Skids

Half the country hit the skids when we did,

and whilst our turning world went supplicant

to Christmas pictures

and the cold closed in,

and those with time to think stripped shelves

to nourish their plans, even as families careen

into frosty ditches

scattering wishes

I say this to you; there’s no other traffic on the road

and six gears to play with, so turn the wheel again 

pull out of the skid,

with forgiving traction

there’s enough grit here to soften the toughest conditions

and in any case, the thaw comes even as the ice hardens

The Sometime Voices

I can hear those voices again

And I don’t know them sweet or everlasting,

But loud enough and clear,

Like an alarm in  electronic mockery of the matins

Calling the sleepy, devout and the needy

in from the playful arteries of sleep

In that chaotic choir, your voice raises

Always higher, by an octave, soon to sooth and bid

Those sometime hectoring voices to be still.  

Door

Another cold day, over grey

and I take the sandpaper in unsteady hands,

to smooth the edges of an old door,

unhung for months now, leaving folk free 
to walk between our rooms,

scattering their remarks like bird seed

for two lost children to follow.

Later, when I get that door up,

another turn of the screw,
and the box of tools handed to you,

we’ll shut it and plan for a lock

fast enough and firm,

to keep our heat in.

Gratitude for a change in sacrificial policy

 The fatted calf was massive,

 taking as it did, a detail of menfolk

near an hour to hump its oiled flanks up

the hill.

The fatted calf too was magnificent,

it’s tongue, pink as a virgin lolled and coiled

into perfumed priest hands.

This tongue was a prize worth having almost

as much as the gratitude of the village girls.

Larkin

How would Larkin start this?

Musing on his need for a piss,

and the pitiful disappointment of our race,

but somehow taking time to replace

the frayed edges of a curtain, a derelict lot,

with a filthy stash of beauty,

which we stumble upon, furtively

(he likes that word)

exposing him for what he is;

not the miserable bastard of his life

but the burning Seraphim of verse.

Age

That old man over there in the flat cap,

he was once a David,

based on the classical Adonis archetype

massive hands,

Small cock, tucked up in its marble pubes,

fixed expression,

now he’s got half the pub at his feet, its that

kind of place

and the din from the jukey isn't quite enough

to muffle

the sound of his old heart, cranking like

a knackered mower,

the blades don’t cut the grass as much

as fold it.

But mock him at your peril young thick beard

he’s waiting

somewhere in a mirror for you, ready with his

huge hands.

The Paper

Train slumped. Paper read.

Indiscriminate judgment 
judged as crap.

But still compassion leaks for those 

who’s stories come to light

like poorly fired pots, 
cracked glaze and empty of

the best intentions of the hands 
who set them as soft clay on 
the spinning wheel.

Why buy a paper for diversion?

There’s enough world here for that.

Enough sorrow in the window,

framing a reflection strip lit against 
retreating dusk.

And enough good news in the drained cups 
and novels set aside for bedside tables, 
somewhere West away, near sea 
and salt spit shackle shell walks 
that shoes tired of city puddles 
dream to take their feet too.

And though I know the hacks 
are crouched in cubicles 
only to pay their way, 
and school hopeful kids enough 
to earn the unquenchable wants
of the supplements,

I can’t help but wonder why they bother
fueling a hamster wheel in a cage 
where the door is always open.

 Read more >>   Options >>  

Like Berlin Itself

Listening to David Bowie (Station to Station) 
bleak Thin White Duke,
glamorous wrecked, like Berlin itself
and the rain comes down,
and gin drains the bottle
all by by itself

I’m by myself

authored by, I mean,
like you are you see,

see?

See how the paragraphs mount up,
becoming unplanned chapters,
the narrative arch no more visible
than the earth's curve from a church spire.

Stand back and observe your work,
read it quietly to old ladies on the bus,

mumble it from under an umbrella
at the adamant red of a traffic light

and in the background hiss of diesel engines
tearing up the puddles,
scattering their bits like a botched paper chain
on your jeans

you will hear an echo, faint at first;

the noise of your life
strong with beauty, surprised of purpose
having in it as it does, all the raw material of art,
though heavy here and there with history
like Berlin itself.

The Silver Birch Tree

There is cold to come and cold there has been,
And the wind shakes the leaves
From the silver birch tree,

There’s frost in store to nip the buds
Tricked into the light by autumn sun
Sun which warmed the silver birch tree

And there’s rain to lash the poles where the beans
Grew thick and long and surprised you it seemed
In that old summer garden with the silver birch tree

Winter has come and there’s ice in the pale
The clods of tilled earth are as hard as a nail
While the bark splits on the silver birch tree

But Spring will arrive with bickering birds,
Its promise its new buds and a warming wind
So the leaves can dance free on the silver birch tree

That’s where I’ll meet you when winter is done
When snow meets the river and earth meets the sun
There in the garden you’ll find me, dancing for you 
and your silver birch tree

For Beatrix, a picture

I have no advice for you,
nor can I give you images
because they belong to you
and are yours to give,
even though we take them
and store them to give them
present meaning.

You’ll decide how to picture this
and piece it from almost familiar angles,
in the home you grew aware in
in the stories your brother tells 
in the rhythm of your mother’s breath
or your father’s fear for others.

He has no fear for you
though he knows 
fear sometimes will find you
and its echo, though faint, 
will wake you.

You are forever safe inside this tableau;
the friends arranged, the broken bread,
the wine, the water and the touch of hands
to hands which form a line
to no mythical omnipotent force
more special, than the miracle of you
and the people in this picture who love you.

In flight

I will sit here crouched in my metal tube
and make poems from these fragments
laid up in the stiffening skein of air
like a childish collection of shells

and when I fit words to those
tricky beautiful calcite lumps
and trace the smooth inner lobe
where a creature once groped for nourishment

much like I reach pathetically in my belted seat
for meaning, it will be stuttering, gasping moments
of you that stand out from the fast-forward static
of this day, remaking themselves like chain-mail

a flexible carapace, an armour,
hiding place of thoughts
and in some subtle way,
destiny of the departing day.

Clowns

When you made the bet you weren’t kidding,
I know this because you were dressed
as a clown might on his day off,
and so when I shook on it, I too
dressed in pantaloons as vivid
as my lost dreams of you
made no jokes nor did I
sign the slip before
throwing it
into the baying ring, the one you retired in
years before anyone could lay un-gambled dice
on your made-up eyes
or mimic and mime the spit in the palm
the strange sense of calm we all felt when
my hat landed in the space you'd left.

Clowns will claim their arena – it’s why
their first move is always to test the edge
of the ring where the dung meets the popcorn
and the tears of a child 
whose birthday treat went awry 
suddenly blends with the piss 
of kidnapped creatures.

Even now, I think of you in your work clothes,
arms aloft, angled dangerously against those
unspeakable shoes, eyes locked on the children
speechless between laughter and tears,
and not being a betting man,
I can’t say if what will be indeed will be
or if your desperate honking will stir them,
or move me.

Orthodoxy

Why is our universe so large?
Why is it so smooth?
Why do orthodoxies boast
behind locked doors?

Keys scattered then collected
in one of those jars, in the garage,
waiting for someone with no respect
to smash it in clearheaded rage
and try those forbidden locks.

We invent the systems we must prove,
we’re self reflexive in our groove,
a record stuck within a scratch,
the sound of eternity answering back.

The Conquered

If I was a conqueror I too would have chosen
this hill on which to build, my scary edifice,
I’d have the keenest eyed amongst my men
observe the channel,
in case some jealous brother already arrayed
in my birthright might take a chance here,
where so many died in the marsh, already
march dead, down on rations.

But I am no conqueror I am conquered
by the ranged armies of your charms
and I choose this hill to walk with you,
arm in conquered arm.

Lyric

I’m unfit for fatherhood,
Having crouched inside
My childhood, for too long,

I am the lazy day man,
Quit it again in a month man,
The heavens are laughing man.           

Don’t presume to see in me,
The things I cannot see
You see, I’m congealing infancy.

There’s no happiness in constancy,
Incontinence is waiting see?
So leave me here to be
The thing you cannot see;
The devil in his deep blue sea.

Physics

When the door slams to ‘you fucking prick”
and tears like greyhounds in their trap
test the spring-loaded lock of grief 
and sick rolls up over choked throats 
rubbed by shaking hands
as wedding bands loosen in 
the salty slick of those tears
and carefully invested years 
produce a debit, 
don’t reach for poetry or art
such stuff will swell your bursting heart.

Know that time is a ribbon folded on itself,
the quantum mechanics of chance
send each molecule on it’s atomic dance,  
sound waves will settle once again
into gentle ripples then horizontal lines
as light in packets of quanta is absorbed
and reabsorbed by reddened retina
and the universe continues to expand
defying our attempts to comprehend
the mind of god and the loves of men.

Flocking

I watched a flock with you, by night
yes I’m sure it was night; it was cold
and dark, yes it was dark.
 
Dark like only the dark night and cold
like only the coldest night can be,
but somehow we experienced ecstasy,

when the flock took off; it was not
the woolen sort but instead it was I’m
sure it was, a flock of geese.

At such a time of night which others might
call ungodly and which others still would
find God inhabiting as sure as a hermit
in his elaborately engendered hole,

you’d expect your geese to be sleeping,
though they sleep with one beady eye
open in case the hooded thief might
wander in for a gander.

On this occasion, roused by the crackle
of dancing feet on slipping shale
they gave way, taking flight, hard beaks
aimed at the breaking day.

Gannets

You remark at the distance between us
and the birds, wheedling and dealing
in their avian wickedness,
gannets robbing the smaller fry of their
small fry.

And I pace that distance, epically surprised
at how easy it is to stride with purpose,
clean out the clean windows of your room
and up, into the cold stratospheric day
within grasping distance of those venal birds
and their stolen lunch.

Slaugterhouse Blackberry

Blackberries crouch in messianic crowns dusted
with suspicious stuff which never quite deters
foragers of fruit. 

And though dogs are sure to go on the lower berries
it’s only the youngest kids who get them and they’re
innocence immune. 

So when a newborn calf skids down the hollow way
born twice within seconds, mother, hawthorn, road,
we’re all in awe,

wondering how hopeful autumn baskets might hold
35 kg of unfed veal, amniotic fluid heaving at the nose
mother lowing; so it goes.

Map

I’m looking at the shape of these words,
trying to find their reason.

Checking for the backstage pass they claimed 

to my inner life.

The one tucked inside my outer life,
an inner-tube of raging desires, inflated
to push against the wall of the racing tyres
they put on me at school.

I’m mixing metaphors like drinks,
listening for the clink of the cube in the dark
so I know when I lift you to my lips,
I’ll drench them with your kiss
before I spill it in your lap.

I’m that kind of chap, the kind that needs a map
to find his way back home
when the day passes and the cars
and the way too many drinks stop adding up.

Thank you for your map.

Play Button

I used to make C90s for would be lovers,
what better way to woo than to offer up a spool 
of tape more magnetic than an awkward teenager
could ever be, and adorned in painstakingly designed    
or rather angst defyingly scrawled inlay sleeve, even with   
the song’s approximate length defined and stars for how much   
she should love each one and wondering how many stars she’d give   
me, if she took the time to listen to the why behind those careful marks   
and the life affirming catastrophic urge to move her just a tiny bit in song. 
Now older, I find yards of tape tangled, wads of it confused in drawers 
and you wound tight around my spools, the ticking and the clacking  
of equipment, and the hiss not quite Dolby smoothed, but songs  
as loud and clear as any Chorus ever boomed, each knowing  
to each the value of the words, and every meaning taken in 
as fast as digital transfer. So when I tuck a loose lock of 
hair behind your ear, tracing the edge of your lobe 
with my pause button finger, I can watch you 
listen, and I never even think of stars.

Soothe

After all the noise, the ricochets, 

comes a certain quiet poured 
like wine into your waiting glass,

swirled, a red promise.

Impish eyes closed for a second,

palm-pressed to soothe and send 

them news that when they open 

they can do what they were born to do;

flicker in ignition and settle me to you.

Leaving

It’s possible that after all this
you’ll look up at the dusty oaks
studded at their bases 
with the faeces, of wild boar

and say with centuries of weariness
“you may as well go,”
because that’s what those
who come here do,

and even in the suddenly fast
footsteps of our child,
we can hear the echoes of the
departed, the portmanteaus packed.

Our vines have all been stripped,
old barriques test their cooper,
a new vintage seeps at the staves
and hired engines turn over.

New Vines

When I settle down to write these hills,
I find them already too famous,
their exact hues committed to 
the vast asylum of art, over and over again.

And just as this august Tuscan sun
has spun its reliable roundabout
for thousands of vintages and many
years before Etruscans planted vines,

I find, in the splashing of your tiny feet
at the pool’s edge, my own repetition 
or replication in, insistent infant needs,
freshly bottled by newly acquired language.

We are new here, and you, newest of all,
help us use negligent adult eyes
to see this year’s fruit hanging heavy,
as if for the first time, for human kind.

Purple

Lavender gives its purple to drunk bees,
rosemary re-builds what was taken for the fire.

Under bruising sky, turning patched heliotrope,
in deference perhaps to noble instincts

I watch tight sticks transform into the lightest
elements, giving off ancient incense,

and with blacksmith hands, and wrought heart,
I forge your letters against a Tyrian sky.

Days later before the altar piece, I’ll give you
the purple of a penitent and wish you, pilgrim, home.

Where Summer is Hiding

Something came out of the mist today
from where the summer was hiding
 
taking the shape of your childhood,
playing impish tricks with light.

From where I stood, blinking, dumb,
shrouded in the clouds of adulthood

it was hard to be sure, and harder still
to know how to think or to act.

So I’m sorry to say, I stood for nothing,
walking your way, reaching for form,

knowing too, when the clouds get to you
you’ll remember where summer is hiding.

Dry Ink

I wanted to write you
a transcendent song;
soaring spirit stirring stuff.

What came was a war wound
in words, half healed,
displaying still sticky, red.

Folding the paper away,
I plunged my obstinate pen
into the drying well,

scraping up ferrous flakes
and scattering them,
like clues, for you to find.

Refresh

I always click:

refresh

because I want more,

from the server.

I can’t undo,

            or create

middleware to parse

this love into a separate

database.

There is no change control,

just one long sprint,

for a delivery,

                       that always moves.

Fishing

You made a fist with fingers
not long released by guts
torn with inexact rage from
the newly split belly of your catch.

Half blinded by the bright static
of retreating tide,

I shouted
               in pointless kinship
above the outboard’s drone

“Protest the tough love of the hook,”

and your bucket skudded aft,
                                           brimming
with awkward silver smiles.

Old Bovver

You were on Brick Lane at the trendy end

and had some audacity to stand,

in ancient steel toed DM boots

with the red laces of the national front,

drawn up tight around matchstick legs

like the lips stretched across remaining

 teeth, which to me at least

also looked like matchsticks lined up

rickety in the stale partially discarded

Hubba Bubba of your gums.


I don’t know if the unexploded ordinance

of your violence was about to trigger,

or if the queer kids in mental hospital chic

or the Bangladeshi man, strayed from

the curry end of this blent street,

had caused you to stand here

in a reverie of shattered politics,

but you seemed harmless enough,

with your now naturally hairless head,

smoother than a beigal,

empty as a morning street.
 

The Visit

I didn't have much in mind
when letting you in to rummage 

amongst old keys and filter through 

your fingers, cat litter
the soiled clods of which sputtered off 

your boots, which as I remember bore
an indecent shine.
There was barely any purpose to this
beyond my need to know
how far you'd go, 

to prove your theory;

that I am wicked.

Amber

Seasons never change with a hard break;

summer runs warm hands across 

the colder cheek of autumn,

who in turn sent chilling emissaries 

as far back as July,

when the weakest leaves performed skits of the fall

for the relief of sweltered crowds in city parks 

dropped, as we said, like the dead.


Nothing ever ends,
 

a touch once felt can’t fade in fullness 

if it is at least remembered.

I remember seeing Viking amber 

shipped as far as Rome,

the memory of a harsh Norse grip trapped, 

like an ancient Baltic mosquito, 

stumbled into posterity 

exploring the oozed sap of pre-historic pine,

fate sealed like fame, for the future.

 

And perhaps that's what we are;

visitors who’s warm touch

waits for the unravelling,  

for the faithful march of time.

Intent

I know I mean it now 
though never meant 
to mean it. How?
If an eclipse makes
temporary night from
even the brightest day,
you can at least hold
my forbidden hand and say
it’s enough now, for now
is all today.

London Plane (more or less found in the Eyewitness Companions book of Trees)

A handsome ornamental

with broadly spreading crown

Bark:

smooth and gray, pealing

revealing,

yellow and green

Leaf:

alternate, toothed, three

five, or seven pointed lobes

cut

nearly halfway to the base

shiny green above,

pale matt green

with downy hairs beneath

Flower:

petalless;

males and females

in separate clusters

on the same tree

Fruit:

burlike, pendant achenes 

covered with 

bristles, green

ripening to brown.


London plane, we salute your palmate leaf

And give thanks for all the shit

you take from us, and slough off

peeling on our streets

in puzzle like pieces.

Drinking (with apologies to Dean Martin)

Drinking to forget,

or was it to remember?

I can’t remember.  

Or stand. 

Or even see my hand

sweeping the air in a grand

but empty gesture.


So I’ll have another for the ditch,

and then I’ll rest for a bit

after all, if you can lie

on the floor

without holding on

you’re not really pissed.

Beauty (with apologies to John Keats)

When I’d taken just about as much

as I could give out,

and with muscles burned

like old briars,

and the hint

or whiff of oil,

given off

I turned to you,

half submerged by hair and pillow

and saw, 

in unwelcome morning’s glow

the truth of beauty;

love entwined with loss.

It's all we know on earth

and all we need to know.  

Holiday

Summer suffers from terrible hype

and yet of course it’s good

when the sun shines and

we spill like beans onto

London’s pavements

forming indiscreet huddles

sweating out the gossip

celebrating the sales we made

and the wars we won on

air-conditioned battlefields.


The backslaps flow freely

the sunglasses get lost

and the phone gets dropped 

in the beer

as the promise of sex sets

like the sun because

you’ve all had way too much.


It’s time to send anxiety away

take that longed-for holiday,

pictured so clearly when

raincoat collar protecting

the neck,

you made

hateful zigzags past desperate pubs,

projecting all hope

onto the glamorous celluloid

of summer.


Super 8 fantasies of you at the heart

of a perfect family

antique games; cricket on beaches,

hide and seek in panting forests,

moist moss offering succour to

sand burnt feet, or even god forbid

in rain, when kids who never argue invent cherubic games

and summer itself will love us all too much to even think

of ending.


But the trouble is,

when you finally find yourself checking

the features of your holiday  against

the promised list finding nothing amiss

you realise,

you brought

your self

to paradise


and are no better placed to enjoy this

than  a punishing winter’s day

when the bar to happiness is
 
never quite as high.

Yards

On hot nights,

yards echo the mingled patois 

of thumped fences, ignition switches

on gas barbecues, and the dying embers

of childish rage, when the inevitability

of bed is proved, and tiny heels flipper

the thick air.

On these nights,

stars hide from the astronomer

and wicked constellations form

behind gritty city eyes.

I open mine to see yours reddened

perhaps by pollen

in London’s evening air.

Lido

Mourning might become Electra,

but all this grieving is becoming a drag

and no one has died.

And you’re soldiering on too,
by the lido, where the ladies
are more naked than they should be,
with children  about,

with diamonds twinkling in the moss,
with pool dreaded hair,
                              like soaked shoelaces

shedding the weight of its water
imperceptibly, in barbecue sun,

where the chips in art deco tiles,
are forgiven by the transformative
bonhomie of surprising summer

whose welcome return, 
overlooks the shortcomings of the past
just as it tries to turn its brief seasonal
flashbulb on a subject
backlit by interfering light.

Sometimes we find the life we set out
in very neat plans but which we didn’t
write down, is not what was ordered
in the mind’s eye.

We were perhaps a boss-eyed
giant with two heads,

troubled by

conflicting visions,

until in madness, he rends himself

on a cliff face, in full view, while the lithe
unimpressable girls of summer look up 

and blink, at the shadow making sun.

Flight

When I left London 

                      to stew in its juice;
the swill of a hot summer Friday,
 

helicopters like fat flies,
ran impenetrable missions
under vapour trails left
 

by planes 

stuffed with 

the lucky ones,
seeking drier crotches
and amenable places
in which to sip Rose
 

or ouzo.

I travel well. I have perfected 

the science of the capsule wardrobe.

Lighter than a balsa wood float,  
I’m jetsam in the jet stream,

selecting the finest wines 
          known to humanity
or at least, the least 
          appalling wines 

known to the airline industry,
 
whose sleek and glamorous majesty
got pinned, 

like a moth, 

to the balance sheet
and now degrades,

it’s powdery wings a shadow, 
                           or an imprint,

or the suggestion of a leaf 
on a recently dried autumn pavement.

These are the images I stored for you,
because I knew, 
there would come a day when 
35,000 feet above all arguments
 
and several glasses down,
surrounded by all the books
you said I had to read,
 
the urge would take me,
to hold you again,
in words as hot
as tears.

Table

Tables for shared meals, 

taken in public under the searchlight eyes 
of people watchers are too big, for you and I. 
Given the choice, we’d take our sustenance 
balanced upon eachother. 

If only no one was watching, 
I’d use the nape of your neck for a plate, 
cut my meat with your wit. 
Drink coffee from your navel.

Roach

The cockroach is said to produce eggs in its head
so if you squash one under a well aimed sneaker,
that rictus grin reserved for the dispatch of insects

fixed,

then you must cleanse the area, where it’s hard
carapace has split, and its innards have oozed,
like melted sweets onto your fashionably exposed

floorboards

Because the innermost goo of the cockroach
dries to become roach dust, and it’s
fucking dreadful stuff known to cause all manner of

contagion.  

Goat

I was surprised to enter the kitchen and find a goat
tethered to the breakfast bar, 

scattering hard pellets of shit with its confused 

hooves. You said it was for milk,

but I think you’re barmy.  I prefer the milk of cows

and anyhow, it’ll have to go, it’s eaten, already this week;

one laptop,

two pairs of fine leather shoes

and a pack of cigarettes.

You don’t get that kind of crap with a milkman.

Phone

Planes thread through low clouds,
and their engines echo after
the way her smile fades
as she puts the phone down,
while I'm still hearing laughter.

Tube

 Doors clatter open 

                  at Earls Court

cutting commuter fug with

a cooler kind of stuffy,
churned from

mouse shit,

                    hairballs

and

                    all that skin

sloughed off in

the regenerative miracle of human life.

We are clustered cells
in London's bloodstream
nourishing the body politic
with our own urge to survive.

Trees

You went down in November
for a four month stretch,
came back refreshed,
green, virginal even.
What did they do to you in there?

Growing

You’re not as tall as the peonies;
but you try tiptoes to smell them.

The sun I remember from childhood
gives more gold to your curls
than Kodacolor memories.

You’re ripening slowly today,
as I pass my external best,
onto you perhaps, 
and try to capture with persistent clicks,
your curious joy,
your surprise
when the edge of the flower bed fools you
onto a nappy padded bottom
and you consider crying,
giving up instead, 
a laugh.

Over the garden wall, fields bleed with poppies,
the hawthorn’s shadow lengthens
and the church clock begins its chime.

Your mimic mouth echoes the bells
but you’ve got no sense of time.

The Greenkeeper

The door to the greenkeeper's shed 

drums it's old frame for the breeze

hard hands like cracked gloves rake

                      thin white stubble

even as early morning bunkers.

          A stoic's neck stiff 

                                     to 30 years at the rake,

and the scythe

its vertebrae fused for careful marshaling
     of the wild west coast into tamed links

creaks

upwards to the silver grey salmon skin of
mercurial Scottish sky,

just in time to see

a tiny Cessna cease chasing
its windmill clouds, cut engines,
and drop

into dark waves
made sudden gold

like Whisky,
in summer's evening sun.

The Airman

When the door to his Cessna

shut

          like the lid of an old dustbin,
 

          and he grabbed the slim

controls checking

                        co-ordinates,

                   and re-assuring

air traffic control
 

     with banter as worn at the trim

     on oil field veteran seats,
 

he slipped

             a fresh bottle of malt

into a rudimentary holder

fashioned from an old hanger.

The necessary paraphernalia  
           of the airborn pisshead 

doesn’t come as standard kit.

And with the rickety thrum
 
of the prop, 

creaking out 

160 horsepower of thrust fed by 
a Hydraulic Pump from
a 1957 FORD 800 tractor with 

a Sherman backhoe attachment
and a 701 front end loader,

bodged up in his workshop but
          good enough for him and

the inebriated loops of the Western Isles
 
                     he’d perform unable to stand 

            but snug as a mole in that old seat 

wobbling with every thermal

and occasionally forcing a fart 
from the Kinglike airman,
 
who’s worries were 30 gallons
of usable fuel below,  

when clearing the 4th
at Blackwater foot
 
he took
 
a final salty glug 
of Talisker 10
 
and aimed 
that scuffed old nose
 
at dark waves
suddenly made
 
black artex in the airman’s final room.

Waking

Hot night throws off its sheets,
leaving this June morning
suddenly cellar cool,

calm streets, stripped of ire,
all the howling baying,
output of the pubs

asleep in their grease,
or knocked out in flats
by one for the ditch

as starlings wait wary
for the first jets
to split sky and heads,

I turn over, exhale,
extend legs into
the cooling edge

of the marital bed
and search pillows
for reasons to rise.

It was in such moments 

as these that intimacy
took its tenancy

half tamed the anxious
wariness of newly shared
humanity, the repression

of the body’s ceaseless
ticking over, the urge
to seem immune,

to all the beastly stuff
left lurking amongst
the idealised heroics

of love’s first insistent
flush. It’s a comfort then
to turn and find buried

under matted hair slicked
with sleep’s quick dry dew
infinitely fallible, tangible; you.

Body

We’re told the head is a good place to start
when trying to tame the heart

or grab with a steadying arm
errant emotions poised to harm, sweet eyes

whose green flash mimics a diver’s back
fading amongst the kelp; quivering limbs

anchored to wrecks, porthole mouths empty
in the gloaming, filtering like baleen,

the wrack, the silt, the rich tongues of stuff,
we yearn to tangle with like hands in a game

of cat’s cradle. But really it’s the stomach
we should start with; that’s where the fist of pain is.  

 

Stumbling

I descend the stairs too early to care
if the neighbours can see my knackers.

If they’re up at this ungodly hour
and want to gawp through the crackled
Victorian glass at my un-chosen junk
then let them.

I am loose on the bottom stair,
rubbing eyes, nose and hair,
casting at imaginary trout,
begging for tickles,
in the dark pools
behind the sofa

where the sodium glow
of London’s lights can’t reach,
a pair of boots, to make them loom
monsterlike against the skirtings,
but which I let them do anyway
in the unloosening of sleep’s grip.

I am here, only because,
in sudden waking
caused I’m sure by late returning revellers
hopscotching in the orange light,
or by a car alarm raising its pointless cry
at the cocked leg of a stray,
I thought of you, older,
in a playground, spinning
while the other kids looked on,

and I needed to walk around to be sure,
your eyes were laughing,
like your mouth was.

Hard Landing

Emerging from clouds at the bullet rate of descent
the circuit board of the city fires dull synapses 
into something like life,

heavy lids barely flicker,
and my tongue feels thicker
than that of Jamie fucking Oliver.

The Thames at East India dock, 

is an abandoned tie,
snaking like forgotten responsibility 

around guilty banks.

Somewhere in there
they’re totting up the debt.

Somewhere skeletons don furs
and dance in their closets.

Two Boys

I
I remember hiding on the roof of a school,
with epic indignance,

clipping a coupon of moon
for my indulgence,

sending seasons of moss
tricking down the pitch,

I remember it.
And yet,

the anger though surely lucid and terribly brave,
is utterly lost.

Unlike the sound
of you calling me in the crackling frost.


II
I remember being small enough
to fit my cheek in the dint of your neck,

your adult breath sweet and strong as tea
and though we were meant to be

asleep

and I was warm as milk,

I’d chase the pendulum of your breathing

concentrating on

the out and in,

lying there and learning

love that can’t be lost.

Seaside Fairground

You were never very fond of fairgrounds,
inky birds on fists too full of fighting
ungambled goldfish suffocating
in bags like blisters,

(No I’ve never seen a blister with a fish in)

Yes, you  said you hated fairgrounds
but we walked anyway, to the pier’s end

the cockled planks had lead us there,
past the sickly hiss of the donut stall,
the rice scribes, 

and a Peruvian flute band,
floating in that English squall 
like a plaster in a pool,
loosed from the sticky wound 
of South America.

We were drawn there perhaps, like everyone else,
on a recreational breeze, aimless as the chip papers
that fluttered round the feet
of reclining pensioners,

glad of the sudden late Spring sun,
and grounded in, an Englishness
borrowed from sit coms and poems like this,
suggestive of sugary tea
sipped under urgent gulls
 
or in the quiet embarrassment of a windbreak.

I can still hear those indignant gulls,
the wheezing oompa of the merry-go-round,
and your voice saying,
 
"I love it here,"

and meaning almost all of it.

Retreat

What was it in the biting wind that reminded me of you?
the shrill way it took the day and bent it
round corners until we felt like we were looking
at the backs of ourselves
retreating,

like armies bent double
over the last cigarattes,

trudging over flinty ground in broken boots
outfought, grim and gagging on bad rations
stolen from the dead.

Or was it instead,
the way it made me hold you tighter,
wrapping the loose edge of my coat
around your hunched shoulder,
wiping the warped marble of a tear
from your eye,

not knowing if it was really the wind
that put it there?

Vikings

The perforated coast of Southern Sweden
is sudden in Sunday’s thumbprint window
clouds like flaking skin float
in the bathwater of twilight,

the arc of a lake, 
glacial refugee, revealed for runes, 
where fires no doubt burned
for Odin, before the muscled landless
terrifying Norse, set out to bleed their hands,
on oars baying for the heads, and the cunts
of unsuspecting Saxons.

That’s a bad word now 
but don’t faint as if you’ve seen 
some mighty Norseman
like a fucking scary biker,
yomping up the beach dreaming of sagas 
with a bellyful of dangerous mushrooms,
ready to go beserk on your soft Saxon skull.

It means beautiful place,
and shares its etymology
with quaint, or cweynte,
like the softly smoking vents
of wattle and daub huts
or cloisters, hands in prayer
the intricate gold leaf in
the life’s work of a scribe.

The bad shit came later, 
when Normans 
themselves descended 
from terrible Vikings
sold our tough Saxon nouns
into a lifetime’s slavery 
on the cussbench,
making the female words sit
furthest from the fire.

So unless you misunderstand me
there’s no such thing as a bad word,
but you’ll know a scary fucking Viking
when you see one.

Cub

A fox cub lies dead in sticky mud,

no marks on her rusty fur, 
and she’s still warm,

I know because I lay a hand on her,
surprised by a paternal feeling,
something like loss lingering 
behind thoughts of hounds 

or hidden boys, 
quick with sharp stones, 
a hand of shot,
the catgut taughtness of a crossbow.

Her teeth like the shallow drip of a candle,
and about as dangerous,
pierce nothing, but the stillness 
of an afternoon made memorable
 
by sudden pathos;
the unfairness of her chance,
and the presence of 

my daughter, pointing 
and trying to say 
dog.

Birds

It’s tempting to capture the sound
of hedgerow birds in early May
but you know their trilling urgency 
and anyway I’ve said enough
for you to get the gist.
 
What I’m hearing now 
if the truth be known
is the same old drone,
that eternal human moan;
fuck me, feed me, and give me
the most well feathered nest, 

you bastards.

The other side of the island

We are not allowed here,
yet here we are,
where ants trick
pine needles
into neat piles 
and the briney marsh
on an offshore breeze
forces you to mark 
each breath.

We are not allowed here
and yet we’re coming back,
from a place far off where
depth charges dislodge
submarine crews
from forgotten missions.

They blink,
at the weak midnight sun; 
they are not allowed here
any more than we,
but have been captured
whilst we are free.

Tarnish

Tarnish,
it’s not a word to tangle with
it’s a smudge across silvered lives
like a film we didn’t want to watch
but which instead we stared into 
defeated, not talking.

And as bright things brown and blur
turning the reflection of a window
into a bent and beaten thing
fingers immersed in printers ink
leave their memories
everywhere we care to look;
the recollection of a touch, 
a smudge, the grease of lives
who’s energy fades until the
urge to polish stops, and out of
sleepwalking months, come
hands to hold old objects,
turning them over,
blinking reflectionless
into this new murk,
like morning coals,
still warm to touch.

I say tarnish, and I tangle
in it’s definition;
wanting hard to mend
and cure but wanting too
new treasure.

I say tarnish,
but perhaps it’s patina.

Weather Fight

Spring is in a dust-up with Summer
Winter shouts "he's not worth it"
Spring aims a kick at a sweaty crotch
Umbrellas unfurl in protest

Pisshead

It’s an ache, arch-ache,
Ultra headache, its fists
Full force in the sternum
Sucker punch to a drunkard
Like this, take turns to return
Full force, furtive and full of it
Shit, that is, spouting it,
A fountain of the fucking stuff
Outside betting shops and chippies,
In the queue, for the last drink,
Before the devil takes over
And has us up against the bar,
Slurring, onion eyed, piss faced
Fucked, hammered like the door
Of an old Peugeot.

Shitheap it was
panelbeaters nightmare,
more dent than fucking car.

Like you, you cunt,
leery old Polack,
fishy git. Where was I? Aye?
Yeah, this ache, it makes me, tough
it does toughens up the toughnut,

don’tchoofuckingdare,
I’ll set this filthy mongrel
on you.


I love that fuckin dog
more than me own mum, that
bitch, hitched me to the skirts of
a life less, less what? Less whatever,
just fuckin less, I’d take less of this
I would, from you anyway,
come here you cunt
don’t be afraid, it’s just
the beer talking gets me soppy at first
and then there’s the anger, they got no
fucking respect, not for me anyway,
or maybe I haven’t.

Haven’t fuckin what?
I lash out see?
I weep with my fists.
Nah it’s alright.
You soppy cunt sit down, have a swig
of this, it’s shit, but cheap as fucking chips
cheaper even. Have a bag of methedrine
fucking plant food, got it off some cunt on
the internet, not like it’s proper drugs,
but it takes away that fuckin ache until
I snap and need to feel some cunt give a
fuck enough about me, to take the time
and trouble to kick this pissy head in.

But you’re alright mate, you are,
You’re alright.

He’s alright.

Cunt.

He’s alright.

Glass

There is a man trapped behind glass,
he puts a hand up, not like Marcel Marceau
in a camp genuflection feeling with his hands
imagined glass but perhaps more like a child,
being driven away reluctantly, from a place he loves
palm pressed to the cold glass, pink skin
pressed to white, red lines on the palm
like roads he can’t travel,
life-line shrinking.

Cherub

Love kicks off like a drunkard in a bar
full to bursting with sweet sticky juice
limbs flailing wild not caring
who he captures in his 

random thrashing noose

but capable of a moment's clarity
when seeing us in noncommittal chat
he tucks his chin into his baby fat

and smashes a hectic cherub's head
into unsuspecting flesh.

Snakes

The old man carries a forked stick,
"for snakes" he says,
though its years since any of us saw one.

He rasps a corky hand on cheeks
                             like cuttlebones;

as white, as hard, every bit as discarded
on the beach of his face,
 
and flicks the V of the stick
at a place out at sea,
which looks to me
like a ship, but which is in fact a barge
                                    listing in mimicry, 
of his frame collapsed
into snakeless years because they’ve been

          the hardest.

You take his hand,
like you’ve plucked a pine cone


from filthy sand
and are about to throw it out to sea
but have stopped
at the last moment


weighing its lightness, and thinking,
turning his hand over like a coin.

You don’t bite to check it’s tender,
but it looks like you will.

You're torturing an old man
with friendship withheld
as snakes drag their hungry bellies
away from the sea,
and the barge gives way
to the waves.

Horses

Tired as post horses on the eve of a war,
we had bruised flanks too,
having torn through, angry villages,
conscious of doors locked against
imagined evil.

I swear I saw a blue-booted knight,
with a plectrum at his neck,
made from the tooth of a child
and heard in a declining scale,
his wicked songs.

You sang your song loud and high,
in a wriggled dance, half unwrapped
in 800 count sheets and we galloped on
clearing fences which from a distance looked
too high for human creatures.
 
Then a week or so ago, we finally came
in a concert of exhaustion, to this place,
a clearing, far from angry villagers 
but near enough to the knight
his songs, and the panting of tired horses.

Canvassing

It was the day the planes stopped,
Volcanic dust, invisibly ending the to and fro,
Clear skies, but for those tiny particles,
Expelled from the deep earth somewhere
Where sagas are made.

Yes that day, when winter finally shed
It’s ill-cured furs, sending blossom
Upwards towards those empty skies
Reminding anyone who’d listen
Of what can pass for silence.

There must’ve been an election on,
Because leaflets whirled in the surprising
April wind, amongst that fragile blossom
Carrying promises more timid
Than fruit on city trees

It was that day, I imagined you
Suddenly years away from now,
Holding my hand and throwing
Leaflets into silent spring air sending
Their stories up like blossom.

Maiden Flight

Your room has been locked for days, 
of course I have tried the door,
and one evening last week I kicked it
so hard in the bottom corner
the old sapless wood splintered
leaving a gap big enough for a cat,
but not of course for me.

I am well-fed, and tend towards the big boned
I do not have a pianist’s hands, and I know you
have always secretly loved their promise
of violence, not to you of course, but to anyone
who’d dare fuck with you.
I protect your secrets,
like a gaoler.

It’s not as though you’re quiet,
I hear the occasional oath, the rattle of lids,
your theatrical dialogue muffled by
the running of water,
you always watched too much TV, and you
got that one from a spy film we sat up late to
watch, once when we were new,

We’d decided to crack open a Pol Roger
and have it with Pizza.
Oh fuck, I’m in a terrible state,
here on the landing, pacing,
and pacing, fingering the leaves
of an old spider plant which seems to survive
though no one round here ever gives it water.

It looks a bit like Warhol’s wig, from a distance.
I take that distance now, April evening
colder than it looks, blowing the smell of moss
in through a stiff window, opened for the first time
since fuck knows when, it’s a long time at least
since September when you shut it in a huff
to stop the last of the barbecues from smoking you out.

You’ve been in there a while, that’s certain.
And I miss you like submarine crews on desperate
missions to the Bering sea must miss fresh fruit,
and girls of course. Like they must miss them.
Your noises are becoming more regular, and if I’m not
mistaken there is a beating of wings,
it could be the leathery flap of a daemon,

But I like to think it’s
the feathered halleluiah of an angel, 

so I take my seat, near a neglected rack 
of National Geographics, 
opposite that adamantine door
and I wait, suddenly flushed with Love, 
for you to take the air.