Proposal

In the piazza Navona we sit and drink the past

we are bees at the flower, the fountain the acquifer

anyway whatever,
there's passable pizza, acqua vitae espresso

courage for the cluster of gems in
my pocket

And bees again buzzing  Barberini, 

patrons, villains, builders and killers, 

in the blood soaked robes of Rome

And laughing again at some joke you've made 

seeing reflected in your sunglasses

the face of your nearly husband scanning the square

for a place without pilgrims 

somewhere to add our history to all this layered meaning,

we're another generation with the unyielding idea of God.

When a Pope dies they melt his ring and leave a vacant throne until white Sistine smoke announces the next of Peter's line. Power and faith holding the masses at bay with love. Fuck knows what they do when one resigns.

I can just make out your eyes under the sunglasses face to the sun that way women do

soaking glamour and cell deep sustenance.

It's March I brought you here to warm you.

Yes your eyes then,

they've got that wide alertness you show when

the cells of you let go their prisoners and anything can happen,

but somehow you don't suspect this even though your Dad knows 

and I'll need a quieter place to do it; 

the only quiet place here when there's a new Pope on the go.

Really I planned this but didn't count on the daisies even 

and the real still heart of this place 

where poor miserable Keats declared to admiring eternity

his name was writ in water.

I'll write my name on you here.

You, still unaware though skipping through the daisies 

and finding Shelley you rest your head a while on my shoulder 

and seem to sigh.

Those Romantics liked a sigh 

and I would make a point of it 

half celebrate and undermine it, 

and we'd have what comics call 

a good 5 minutes of material from it

But this is serious earth now 

Romantics beat the comics. 

Over the wall busy Catholics leave me to my not quite secular promise.

Here lies one whose name was writ in water

The water of me not nervous, not stormy, 

not all waves like the death of Shelley 

more a steady break of wave upon wave 

at the sure shore.

This is roughly how I planned it, the failsafe place of poets. 

So Grecian Urn then mainly from memory and also my iPhone 

while you so happy in this glade 

and taking pictures of the light 

opening those cells that lock you up in winter 

so light-glad I can hear them I think 

crack open with your laughter

Fiddling with the camera you don't notice I'm on my knee

But listening to the ending of you as girlfriend 

beauty is truth, 

you know that don't you, 

your beauty often stops me in my tracks 

sending thoughts off track 

or one track in particular

you have just noticed me

on my knee 

saying "will you marry me?"

When you fire a gun without ear protection

The silence after the bang is surprising.

Your loud dancing YES loud enough 

to wake Keats light bounces off emerald grass 

white diamond daisies 

light through leaves 

and the latest waking bees 

do a dance with us through poet nourished trees 

in the old gold 

Roman sun.

America It's You

Some things are too good to be true

I think maybe America that's you

you are no conspiracy, true 

just a good idea failing you 

in execution every bloody day 

on streets and in your schools

there's a war in store 

because American war 

is the thought of you

the right to bear arms 

will be the death of you

in the food aisle 

stuffed to white teeth with black bullets

bulging to the eyes with poison apple pies

drone cloud skies wide 

eyes plenty surprised

at the feeding hand raised to strike

broad shoulders down to slopes

slipping, down, punch drunk dream

hugging the ropes 

Echo

Look at this place,

look hard enough and it’s a face

full featured, staring back

to ask you why you look here

Feel out the space,

trace features with a finger

take a moment to linger

over it’s contours

Shout to hear its echo,

if you’re dumb enough to

recognize you in the waves

answering back

do not attack,

the anger that you feel

is misplaced

Stop a while to judge

your little actions

make them bigger

Don’t snigger at the back

of your 20,000 days

sniggering is a phase 

you must pass through

if you want to find the point of you

Which when all is done

is just the sum

of what you’ve given out

So make it good, 
and for fucksake
don't live for your echo

North Star for Bob Kaye

You may have always been 
my North Star, star of the north,
you were perhaps always the source 
of salvation for me, perhaps,
even as your hands turned a table 
from junk to a witness of lives not yet lived
or raised from your earth, beauty and truth
your house became the fixed point 
for a constellation of friends
when you found the missing pieces of you
which became the missing pieces of me

You are an organising thought
you are a mystery of means
you are the hands and the book 
perhaps, or as close as it gets 
the pages the verse, ellipsis precision, 
the wondering why and the answer always left
in the mouths of the children whose children you trust
with the echoes of god if that's what we must 
call knowledge, I think we must.

You are a witness to generations
you wear your frailties well
your strength is a loom
And your song is a bell
calling us in truth back to the place 
we would be lost without; 
nothing less than the heart of us
though sometimes a spinning compass,
and always a grateful amazed love of a man

This family will rock and it will roll
to the maths in the music
the gaps in the theory
the family chosen
and the light that you give.

Why

Don't ask why
Why doesn't know the answer
And though talking to a child you
Wonder why why always follows after
Every small reflection, wondering why

Why is just a state of mind
We leave behind
When we're old enough to pretend
We have the answer

Afternoon

The afternoon is fat with dull
It's caved edge like a raided tomb 
Shows where brilliance went
And stuffed barstools bear 
Their loads like a lost key
Or the slow return of flooded land
Leaving particles of plastic
21st century sand.

To the barman then a round
And go home to houses
shaking in the cold holding hosts 
in half bitten mouths
afraid to swallow.

There are tales in those bricks
stories in the cracks
But they're always holding back

Honeymoon

The moon lapped sand all reflective of immense time, atomised particles of this n that, geological end state and nice between the toes, like the warm water, and you afraid to take off your swim-suit because that bright moon, relic of a space crash between planets, now dumb orbiting reflector rock shone so beaming bright as to stop night or turn it to a well lit stage set for wave frolics and you, a little coy now, afraid others up the beach might see us laughing honeymoons at them, water running off us all milky silver in that surprising bright light, a light you could read books in, books of advice perhaps for lovers transforming slowly in the waves into something steady as rocks but praying silently between whoops that the waves we’ll sail into won’t wear us down to powder, won’t sand us down, and saying if they do we’ll drift as dunes together and march up the land, squeeze between the trees and take over. Dunes move slower than moons you think as we plash back into ink waves and come up eyes full of stars all upside down and unhidden in this hemisphere and there’s warm water, warm laughing water of you, and then still, to watch the what’s that? horizon, where it’s squid boats we think lined up lantern lures, and more laughing naked now, and the how lucky feeling and it would take all night to choose the luckiest star all domed out piercing purple sky with dying light so turn and run then, faster than we can, mindful of the moon all her quiet push and pull at those waves, all her rhythms ellipses and elision, and no one up the beach can see, but smile to hear laughing lovers as the lanterns, bob, disperse then  disappear.

Arrival

This should be the end of my protracted youth

Where the drugs don’t work and my back hurts

And here’s the truth

This should be the start of my extended middle age

The settled end of rage

And my back hurts

But this is the start of the heart

Whose beating you can't rely on

Yes this is the place we prepared for

Like it or not

As soon as your snot

Has crisped in your mother's hands

You set off for this place

Only now you realise it’s not a race

But a sudden arrival at a place

You should have seen a mile off.

News

They’re dropping a desert here those winds

and no missing planes are found,

and the kids are in the park

or so I’ve heard, but I can’t go

to hold their hands or watch them tear

the dusty ground in pinching shoes.

and I’ve stopped watching the news,

because they never mention you,

nor do they ever help me see

the bits I can’t find in my reflection

the bits like you

And now with the TV off

the kettle on for benediction

and the milk running out

I wonder if the kids can hear me shout

above their laughing friends

But I hope they can’t

because this is not the way to go

it’s not the way we do it here;

to never see things through,

So I’ll see this through with you.