I stand – alone – at an open gate –
I have missed midnight’s kisses –
then – me-the-fool – fleetingly lost
the worked-at vows which we set
on our half-recalled wedding day –
a ceremony thirteen years earlier
where we sliced up a countdown
to the last hour’s holding of hands –
with our slid rings on held fingers –
our bind to the old laws of the state –
silver and gold bands of such weight –
I stand alone as this New Year sings
Joe Gould’s swag bags of pearls
were only bags of bags of bags –
they were his carried-out emptiness
of the never-written writer’s words –
but he could speak seagull fluently –
having learnt the dockside language
of New York’s scavenging finest –
taking their shrill wind-scatterings –
setting them to his Cherokee stomps
His claim to have written such a vastness –
ten times longer than the Bible –
and then to carry around such a thing –
was this vagrant’s bagged possession
Look in on yourself
for thyself’s approof
be your own witness –
never seek such belief
from outside yourself –
from those’ll forbid us –
they break brittle vanities
by censuring certainty
This second life was ordained
by a drawn-out judgement –
an almost-expected epithet
for the quickened reductions
under my ever-thickening skin –
on dragged heels and hands –
Add Old Age’s uneven stockpile
of his enfeebling irritations
and so my time was reset –
And in this slowing restate
I cannot make any mistakes –
I cannot afford to fall heavily –
do not expect me to pick myself up
as quickly as the still-blessed do –
as I did before this epiphaneia
In a rather cruddy function space
above a time-stale pub in Brighton –
sat uneven – at beer-stained tables –
we sipping poets of no published note
fingered our place settings of paper
in folders – our kicked headstones –
Here Lies M.A. Bell – and other writers –
who died slow deaths of dull rejection
There is no air or space these days
for me – from the other side of poetry –
I quote verbatim Atilla the Stockbroker –
he put me in my place a long time ago
There I was – that fusty room’s rum alien –
in my coat – offering quatrains of fear
about warm croissants and disease
and Del La Warr and surrealism
I cannot get close to the slam-generation
with their pert feats of rhymed memory
nor reduce my voice to their flat intonation –
I cannot do their shopping list poetry
Bend to the paid work in hand
and watch your hours fall away
as if they are pearls spilt off string –
those drops off your tilted head
under the fast-running shower –
in the hour before you commute –
until those sped beads are nothing –
And do not ever – ever – attempt
to be a true artist unless squared –
unless you are recompensed
for the selfish hours given to art’s
endeavour – it was Van Gogh’s failing –
not putting money first
They’ve got a Dead Cupboard
in this Underground station –
hid from swilled passengers –
a Central route to Heaven
Behind those locked doors –
they hide the fresh body –
where the platform-removed
is stored temporarily
There the dropped dead
waits for the official –
to pronounce upon
this stiffened individual
The zipped-up fallen
is bagged – airtight –
he will not be required
to tap his ticket tonight
I will wake and fail to find my eased flux –
not without pushing up into discomfort
over breaths of ground-voice-as-grunts –
these announcements vex my tired wife
who needs sleep in my odd-roused hours
I sit upright – off the bed – to test myself
in the sweated night – I almost always assay
in the woken hours – contrasting the past –
adding to a never-published paper
about this ill-judged illness – it will devour
My recent history of being her own overman –
able to embrace all with gusto and gratitude –
has been powered down – pathetically cut –
too much for either of us to truly construe
We wake to a slow down – no more superman
Arrows still fly at Battle – spiritual ones ..
against Anglo-Saxon self-satisfaction* –
as if The Bengal Colonel had then leapt
from the stretched canvas into Ninfield –
and prowled around the village green
set to devour their war-won remains –
that pyrrhic victory over downed fascists
who were set by the Sussex gravediggers
Look inside its mouth to find meaning
said Grace – to anyone who would listen
to her – and Richard – and Reuben – they drew
from the post-war rationals against hate
and conjoured up creatures and shapes –
As if Terry Gilliam had sucked the oily teat
of these artists’ bared brushes of surreal
extractions –
as if colour and lines were not rationed
and all of Picasso’s art was lost to Bexhill
And I see Scarfe and Steadman in the ink
of cross-hatch – etched so hard it scratches
the paper into furrows of staining –
the future will be saved from the past by art
(*Reuben Mednikoff)
I am here – thick-and-mixed
among middle class minions
who eye up the croissants
in the De La Warr Pavilion –
they discuss in great depth
the state of the nation –
as they queue so politely
for the barista’s attention –
The winter light bounces
off the buffed bar surface
and my large mug of latte
warms me to their circus –
I leave via the shop –
where I eye the gift dirge –
my shifting behaviour
is verging on absurd –
Return me to boozers
with their beery truths –
avoid gentrification –
and all it consumes
Robert Richard Rollins –
I was born nineteen thirty-four –
struggled with the name –
El-dwabe
He worried out loud
that he’d forget
the surgeon’s
Egyptian-sounding name
As he was wheeled –
backwards for ease –
he again apologised
so profusely to the nurse
for his failure to recall
I forget names –
the consultant …
El-dwabe
He really did not know
for how much longer
he could hold on to her
and still be dishonest
He had walked far more
than he had drunk –
but still staggered
along the loose path
off which his love for her
dipped like a slunk ghost –
then she was there –
caught by a car’s high beam –
then she was inverted
like a shadow between trees –
as if his recall of her
had been politely dimmed
as if they were long-divorced
from each other –
that common vote for failure –
which is the wedded norm
Our Ikea-padded cells
should guard us from self-harm –
but instead they fuck with us
in cubes of coupled calm
Each of us fitfully sleeps
in our over-familiar beds –
we pick at our clipped wings
feathering empty nests
We rise to expected alarms –
our daily rude refrain –
to stumble without consciouness –
to queue for time-warped trains
In cattle trucks we stand and sway –
our iprods poke our eyes –
blinding us from seeing
the pastures passed outside
London Bridge – we rise to screams
as the wheels rub on the track –
we shuffle from the shouldered stalls –
spewed out – we can’t turn back
She is giving me lessons
in love without hate –
but my teacher is failing me
for my schoolboy mistakes
The morning was fractured –
my compass wouldn’t twist –
I failed to find answers
and she would not assist
My notebook is ink-stained –
I scribe off my left –
I crib her taught words
but I always forget
The air is mite-lighted
as I pull from her mind –
this classroom is silent
as my learning unwinds
I sought the purport
of a four-letter word
after coming across it
in a loan long-expired
I looked to definition
in its Wikipedia entries
of disambiguations
in need of citations
But do not believe
everything with labels
not even a short story
of four vocables
Love is an impact crater
on the far side of the moon
Love was a film
starring Salman Khan
What dya expect
from drunken kisses?
I touchd er black nylons
er sweatshop stitches –
Er ringd fingas fumbld
as er wet lips partd –
I gropped er net-arse
my rub o stiff chances –
but er give were short
in my piss-poor grip –
she paintd me shirt
as she threw up er drink
‘ ..We know nothing of man .. far too little..’ CG Jung
It is over two decades since we last spoke –
you offered no responses – not when I ‘phoned
or when I cheerily arrived at the family home
with – or without – a disquieted companion –
then I’d try to engage you in light conversation –
but that was your silent-met cue to exit the room
And our mother never gave me a full explanation –
except that – He goes upstairs and paints ..
pictures .. from his imagination .. It’s his escape ..
He doesn’t get out much .. nearly an old man – You –
a temporary loss in her thinning line of sons –
each boy sets her wondering – What went wrong?
I watched her fight her eldest – a patio-battering –
from behind the Crittall windows of my bedroom –
I saw her ill-faste fists set upon her eldest child
That is what she made – Us in her ugly likeness
of turned cheeks and of emotional tightness –
that son she striked – he died too early for her liking
And now – on the ‘phone – She is too ill to talk to you –
your first line in this garrulous time of your remove –
then a snapped order – not to try again – It upsets her!
You don’t speak to me for years then bark commands –
Do they count – along with your hardened demands
against my ragged ripostes at your loss of voice?
No – do not speak to me –
Please leave it twenty more
She turns to let the bird go –
as if it would leave
such half-robed beauty –
as if it would be robbed
of a close indulgence
like us cocksure things
and I can pick up the scent
from her underarm sweat
as she rotates – so as to let
the creature lift from her –
as she turns away
on her bare bone heels
Inspired by Michaela Ridgeway’s art @michaelasian
You lymphatic racists rupture
bursting forth a noxious poison
as you brandish your creased flags –
whilst you unfurl your ragged stupidity –
you slurred men – you such ungifted pigs –
you too-loud opinion-screamers
Reduce the yellow-vested sectarians –
and throw back their shite –
by pointing out politely that they are not right
E080119
I stand under this vault
of our common church –
off-centre on this sea-girt isle
Our stone tradition of roofing
is more to do with fools’ fires
than Heaven’s weight
Here the light is insipid –
no tang of incense
only the blue miasma
off flume emissions
My legs tire – but find no pew –
no tuffet to take me
to the path’s cathartic
kneel-down call
