad duet,
we lose ourselves.

Dawn

outside the sky is waking up
re-bandaging her clouds
listening down into my heart
to discover a unicyclist there

stars are packing their shirt sleeves flat
stepping moondrunk off the carousel
seabirds are shouting your name
what name do they shout for you?

outside the air soaks itself in light
monochrome bleeds to cornflower
passing cars pull the canvas tight
what shall we paint today?

in my belief
the stars and mad old moon
go spiralling into your throat
so you can taste my breath in yours
as you clatter
towards a shared sunrise.

The Beast With Two Backs

In the beginning, we had four legs,
four arms, four eyes, two hearts, two heads.
We men were children of the Sun.
We’d fight and shout and hunt and run.
You women were children of the Earth,
baking bread and giving birth,
presumably.

On Mount Olympus, Zeus got jealous
and some might argue over-zealous
for over time he had grown sour
contemplating human power.
Would we, could we fight the Gods?
Zeus didn’t much like the odds,
presumably

because he called, “Fee fi fo fum!
Ready or not, dudes, here I come!”
and before we had the chance to laugh,
he split all humans neatly in half!
Now we’re half as big, with half the strength
and roughly half the width and length,
presumably.

So now we all feel incomplete
with just one heart, two hands, two feet,
and spend our lives scouring the Earth
for our long-lost other half
and though our partners may be great
they’re not our actual soulmate,
presumably.

In fact, we could change our partner nightly
and it would still be statistically unlikely
that we’d locate our special friend
so we all settle in the end
for whoever’s lips we’re kissing
but we all sense there’s something missing,
presumably?

I was content to settle too
until, sweet lady, I found you;
my mirrored self, the rest of me,
the whole root system of my tree,
the ghostly double of my soul.
Come lie with me and we’ll feel whole!
Presumably.

Wet January

‘We have invented happiness’ and blinks.
The last man watches nature from his couch,
forgets that he’s in fact the missing link.
He rises up, does the Bethlehem Slouch,
grazes the butt-ends of his days and ways
hunting for what’s left of self-control.
All evolution stopped with this malaise;
when hominids discovered alcohol.

If he could, would he live his life again,
promise all the same dull resolutions?
That question’s always dragging on his brain.
No answers, no acceptance, no solutions.
Abysses do not gaze or answer back
and God’s a hopeless dipsomaniac.

Sunday, January 09, 2022

Love Story

Hold sadly under the palm of my hand
a moment longer -
let’s each cast another
seventy feet of spell
to stay in love. Thank me

for our unlipped kiss,
for letting my shadow
fall across you;
this snapped daffodil
I fetched from your garden
you can place in your own mouth.

Keep your sleeping flesh in hunger -
your dugong’s dream of perspiration. 
I might unbutton that dream today,
anoint you, pour gasoline
into your dry throat,
seed wild flowers between your lips
and loosened breath.

Hold nothing else with your dominant hand.
Let a reptile climb across your belly.
I could peel this planet Earth for you,
push my thumb between its segments,
rebuild you out of my ribs
and the cloying, fattened air.

All I ask is everything you have left,
to lie in unwatered darkness
waiting for my wasted breath -
to shake your dull body each time
to the cry of my name.

In between events,
I have fastened a silver chain
around your two thumbs.
Love me and I’ll lead you back
to where you started.

The Shadow

Everywhere
in the vast night
men are strangling wives
and daughters bleed out
in the boot
of a Ford Aspire

Everywhere
men with boiling eyes
their stale bodies bristling
their tongues blood-soaked
grab through
half-rolled car windows
at the women who loved them
and howl

Everywhere
in the shuttered interiors
of factory towns
stunted lads with Xboxes
Google creampie anal
jerk off to pixels
and inherit the Earth

In her little sedan
on Parking Level 4
Kathleen knows she needs to be firm.
Ryan’s toxic,
lost his job six weeks ago.
He frightens her.
As she fetches her keys from her bag,
she hears footsteps.

The Story of the Human Race So Far

One night a little pip fell on the ground
and, luckily, there were no birds around.
A breath of wind picked up a maple leaf
and dropped it with the little pip beneath.

That night the pip dreamed she was giving birth
and woke to find she’d sunk into the Earth
and from the clamshell of her little coat
there had appeared a fragile snow-white root.

She sat and wondered what the root could be
not guessing she might one day be a tree,
not knowing she had found the perfect place
as her planet tumbled soundlessly through space.

The Tide is Out

A ship that’s accidentally run aground
might day-dream of the previous high tide.
A fish that’s beached itself and slowly drowned
lies lifeless at the sun-baked waterside.
These poems are the dreadful rasping sound
I’m making as I slowly get tongue-tied.
A tank abandoned on the battleground
will rust if it remains unoccupied.
I try to be your faithful palace hound
but all the fight in me has slowly died.
My poetry has never been profound.
I know my protestations are cock-eyed
but I’m nothing much when you are not around
and you are otherwise preoccupied.

Bobby Part One

Bobby from Walthamstow
playing in the Hollow Ponds
Baby boomer Robin Hood
shrinking the forests 
of Epping and Sherwood -
getting lost on the Debris

Whose copper father cheated
and moved the family to start again
but who even after
saw that Scottish father
laughing in a passing car
with his mistress
and had to hold that in
like a lungful of poison smoke
waiting for a new bomb to land

Who hid in black and white
as the horror started to hatch
cheered as Cagney self-immolated
and Bogart said
‘the stuff that dreams are made of’
Who lost himself in the flicker
and in the mirror found
a copycat Belmondo
lip-curled and pomaded.

Whose mother dropped dead
in the middle of a family fight
aged fifty four -
No angels came, just a dozen uncles
on their police motorcycles.

Dad, when did you put on your armour?
A waistcoat and a cine-camera
North London Clyde Barrow
sneering at the Beatles
and the stiffs who towed
the nine to five

Dad, you found your own dad dead
when you were twenty one
What pills were those by his bed?
What had he taken?
What did you say to him?
What carnivorous corkscrew
chewed down
to make its nest?

Who met a girl who bought
the thoughtful bad boy bit
and so began
the fifty two year conundrum
of the rebel without a cause
but with a wife and kids

Who rode a time of change
with Baudelaire and Bergman
listening to the String Band
smoking black and dropping acid
Who found in Brighton 1970
a city-sized family…

I’ll leave you there, Dad,
as I cannot hold you in a single poem.
I’ll come back, I promise,
and write you something better.
I haven’t even been born yet.

The River

The river carves its path across the land.
It rushes by the ghosts who haunt its banks;
two lovesick souls who dimly comprehend 
that if they touch the water they will sink
and so each day these tragic phantoms stand
to watch each other on the farther shore;
a fascination that shall never end
for all the things they cannot ever share.

Instead they sing in voices soft and sweet
such love songs as the river never heard.
In melodies these lovers truly meet;
they hide a kiss in every rhyming word.
Perhaps one day our river meets the sea
but until then, my darling, sing to me.

Three Women

In the sunlit lobby, two boys
behind a couch
watch a Wild Girl

In an upstairs room
heavy shoes are placed
beneath a bed

Down the hall
a call girl
arches an aching back

Two hundred bucks
He comes as
her telephone trims

Out front a drunk guy
climbs a ladder
hoses hanging baskets

His daughter died
nine years back
Killed by her lover

In the lobby, a briefcase
holds two hundred decks
of trick playing cards

Wild Girl high-kicks
shakes a wet canvas
“Let’s get noticed!”

The boys dream
of catching the whole city
in their fishing net

Indeed, they will grow down
to the water table
drink all they need

The call girl
washes her moneymaker
in the bathroom sink

watches the window
Pigeons are re-enacting
World War Two

The lover was Bengt
a Swedish singer
It was a closed casket.

The World Enough

All life exists between two open doors
An elevator stuck between two floors
A mere handclap of lightning caught between
two nothings we can feel but never see.
The sun must rise and fall, the heavens turn
We work and play, we watch our candle burn
The winter thaws, the summer turns to rust
just as we know that soon we will be dust.
Yet what we think and feel while we’re alive
can overshoot our deaths. It can survive
long after we are rotting in the ground
and all we have to do is write it down.
Our love exists between two open doors.
I’ve written mine. I beg you to write yours.

The Fire

The fire churns but I don’t put it out.
I do not even step back from the flame.
At some point this will hurt, I have no doubt,
but when it does, I’ll have myself to blame.
You tut and tell me you don’t feel the same
wildness, the hopeless wildness that grips me
and yet you stick around to play our game.
Meanwhile the flames grow exponentially.

Composing your exquisite poetry,
not noticing your skirt has caught on fire,
you casually enjoy our repartee
despite the tongues that lick up ever higher.
Come closer, lover, hold my hand and burn.
Perhaps we’ve both still got a lot to learn.

Poetry

So much depends on poetry.
It’s how we learn to love, you see,
it’s where we first interrogate
our feelings, how we navigate
an often harsh reality -
On formal forms, on verse that’s free,
on dactyl, iamb and spondee,
on how we choose to punctuate
so much depends.

In this world of uncertainty
where people mostly disagree
except about the things they hate,
where Heaney’s lost and Bieber’s great,
on how we value poetry
so much depends…

Under the Christmas Tree

The Morning’s come, let’s have some fun
We’ll play our game once again 
I’ll take your mind off wintertime
Under the Christmas tree

Oh babe, make me smile
Today’s the day you’ll finally come
Oh honey, it’ll take a while
Tomorrow we’ll be free

We never made a simple plan
I became your bogeyman
so follow me now, take all you can
under the Christmas tree

Oh babe, make me smile
Today’s the day you’ll finally come
Oh honey, it’ll take a while
Tomorrow we’ll be free.

The greatest story ever told
Growing up is growing old
I gave you gold but you grew cold
Under the Christmas tree

Oh babe, make me smile
Today’s the day you’ll finally come
Oh honey, it’ll take a while
Tomorrow we’ll be free

I guess you knew I didn’t know
the secrets of the rodeo
but now I do, I’d love to go
under the Christmas tree.

Oh babe, make me smile
Today’s the day you’ll finally come
Oh honey, it’ll take a while
Tomorrow we’ll be free.

Oh babe, make me smile
Today’s the day you’ll finally come
Oh honey, it’ll take a while
Tomorrow we’ll be free.

Where I Find You

In the full stops of a stolen library book
In the ballet of a bloody boxing match
In the fish that wriggled off my careless hook
In the pistol with a broken safety catch.

In the tombstone names of endless nameless dead
In the small hours when I’m feeling all alone
In my heart and in my balls and in my head
In the Unknown Caller on my ringing phone

In each flower whose real name I do not know
In the joggers who run past before I wake
In the owl, the buzzard, dove and goose and crow
In the signpost on the path I do not take.

In the deep sea where the haunted dead reside
In the eyes of lost boys sleeping in the snow
In the silence left behind when love has died
In the places where I know I’ll never go.

You’re hiding just behind each leafless tree
You’re shadowed at the back of every cave
You’re the hidden hand that writes my poetry,
the moon which galvanises every wave.

You’re the pulsing, primal singularity
that’s revealed a whole new universe to me.
I’m not asking you to love me or to care.
I just wanted you to know you’re everywhere.

Water Dream

On the black beach you and I
leave doodled footprints
to be lifted by the sea.
Our bodies understand
the hurricane of whispered witchcraft
the cadence of attraction
the dark salt taste
at the heart of a candied day.

We do not hold each other
but we can each hold
two cupped hands of water
to sip and say I love you -
We can clasp our coin of the tornado
in immaculate burning calm
and dream of the ocean
like sightless fish
swimming weightless
in formaldehyde.

Counter Factual

The drowsy day is at its height.
The river flows beyond our feet.
With bellies to the sulky sun,
our hot hands meet and intertwine.

We have loved inside the grass,
ate zebra at a Grand Hotel -
we challenged God to strike us down
and heard the randy bugger laugh.

The river flows out of your eyes.
We fold the drowsy day away,
reclothe ourselves in silly words
and stroll back sadly to the car

while on that bank of celandine
two fresh-pressed angels slowly fade
and with them goes what’s good in us -
the dream we had, the love we made.

I feel your planted seed in me
warmed and nourished by the sun.
Ignition fills the car with rock -
we drive and watch the river run.

A Frivolous Song

Milwaukee girls in 81.
My father died. I felt so glum.
Every thought under the sun
and all the boring shit I’ve done.
My poetry is never fun
but now my race is almost run
I seek the trophy never won.
I’m desperate to tell someone

I’m serious!
(And I should be taken seriously)
I’m serious! 
(You must respect my poetry)

I’m serious and I don’t think
my armour has a single chink
and my huge muse is in the pink
while all you other poets stink!
Methinks I’ll pour myself a drink
and wonder why you don’t all think

I’m serious!
(You just act so frivolously)
I’m serious!
(Why can’t the gang be nice to me?)

I’m serious so I don’t rhyme
(Frivolity’s a major crime)
I pour another glass of wine
and weep as I write ev’ry line.
My thoughts are so damn crystalline
while your remarks are asinine.
That’s why I stamp my feet and whine

I’m serious!
(Enough of your frivolity!)
I’m serious!
(My poems are top quality!)

I’m serious. It’s getting late.
I’ve no time to reciprocate
but, even so, please say I’m great
and haters, if you’re gonna hate,
you’re just a juvenile ingrate
and once again I’d like to state

I’m serious!
(I’m a bit like Walt Whitman)
I’m serious!
(I’ll throw my toys out of my pram)

I’m serious, an alpha male
way past his best. I’m going stale.
Robinda’s gone and hit the nail
right on its head. That’s why I flail
and fight but know I’m doomed to fail.
I’m Ahab. He’s my Great White Whale.

I’m serious! Be nice to me!
Enough with your frivolity
I’m serious! Why can’t you see
I’m serious?
I’m serious!
I’m serious!
I’m serious!

(Repeat till fade, screaming)

Ejaculation

My fountain pen is flowing once again
and all that’s good in me is spilling out.
My hand moves and that works to calm my brain
but will it be a whisper or a shout?

And out there in the darkness do you wait
to taste each dainty drop of what I write?
Do you write yourself until you must abate?
Do you dream about a hot nib every night?

Will what I write tonight be seminal?
Will this sonnet penetrate you to your core?
Will it trigger something neurochemical
and leave you lying gasping on the floor?

Or will you be more sensible perhaps
and volta long before my dull climax?

Tuesday, December 07, 2021

Appropriation Art #003: Lines Lifted From Other Sources

Dear friend, I sense a darkness settles in.
I want you to reach out, to take my hand.
You stare, nod, pretend to understand;
your eyes dart anxious as a Robin.
Though darkness dwells to keep you from the light,
I clasp this moment as though it were a bird.
Till darkness claims the timbre of my word,
this vacant folly beats its wings tonight,
my skull a boneyard destitute of dreams;
yet what is dream if not a sleeping state?
A tangible theme in your quest to create?
I sink at dawn in vague subconscious streams
awash with everything we’ve left unsaid,
this sonnet cutting crosswinds in my head.

Swidden

I sail my paltry craft across the sea
to search for footprints on the morning sand,
to faithfully obey her faint command -
her siren call a message left for me.

My passion’s fuelled by fading vapour trails,
my rhythm’s measured by a quiet heart
yet from the Doldrums suddenly I start -
a single breath is billowing my sails.

A single breath upon a tiny spark
may burn a mighty forest to the ground
and so I sit and watch the flames spellbound -
my meagre craft burns till the fire grows dark.

Then, from the ash, a poem flourishes.
I realise her burning nourishes.

The Mouse

It’s okay for the flag you wave
to make no sense
or for the universe to stop
for the twitched whiskers
of a mouse. 
It’s okay to write your love letters
in water with an idle finger.
It’s okay to draw a blank.

Sometimes we wish we were robots
or Mozart
or the Great Wall of China.
Of course we do
but late at night
our bodies are so narrow
that we must not ever be loved.

Where is the universe then
as the timbers moan and
our windows fill with rain?
Where is that child
who could lift us so high
in our own strong hands?

In the day, our bodies
collect iron ore from
sulphurous depths.
We drink the boiling ocean
eat handfuls of the sky.
We are Eleanor Rigby and Dick Turpin,
separately hunting
the same Bengal man-eater.
It’s okay.

It’s okay
sometimes 
for a clever mouse to turn
to the swollen, howling sky
and say
‘Sometimes it’s okay to stop’.

We all need more than we have when it comes to love.

The Hole in the Middle

And all around
these people come and go,
dim shadows in
unending shadow play.
Peeled nerves
of teenage hurt
each fucking day.
Sad spinsters
finger out
a dull rondeau.

This waterfall of words
won’t rinse away
the stink of mediocrity
I fear;
lives lived in a
perpetual first gear,
searching for the next
heartfelt cliché.

Your mental health’s not great.
You married wrong.
You’re facing midlife
with a rictus grin.
You’re writing for an
audience of one.

What happens when
that audience has gone?
Will I understand
and take it on the chin?
Does it matter much
when all is said
and done?

Headless Chicken

The following is rather gory
but I think you’ll enjoy the story
of Lloyd P. Olson and his bird;
the strangest tale you’ve ever heard.

When Lloyd cut off a rooster’s head,
he noticed it was not quite dead:
the chicken jumped and flapped and danced.
Old Lloyd applauded, quite entranced.
His bird had risen quite Christlike
but Lloyd just named the chicken Mike.

The next day Mike was still alive.
The year was 1945
and Colorado farmer Lloyd
knew what he had and so he toyed
with dreams of local sideshow fame
and so gave up the poultry game
and Lloyd and Mike took to the road
and quickly found the money flowed
wherever freaks and geeks sideshowed.
Lloyd’s rooster was the motherlode!

Lloyd’s wife Clara joined the team
and helped with Mike’s daily regime
of droppered water, liquid food
and getting rich and being shrewd.
They had to keep their fowl alive
if their careers were to survive.

Knowing Mike was their paycheck,
they suckered mucus from his neck
with a sterilised syringe
and though that image makes you cringe,
I wonder just what you might do
as moolah started to accrue
with all the sideshow ballyhoo.
You’d baste that rooster mucus too.

For eighteen months from state to state,
with their decapitated mate,
Lloyd and Clara lived like kings
until, in Saratoga Springs,
awaking in their hotel room
they found Mike’s neck all full of spume.
Lloyd freaked but Clara freaked out more!
Lloyd searched their bags. He searched the floor
but only found they’d come a cropper.
They’d lost their mucus-sucking dropper!
Clara watched their bird conk out
and, panicked, waved her arms about,
truly gutted, truly stricken,
flapping like a headless chicken
and so the miracle met its end.
Poor Lloyd P Olsen lost his friend
as Mike went up to chicken heaven.
The year was 1947
but Headless Mike is not forgotten.
No, though his fame was misbegotten,
it endures still until this day:
In Colorado, every May
a festival is held for Mike
where people, young and old alike,
celebrate their prized halfwit.
I recommend you Google it.

This poem is a formless mess.
It’s lousy and pure silliness.
That’s plain enough for all to see
but hopefully you might agree
it may not glitter but it’s gold:
The Greatest Headless Chicken Story Ever Told.

Birdsong

I stretch my hands - what will I have of you
now sweet November races to its end;
this month of holes that I keep falling through,
unable to reach out to you, my friend.
For now I know the silence loss can bring,
how empty days will fill with nothing much;
how, brokenly, I lift myself to sing
and feel the press of words I dare not touch.
Then yesterday I heard an old songbird
whose chicks had lived and died or fledged and flown.
She sang the sweetest song I ever heard;
a song which told me I was not alone.
My love, for now, let’s stop our sorrowing.
Let’s find a branch to lift our beaks and sing.

Hand Prints

On the cave’s envelope
your hand is pressed;
sent on its mission into mine

Your shy woad star
a perennial gentian with
fingertips of red ochre.

A joke that no-one laughs at
blown through hollow bone,
a shape that only I can see.

Side by side, apart they lie;
to be covered, lost,
brushed and excavated

Some day a soul may see
two hand prints almost touching,
tell a story that we
never dared to live.

Attack of the Killer Mouse Mat

The house sat quiet.
Feeling flat but inspired,
my mouse mat conspired;
he had fiendish plans
to eat one of my hands.

At Easter he struck!
The beast started to suck!
He feasted, the schmuck!
He ate my right fist
right up to the wrist.

Thank god my house cat
pounced on the mouse mat,
trounced it in combat!
An unconventional end
for my two-dimensional friend.

Thunderstorms

“My soul is split in pieces”, she said,
overturning our unfinished game of chess.
“You could kill me with a shout
at the water’s edge. You could
kill me with a clematis flower.
It is called The Queen of Climbers”.

Her hands rested on well-toned thighs.
“It’s thunderstorm weather”,
she said absently.

I told her I loved her.

“Love is an occult power
that should be exercised responsibly.
You wield it like a billyclub”.

We drifted noiselessly just then,
two corks on the ocean,
each in our own scoop
of sunlight.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again”,
I called.

“Let’s meet at the horizon”.

And so, with the winds gathering
and miles of dark water
beneath my feet,
full of her
and full of the occult magic
of thunderstorms and love,
I began to swim
and I began to sing.