Poetry

FOREWORD

 

            I wrote these poems between 1967 and 1990.  I have written poetry before 1967, but no examples survive.  This must be a good thing.  I remember being impressed with Tom Gunn’s Carnal Knowledge. I tried to write like him.

 

            I typed my first poetry on a manual typewriter in my father’s office in 1967, in July just before I went to Canada.  I also typed out most of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at the same time.  There was a magic in the sturdy mechanical keys which frequently stuck and misaligned themselves, but best of all it looked almost like print. This was the object after all, to see my name in print.

 

            In Canada in 1968 I typed out three or four poems on a law firm’s electric typewriter and thought myself a poet. I carried them around showing them to anyone half interested in poetry.

 

            I enjoyed really prolific years in 1969 and 1970.  Ruth typed out a deal of poetry on a portable Corona that Chris gave me.  Ruth used this in my room in Manchester in 1970.  Also in 1970 some typists whose names I am ashamed to admit I forgot did some more, when I was working temporarily in the Registrar’s Department at Lloyds of London. They also typed out a children’s book I scribbled while I worked.

 

            The next major retype was on my PC using Lotus Software in late 1989.  I then learnt that using Lotus software was unsatisfactory because it is spreadsheet based (somebody told me that) and was a pain in the backside because it did not seem to be terribly logical in its processes, so I decide to type everything else using WordPerfect (I should be so lucky) software.  I need the software because I cannot type well, and I do most of my writing late at night. 

 

            I have always preferred to do this.

 

            Through some accident of chance I happily found that I could convert what I type out on Lotus to magical WordPerfect. Gosh, it even looked better on the screen.  Gosh, (again) when I started to write, I resolved that it must be better to write on a full stomach, in a comfortable house, healthy and happy. It might not be conducive to writing better poetry but it is certainly more pleasant. 

 

            Given any kind of say in the matter a person should always, if possible arrange to be rich, or a least comfortable in his financial circumstances. Also, I am not a disreputable sort of writer, as most writers are these days and as most writers have apparently been.  Some would say that I am not any sort of writer at all, but merely another rich person (cannot call myself a man) indulging himself.

 

            I digress from the task of explaining what follows.  Some writing (not a lot) was done in the street, on scribbled bits of paper, and some on bed on large note pads, scraps of paper and in bed on the portable manual that Chris Calcroft gave me. 

 

            I first wrote from fear of death. As a young man (Barely a man and young) I realised, with fear and revulsion that I would die one day. I looked for ways to avoid this catastrophe, and chose writing.  And now in my fortieth year I fear not death but many other things. This cowardice is sufficient for now but at least I will remember this; the frightened youth who learnt slowly and foolishly to write out of fear of death, and now wonders at the cold sweat that the fear thrust him into.

 

 

                                                                                                                        

SEA VOICES

 

When the voice of a woman speaks to me

It bursts my own ear drums

And the blood from my brain leaks to the sea

Where it lies warmed by the sun

 

I have walked along the shore to see my blood

Frozen for so far

But when the wave that greets me there

I have always cried for more

 

Yes the power of movement dissolves me

And it leaves me lame

For I don’t know what will become of me

When the women speak again

 

 

WIND BLEW THE CITY

 

I went for a ride on an omnibus

Somewhat curiously out of date

Kept a forgotten timetable

Was never very late

 

I went for a ride on the underground

I thought it would have to sop

I was never always quite like this

I never counted the cost

 

Stretch, stretch, for in the valley

We smoked the day away while

Wind blew the city

Wind blew the city

Stop, stop

 

I’m going to ride this great big world

I’m going to travel it good

Until it is all forgotten

Until it’s all deadwood

 

 

 

 

COMING INTO FORM

 

A shade spoke

Beneath the wide below

(yes)

And yet, before I heard her speak I felt her

Below.

 

Blown eyes blown ears blown teeth blown smile

They shook she shook them all

Were I a star I would I would I would she were

Me now.

 

Sweetly descend most easily

She beckons yet she counts (one two three)

 

The drum beats the drum beats I hear the morbid sound

The drum beats the drum beats and echoes in the ground (all around)

Before beneath below she spoke

Told what she would do

But now I understand

(You see she will not kill my eyes)

I never even knew.

 

MAGIC DARLING

 

Magic darling with those faded sad brown eyes please leave with me

I implore you not to say your sweet goodbye too hastily

My sweet darling let me once more play with you I have your gifts

Gold and forests lakes and jewels abound still you won’t kiss

 

O let me fall up

And let me rise down

I always come

And sometimes your proud

 

O let me fall up

And let me rise down

 

Little darling with those faded sad blue eyes please leave with me

I implore you not to say your sweet goodbye too hastily

 

WINTER CAME INTO THE KINGDOM

 

Winter came into the kingdom softly

Stealing brown leaves off the trees

And hardening the earth and its arteries

 

Can you find one green growing thing ?

Uncovered exposed or braving the march ?

No! Just the soft slow step of winter

Creeping slowly in

One certain step at a time.

 

And you and I ?

We aged and raged and aged again against the fear

Overcome, unable to walk, thus disabled saw 

 

Winter came slowly into the kingdom

Stealing leaves from trees.

 

 

THE PROUD PIT

 

“And this is what I have all this

From the trees by the stream to

The near side of the Saxon churchyard

And I have many lovely things, am blessed.”

 

He modestly hung his eyes claiming luck

While I smiled consent and then

“But here the pride of my possessions

(Possessions are such ephemeral things)” he expanded

As he threw his eyes to the earth

 

“This ?”

“This pit, dug with my,

And with its glass sides

And made in the fold of the

This mine”

 

His.

 

 

PERCEPTION

 

Pieces we can make awhile

Etna was a gestetner

 

The mouse down New Brighton

Ever so frightening

 

 

RUTHLESS

 

Careful man wandering through

So much you have left to do

So far come since you began

 

O Yet in the sunshine softly played

Through those nights and rainy days

Ruthless, gone to a place away

We should have stayed where we made

Each other glad.

 

Careful man.

 

 

THE CLOCK

 

If the clock ticks all night

when does it sleep

when does it eat

for it certainly ticks all day

 

 

If the clock ticks all night

when does it sleep

when does it eat

for it certainly ticks all day

 

And although I can hold my clock in my hand

I can never hold time in my grasp

I may feel I may see

But through all eternity

Time will always come first and last

 

 

 

THE GHOSTS CAME OUT TO PLAY TONIGHT

 

The ghosts came out to play tonight

Better than that better told that

And laughing kissed the day away

Than that to that than that

 

Special, such property in this

Goodnight the dancers, this night was good,

 

Wisdom, yet another sweet waltz,

Found out but uncovered can we

 

Cold snaps your fingers off the radio said

That was good

The radio bled another night into

Wireless ether, every one.

 

The dogs stood up to dance tonight,

Circling their ways

And touched the other men not now

Some of them never stay

 

Dog radio days, wise waltzing ways.

Dog radio days, why dance amaze.

                           

 

ENERGY ENERGY

 

Above the noise of the night flight and yet there was a time when these

things…

 

Excitement, thoroughly driven

Still not at the opening of the times were loved in

As incitement.

 

You all provoked me.

 

Far away, should the countryside never reach

Lost inheritance, such circumstance

Could never deride thus abide

The spectacle born within birth

Paid for and receipted

 

Time within a clock

We owe for the energy, used and driven in.

 

 

ALBINO

 

A rabbit stands by his ears

And counts them one two three

Although he’s white and generally bright

He loves his ears two three

 

Falling backwards at the half

Those ears fall, see two three

Thus loves the rabbit counting ears

To prove he can count three.

 

 

 

THE SWEAR SONG

 

O shit knackers arsehole tit cunt

 

Fucking Sunday

Bolochy Monday

Shitty Tuesday Balls to Wednesday

Thursday ain’t no sodding laugh

Friday I farted in my red hot bath

But on Saturday (o)

I loved it (o)

Saturday is my cunting fun day

Not like fucking Sunday

 

O shit knackers arsehole tit cunt

 

WINTER WALTZ

 

A voice in winter is a voice in vain

This is cold magic

 

I touched the sun in summer

I held it in my hand

Knowing all of time to come

Will drop from me like hour glass sand

 

A voice in winter is a voice in vain

This is cold magic

 

We danced to please the valley

I held your hand in mine

On ice you did your pirouette

In water I did mine

 

A voice in winter is a voice in vain

 

I pushed aside the snow

For a voice.

 

 

THE STONES OF AN OLD HOTEL

 

Waiting for you outside the stones of an old hotel

Looking for your face among the crowds passing by

Smile and you’ve come and then urgent love

Away from all my ties

 

Locking and smooth inside the cold plaster done white

Breathing in your eyes above the noise in the street

Catch and your taste inside

A shame to hide

 

Parting and thus goodbye the time has left us alone

Sweetly the love stolen each week in the afternoon

Stress and the fear so carefully washed

In shame so soon

 

 

THE WHITE PIGEON

 

I have spoken many words

I have sung many songs

I have kissed many women

I have stolen many wrongs

I have fought with the tigers

On the strange and distant shores

While I spent my nights

With the debutantes and whores

 

Could it be I am living

On someone else’s time

If that’s so I can tell you

That I really do not mind

For my life is an empty shell

Falling down the hill

As empty as a bucket

That I never knew to fill

 

I will touch many creatures

Or at least I will try

But the rules that have taught me

I suspect will have lied

So the white pigeon sitting

On the ledge out in the rain

Will not know what she brought me

Left when she came to stay.

 

 

THERE MUST BE TWO IN THE THREE OF US

 

Is a hill very high

How long is an arm

And if I fall in love

Will I come to much harm ?

 

Is water wet

What is a test

How many loves lie

Between better and best ?

 

A push from those thighs

Arches me back

And we two turned whole

As we lay in her lap

 

All the world sees her

Loves her rounded place

With as much as they see mirrored

A pleasure made straight

 

Who is a question

And how many times

Can children of Jesus

Swallow his wine

 

Why does your stallion

How can it be

That children and water

Mirrors and Jesus

Pleasure and lovely

All follow free

 

 

REQUIEM

 

I felt summer in the water

And I kissed the silver dawn

As I tremble with my freedom

Mother am I born

 

My blood was flowing through my eyes

And splashed upon your brain

Mother I am sorry

But our bloods taste the same

 

I recall the Sunday diners eaten

I was kept outside

Listening by the window

While the parents took a ride

 

Now a hundred thousand helmets marching

Through the winter’s night

Why do her suitors anger me

Please don’t make me fight

 

For I’ve heard the sirens singing

On those strange and distant shores

And would have reached to follow

But my deaf men pulled their oars

 

And the nature lover lovers smiling

Bouncing on the stream

Softly slow my darling

I shall kiss you in the field

 

And his Helen playing dancing dancing

Saraband in hand

Let me wipe away her orange tear

For Sergeant Pepper’s band

 

Then I waited by the bus stop

Soaked and hoping for the sun

Hold me, coat, please hold me close

I’ll wait for anyone

 

I can meet you by the wall of death

Or meet you by the pool

Let me know which one you choose

Or darling we are two

 

I can drive my bus around the fair

Until I reach the wall

I can find it by the bright lights

I am starring on the wall

 

Round and round the wall of death

I am driving in my bus

The Americans are cheering

I hope they’ll make a fuss of us

 

I LOVED YOU

 

I loved you

When ever dawn has hit my face

Whenever you left your embrace

I loved you then

 

I saw you

Smiling your love right back at me

Laughing my tears into the sea

I saw you then

 

You held me

Throughout the coldest nights of spring

While  I was holding everything

You held me

 

We ran free

Singing our praise into the earth

Giving our love for all its worth

We ran free then

 

LAUGHING SPAM

 

Laughing Spam is a jovial man

Who picks a fight whenever he can

 

He can munch all his lunch

And he packs a mighty punch

 

Drinks from a pot while it is hot

And when he hits you he laughs a lot

 

See him run with his gun

Shooting people in the bum

 

He’s six foot tall that aint all

Six foot wide and  lots of gall

 

And my song it must end

Cos laughing Spam’s come round the bend

 

WE’LL

 

We’ll turn it out

We’ll churn it out

We’ll learn it

And then perhaps my friend

We’ll burn it

 

We’ll seek it out

We’ll dig it out

We’re meek

And then perhaps my friend

We’ll eke it out

 

 

THE COOL SCENE

 

The cool scene beats generations betrayed and sold

A fast outlet with Aristotle’s poor cave being cold

A hazy sea of lie; a fat head chin upon finger

The short breaths of violent sparks; distilled actions linger.

 

What if we sat cross legged

Looking at the inside wall of the cave

And outside people passed by tall and free

Carrying cardboard people plastic dogs and o

We inside only see the shadows

 

Must it be a shame; behold and see the complexity.

Contorted posings giving a feeling

An idea of orgasm

We bounce like a ball in a box never ever free

And the magic only wakens in spasms.

 

Loving time we were not fair

We sped in cold and central caves with no ideas

Hazy we linger in our actions

And the fat becomes us

 

Look and see look and see

See through all eternity

Turn the pages

Shadows free

 

Bounce like a ball in the box,

For the magic fails to waken

Even in spasms.

 

 

ONCE SANG A SONG

 

Once sang a song and sang it through the night

Dancing in the wintertime would make our evenings bright

But the then sun came and drove away the night

Leaving only widow’s tears in the starless white

 

And although she’s gone now I still feel the pain

And so I laugh and sing now but don’t feel the same

Watch my body feel the pain breathing ice cold air

Oh so cold with frozen lips there’s nothing I can share.

 

Once sang another song but it didn’t change

A song of love a song of joy we sang the song again

But then the sun came and drove away the white

Leaving only darkened lips in a starless night

 

Now she has left me but I feel the pain

Though I laugh and dance and sing I’m really not the same

For the empty feelings blessed with ice and air

Tells me with each breath I draw there is nothing I can share

 

 

(acknowledgements to Chris Calcroft who wrote:-

 

Once knew a woman who didn’t want to know

Dancing in the winter we were happy in the snow

But then the sun cam and blew away the snow

Leaving only melting tears to fight the summers glow

.

(or at least that is what I think he wrote).

 

 

TOUCHLIGHT

 

Touchlight of winter’s song

Come along to touch with me

We can touch where we belong

Sailing wildly on winter’s sea

 

We can pass our dreams away

We can show them wild and free

We could watch our good dreams pray

If you would be good to me

 

 

JOURNEY

 

One track we passed so fast

In huge, black stark and lost

 

Through a tunnel

(The darkness bent)

Then white again

 

Take me

Take me; take me away from her memory

 

Two rails that find the time

In failed love and bitter rhyme

 

Through a tunnel

(The darkness bent)

Then white again

 

A dead woman can show no mercy.

 

 

 

 

THE PRAYER COMPASS

 

Cross myself, began in the woods,

Could never collect for remembered too well

And recently taken  (forgetting to breath)

 

I do however remember dusts we stirred together

 

Penance we won at the side of the Rhine

Together we sat we finished our wine

Held hands we laughed remembering times

Apparently dead and ghosts.

 

Now fancy horse carriages meaning appearing

Their absolute never nearly quite real

Black plume and crepe feathering break

Spiriti sanctus, Are we too late!

 

Flowers and essence, take them away

Can none of our orders ordain today ?

Will none of its fashions root in the mud

To suck the elusive imperial blood?

 

A coat of many colours for each of our many soldiers

 

Spinning soul, slip back to the dream

Wheel away army , follow the sea

Where you take us you shape us you call us the real

The royal fine person who dances on wheels

 

Supergirl supergirl where has she gone ?

Super girl left us, superalone

 

The world on the march, hot effortless place

The sun in the firmament moving in space

Time cannot end here before we have sang

For trees came to kneel, as we began.

Cross ourselves, began in the woods

And recently taken

 

 

DREAMS

 

Drums upon the humming bird

Bass upon the running bluebird

Grace upon her soul

 

Eyes away from stealing sleep

Petals leave them in a heap

Set upon my all

 

Sooth away cacophony

In a thrill of ecstasy

Slim around the night

 

He made her rise Spanish in triumph

She fell, she fell

 

Drums upon the humming bird

Bass will get that running bluebird

With awakened vigour vapoured.

 

 

 

BIRTH WINDOW

 

Animals circle at speed

Sweat pours from her brow

Not another new creation

The mice are gabbling their need

To the maze of eaves that show

No response or vibration

 

She is amazed at the ease of conceiving new life

Hard hit to be heard

The careless midwife says “Birth’s the word_

Inhale forward wit”

 

SUNDAY MORNING

 

Your body is warm and sweaty

Your breasts are full and heavy

Your hair lies in my eyes

Your legs twine around mine

And I can lie here feeling you feeling me

Love is the only way to be

On Sunday morning

 

Your neck is white, and tender

Your body fine but older

Your breath sets in my ears

And each stolen moment fears

That love never hears

On Sunday morning

 

THE UNION BAR

 

PIP

Sweet oranges make my mouth sore

But apples give me more

I don’t like to waste but I have no taste

So I’ll eat the apple core

 

STEVE

If I ever make a woman for love

I’ll never give her any liver

 

COLIN

Affy topple happy poffle

Poffy tapple Toffee Apple

 

JOHN

Quack quacked the duck in the library

As he welshed upon a bet

I didn’t have a duck opener

So took it to the vet

 

RED KEITH

In my head it’s all red

It’s so truenion at the union

But I’d rather stay in bed

 

 

CELEBRATION

 

Words not used

Thoughts not pictured

 

A meal of gold and old pewter

Crested trees

Moonleaves; I ate a star by mistake.

 

Grief lost in bloom, why late you star is mistake.

 

I slept these many years

And your rounded body

Kept me away.  Tombstone.

 

Carved head

Stand at my feet, can never used

To taste again

 

THE REVOLT

 

The sea moves

Whispering its waves and motion curved peace

 

Let it move

Let it move me

We are near and yet there is tomorrow

 

Sailors throw their cigarettes

On giants wheeling in the mists

 

Stand, see hope pray

It cannot always be as it is today

 

Watch the sea move

See the waves

Away

 

 

THE FALL

 

John is in the attic

Thank you Albert

John lives in the attic.

Yesterday his old buddy

Fell down the stairs into the cellar

To ferment

Now dusted off to greet his old pal.

He sometimes complains that his son

Is not up there with him

Giving the comforts required by age

Wishing He would lay off the whore next door

He is in the attic

Sharing the only bed with me.

 

 

 

DRINK WHILE YOU MAY

 

She found a broken mess of stars

In the cupboard under the stairs

She could not speak to them

Or even play with them

As hard as she tried

They tangled in her hair

 

Her files were full of people

Who only had a name

 

A claim in the rough hills

Decays in a forgotten dream

The pick is forgotten

The prop is forgotten

A laugh is a ghost that sounds

Through the wires of old machines

 

The names are full of people

Who only have a file

 

Walk alone arm in arm

Through the rooms of the old hotel

Fall beneath the earth and ashes for a spell

The world is full of people

 

 

URGENT LOVE

 

 

Wait…outside the old hotel

I’ve been waiting for you to show

Smile… now you are come along

Then inside for urgent love

              

I’ve never enjoyed her love

Yours is sweet but our encounter is brief

I’ll never be free of her

And yet you’ll wait

 

Love… we lie inside the bed

And to those whom we love least

Come… I will love you again

Here now more urgent love

 

I’ve never enjoyed her love

Yours is sweet but our encounter is brief

I’ll never be free of her

And yet you’ll wait

 

Time… Soon we will both be gone

We’ll be waiting to meet again

Come love, I’ll wash your fragrance off

If we’re found out that wouldn’t do

 

I’ve never enjoyed her love

Yours is sweet but our encounter is brief

I’ll never be free of her

And yet you’ll wait

 

 

WIGMORE STREET

 

Those sad blue eyes

A little scuddy, now, appealing

Simple, gaudy, the professional

Counting her money in the side room,

Hoping to have enough for…

That is her business

 

Quick pumps for such handy work

The mouth that faces pleasure

Too subtle too much alone to care for feelings

 

Me ? Never more than a sturdy amateur

But it is nearly on its way it is Hurrah.

Came.

 

And the messy shame of it

Cleansed by the catholic soap.

I wean on other milk

And inhale deeply but once into the world.

 

        

THE WALKER

 

Struggling down the street he polished his glasses

And did not embrace his brother drowning in a puddle of the pavement

 

Could not catch the sunshine

As it sparkled in the park

His coloured friend had placed it there

Hoping it might last

But all things die

 

Within these walls our walker made paintings

In these fine walls he laid down his lines

A tree dead clover green river

But the lines that fell into the sky

Were of a scarlet giver

Created by the walker

 

 

THE MISSION COMPLEX

 

Why do you let

The wind shred your decay ?

 

We met in Detroit, wild land fall of youth

Behind the Cathedral

Where the executioner kept his tools

In the dirty city where no body moved

Except you and I

 

You and I

Took to smelling perfumes

To wrap around the dead

 

No one speaks

This year of our Lord

 

Threads told stories, occidental stories

Of weaving and simple, in the theatre of worship

We took no notice

Needlessly

 

They told us

You and I

Be assured

(You and I)

You laughed be as you are

So were we, you and I

 

Now,

Why

Do you let

The wind shred decay ?

 

 

MEETING TIMES

 

In hollow twilight will you meet

Tommy singing on the beach

Poor Tommy sins but Tommy’s mad

Leave him reflecting where the water is sad

 

Our pond is stagnant, it is dull

You touched him you touched him

 

Enough, in my sleep I scream enough

It falls in the evening

Awakening it falls

The failure the traitor

Arriving in time with the acrobat

That falls

 

Blow blow you summer

Across the clear beyond

It falls before my failure

 

Spiteful tonight

The rain from the sky falls into our eyes

Yes it falls in the evening it falls and fails me

Before my awakening it falls and fails me

 

The ships lights fell on the shiny sea, westwards

 

“He fell in the evening, he fell and failed me

Before my awakening he fell and betrayed me”

 

Tommy laughs “He has merely betrayed me”

Tommy sins  “Yes he has failed me”

 

In hollow twilight will you meet

Tommy singing on the beach

Poor Tommy sins but Tommy’s mad

Leave him reflecting where the water is sad

 

 

MAGICIAN

 

 

Magician comes

Enter the l night

O yes he comes

Destroying light

 

He changes hearts must it always be this

Turn you to ice, so you too can be him

 

Go to him, he’ll love you true

Go to him, he’ll thrust his serpents in your womb

Magician comes, I never even knew

Magician whose fingers are blue

 

Sweet Jesus came

Brought with him light

Sweet Jesus here

Destroying night….

 

SHE, KAY, F. & ME

 

She smiled at me with a restless eye

I kissed her crippled lips

Listlessly

I had a weird day

I spoke to Kay

And wrote to F who died yesterday

 

Five years ago I confused love with my meaningless rules

F. made a fuss, “scurrilous”

I sprang a leak.

 

 

PASSION PLAY

 

Full eyed, you blossomed in my mouth,

Such elastic energy

You ran through my arms, unsprung,

Dancing beneath my body

 

Hard I wandered through your tongue

Lips that would kindle

As I thrust through your skin

Where you let me in

 

Tender mother of tonight

Bend, thirsty, you let me

 

You, stormy, afflicted, fearful loved.

You control while I dominate you, clever girl

This is blood well spent.

 

 

1989

 

One hundred years ago

In a part of the world I have never seen

My grandfather

(Whom I have never seen)

Was born

 

One year ago

In a room I knew so very well

My mother

(Who I never saw well enough)

Died.

 

And between I lay, lay my father

Lay my sisters.

And sure, certain of all of them

(We like to close our eyes in our family)

Perfection.

 

This year this very time

My mother’s country

(O she told us the stories)

My grandfather’s land he defended and lost

(O we knew the stories)

Yes those lands

Are free

 

 

COLLECTION

 

We were collecting ashes for the cage

Sighing, Ironwater I

Held your hand turned your face, wound your arm

 

Hazel lights

Tatters of memory

The wilderness seems futile this year

 

Last year my crops

Isolation and very hungry

The wind was to blame

 

I am blind

He is a dead man

Everything is wrong without gold

 

Rainbow

Not in the wind

Without storage or learning

 

And I am sorry

Very sorry for the trouble I caused

I will not blow again

this year.

 

 

 

IN CELEBRATION OF THE CRUXIFICATION: A GOSPEL

 

1.  White sandstone and the well was one.  Victory solemnly.  Soapy earth where water sprung and heaven’s chimes rung.

 

2.  A bird in crazy flight_the phoenix pursued her and food sent seed spiralled down deep inside the well as her anguished cried in death.

                                                                                               

3.  Centuries, the tree grew far higher than the well.  Its roots filled and fed and leafed until it died, the ash white planed by sun and wind rain bark fell grown out of the white sandstone a dead tree.

 

4.  From the hills it looked like a dead mother.

 

5.  Holy men, passing traveller, showing the nails and the blood stains against the white, until the reality dissolved, desecrate, sorrowful, and mourned as they wrapped the evidence, far away from sight

 

6.  O I wrote it all down, just as it happened, just as men have always written it down, just as it happened.  So I would not forget.  That is what I do.

 

7. This is the testament, the evidence and the truth.  By its nature, unassailable, by its word enduring.

 

 

 

GOODBYE JAN

 

 Time to go girl

Love is so girl

Very hard to keep us kind

Time to kiss me

Time to miss me

Time to have you on my mind

 

I always will remember

These times we kept together

Goodbye Jan

I always will remember…

 

Must not hold you

Cannot hold you

We might be seen outside the town

Got to hide girl

For a while girl

In a place I can’t be found

 

I always will remember

These times we kept together

Goodbye Jan

I always will remember…

These times we kept together

 

Can’t forget you

Won’t forget you

Never ever felt so bad

Wish I kept you

Hadn’t let you

Let me leave you feel so bad

 

Morning in the city

Has touched me but it won’t affect me Jan

And so we say goodbye girl

You’re telling me goodbye, Jan.

 

 

THE OFFER

 

Missed heart beats, speed thrashed out.

In the roads, where the sun lives, there

Let it hang from the vines

And its shadows cast, wine is given, here.

 

Winter bread, can all these times have so little to offer ?

And you will hold me, won’t you Mary ?

 

Cast steel spins,  born around

By shelter, how the men live, there

Let them fly in the sky

For they tremble fear, tie in freedom there.

 

I’ll offer I’ll offer and you’ll hold me.

 

Do not leave me in this silent life

There is no music to fire me, nor earth to bury me

No sweet daughters to soften me

Do not let the music die tonight.

 

Missed heart beats, speed thrashed out.

By shelter, how the men live, there

I’ll offer I’ll offer and you’ll hold me.

You will hold me please Mary.

 

If I were a hunchback

I would wear loose fitting shirts

If I were a blind man

I would count the stars

 

Play with me, do not let me slip into you

Without protest play with me, my body will do the rest,

Play with me and let each ounce earn its keep

Play with me and forage deep.

 

Touch me play, and I’ll offer

Touch me play, and I’ll rest

Touch me play together

And Mary will do the rest.

 

 

CHANGED BY THE LADY OUTSIDE

 

Cold lady young lady standing by the door

Whisper your promises with your eyes

Like a doll.

To sleep with you would break me in two.

Inchoate crimes afflict my peace

Not the King’s but mine here now

Like a word

Left unspoken in the tide of casual work.

I have wasted so much time

With this pantomime.

Breathing so much recently

Yet you never came into anything but income.

There is no-one in the gulley of this dark city’s face

The wind that blew this city once now blows over me

Dreams that tumble over nature’s breath now deliver me.

 

Copy the ten dollar bill

See it run

Ink melts into finger tips

Tips melt in the sun

The bones bleached.

 

Torch light and winter sun

Come along to feel with me

We can touch where we belong

Sailing wildly on winter’s sea

 

We shall pass our dreams away

Thus we show dreams running free

See our proud and good dreams pray

To throw the nightmare into sea

 

Holding bodies clutching tight

Gentle sea to have us there

Can we fire the wayward night

Salt wind dancing in our hair

 

But my dream still breaks when the morning sun

Leaves me empty when you don’t come.

 

 

LIFE WITH MY MISTRESS -PART I

 

Sequences:

In the light of all

On this

Dedicated I begin

 

The leaning teacher taught on me

With wand and finger sport on me

I stared at the man who threw

A lump of cold clay

He thought he taught me that

And told me today we will make a cat with clay.

Today we will make it of clay.

 

Can a song be the thing ? I cannot sing

 

Elias:

Fortune met old Elias in the doorway

(Was he out stepping in or in stepping out?)

Where clutched him, raising his voice above the darkness

 

Black wind darkness why have I forsaken you?

 

Elias thus to Mary

His mother’s child in bondage

A city of the night time

And daughter of the morning

 

Red ice darkness why have I forsaken you?

 

Elias grew; food of tears

In each of those reflected years

And stole from me; stealing is wrong

But I have stolen from everyone

 

Fortune, darkness, why have I forsaken you?

 

Amazon:

Came and went but Elias he died

I cut to welcome

Pensively

 

Again:

Reputedly, level headed proven guilt?

See old man what time has done

While outside in the easy street a coldness rings

And passion leaps, so proven dry it does not matter

A man is fire, a woman water, and couples rarely live in laughter

 

But my mind still turns and swirls in the beat

And my tongue is dry when I think of the heat

 

Never ending chain of pain, happen here again

 

Conception:

Scorn cares it is there

 

I can mouth words

But not speak immediately

 

Discovery:

He told me

“I have shown you each dimension

And you know by me that eternity

Is but a light in the night of time

And still there is fire

It burns with every movement

And cries within each moment

For all your cares you walk the night

But it will never lend its light”

Old man old man you have made me angry.

 

Ending:

I go to die

And do not lie

I walk and run

I bleed

I am free

You cannot be

As free as me

You cannot be me

And we cannot see

Beyond the facade of infinity

Beyond lies you

She too lies

Just like me

 

The end:

The end is tangled water

The end is the laughter of my Mistress

The end is not my Mistress.

The end is not

My Mistress

 

LIFE WITH MY MISTRESS- PART II

 

Start:

I danced in London Town

The bridge was taken down

The river steamed

The money gleamed

The race an empty sound

 

Talked carefully for them

 

Among the jews, among the agents

Wheeling their conceits

Limping through the city’s seas

As graceful as a grin

 

With palms that itched and hands that grabbed

I fought and ate the dust

Renovating Homelessness

According references to instants

Thanking receipts

 

And the tears of my Mistress fell into the gutter

Which savagely drained into the river

Where women waited in flood.

 

The Trial:

 

The sea was as clear as white rum

But mucky barges lighted onwards

I carried my dunnage in my pocket

Pass the port, December,

With you old chap.

 

Amongst the gates dead soldiers lie

Amongst the death their bodies sigh

When touched by those afraid to die

And join the stench of sleep.

 

Touch, and the sun dies

Touch, and the wind hears

 

Show us God in the city’s dust

Another port, my love, another time.

The port is with you, December.

 

Touchstone watersand lifeblood of toyland

They will not listen and could not dance

And would not chance the dance

They will not fear and could not chance

And would not dance the dance

 

In the beginning was the violence of December

In the beginning was the violence of this silent cold December

In the beginning was the violence and the silence of December

 

My mistress began with the ocean

Then started on the sea

My Mistress began with the ocean

And then in December

In the silent cold December

My Mistress turned to me.

 

My Mistress began with the ocean

Then frolicked with the sea

She stunned the fluid silence

And then at last in December

My Mistress turned on me

 

LIFE WITH MY MISTRESS: PART III

 

Enough

I scream enough

In my sleep I scream enough

Awake I scream enough

 

Whimsical volatile smiling

Between the boulders acrobat

And lengthener of knots

 

Blow blow you summer

Humility gone

 

Lost madness, kindling wind

Hail our redeemer save for her

Coarse recognised, save the corpse.

(Of course you have looked after yourself

My skin is pitted with dust in its pores

But see how well soaped is my hair)

 

And there where we once lay lies nothing

Not the cold earth of the grave

Not the empty times gone long spent

There lies nothing.

 

At the boundaries, here, a little more here,

And again here, where they stayed,

Were frightened lawyers huddling together for comfort

Such recognition

And passed as they stopped to hail with the passing.

 

Pour out with haste, much much too late

 

And in the spiteful night

I did my best and stumbled on

It was so cold to stop and talk

Needed the desert monarch.

 

The end was a frame but Mistress

Why did you then stop laughing

Sitting on the bed

Counting with the Count

Take care take care

Over over here

 

Pour out into the spiteful night

There where the green hills fall

On the wall the setting sun

 

Down past spitting fighting town

They jumped and bumped the good men down

And over they tumble they call for a crown

They acrobat tumbling down.

 

Can you retract the good men ?

Can you touch away and feel the sheets

Rubbing precious the good men?

Can they all disengage ?

 

For the ladies who danced and laughed

And tangled the essence of drought

And sought to abort the endemic retort

Of the ladies so taut and distraught?

 

There there there is not enough

To feed all those who demand 

For the silence is plenty and plenty enough

There there, there there, that’s enough

 

And the corn in the fields and the rice in the store

And the mice fed fat with the grain

And the holy men stop us arranging the corn

To the old and the young and new born.

There is not enough corn

There is not enough corn

To feed the demands of the born.

 

And we stop the parade

As the feel of the rain pours down its forlorn story

We will not witness this

And will not permit this

There cannot yet still be enough.

 

Count the faces that watch the parade

They are leaving and turning away

They are hurrying past

And are moving and fast they

Empty the streets and the stores.

 

The lonely man at the grand piano

Cannot play, hands tied and eyes burnt

Must not try to coax music out of the keys, she commands it.

And like a ball of fluff, blows away,

As neatly as dust.

 

LIFE WITH MY MISTRESS PART IV

 

Here once more again:

The well trod books read until the pages fell out

The glue in their spines

Limpid now then stiff

Read them enough and you will

Kiss them

When you pick them up

 

How your wrists are strong

You can flush me hard

Never never stop

And your little lines and the joy

We touched each other, never meant more

smoothing blubber in your moods

 

Stiff and white and skinny

Eyes that hid your art

Teach me what you did to me girl

Sitting on trains

Waiting for my turns

Wanting nothing but to star

Rattling from side to side

Teach me with your mouth

 

Pressing your tenderness

Breasts you filled with smiles

Do what you never could bring yourself to do

Passing passing passing

In adulterous dreams

 

Turn away your hair

Toss your G String down

It is all there where you wanted

I am a drug but you are

Frightened to lower your mouth

 

You can fuck me well

How I hate your smell

Close to equal me

Mind touch stimulate you lending library

Without a penalty

Let me touch your breasts

Small confine the joy

Dance around my eyes

Athletic, I will toss aside my cares

If you promise to pick up my caution, guard it,

Return it with my heart

Eat my heart

 

For the ride was with the times well spent

And the touch of the slopes and the hill

And the thrust of the flow

And the stuttering joy and the run and the fun as I come

 

Yet the pleasures and thrills never measured to her

That I praise each day of my sentence

For the mistress who does not make love.

For the lady who does not make love.

The lady that lady this lady my lady the lady

Who does not make love

 

You should not write such: these are secrets

The ladies are married- their children even yet

Begin to explore the bodies they meet

It is not fair-they did not give you

What you forced for public exhibition

 

But my Mistress is jealous; she hates them all

Draws pictures to tease me of their faults

 

And will not let me ride again

She will not let me ride anew

 

Haunt me

Please.

 

Yet the pleasures and thrills never measured to her

That I praise each day of my sentence

For the mistress who does not make love.

For the lady who does not make love.

The lady that lady this lady my lady the lady

Who does not

Make

Love

 

LIFE WITH MY MISTRESS PART V

 

The Complaint:

We grow old together, she much older than me

Is young to all her suitors. 

My bones ache.

 

Her face is lined, mine is wrinkled.  The hair grows unevenly, and we

Fail to touch together as perfectly

as we

grow old together

 

There are places of fat around my waist,

I feel her bodyfat, touchingly

Seething with hate for the years that are gone

Because they left us

I hate them I hate them for failing to stay

 

Each day we are a little louder of eachother

In our peculiar personal ways

I cannot fly

I take care when I climb the stair

I have grown careless of her

 

Still we dance stiffly

Cracking arthritic joints

Until the blood pours inside

To lubricate our dance

 

When we stop

Our bloods congeal

We stop arthritic

In our dance

 

O, I followed her into the mountain

Where her caves flowed into tunnels

Deep into the earth

Return into the earth

 

Let him return into the earth

From whence he came

He will be happy with his cold mother.

 

High above the earth her rivers flow

Between the hills and there below

The good mother earth stays her hand

To see the resting dancers stand

 

Trying to learn new dances

Trying to sing new songs

Trying to find a piece of earth

Where we can both belong

 

Bury her in the mountains

Bury her in the sea

Bury her when the dancing stops

Bury her inside me.

 

And she holds me

I hold my breath

Waiting for my edges to turn yellow.

 

Chorus:

We talked of many fine things

Treasures lay buried, pleasures lay there

We spun, wearing gossamer things

Forever would stay her, forever feel this

Lady, I call you to come

Lady I call you to stand at my side

Lady I call you to come

The waiting and hoping is nearly all done

 

The Illness:

Suffer not to him

Not like this you butchers bones

Too marrowless for gruel

And the dogs crawl quietly away when they smell

My cancer in the air

 

Illusions, yes, I will be well

Times long spent, hoping, clicking my fingers

Staring at the walls of so many different hospital rooms

 

When my life is completed

I shall be deleted

One way the fire

The other way the night

 

Chorus:

We talked of many fine things

Treasures lay buried, pleasures lay there

We spun, wearing gossamer things

Forever would stay her, forever feel this

Lady, I call you to come

Lady I call you to stand at my side

Lady I call you to come

The waiting and hoping is nearly all done

 

The Ceremony:

Lizards scatter here, in this dry place

Where we are ready to start the event.

This will not happen to you again

This is special my dear

 

See the fit, remarkably well

Thirty inches wide, and that is enough

None in extra large (the cancer does that)

None in anything you have worn before

 

For your size has now changed

And no-one will sleep with you now

Not even for money.

 

Chorus:

We talked of many fine things

Treasures lay buried, pleasures lay there

We spun, wearing gossamer things

Forever would stay her, forever feel this

Lady, I call you to come

Lady I call you to stand at my side

Lady I call you to come

The waiting and hoping is nearly all done

 

Five:

I have reached the fifth age. My hair

Once long and proud now

Trimmed to perfection

An insurrection in parts of my body

Suceeded in bringing down its governance

An unholy alliance of Churchmen and whores.

 

Together sipping our ancient sherry

Clinking our glasses of heavy sweet wine

Wishing for times when we had long hair

Stuttering as we walk upstairs more

Slowly than before

 

Five; I am five. I am alone and by my self in the world.

I can find no relief

In the ways of a thief

Or sleep in the nights of pastiche.

 

I once had a man

Who would lend me a world

If he had it to spare in his pockets

The favours are called

And he man is long gone;

I will buy him his tombstone tomorrow.

 

Debts:

Pay my debts

Please pay what I owe; I will not repay it to you

Pay my debts

Clear my accounts; I need to continue to do.

 

the dwarf sat ready

For Darkness and Pain

promised to enter his lodgings again

The dwarf sat ready

What else could he do

Darkness and pain would see him through

 

Satan stood there outside the door

Satan cavorting with our dwarf’s whore.

 

Exit:

Time to go time to sow

Time to turn your collars up

Before the wind blows.

 

LIFE WITH MY MISTRESS PART VI

 

15 January 1994

A decade has succeeded Orwell

Senseless night, highest time,

All will calm our restlessness

Surround the girl, take her into your heart

Large young being coming into the bright

Wake it is time for action

Must not let the dull drag you down

 

Excuses excuses I bring you money and you bring excuses

 

To prevent me from gathering

My feelings

I follow myself

(the lead man goes first)

watch me follow myself.

 

Brightness, cannot stand still

Let it all happen, whatever it will

It cannot destroy me, my destiny’s done

Whatever it chances I’ll find it has run

 

Two lives, one here where I worry and grope

One elsewhere where there is good fun and hope

To live in two bodies is not very hard

Watch me I do it with ease

 

Starlings flying west, towards the fibre satellite

One thousand flights of fancy in the night

The birds eyes see downwards the strangest of sights

The tops of the trees, the houses in plan

The scars of the earth on the body of man

 

Lovechild, lovekind kindle in me

The feelings of pleasure of high majesty

The feelings of peace

From heaven on high

The feelings of love from the corners of her eyes

 

Let her wait, let her wait, there will once be a time

Let her wait for the city to swallow the lime

Let her wait for the corpse on the woods and the bell

That rings for us all let her wait for her hell.

 

Let her wait in her portrait, like all excellent wives

Let her wait with her message, and I’ll wait by her side.

 

Here we start the time

Now the clock runs

Like mice around the shelf

Or mantle capes and spices

 

Trigger

Turn

Sharp

 

We have to learn our lessons

We will achieve our lessons

To teach them to you

Yes that is what we will do

We will sing them to you, my dear.

 

Faster, pull the boy fast

He drowns in the middle

Of his very own message

Pull the boy faster away

 

This is the time

When we will, being old

Remember and say what turned the tide

No matter it turned.

 

Pull the boy faster

He wants to learn.

 

(Forgive the Roc

For he has taught

Within the door

Intrusively)

 

Here now my dearest while we are young enough

Half way gone more than half nearly done

Quite enough life in me left

 

Row the child towards tomorrow

Get him there today

Wind his watches clean his laces

Set him out to play

 

For

The river storms up and burst its banks

Flooding the lowland meadow

The cows are wet the cars are sunk the garden leaf a shadow

The cows are wet the cars are done

The starters will not work

There is fish in the milk and milk in the tank

And the river is full of mirth.

 

Quietly, you’ll disturb the dead

And you must not do that

The penalty is a life sentence.

 

Thus the teacher taught

Catechism daily spent itself

Learning its time as I stumbled under

The weight of the teacher;

We stumble asunder.

 

Modelling with the material

The right medium

The most effective communicator

The cat:

 

I had a cat I moulded in clay and dust and ashes too

I tried to breath life into his lungs

But failed I could not do

What the almighty did

 

My breath weaked the cat

It grew longer and thinner

Its tail sprouted eight children

Its smile sprouted

I doubted whether it loved me

My cat my instrument

 

Share him with me deep

Inside him his sinews his tendons

His muscles wrapped in perfect

Athletic sheafs.

 

THE TRUST

 

In the far corners of each earth where there are

No tireless eyes

And cigarettes burn into

Fire tires necklace style

 

Because we care yes watch us care

To forfeit this our gain

Forget the star that fabled us

In days when fame became us

 

Come again; the dinner dance of light

Come again, the earth is burning bright

Come again; the men are turning

 

Yes Bedlam here, yes nurses fear, yes all the madmen run

The long thin halls and wired walls; see how the madmen run.

 

Everywhere

In every head

On each peculiar hair.

 

Eating

As the eyes pluck themselves

Such clear brown eyes

 

Making the message clear (can you clarify?)

Feed them, and their eyes shine, feed them and their hair stands

Feed themselves upon the corpses of their children

Give them blood, their mothers’ blood and offer all they need.

 

The cup held high aloft

 

That was his vessel, that was his right

That was the man who held that light

That lit up our night.

 

Yes Bedlam here, yes nurses fear, yes all the madmen run

The long thin halls and wired walls; see how the madmen come

Away.

 

FAMILY

Five sisters, none of them older than you

Sighing denying

Change in the wind their crying

Weeping grieving

When you want them to

 

Four brothers, none of them keener than you

Golden wooden

Boxed in a cedar coffin

Harden crashing

Taut and tired for you

 

Three fathers, none of them kinder than you

Minding, finding

Careworn and corn is chaffing

Learned sterned men

See how they love to do

 

Two mothers, one of them kindled you

Charming disarming

Weep as the growing harming

Sowing and showing

Life for the dance for two

 

One God, one, yea one; none of Him lonely as you

One God, you God

Tired in the rush of battle

Trampled in the fear of passing

One and one makes two

God and you makes too.

WHAT IS IT

 

What is it now, the old man is dieing,

The never ending misery of his breathing

As he struggles vainly for death

How can it be, the once strong frame expiring

Wheezing and discolouring

As he tries to pull in his breath

 

A hero my father my light

 

You feel puzzled that you feel weak weak

Surprised that death should be like this.

For all the ways that you can suffer

Why do you think that

 

At three in the morning I fear for him

At ten in the morning I hear from him.

 

The phone is grabbed quickly.

He picks it then pauses,

Coughs wheezes splutters

So I know he is ill.

 

“Robert do not worry

No need to worry

I had my life”

 

God bless him. 

May I live forever.

 

WISHES

 

I wish an American University

A seat of scholastic learning

Would ask me to keep

Every scrap of paper

That I ever make

Notes on.

 

My computer would have a fit

It would need a new disk

It would find a new programme

For storing the paper

 

Then, at the end of each month

I would periodically expel my paper

Swiftair delivery to the United States

Where literary virgins

Would assemble and dissemble

My scrawling tampons

 

They would pay me

Large sums (I would modesty note them

See collector of taxes money thus gained

Is so awfully easy

To declare for the tax)

 

I would modestly make speeches

Make speeches humbly

At Mrs Foyles’ luncheons

About the behaviour

Of those American dons.

Curious people, those American dons.

 

Me from where the air is dusty with stale cheese

Stealing a mouthful

There the rinds of bacon gather flies in the boxes

Where flat chested women

With glasses

Pass for the beautiful girls of the beach

 

Me from whom the keys have been hidden

Would be proud to assume

Mantle of fame

For the string vest of destiny

Bought for a bargain

Bought for a bargain

When I was young.

 

 

CASTLE

 

There are but two

sisters sitting

One higher one lower one not at all

Two little dears ageing but painted

One is mine and the other is there.

 

If a leaning tower leans on a tower

And battles never fought echo round

Peace places, deathly faces, subtle rides and curious races

Here and there and now.

 

Here the Lord

Of Castle Town

Out of his armour

Dug a pit

Clay sides

With steep walls

Baked ovens

Well cooked on special

Bricks laid

on fire

Build it high.

 

Can a building be a poem?

Can a Castle be a home?

 

 

CUSTOM

 

Stormy and the heat arises, rain washed gutters

Now dry and parched, the city lawns and arid rose bush

Peeps out, startled bare and stark

 

These are the times we feared

Made in the times of madness

These are the moments when the taxman collects

For the madness

 

Simply and she tangled inside as they questioned

She drank too much; the city slaked her thirst.

I advise: slowly, or the men will get you

 

These are the times we feared

Born out of times of madness

These are the moments when they all line up

To collect for the madness

 

And I left her there, weeping as she caught her train home.

The dusty station was enough, I could not face her platform

I did not take her to her platform

The feeling was enough

 

These are the partings I feared

A long journey is always too much

She must travel; the fare is paid in madness

Times ago.

 

I COULD DIE TONIGHT 25^TH OCTOBER 1976

 

I would see lions in my death walking

Across my corpse, slowly watching it decompose

I must not think of these things

I compose myself and look at the flies in the glass

Cold glass warm sun and across Africa

 

Would you ask me if I can decide

To revise and advise?

Will you ask of me

When I die?

 

Seeing my body

Surrendering

Into the circle and across the cool wide plain

Where Africa sits behind me

And I rot in the bowels of the Earth

 

One day I shall plant my seed inside the air of the sky

Instead of the bowels of the earth

 

Can we see each other you and I

As we walk across the sky. Like a patient girl

Spreading amok across a centrefold

Looking nearly young, flapping old

If you look at her with a medical lens

You can see her kidneys, dripping urine

Into the wine glass labia.

 

PLEASE

 

Please play to me I am in need of you all

Can feel for me and my plucked heart

Finds your picking sympathetic

And less. And less.  Can you either find me

Or either lose my independent plasma.

Do you want me poor, fallen or not at all?

 

Let it not be not at all

Let it not be never at all

Let it not be at all at all

 

Please talk to me. I an in need of soft talk

And would hear your voice in my throat telling

Such things as may never be heard by your ears

Do you love me as I am or as I will not become?

 

Let it be as I will not become

Let it be as I will not become at all

Let it be

 

Wave you flag or your spear but disappear

I have felt enough for now and will

Feel later, but never with you.

 

WAYS OF THE EARTH

 

Mine is a very special world

That hurts each footstep with a pain

And laughing at the wonder life

Can only kill each birth again

 

Mine is a very separate life

Of spiral pity and the thrust

Could generate despair of truth

And tell my world so very much

 

Mine is a very ill filled hour

That fought with pain until it cried

And with the miss and peace of grace

Multiplied until it died

 

THE SEED

 

Dandelions scatter seed

Into the wind to wrest with nature

And chance the spinning of the earth

A night’s movement may prove less than truth

 

I am no flower

I am no fighter

I am no lover

 

When she brings me the temple’s water’s

And tells me rest pursuit

Laughs my weapons, hides my armour,

And lets me speak the truth

 

Then I will carry

I will be the sun

And subdue quietly

 

In harmony we’ll kiss the sunrise

Together we will touch the wind

I’ll love the apple, open window

And breath her body as she lets me in.

 

 

FOR DYLAN: MAGIC

 

To begin where you ended

(Why Dylan Thomas, were you pulled

From your dream to a neon light scene?)

It is still winter and a lump

Of sun may make you in Reasonland

Forget cold fingers that snapped in February

Till you remembered

Your nearly final line

An invisible cripple man

Whose crutch you stole thus teaching him to walk

Unnoticed.

 

 

POST SCRIPT

 

The wings of a membrane

Obvious oblivion

Brings travelling doors home

Stayed prison.

 

Butterfly blessings

Lessens barred walls

Long is nearly the same as tall

 

With my finger or any membrane

I will stop the sun at noon.

 

But my sleeping books lie on the shelf,

Say, can a man condemn himself?

Can a woman bleed each moon?

Can then beating wings find home?

 

 

SQUARES

 

I have hunted the greatest number permitted me,

Consolidated what I have seen in my spleen

Perhaps the gesture

Is a little belated

 

Can Edward the King

Rule the realm much longer?

A wiser man than you

But one who never went to school

 

I passed a policeman in the street

I smile at everyone I meet

 

Judge Rudi Kipper wrote another tale

I spluttered when I read it

And my laughter fell down a drain in the street

(I smile at everyone I meet)

 

MUSIC OF THE PARTS

 

Eyelids pull at the sockets

The face is older than tomorrow in tears

It drags in the morning rain and never

Lifeless future

Pink of tears

 

The blue smoke has disappeared

Quiet while your mind is falling from your head

The body frozen quick fingers

Never moved

Now are dead

 

Must feel those colours

Ah, they swim so deep in the lead

And the meaning you thought so little

Often starved

Now is fed.

 

 

THE LAST SONG

 

Soft eyes show a heavy face

Scarlet in the evening

Grieving tomorrow’s pain

We must sometimes forget today

 

For all the human race

Deafened by our speaking

Needing forgiveness from the rain

I give you time to play

 

This must be the place

Doing all my breathing

If I kill it will I feel the same

By knowing what to say?

 

 

MAGGIE

 

I slept with Maggie the other night.

Dear sweet Maggie.              

Have known you so long. 

Is it really nine years, it must be nine years. 

You would not have looked at me then. 

Gangly I was, gawpy stupidly bespectacled. 

I was rough house to be looked at with a side ways glance.

 

 now she sleeps with me,

calls me Dear Robert and cuddles close and hard

wants to

on body

on a body

in heat

and does so. 

 

She and her family

(for I have also slept with her sister)

Give off the same antiseptic aroma. 

I enjoy that now

And her tiny but smaller and firmer than tennis ball breasts.

 

Yes Maggie and the way to play with you

The way I did that night would have been

Unthinkable not so long ago. 

And yet I saw the sight I saw the glances

The way you looked at me the little things you said.

 

I remembered how jealous Nicki became when we met and how she

Pretended to like you-

Strange how strange

I trusted to instinct, and failed you so completely.

Dear Maggie

Dearest dearest dear.

 

LAST WEEK

 

You were not in the school clock

Nor the coffee bar, nor night in winter

Yet I thought I saw you in those places

I thought I saw you there.

Look you are not in the sky.

 

Library lecturing, drunk Friday

Before you I spewed then to love

You are sleeplessness fighting

I was drunk on Friday.

Look you are not in the sky.

 

Inviting thighs, scant clad welcome

Sad because you thought you a giving

But I was a stealing

Except nothing of value, I should have grabbed

What you gave.  Look I am not in the sky.

 

FIREFLIES

 

Fireflies

Jumping upon the bumpy June Road

Just fireflies

Shouting and jousting their way in the night

See them fireflies

Meeting and greeting and eating and drinking

 

The June Road forks, one to July, one to Camelot

One hotter and harder, one young and dew ridden

Watch them fun

In their indecision

Shall we move towards to death of November

Or dance to Merlin’s Art?

 

Fireflies rumping plumping gadzooks hunting

Fireflies wasting away

And the Magician weaves his path

To December death: Camelot is shut

It’s just a short cut.

 

OLD MEXICO

 

The canyons and the hamlets

The scrublands and the desert

Hot and dry and dusty

On the Southbound stagecoach

 

The Churches and the cactus

The heroes and the cattle

Companions tell the stories

Of phantoms of Old Mexico

 

Starwheels and the water

The Padre and the dieing

The strongbox and the peasants

And you have lost your journey

You are frightened in Old Mexico

 

 

DEATH IS AN ANCIENT TYRANT

 

Winter came slowly to my poor Queen’s face

Pitting her skin, crumpling bones

Alas she can no more stooping with decadance

 

Take her away my poor Queen, take her to where

Death dances

 

When she has gone

Hide me in your overcoat

Hide him in your overcoat

Hide him his skin is smooth

Hide him and see how

He is as we saw him

Growing

Inside your coat.

 

Winter has hidden her (inside the coat)

No-one can find her (inside the coat).

 

I wish I was the fragment of a lover’s quarrel

Or the air breathed out by all, all the patient people.

 

My dead Queen had lines on her faces

Bell on her toes

She shall have lines to greet her in hell

 

In winter by the ancient lake

Death dropped his coat and danced

Death lost his coat to find

We were dancing; death is blind.

 

 

SUMMERDANCE

 

Gazing at you

(Eating your lunch and showing your proud nest

And) looking up at me

I saw your eyes blush.

 

Together I danced for you,

O the dance that I learnt years ago.

I still know the steps and you, yes you know

You need not fear

For the meaning of feeling and

Being and loving and touching and dancing for you.

 

In the night we would have smoked once,

Each of us

But now

Walk talk move, set cross word puzzles

Playing and pushing your welcome

And dancing for me, as I applaud

I pine when we are a part of and at the same time.

 

Yes

I sent you roses you sent me toothpaste

yes

All the way across the ocean

Yes

Toothpaste and roses flying at eachother.

 

The nights (have we made it, did we get away?)

The afternoons (I face your tea)

The evenings (our skirmishing)

The mornings not enough mornings not nearly enough.

 

Together I danced for you,

O the dance that I learnt years ago.

I still know the steps and you, yes you know

You need not fear

For the meaning of feeling and

Being and loving and touching and dancing for you

 

My heart beats a little faster when I see you waiting for me

My skin pulls a little tighter when I smell you ready for me

I rub my fingers through your lovely hair

I drink deep of you, and inhale into my body holding you there

For once would have smoked.

O together I danced for you.

 

SHADOWS OF CLEVELAND

 

                        In the shadows of Cleveland

Where the sun never reaches no matter the season

I saw her bustling

Her eyes shiny

Hair streaked beauty

Surrounded by her fawning followers

Bathed in the sun

 

Here in the night time of summer

At the still silent doorway

I would have smoked once

Tossing my match at her

Watching the fire die before it hits the pavement

Long before the wood

Could ever touch her

Never again

 

She half dances into a taxi

Our number one winner

Our woman of love

And our lady of time

And our sweetness of summer

Our touching of laughter

Lost in my shadows

Together no longer

Remember together when we were one.

 

 

 

            LITTLE

 

                        A little bright lady

With flowers and rings

Who sits waiting for the very next thrill

Holding my hand in the mound of her hill

Where Venus once lived and the shell wave sat still

For hours it sings

My little bright lady

 

 

            Do you have to

            Bring me into your life?

            Do you want

            That is me so much

            Can you possibly feel comfort

            And can I manage you

            Do I deserve your support

            Do I again

            Have to care for someone?

            I am full of caring

            And sated turn

            To see what

            Summer brings…

 

 

            SUNNY SONNET

 

Meeting people on the street

Where safety changes struggles smile

The young wind blew away the clouds

And softly paused to wait a while

 

The people turn their heads away

For fear of dust blown into eyes

The summer coats can shelter them

Secure impregnable their lies

 

You floated high above the wind

Could never reach the highest towers

But only shake the blades of grass

And worry ill bred fragile flowers

 

And so the ever lasting pain

Greets weather wind and Noah’s rain

 

 

 

 

SUMMER DAYS

 

The warmest of summer’s days,

Sat on the backs of our shirts as we

Mourned for the falling leaves still holding

But soon to end their useless clutchings.

 

These times return to us

The seasons return 

 

And all these grand thoughts

Picture me as you see them

Imagine me as you feel them

 

These times return to us

The seasons return to them

 

I have dedicated my life to your comfort

Turn make sure you are happy

I have dedicated my life to your comfort

 

Autumn comes as sure as it came last year

Our Indian summer was an illusion

Never hot enough for scanty dress, not dry enough

 

It is hard to choose clothes for you

I have dedicated myself to your comfort.

 

For many years they warm things

With their fine possessions

Stood at the back of me

Orphaned now I await to stand at the back of them

 

It is hard to chew food for you

I have dedicated my life to your nourishment

 

These times return to us

To us

 

 

CONFUSED

 

What a mess

There is a softness between her legs I caress

And the fortune found in victory

I digress

From my love for her to my fears.

 

Such a mess

As she waltzed though the door in her dress

Dancing as I limped my sweetness

I confess

My fears for her love in tenderness.

 

The stable is too dirty

The river too far

And I am too weak

And I need to engage in some rest

 

All a mess

Torn between day and night more or less

Caught in mind to abandon ruthlessness

Hopelessness

Frightened love life relived in her nest

 

The sky is too far

The sun too strong

And I have no hat

And I am without her success.