10,000 POEMS – Posted freshly most days
Dredge memories
from shallow pools
of sucking currents
Why so much anger
at other coital acts?
Re-open a wound –
count those bloody
cuts [a slice-tongue-
festival-of-falsifying]
There – dancing on
tables was allowed –
disperse our service
equally set out [seat
plans unwanted]/ It
no longer nourishes
Another day without doors
[or chats-over-pints] – wait!
No last-minute unexpected
visitors – we creep from our
shelters of friendless rooms
[as neighbours mutter ‘bout
recycling indiscretions]/ We
will not meet [no coffee this
week because no one dares
to cross locked thresholds]/
Do you recall easier weeks?
& one day there’ll be normal
We will cut back – to avoid a
second certain drag on time
as time becomes a burden –
we’ll not lose it in lockdown/
We will then rue
how much time
we dead-stared
at gripping light
at bright scrolls
& herded bleats
on social media
[how much time
we gave blind to
urges of friends –
apes never met]
Our trivial troop
isn’t pukka fidus
Achates/ Delete
is not an option/
Dead friend lists
will haunt us all –
we will get old &
never know who
is truly breathing
They’ll always revert to size-of-cock
[& what-they-would-do-if-this-that]
as alcohol’s numbing repeats such –
this week’s cache of ex-wife cracks
& tall stories – from short-changed
men – they don’t hear anything – in
pubs they bawl out said-soliloquies
on deaf ears [‘cause no one listens]
except for offers of one more? [But
even then they are still dismissing]
They’ll wake to habitual headaches
It rattles – as if a thousand
thousand bottles of drugs
are shaken [to reprove my
lacklustre skills in ticking a
prescription off – as thuds]
50 gram tablets – for God’s
addiction to sorrow-hits &
we wonder why July’s now
a monsoon season/ British
summertime’s hiss of burnt
offerings on wet barbecues
confirm it/ Global warming
& other seasonal shifts piss
down [inhale rich stenches
of methane’s quick release
& other disasters below us]
Two hundred yards away
a teenager tries to stand
upright on a rolling bale/
My right-hand dares on
your inner thigh – you are
loosened straw alongside
me – a fat man in running
attire walks past [sex pest
threats are laughed off] – I
want to [but we have only
just met]/ Tinder dates for
ill-coupled counsels haste
& only my imagination has
you naked & rolled tight – I
put my thoughts into you/
He removed unto Alexandria
[aged about seven-ish x ten]
He listed each given name &
address of every sold-soul in
that city – hiring his hours as
a tool man & paid out to one
woman his earned-at gains
each day thus fixing dignities
He’d set her worth in being a
woman/ She did not deserve
to be used by men as lusted –
that lowly art then condoned
by her Church in her foul city
They gave up old professions
to live as women without ills
& Vitalis was killed by a fool/
It is raining –
& my tipped
up skylights
lean mottled
[2 set skies
framed unto
larger views]
Spat rain falls
through gaps
left by tilts &
remind me of
those outside
discomforts/
As our dog digs
I am returned to
cold earth – mud
turning [fifty-odd
years earlier] – to
small diggings &
huge schemes to
burrow – deep to
Australia/ All was
possible by hand
as I dug – aged 8
not knowing nots
I will move to Barbados
& sip cold beers as light
winds tease me to sleep
in my hammock [as my
belly slops loudly – as if
drowning at sea’s leaks &
pumps do work] – not me
in a spin about breaks &
things – I will move there
soon & recite my poems
[as others voice elisions]
Being male – white – southern
& sounding as if my schooling
cost – & you assume a degree
& connections eased my ways
through life/ So tell me it – that
my life is made easy [& tell me
how to do well – with a disease
& no work] or refrain from such
Over 99.9999 per cent of what
I was ever taught has slipped
from me/ I have been re-filling
gaps since my school classes
[writing groups do NOT count]
State schools did us all in with
their pettiness of endless lines
[we were paraded as if troops –
taught to never try to advance
by war-served suited teachers]
Groovy bearded Sirs [caught in
London’s petri dish of suburbs
& sick of war in Vietnam] took
no prisoners – they were equal
in their rigidity – we all become
members of an old guard once
our guard falls off – they taught
us enough – I still keep to rules
but cannot recall trigonometry/
A shock we don’t like teachers?
They claim Harry Blezzard [Skip’s
age & twice ‘is height] would carry
Skip from school – then later Miss
Winstanley’s Dance Troupe threw
him high onto piggybacks as they
toured an island/ Skip was raised
four foot two inches at his tallest
[stuck after his eleventh birthday]
so – it would take less barbiturates
& alcohol to schlep Skip off to his
last place [lay him cold in a lower
drawer – no cot at Spout Houses]
There is nothing missing in her life now –
no racists at family lunches & snobbery
about whose house is best [& no Brexit-
justifiers with their Mail on Sunday wide
open with its offers aimed at dull bigots]
& kids who are not allowed to be extant –
snapped at/ No simmering [fugly] anger
[thick as brown soup] – stirred by Farage
as he sups on another pint of mistruth/ It
won’t be regretted [there’s plenty of fish
to catch – ‘Cos fishin’ rights matter now!]
Hold briefly your peace [she tells herself]
No more driving off with carsick feelings
[as her kids deride a xenophobic relative
with laughs] Those days are not missed/
Mercury dimes in fools’ silver
to weigh my ghosts down [so
I’ll not rise – & other dangers]
Lost Phrygian caps doffed [no
sex – kicked-in manhoods] I’m
manumitted by Liberty’s kiss
Marianne spoke about such –
& then Paris turned on itself &
saw disgust – at failed royalty –
whilst on my eyelids lay twins
in metal shrines bearing dead
models – a poet’s wife? – Elsie
posed for Weinman – turning/
Liberty won’t release me from
my resting place – no last toss
of shiny coins to decide on my
fate beyond all – la petite mort
& other foolish points of death
settle among equal cold casts
of her coins & my cadaver/ I’ll
remain dead [& blind forever]
I recognised her natural shape
[we’d been mirror images – for
years – until births & deaths of
yarns stretched us into others’
arms] Vallotton trapped her at
posed abandonment – we had
equal biteable nipples – we lay
on a yellow spread & she read
my published verse aloud [pas
en français]/ Felix aroused red
details – layers of dabs [raising
eyebrows with its exhibition]/
I slipped off – his retouching of
her didn’t matter [we don’t see
derogation in a blown mirror]
Left off-shore by previous tides
& adrift behind a mask of cliffs –
redoubtable & other labels – as
if different [as if our differences
are good]/ Scuzzy pissed tribes
trip over bitter-sweet cocktails –
a mix – cruel shyness & loathly
arrogance gather outside pubs –
knocked back three – then off to
our match – foul origins boil &
spill across crowded pavements
as fists find their answers with a
night’s sweated dizziness & piss
dries quick on wooden benches/
By daybreak there is no hope or
glory on our lorded landing strip
[we were all sold short by Brexit]
You were off your face – once –
in our past decade
whilst colleagues got blindly laid
on cocaine & lust’s
attractions [just once a month]
One admix [of drugs & booze]
numbed your pain –
but what was their excuse?
*tumbleweed-quiet*
We’ll roll in truth’s disquietude
So pause – reflect [no bent-to
powdered mirrors]
upon statistics & cold facts
thrown up by time’s
tergiversation of truth’s routes
Let’s check all re-drafted notes
of scrawls & jots –
after-the-event not much lies
undisturbed – they
will bide – only teetotallers know
We aren’t rational creatures –
[state school re-calibrated us]
We fire a complaint with thick
skin on trigger fingers [& I will
peel it – until raw-gnawed – as
if rat-chewed] I’ll squeeze that
primed lever via my lit device &
raise my white flag – a practice
unforgiven by rah-rah Etonians
with their ragged Union guidon
I know a cruel psychopath – all
of us have at least one nearby/
But narcissistic people kill too –
small memorials mark each fall
where they pull & breath – out –
& aim direct from a firearm/ We
are walking targets – bull’s-eyes
slapped on our backs by lovers
& haters [as they measure out a
range they know is in their skill-
set]/ They have a gun club – rifle
handling is taught from birth – &
other stuff for assassin-love/ Lie
on your face – as blood-spatters –
descry a grave-deep hiding place
My youngest has my eye
[& my eldest too]/ Colour
& tightened perspectives
meet me in their artistry/
My father noted in upper
case – he would circle ink
to Da Vinci rounds & he’d
not convert canvases – or
pages – to colouring – his
was by naval architecture
[no hue] – I shaded – as if
there were no greys [I will
teach our middle child to
cross-hatch – revenants –
so inheritances lie intact]
His Truman-esque Show stretches to Peacehaven
in his hoax East Sussex
Here he sucks on sea air tasting far away origins –
but no sandy footprints –
shores are shingle-thick & slope down to meet a
cold dip of toes – no sun
from falling lamps/ Paint your backdrops in green –
your long tales are fakes
& Zoom will not save any alliance built on groping/
A blind fool counts waves
as they break [over bared flesh on beaches] He’ll sit
& count for a seventh curl
but love will not deliver an easy refrain – a gale blows
away his lust-pulled attire
as he stands & sighs – he is offered no focus pull to
ease him from this scene
It begins – with an appetite [he said]
to discover my self-respect [ah yes]
to redeem the day/ So the day does
not go down in debt [he had said as
he looked around his Tower of Song
& in his fridge was a cold notebook
of unfinished choruses about you]/
I’d sport a suit [& a fedora] if I wore
his tongue & slim hips & weightless
thoughts [it helps having his height]
& I slip from fancy dress too easily]
Undressed lyrics [stripped back] to
fool’s gold will not pay answers out
to a chanteuse or torch song singer
bought into meanings/ Our words’ll
re-lace our bindings [if left unsung]/
With a tune to fix to all is now loose
& unproven in time’s beat of songs
as our tossed coin feeds a busker/
It begins with finding dignity [I said]
with my therapists
We have been through it all
[digging for indiscretions]/ I
have teased no rhymes [nor
mis-scans by distances-set]
Sit with me on a wider seat
[for public use] & no longer
select Avoid Publicity – now
truths will reprise from my
flash of text or verse or odd
words – read from me word-
play sent nowhere – thrown
up – vomited from therapy’s
despair – she said they need
it too – talking in circles – an
honest plunder of old spites
[maliciousness – it happens]
There – see sagged boxes sat
[on tables & bogs] tugged to
offer another thin tissue – to
wipe our cheeks – or faeces
Sorrows floats [as Mr Irving
wrote] & keep passing open
windows – greatest advice is
left – by our greatest writer/
My therapist worked from a
dull room in Sussex – whiffs
of grandad’s bookish house
& post-war disgrace – Poetry
books on shelves waiting to
expose their off-loadings or
be left untouched – trinkets/
Tissues were tugged – again
Your soul so toils – your own/
You dragon – you Ouroboros
[loud swallows of lost motifs
took your crown] – old Osiris
joined your roundings to ‘O’/
How your omphalos tore off
[you shouted oxygen’s howl]
Born so cold to our mother’s
spoken tongues [of shouting
of scoldings – of sour notes –
of louder bonds [to control]/
Pour out – more complaints –
to poison others [no women]
Our cool childhood took you
off to crowds for other love –
smothered you – for too long
below someone to love [who
blows you off to destruction
to reprove – to misdirection]
Who sows hope out of love?
You roll your O icon – to loop
to open – to swallow – whole
dragon stories – for Gnostics/
Uncoil your yonic metaphors?
He bought a paste jewel
in order to undo her bra –
[& she said it as b-rawwt –
it was sweetheart time to
bare her thickish-charms]
He sighed & so fathomed
her submissive way as he
said this hotel is my home
[some rooms held his lies
limply on hangers – songs
pressed by sweat] All was
fixed stiff in starch [& by a
blue pill two hours ahead
to keep Leonard hard as a
chook-frying man on heat]
Cut to another scene – his
hand holds an Amex card
& he pauses – a long beat/
Credits roll/ Skip an option
& she selects OK [yes I do]
She will have words written
by Mr Cohen – verse into a
song – but not a Marianne –
such composition is a once-
in-a-lifetime [out of his love]
A fox replaced my dog
[momentarily] below a
hood of low brambles/
I took that uneven path
around my youngest’s
school to avoid fools &
cars – a quiet dog walk
but underlined – now –
by that beaked snout –
slouch of red pelt near
to Scout’s colour – spit
of white tips too/ Low &
mean in her halt as she
looked me up & down –
a bitch – I know vixens
I’ve found my second home
due west above Erriff’s coils
[north o’ Galway’s gut] – you
take a road over Glennacally
Bridge & find it up a sloping
track of cinder & stones – I’ll
not be lost with my hearth &
songs in poems – possibly by
poor connection – no WIFI in
Niflheim/ My days will drip &
drip with rains & mist sent on
from an Atlantic hater of men
& women – sideways delivery
of precipitation – there will be
no lurking from God’s tests &
no obligations to remain sane
in hell – County Mayo’s belly –
that wet underside – by Erriff
& her casts of salmon stories
[for me to reel]/ I’ll rewrite it
Another one for Mike Bell I don’t have time to wait till inspiration strikes me with its electrified fingertip the frescoed hand of God reaching down …
A Reminder
F Scott Fitzgerald led ‘em
off to jazz-bled hours & a
club to sip on his dream –
cocktails’ll cling for hours
Never run up a bill at your
local jewellery store – was
advice Frank handed out –
fools feed at tables laid by
men [he spoke his prizes]
Cole Porter undid songs –
meeting in words – Kate’s
kiss did him in/ Never slip
a carat-fat brooch as love
or lust’s oiling – Frank said
& don’t work to an openin’
of thighs [not without first
gauging your cost of gold]
& your old trading position
Kitchener fingered it then instructed
his queen’s crown to be engraved/ By
his weak hand he couldn’t beat out a
sound/ Khartoum was taken [a canal
war]/ A slit drum – lootings [his spoil
& stolen – again – a theft once before]
It had been re-marked – reset by Arab
tools on its African coralwood flanks –
it’ll hold off termites – that’s all/ Hit it
hard – strike at plane of timber tunes
but it stands mute in a quiet museum
I know every bench in Uckfield
& its rigid offerings [too honest
in framing my sittings] but I’m
a blank study to sell as they put
latest prices on my head [Hey!
Have you heard? & other bets –
He is colour-by-numbers – He is
dot-to-dot – He is easily tricked
& Sudoku-fooled]/ Cruel prices
re-layer – homemade-caked – a
thick piling-up [of sharp psycho
stuff] – brown sugar [sweet-ish]
Do not pay for any hand-made
bakes – unwrapped & delicate –
until tasted – in each bite took –
wait – wait – for poison’s hooks
[I’m on every bench in Uckfield
& await one cook’s cut by knife]
Chefs in white smocks gather to
carry off starters/ Chef – yes – &
Yes Chef – too many – they spoil
stuff/ Three is a crowd – soured/
Throw brown sugar to quell – to
sweeten & stiffen resting places
where varnish is treacled across
giving timbers – my bench – here
I’ll sit – on sugar-wood [screwed
& washered to aid my recovery]
They rape ancient woodlands – a
seat is axed & my ill-rest is stolen
Where my stick is angled to prop
[& not fall] – for studies I have sat
to watch birds walk [a bare cook
at work – that rook with her gloss
of feathers] – our greedy gatherer
of sugared ingredients at my feet
& still we cannot speak of truths –
as if my self-portrait is too untrue
between my charcoal sweeps – in
each digging-at I spoke of snaps –
break of burnt stuff [of cooked art
& too much time given to studies]
All this is mine [my view – my type
of words – my phrase-pots]/ Don’t
[do not] try to know my hauls/ You
thick-set fools who’ll look too hard
for gold in barren seams/ Sit back
& wait – wait for fuller explanation
of meaning [of verse]/ Word-soup
is one view/ I will watch cars piss
up Brown’s Lane – speeding – fast
to homes – quick to conflict/ Here
remembrance for long-gone-dead
& others rested on empty benches
Stale air sits above river routes
without winds to move or shift
enough to aid sight of lay lines
in Sussex/ Spires look towards
burial mounds/ We stride blind
along Stane Street without any
guide book toward Chichester
Cathedral – not mistook for old
Winchester’s up-turned ship of
God – paced out as if dod men
at work/ Plague stones mark a
previous crisis [met on ancient
markings worn flat by weather]
Lewes rots over Brack Mount –
where graves were piled – as a
hill to climb – our dead deform
to skeletal ladders – here there
is an electrified lay line running
down from London [DFL curse]
We roll in an encyclopaedia of grasses –
flicked by a wind/ Your off-white blouse
is ripped open to burns [but not a hand
or eye] – enough has been imbibed – by
both of us – we filled before we left for a
walk over Firle/ No social distancing – or
other protective measures were taken in
our day’s exploration/ Idiots toss reams
of litter – they strew word of McDonalds
across a seen-it-all tumuli/ I bend – help
you up/ My eyes ache from map reading
& staring at you/ We revert to hill walking
See those emptied fish on
their brine-washed blocks
sitting gutted – white flesh
worth cashing in – net sale
captures – now is my quiet
time of gasps – in my slow
drowning [in bracing air] &
gulls will stab over insides
& guts picked from foams
in this trawler’s wake/ Eye
me up once my blood has
been rinsed & returned for
a final sea-watering down/
Quick wing-dipping-on by
plummets & calls in flight/
This is our hauled removal
as we tip into ice-packings
among others equally split/
Slit of knife sang a’sweetly
among rough sea shanties
Loneliness is not tolerable
for any family man loosed
from spokes & tensions to
limp [forlorn] along uneven
roads/ Laws of motion will
be left unread [if nothing is
left opened]/ Seizures fill a
vacuum & clotted love will
stick between sore valves/
Care – a four-lettered word
blunts by anger’s revenge/
Asks for consciousness of
locked rooms – lost if keys
aren’t slid into blind doors
[& turn! – unfasten a lonely
soul bent under by reverb]
I have stiffened – sat alone
& so unaware/ Shut down
[I’ll ignore egotistical calls
left gelid in my empty hall]
A quart of my conscious day
is online [not with nudes but
a plethora of word] – @ news
& searches/ I probe & review
dubious sources [there is no
one real book with adequate
indexing]/I sniff that whiff of
algorithms [as my CPU hums]
Time won’t cure –
& crows’ll snatch
every left stem in
plots’ jimpy pots –
they pick at them
to agape at slugs
[feasts of flesh &
fresh snails stuck
by stabs of beaks
upon frail shells]/
Another knocked
vase of blossoms
mark a crow’s dig
at cemetery dead
This locked-in-ness takes
getting used to [it has to]
My excess remote talents
feed on lurking/ I forlese
& let a stream of services
play – endless loops keep
me low [it’s easy to fall in
line if lines of drugs don’t
do it] I cry at Episode 4 of
Normal People & I Google
Kanagawa’s waves & miss
a plot twist as they buss –
a-page-a-minute storyline
[until my remote is aimed
& isolation re-established]
I cannot move on
again – upheavals
of beds & boxes –
there’s part of me
unable to operate
& so I will give in –
soon/ Persistence
is my word but no
good will come of
it/ This is where I
admit my failings
& refute my verse
[my broken world]
Walls of Death ask to
be peered at [leant in
over shoddy welding]
until a howl of breath
then provokes a spin
into a swirl of vertigo
So sleep – sleep alone
[shoot-em-up carnival
clamours don’t count]
In Super 8 minutes of
thrill-rides roll her tale
[fat men turned on by
her lickerish quartets
& spools flicked upon
her jerked-off screen]
Ride & orbit her hoops
painted red & 360-odd
tyre-rattled pine planks
Your fitted door shuts
too tight – no rider will
get out of there [alive]
St Margaret rode on a
Yamaha motorbike – a
2-stroke affair of 49cc
No one dares mention
Acapulco [not drugs or
death of La Quebrada]
You won’t have vitamins
[but you’ll always eat up
fantasy in script & lines]
& motorcycles will idle –
as that next show is set
to rewrite poetic rhyme
Some’ll bait [little empathy –
spit indifferently & she did]/
I want to bed down [now] in
these woods & never get up
[but I fear my dog would not
sit still for long enough] – no
outdoor decomposition – rot
not yet – no decay in peace?
No choice? Please – a minute
spent between bared roots –
let me lie wet & cold – shake
to exposure’s severe hold [&
then dream of dew & no lies
to face] Her kiss dries on her
mother’s forked tongue – old
tarts pet under full moons &
blow sour breath – both ends
stink of decaying meat/ We’ll
return to addled quiet spots –
once affiances are corrupted
& there unearth a low place –
this hollow is ample for me –
don’t put down my loud dog
Me & David Bowie had
our souls bruised – hit
by danseuse – I will not
trust any dancers/ We
carried them for years
inside our ways – his a
Norway refugee [mine
a German]/ We will be
fixed to loss [but Davy
Jones has beaten me
to death’s last post – a
head start – lucky him]
Your bed whiffs of miserable sex
[& urine’s drip-drip]/ I’ll shove you
away once your ill Queen is dead/
I am sailing to Sealand where our
border is an irregular confusion –
[there they don’t crave our House
of Windsor – Edward has no work
but earns nicely – lucky him]/ This
country stinks of supremacist talk
from unapologetic men & women/
Superior sneers are easy masks &
filter their words/ Dame V is dead
& white cliffs fall [with our weight
of greed] – bluebirds do not live on
these islands of myths & sung lies
I seized a meditation
[online] to expedite –
to heal my loth scars
[records bubbled by
her acidic deceit – all
that she still exhales]
& now faded by rubs
of a sweeter air – as I
inhale a lung-of-song
& sing out it worked!
Cloudy cordial – it was too soot
for my tongue – inbred-sweet &
all sugar-buzz – Grandma’s own
& she is an amazing woman [no
proof given] None ‘fess that she
should add in a splash of bitter-
truths/ I’d tie her up – then off to
a rest home near Kent [she was
born from French blood – Boton –
& would feel at ease in sight of
Calais] Aye – Grandma – fuck off
A red heart beats in my tall bin
it trots out subtle thud-a-thuds
[no one will die tonight]/ It is a
struggle to talk about ‘how I’m
doing‘ – I attend a playground-
bait of held-back & brave boys
don’t cry – hold it off – greeted
endings won’t happen – as that
[round battery] raps descants/
I had plucked it from my pup’s
toy & left it to wither [& expire]
Honestly? I do struggle – no church –
a lost belief in passion [no worship]/
It’ll not be a surprise that my dignity
has been vilified by her kicks [wager
now her nakedess]/ It’ll be no shock/
You can eye her up [online-profiting] –
see magic wand work – available for
Men aged 31 – 60 – & she says she’s a
sane, sexy bundle of fun… looking for
someone to enjoy the good things of
life [sic] [whatever implied]/ & – I’m
no … bimbo but can be quite naughty
We drop to bate by our barter of sex
& faith [love has been loosened by it]
& nothing is left [nothing but adverts
for sucks in hotel suites – arranged to
suit]/ So do not reply – no pickup – of
her calls – her prices are set for fools –
& other men – tread carefully – all that
comes online comes with packaging
& fingers that unwrap [only diamonds
as offerings] – more arrangements for
men seeking such brass offers – see I
tire of all that glistens – let me rest in
my bed & delete my last two decades
Here is paralysim’s circus show –
of trotting saddle-stiff gits – let’s
sit & peer [but not forget our FB
friends] – here – whipping riders
above us – lofty rein-pullers/ No –
it matters [their tongues strip at-
&-lash as loose as far-right thugs]
Our Elizabeth R rides through her
grounds – us plebs place Her M on
Instagram [#Queen] – Please post
& share HM on your timeline – it is
a recall of an Empire’s crush of life
A pitiful man tips into dead water
but doesn’t drown – iron men will
dross [some ore will bleed to red]
Rubicund stains are inequal over
every cast tyrant/ Please – do not
erect a bronze of her racist Philip
Lonely days take their toll
on my bloody places – my
loose change of thoughts
line my pockets [as if one
needs such coinage] Just
a few steps down & under
running water to drown in
poetry’s instant outvoice –
I know it – I am not healed
[cicatrice marks upon me –
a gnawed stroke on it all]
& with one leap I am over
that boundary she scents
[in squatted out-pourings]
& this old disability sops/
There were times it was a
perfect thing – timetables
& tickets were followed to
[shared] clocks’ advances
& trains ran – not derailed –
or late or slow or shunted
by other men/ As long as I
said nothing/ I will need a
lover when your disease is
keeping you to a bed [with
rancours she reduced me]
There’s a thuggery
in our cheap blood
[it binds in days of
sluggishness]/ We
clamoured hard in
playground years/
Grown men – beer-
barrel thick – throw
old taunts & inked
fists/ Nazi salutes
poked in Winston’s
shadow show their
hand/ These days –
these days of fear –
are torn [as binary
parts] – barriers set
& hoardings placed
for pathetic battles
[whilst Elizabeth &
Phillip grace a tent
& face toy soldiers]
Her selfishness has resonances –
[do not let ’em wound any more
in jumped recalls] – let me see all
her schemes obliterated – move –
move on – let me fall in love & not
fear [again] a lover’s beat of word
games – let me not flinch & whirl –
my affray of her tongue-whipping
stays [a scar] she’ll squeeze at my
wound to peel me away/ I am her
bank that wouldn’t expend a vast
settlement [Mediator] please take
into account what a judge will pay
so that Mike can live securely with
his illness – & let me sleep when it
demands – when sleep calls – this
is not a needless retreat/ Now I’ll
cover my ears in her presence/ A
whip will unwind if bodies are not
offered – my headphones stay her
tongue’s turn to list her injustices
& distance is [now] such pleasure
We sit immune
to 20,000 dead
it would seem –
20,000 less & no
regrets/ We can
be led off a cliff
[science says] –
new routes via
guidance given
& follow advice
& clean [twice]
both hands with
puffs & flourish
[with picks from
God Save HMQ
or Fuck U Boris]
Openly-racist Grandma B’
unfolds a [crisp] Daily Mail
& mutters ’bout Foreigners
invading [no family correct
her] & lip-held Grandpa B’
minds his P‘s [deems] Well
it won’t take much to upset
my old wifey – better agree!
She crows [weak] squawks
in her kitchen As for those
bloody coloured protesters!
Her spittle-phrases scatter
off her tongue – until scorn
is her dull song/ Nephew J
said She was so lewd years
earlier [he fooled with her
eldest – best keep hatred in
one’s family]/ Inbreds you
say? You may say – indeed
you may say that – indeed
there be racists [in Sussex]
who believe in their status
Do you recall that field
we found – out behind
part-time farmhouses
[Google Maps records
our kiss on twisted-on
grass – tucked under a
tree & hiding] Like that
other time when I rode
fingers on your thighs –
whilst in sun [& shade]
beyond Buxted’s Hotel
[no room there but one
in Brighton with gins &
pulled-at sex – a porter
grinned at my bag-free
grip] & do you recall? I
fell so in love with you
& never did anything to
make it fix? I am a fool
There is no fixing of rock cracks or
splitting props/ A talent to renovate
was her hate-flail
until no thick skin was left – my sure
claim to her tenet [& altars of loving
acts] was denied/
Roosters repeated her prayers aloud –
by sunrise refuted three times/ Cock-
voices peal ‘cross
her home town on every hour/ Damp
rags won’t absorb late laments – one
tear of repentance
was not enough/ I cried like a child in
mediations & gave her an easy ride – I
gave up others too
because routes of affection will not –
not for me – find a split rock enough –
all faults broaden
with annual frosts & droughts/ Denial
came [in triplicate] in misspelt letters/
My trust is severed
I fell out of love
with myself – its
easy to do – will
erodes [laziness
rages to sighs &
sleep is my task
in waking hours]
I have not done –
others have – I’ve
lost weeks to it/
My weak poems
are thrown [drink
has been my old
whore & partner]
& Leonard’s lilt –
love songs to me
[I’ll whine in time
to his sick notes]
cool my latte – to
add to my chores
as I wash up after
old Lennie Cohen
[& spectres of his
lovers – they leave
sweated bedding]
& he’ll hit a chord
as my sink drains
in northern ways –
[see vinyl spins to
gravity’s old hand]
Mr C is locked up
with me – he says
No one likes poets
as he sips a coffee
[long-cold to syrup]
& hums along with
his own voice – L P
sent – come healing
of the limb – he has
forgotten his song/
All cells come from cells
& other facts rub at me/
Our place is layer-thin &
ready to cleave [cut out
such thoughts] while we
carry this bag of bones/
Quick-ish siestas muffle
pain’s deviations – those
bruise-lows/ Blemishes
itch with ingrowing hair/
At fifty-six my fun seems
to have run to summer’s
stained trough – rust ires
& cannot be rubbed off/
Spots of blood – imprints
sat in my back catalogue
have faded into that red –
they will never be erased
This is our kissing tree –
you were my kissing girl
This is our kissing tree –
this is where I fell
This is my missing girl –
no more by our tree
This is my endless well
of kissing memories
This is our kissing bench –
you were my kissing girl
under our kissing tree
This is where we fell
Dogwood – a dull name
for a comely flower & I
still say yours was also
a name in need of fixes
[You were missing an e
according to an airline –
boarding was an issue]
You’ll fall apart in a few
weeks – no thrills left in
holding yourself open –
those sweetened stops
will end within a month
of frontage [so assured
were your bared days &
nights]/ Close your legs
Lincoln sits splayed in his pew
as clergy weep teargas tears –
they retreat from his chancel of
greeting air – sundered nearby –
[quick] flash grenades/ He does
not turn his head [he cannot] as
cries multiply [he’ll listen for old
axioms]/ Truth will fade too fast
if screamed too loudly – our first
rule of pluralism/ Instead recite
Yeats [often read after troubles]
& we may appreciate thinking &
art – we may take time out to sit
& win – without violent thoughts
[without violence]/ No holes will
be left to widen – to swallow lies
I drop my ball sack
into the bowl’s gap
& exhale out of my
arse – a sour split &
burn of [foul] gases
followed by spits &
grunts of red wine’s
overnight damages
inside [we will not
discuss what I said
eight hours before]
Booze talks & won’t
shut up/ Midnight’s
Scrabble is a forfeit
come morning’s hit
on glossy porcelain
of triple scores – so
shower with soaps
& don’t breathe in –
or see my posture –
here – no one prays
for foul drownings –
now flushed & dead
She smells of angel shit
[no one mentions it]/ I’ll
start my MK1 Bayesian
Probability Machine & it
may warm me under my
Markov blanket – such a
confusion of thought & I
will scrub at it [all]/ Free
energy is that difference
in a place we anticipated
& this place our eyes tell
us we are in – feeling out
for less shocks with less
free energy – I think [or I’ll
think not] & offer my last
words on these problems
[it ain’t for rhymed poetry]
as Friston wraps himself
[such minds get worn out
& seek sleep to so dream]
My final walk is chalk-marked
[primary colours & a bruise of
pinks] & above here rainbows
[bled in felt tips] are tacked to
innards of smudged glazing &
then rattles on pans & healing
of stale unneighbourly tiffs – a
gift on Acacia Drive/ I listen to
hisses as a small kid cries out
[overtired] disagreeable wails –
ask her for cuddles & whines’ll
fade & a conversation at 10pm
will drain into sleep’s quietuide
[I should know – being trained –
a father never dies – he wanes]
Here – not alleys – but twittens/
Old sodium lamps [spilling out
light pollution] guide me up my
hill – on a path between hedges
.& into two ghosts – of glow & a
shadow-friend – rust on a slope
home – always slow-ascending
as if embrace of sleep will cure
us virus-luggers/ I’ll recuperate
once I return from my saunter?
Time will not be adjusted [to suit
your needs] – that’s my assumed
forecast of less-assured futures
Histories – that slip of shadowed
kisses & us [such burden of love
is brief – emptied skies less rare]
My cadaver has a fixed contract
in ink [& yours too] – parchments
are furled close – like a clingfilm
stretch on & as gripped/ Oxygen
will be kept fresh [for three days]
& then my watch will turn to rust
[in your rivulet my timepiece rots
to orange – do not drink it up]/ Sit
at your gloss of pool & prod fast –
to ferrugo my cogs & pendulums
‘neath running spring waters – so
decrease my minuted remnants –
[watch parts] sink in Jarvis Brook
& fritter more – in no time – at that
confluence with R Medway’s rush
off – via printed tidal timetables – &
with a nod to rainclouds – forecast
flood – reports read – News at One
It was a lifeless marriage –
once she openly admitted
I only married him because
he had a promising career –
but her honesty was never
shared out to her husband
just to her sister & mother
[their unhappy triumvirate
of frothing coffee stirrers]
& decrees will be served &
stuff divided – broken kids
sidelined-ed – roll on Xmas
& less son-in-laws to feed –
Mummy has her girls again
& she’ll be loved [no doubts]
Episode 5 Desert Island Discs [2019]
When Bob Mortimer is dead
he is off to some fantastic place
[& James Moir will fall apart]
Bob will renounce his home –
one last time – unless he gets
to be laid beside other long-
loved pets – down his garden/
Looking’ll come to be a hobby
‘cos his stare will be sooo hard
in his head [slept upon a moist
pillow]/ Fools ease [secluded]
& are left alone for a festering
until putrefied/ Haul ‘im off to
Poets’ Corner when well-soft –
just to annoy every reverential
buff of well-received wordage
& verse – clowns are required/
Fools missing Footlight’s glint
will [eventually] be recognised
as poetic-gods – we will pray –
such adjustments are needed
You have taken
off your clothes
[in that strip joint
in your mind]
You’re dancing
on a table
[you lower your fear
of heights]
A cashing client
dusts
on your
snorting open crutch
& your sister blows
her lover [her tits –
she lets him touch]
There
are men & kids
emptied
[by your sibling rivalries]
May God
be kind
[to both your souls]
and you
to cocks you tease
Now fewer [less] unstructured
conversations – with fortuitous
visitors/ A spin-bawled belamy
of gagging orders & infections
Desires have fallen away [as if
his blood doesn’t crave a love]
& his hammock is still without
pushes/ His spine curves with
his hanging bend of canvas &
ropes – sunburn is a flush [kiss
of death] set to rules [lies?] by
missing ministers [a disorder –
difficulty with truth]/ Common
colds [odd at this time of year]
will catch out travelled fools &
[unforeseen] anxieties of dying
will steer bald plots to Durham
& back to other low strategies –
an actual plan to sell-off gems
& other erst national treasures
Dominic sat at a [pathetic] table
& cut a disposition [not a rose] –
as his script [of facts] scattered
to breezed sighs [by dismissals
of media complaints] – a re-spin
& no apology given/ One Nation
in lock-down is his one-line joke
on us blind-sided [stupid] voters
as curtains twitch [comparable
breezes locate a sash window –
held open by counter-weights] –
a flitted gust [in #10]/ A TV sits
alive to Sky News – a baby cries
next door & Boris yawns with a
tiredness – it wasn’t meant to be
this bloody difficult [fatherhood]
They’ll re-tie his comfy swinging
bed once those media [we don’t
anoint them as Press any more]
leave – remain – take back .. Zzz
They’ll solicit obliteration of
our old theatre [not heeding
complaints from preservers
& old-way-fixers with books
referencing how long those
stall & circle dream pits sat
in our gist]/ Homer was not
one for such revery/ I lost a
phone in Paris – among 200
tipped-up seats – it rang as I
searched – unusual acoustic
tricks did me/ Acts spooled
on my Walkman – fast fwd &
that mechanicalness [we no
longer degust]/ Our mobiles
rewind our playlist of screw-
ups & messages from those
whom we kicked back – that
ruinate of old performances
with no awards [or encores]/
Bingo halls serve less balls –
those so-monotone tenants
of unwanted playhouses are
on a list – to be ever-emptied
with a similar blow by C-19’s
twistings [best played online]
Shingle/ Vinegar/ Under-pier
strokes of cock – undesired
[pills were not dropped after
a fuck]/ Complaints by age-
weighted sunbathers – youth
scum/ Sing to me [when you
can] ’bout zoot suits & sharp
creases [being a Mod wasn’t
about anything honest]/ Gull
calls & chip wrappers – upper
litter still blows into seafront
trippers [they used to ride on
scooters]/ Old Mods look on
as girls bare too much – hard
times of under-pier I-love are
lost – There should be a sign –
Here is Brighton’s least costly
room [a consummated place]
& let every Jimmy there-ever-
was return to savour old spray
[but – I gotta get running now]
He listens to Neil Young
without an ironic bone –
& his twin [a son-in-law]
has been diminished by
his sharp step-daughter
& his wife is looking him
over from below a brow
of raised concerns [how
ludicrous it is – he thinks
aloud to no one]/ He has
built a mausoleum & will
be lucky to lie in it – he is
on her roster of men they
will despise – it’ll be read
out – he isn’t Crazy Horse
A chattered rock – it sits quiescent –
lifted up from a stream’s free fall by
unseen hands with time to sculpt &
form a passionate embrace – before
contrivances of sex [circa 1963]/ Ain
Sakhri’s shadow kept its lovers cool
[in a pebble] ’til its price was met – &
so sold off [to be rudely displayed in
our British Museum]/At only 10cm –
almost lost [unless stopped at to be
mulled over] – does size still matter?
Papier-mâché connected us kids to old Egyptian
burial processes [nowt else for a state-educated
minion – maybe Tutankhamun’s spectacular tour
in 1972 cast a curse on a few school-trip slaves]
Layered newspapers were our papyrus strips – in
spore-ish glue our fingers dipped to fish at strips
of Fifty Killed & One Million Unemployed rippings/
Ms Green also shredded two pages of obituaries
& handed them out in our mask-making art class/
An ancient lesson – we would not decode her torn
articles – kids sitting detached from too-big words
was a given [death an unknown] Our labours went
unpaid – all innocent in our hour of old arts of layer
placing/ Under Hornedjitef’s swaddles they placed
his body parts [bagged] to travel with him/ We set
our glue-dripped masks to dry as Ms Green smiled
& our precise lunchtime bell rang – she piled up her
stock of ‘papers [freely donated by male teachers]
praising us all we departed/ Sally whispered loudly
to Anne that Ms Green had bagged Mr Burn’s heart
There’s an online rumour
that Elliott Smith is dead
& Elliott’s serving Elvis in
a five-to-four bar job – I’m
whistling my high chorus
[I’m wiping my blunt blade]
My pipe-cold water pours
to bathe his blood away/
Portland is tracks & paint
& Nick Drake isn’t dead/ I
turn up Elliott’s stereo [11
is now 10]/ A blade is my
first choice [sliced skin to
pay rent – not callin’ on an
artery] Elliott is now dead
So tell our online ‘papers –
God’s mistakes arent few
He was waitin’ on Costello
[in Largo – his front room]
I duck your politic-clap
[an evening’s clatter of
pots with old utensils]/
I hide from malt-horses
who plan to sell off our
free-to-pleb perquisites
I hole-up from crossers
who put slack fuck-wits
at jack-flagged lecterns
[political-sops applaud
in staged photo opp’s &
spit a fatigated plaudit –
so many regrettably lost
lives – not jobs curtailed
by Mr George Osborne
& his austerity planners
under strikes of dogma]
I will hide my face in my
hands when they appear
& vie [aloud] for my vote
[my box crossed] – never
applaud Tory marauders
For S.L.
Here flesh-plantings [for our afternoon]
but delayed fig tree endeavours – ’til my
sighs followed yours/ You face away – I
see celestial-stencilled stars [a skin tale
in that window’s impartial grin] charting
you – in sorts – to guide my clasps – your
moles & scars relate one’s past – lovers’
visits of buryings & closings? Outside a
dog howls in a neighbour’s garden/ We
recovered – with my thigh dripped dry &
your hair ruffled [smiles in sperm hours
until sleep returns]/ I’ll ride off – I’ll ache
.. we fail to realise how unnecessary
many things are
Seneca – Letters from a Stoic
I may forbear fingering magalogs
of wants-not-needs – buying hope
on our poking ‘phones of popping
offerings/ Mutterings are greedily
overheard by AI [I’m replacing our
barbecue – a B&Q ad appears – its
pop-up perturbs us whilst we view
Love Island’s insta-brigues]/ I can
navel-gaze all day/ I am a shoddy
commodity [mine not so desirable
unless re-figured by an airbrush in
Photoshop’s too-mendacious bag]
My weight drops off when I bezzle
less – mathematics of fact – Money
don’t grow on trees – Mum’s mantra
from 1982 – Use of public transport
a sign of failure – Margaret’s lie/ My
first kiss was so cheap [still – it sits
on my tongue – that sort a’ buss – it
was false] Cash was a way to sex –
porn – not free-to-use [shame rarely
fell away] & kisses ad-libbed – atop
bus #72 – impurity among us teens
[on snogged trips to better shops –
one after another] & invigorated by
a weekend of expectation – parties
& bars – fingerings & fumbles – fags
& drugs – waking up numbed & lost
in off-girl sweat in unknown rooms/
Street signs guided me back home
with my thirst – but not desiring my
night’s before/ Shops locked up for
one day of rest – unless you craved
tobacco or red top headlines – such
days – could we survive them now –
in this miniaturised world of want?
Parcels fall through front doors & a
momentary high of fresh unboxing –
an art for product-placed vloggers/
Hopes are unwrapped & set buzzin’
[a buy-it-now drug]/ China will fulfil
endless shite – ’til we gripe – sucked
off & broke/ Kick me back to ’86 – to
those top decks of tongues & tits – I
lived a simple life without Byzantine
choices to tug my eye/ My return to
nothing much to do would follow my
shutting off purchasing in my palm/
It draws on us – until we are drained/
Perfect knowledge? Let it discharge
Listen to Devices & Desires.mp3 by 10,000 POEMS by Mike Bell on #SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/wordsbell/devices-desires-mp3
Our gold mine tour of shifts
& tales in [bellowing] Welsh
tones – chopsing – blown by
dynamite’s effect [& all that
glitters – etcs] & that rugged
bugger dug at fools’ stories
under his tourist-flowing pit
of cuttings & blastings – our
jump rod conducted us to a
pitch-black – lit-black [dense
once turned off] & someone
touched me up – afterwards
she said she was scared/ A
kid was less than a candle’s
expense [no more – now we
have tidy days & Hue lights]/
But Jones is furloughed by a
Tory chancer & slumps – dull
hours without his scripts for
ears – he recites them up top
in a double-glazed bungalow
for none to hear – lechyd da!
His email [almost] dripped relief
with sudden news – Your decree
absolute is in view – All solicitors
love files & billing [such thrilling
times in lawyers’ quiet offices] &
your ill words [err your mother’s]
will soon be mum & my muckers
were right [they hated your guts]
Home-breaker/ We men’ll swank
[in that cock-sured way] – but will
fall & only then succumb to auld
thrown advices/ We’ll fossick for
others sown words – thus we will
disabuse ourselves/ I’ve lost too
much of my life – bound to you &
your mother/ Your lies & cellulite
thighs are closed [filed absolute]
“Rabbi Kanievsky says cancelling
Torah study is more dangerous
than corona,” Shmulik Woolf [JTA]
[A true story]
Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky aroused
sentiments of a divine immunity
as my family [abutting suburban
cryptic crosswords of meanings
& Israeli misinterpretations] met
together – in peace – to eat under
lockdown’s eye/ No Torah to add
light relief or blind belief in Rabbi
Edelstein to put things right/ Still
no flights into Tel Aviv to sit with
my relatives – Facebook is a tatty
plan B/ Study the Torah – just text
appeared fixed [here] across this
lit screen – mid-poem – this poem
on this screen – across every app
that instruction floated – no scroll
fix – dead seen text – a phantasm/
Some would cry God’s instruction
in such odd data behaviour – but I
still type heresy/ A ‘phone reboot
corrects it all & my poem finishes
under UK lockdown/ No miracle/
Study [of] the Torah won’t cure me
I’ll lie with a sun at my feet
& a moon above my head
[flit birds intone] – at blind
north you are nine-ish km
from my swoon where we
had undressed [stretching
& bathed – but not in rain]
Your unchecked meadow
is a rule-broken hill – slips
of grass & breakfast hens
[an incline of nature-sent
breaths] – I’ll cycle to you –
my captured heart rate is
safe [no concerns for now]
Old ways – a basket arced
from skinned brambles &
other wonders – hands-on
matters too – honesty rips
thornish – you pull my tear
of thin skin & usher me to
your own [here deer graze]
Nine-ish thousand stroams
of to-be-discusseds wait on
our auld Bartholomew Map
of Lost Empires – our times
are not to be contained [we
were made in empire days –
you a flesh map of marks &
I am yet to read yours] Slip
me time – before collisions
& cataclysms [not knowns]
to untie my tied-down body
from moon-sun alignments –
then I’m free – laid out – your
rule-broken hill to astrict us
as lovers – no pulley-weight
or worn-gearing of recalls –
not enough to re-route each
of us – there’s a path that is
marked by green dashes on
my OS map – spitting north –
we will walk on it – it calls
without clumsy 3D heights –
best seen from at your feet –
travelled naked – backpacks
left at our bedroom door – I
will allay my afear of heights
to climb with you & so belay
your choice of rope & routes
My pain has removed [My pain has added to] my one sense of self - but without pain how would I work? I gather more fallen blossoms & count out what has been dropped / My chance crop sucks space into trees [No shade today over my splitting back] There is no held scent & my arms ache with such weighty petals / All you see is beauty's opportunity in vases - They'd look great here! But I cannot grip their rough stems to make studied arrangements / So I work & fall again
I shift in my coffin – to allay stiffenings
without complaint – they did a fair job –
although boxed air thins – that miasma
of parlour hasn’t paled/ Laid out 6 feet
under [all tidied] wasn’t high on my list
[no before-I-die tick of once-in-your-life
thing] & then my killing ache – heated &
immovable/ Leave me here? At least til
I’ve had enough/ I’ll long [my paradise’ll
not reduce for now] under broods of sin
[of taste & memory] Then sex & ale call
out to my stuck lips/ My burial now not
for me/ Dig me from my pit [& be quick]
My walking stick whistles
[but I cannot]/ We are met
by ire-blue clouds – hefted
& sullen in gestation – sick
of their sour discomfort &
weight – brushwork inks &
greets hard from her stain
above us & hail hits us – it
stings skin on Firle Beacon
finding ice-stoned sinners –
a sheep pen & spiky patch
of brambles is a salvation/
A battered cyclist wobbles
past [his lycra-skin too thin
to shield him]/ Dog owners
bend as their pets lag [This
squall was never forecast!]
We forget God is covetous
& not one to bow to orders
from torpid meteorologists
droning in air-less studios/
My walking stick whistles –
a note blown across height
adjustment holes – but I do
not/ Frore-misery urges us
to a warm pub’s profanities
[where ice is better served]
& here I’ll warm your hands
& we will plan our re-routed
way – furores’ll not stop us –
we walk on [& to anywhere]
Experts decode his hue sources
via hoof-trod dales in England &
by rare [thrutched] pebbles from
Eurasia & in a crushing of South
American insects making his red
[whilst scarf blues & pearl whites
demand other world discoveries –
projected back in his eyed graft]/
A virgin trade & commerce in art
supply before his work/ Of worth
even before his canvas was born
bare – such craft upon his palette
before sleight of hand & brush to
capture God’s own daubs – of life
& death – such fine stuff by both –
[but man ground it down to dust]
No family clues to Gran’s
husband’s death – his life
was not a part of us/ Dad
took his ever-old mother-
in-law off to Runnymede/
We were dragged without
any explanation – a rub of
three boys [as she looked
for her husband’s rank &
recall on marble]/ A slight
woman – with her Geordie
beat – flagged by Player’s
fags sucked on scant lips –
not tall enough to read all
those dead – Dad helped –
his rozzer-height one lofty
ambition for his sons [our
desires were to be as high
as him – to descry in ease]
I now aid old-aged people
[in need of my set height]
I reach for tins in Waitrose
reading out those names –
Heinz Beans [low in sugar]
sat far up like her wor lad
who met her last on stone
below a war memorial flag
In Hull they landed fish & Larkin
& he sipped champagne [after a
fuck up by a parent – Let’s watch
Nazis parading – his father’s first
choice of destination]/ Poetry &
rhythm came early & easily/ On
to higher education & Oxford – a
failure only at military medicals
[& others not expressed – not ’til
he died – then his covert life was
dug at – sordid stuff – thrown up
in a glasshouse – set to shatter]
Our ashen marriages
are trace-cartography
on our drunken maps
of tolls – drips of wine
circle our old haunts/
Merlots are our ink in
marking our routes/ I
track my tired footfall
on gradients – we see
tumuli – each labelled
in gothic font – a man
stood there – a digger
with flints to scrape &
form his remembered
monument/ No recall
of this evening will be
left – so I vomit hasty
poetry – I traduce fact
& delineate spillages –
trippers can sidestep
our cists/ We’re not a
sober triumvirate – my
sips enervated [but for
for gritted sediments]/
My tap spits as red ink
circulates & remnants
are washed off/ Come
morning & three stains
will have dried [rubbed
at drips to scour clean]
& our maps will be set
aside [out-of-date] – no
worth left – lost routes
to diggings in Wessex
& nothing more to see
Primal tempos of match day routines
are missing – tension between games
have slacked [to monotony] as soccer
offers nothing – a doldrum – no crucial
ties & needed points to pray for [every
89th minute of watching] – no Bovrils
or beers in our rumble-guts to absorb
on top of other football match results
& tabled machinations [can we dodge
relegation?]/ & Falmer has reverted to
fields of bird song – no stadium ones –
no trudge of sopped trainers on paths
back home [quick pint – eh?]/ No result
Some of his colours were valorized
[vastly higher [then] than pure gold]
When Vermeer lit – beyond grisaille –
by halation? – layered line strokings
in his replications of God’s working
[before rest]/ Old artists’ rules were
brushed out/ His irises widened [as
if exposed to yet-invented spotlight
& revelations] – his arts flummoxed
God by likening his girl too much/ &
one swirled curve of maker remains
tethered [some say tin – not a pearl]
For S. L.
There is a countervail in my days
[as if] as if I can’t connect to now
& now piles hours amidst sunrise
& sunset & expands & inflates & I
am washed out to a history-wide
delta of fingered rivers/ Time is a
tardy channel of tidal watchings –
compounded to have me drown’d
[imbibed from normal & known]/
You stood [naked] in that rivulet –
my hours now engorged by it all
& streams became fluvial giants –
but your fingers – in that channel –
on me – redefined my clocking on
& off – lifted me up – no drowning/
Teach me how to reach with you/
Let me walk a chattered ford & so
embrace your so denuded beauty/
My luxury is in your space – other
options will be excluded – let me –
[let me] be in your running stream
& teach me to swim [without fear
of shape-shifters swum below us]
A raindrop broods on my lens
[caught earlier] – a simple wet
speck of confusion – now set
across my sight [almost a cell
as light refracts] not cleaving –
not shivered – an inert microbe
placed upon my fingered slide
for my eye-tight microscope/ I
hold off from wiping it away –
my unhoped rain-jewel [turbid]
alters my way of seeing things
as if I am Argus Panoptes with
[up to] 100 eyes – instructed by
Heras/ My glasses quickly mist
& blind me [a peacock’s fan of
eyes once petrified my first son]
& I wipe at my rain-made keeker
to see as others see – corrected
They promoted Captain Tom
[Colonel of Hope] & wheeled
out war tropes whilst setting
fire to a sacrificial scientist –
a hazardous risk when alight
& likely to cause suffering in
wringing hands/ Our PM has
added another kid to his list –
sequestered alongside rabid
Rees-Mogg [who offers zilch
words of comfort to us plebs
of lower class] Save our NHS
is a fight-’em-on-the-beaches
refrain on clappy Thursday
as plans are made to offload
some too-expensive niceties
when war is won [NHS gone]
He landed [dondurucu]
under a northern star
on Kent’s stones/ Glib
shingle hindered him –
a slow-toddled walk on
this ever-algae’d land –
[his arrival was met by
many ill-faste lanyards]
He will aim to win grith
by his time-kept faith –
& until then be bedded
‘neath a low flight path
into LHR in a box room
[three-in-a-bed etcetera –
& narrowed bandwidth
of internet connections]
He cannot sleep easily
on his smarting wings
[sprouted after battles
against parochial sins]
& too soon he is re-set
[his crown to his chest]
& beseeches for return
to his disposed mess –
before England called –
Georgius finds warmth
bled under his donated
Red Cross coat – armed
with prayers to one God
& truth to himself [Beni
eve götür] Tran/ Take me
home? Let Georgius loose
to save his own – let this
stolen Saint return to his
land – still unassimilated/
Efface him – not a tattoo
For S. L.
Call me if you fall from a tree
& I will ride to your woodland
to find you fallen – unsprung –
& I will kiss you [I am obliged
to] & folkore directs me to lay
you in honeysuckle to fix you
[lent by your generosity under
this free-to-lovers arboretum]
I will pull at loose ivy to effect
a bed for us [sheets as leaves –
from fern & bluebells]/ Ripped
old wives’ tales will offer ways
& means to your soft recovery
across books & time [my stock
of both is endless] so assay me
I will not sense those rising sibling tensions
with me far from home routines/ My chronic
status has me this side of Falmer’s twists of
roads & visits – my connection as your father
will knot me up – our living distances will not
be fixed by [or fall to] any sterilized contacts/
Remove my anchor of liabilities & seek in me
my lineal way/ I am ever your living presence
still available as a parent – albeit one stuck by
old choices [forgive me for my disconnection]
For S. L.
Besser allein als in schlechter
gesellschaft
Better alone than ill? Not quite –
we cannot [so fluently] interpret
our words [Dachshund!] instead
we explore with our minds & so
find better rationales – Your dog
chases ducks – pull ‘er back from
those moorhens! [Not one of my
finest lines of English poesy] On
arse-rubbed-at-sandstone there
is time to climb from walkers &
threats of cross-infection [but –
we don’t adhere to 6ft distance –
no judging others] Hold me – so
I can smell your hair & neck just
long enough to have something
to take to my bed – let me speak
& use my words to encheer you
[plain English does not suit you]
For S. L.
Almost African – I meant our outlook
as we took a dust path – burnished &
other out of reach words – our sun in
its last role – such an unsolid player –
typecast & somewhat unreliable/ As
you burnish – still not a verb to speak
aloud – embered? Rules & right ways
are to be ignored in these days of flu
& concerns? Possibly? We cavort by
text & voice on our propped mobiles
in games of chance – but we both do
admit to tugs & pulls towards full sex
would be more agreeable – after all it
is allowable in wonted times/ There’s
no normal [not now] we’ll wait to set
There is a betrothal [between us]
to open – to enter – to engage in
filthy [but loving] less-than-aged
sex – once our freedom to travel
returns to us [just don’t let it slip
that we have already performed
some acts of fleshed abandon –
Wallander was ignored] & wait it
out for three more weeks [& add
a few extra to be heedy] for their
exit plans to ruminate – ours are
ready [they’ll be easily embraced]
See – a cut stump is a record
of age [in concentric rings] &
a blade has altered readings
My limbs ache – by disease’s
ill-conduct [new desire to lop
off my legs crawls into me] –
in better times I’m fine – not a
raspberry ripple ready for PIP
or to give up/ My daily mood
dithers from life-is-good to a
fuck-off-you – excuse my foul
language a malady sours me
when pain is engaged by my
body to remind me to delay –
Do not listen to that bastard!
& other encouragements – a
word to our well readers – no
illness is reversed by prayers
& I count its rings but am led
astray by a chainsaw’s scars
& resign to guessing games –
of age & time & late histories
written of in coppiced woods
[where I set my walking stick]
I’m stood trapping a sunset
on my phone – I will tell any
rozzer that – I have stopped –
Officer – ‘cos my limbs ache –
Yes – My Parkinson’s can be
confused with drunks’ ways
but you’d need a drink too if
you had this kind of ailment!
Our laughter lightens his ire
& that kind sergeant’ll leave
me to take a photo of God’s
beauty [I’ll stick him a finger
as he strolls back to his car]
My clothes smell of bonfire smoke
& my sweat drips garlic/ My throat
readies to burn/ What a perfect day
You are a splinter under my flesh –
without pain [none lodged in me] I’ll
not pull you from me/ Burrow more
& infect me & stir a candied poison
[by presence] mixing honey & blood
to be bled/ I now slake on my skin’s
wound – but no removal – no tugging
of your sliver/ You’ll now corrupt us
with your kiss of sepsis in my veins/
Pull me to your pit & let me abrooke
love’s malaise [& bear more lesions]
but – still – I am undistressed by your
infection of me – we will sudate sex –
to mix with other tasted sweats/ No
nails struck in your plaster Jesus of
Nazareth [none]/He is more bruckle
than me/ I absorb you – a cut stick –
out of sight & so avoid worrying our
younger kinds [those we fostered to
minded ways]/ This flinder fuses as
my defences melt [an exquisite scar
will be left from days of burning-ups
& digging-at]/ I will bemuffle you – in
a tight gauze if it means you’re kept
safe from your under-skin qualms –
& visit your garden – we can work as
a pair – pulling out burnables & roots
to find never-touched loams under a
hospital blanket – Burn those witches
& dripping memories with a fire stick
to poke – we absorb more splinters &
scars off choking smoke & we gyrate
with that Lizard King & call on ghosts
of Red Indians with your rude embers
& I have found a piece of Heaven – on
your sofa we lean in – relaxing another
rule [my wound bleeds easily into you]
Over time I may come to like myself
& Aristotle will be re-read & sales of
Stoicism accelerated to re-set every
thought of every thinking soul under
lock & key as we wash wrung hands
[ones brushing on outdoor surfaces]
A churchgoer lifts her arm to buckle
her face – masked – & a heated rising
in me cannot be tempered by Plato –
perhaps Marx offers propitious ways
for my mind as I stray into disdain of
God’s double spoken way – Amens etc
My dog pulls me from my thoughts &
I cannot catch that churchgoer’s eye
[as she has turned her head from my
stare] so I return to social distancing
as instructed/ Without Gods to guide
my retorts I’ll stay polite [of course!]
They’ve renewed lockdown edicts
for us shuffling half-wits [but I will
fly in my mind’s self-isolation cell]
No rattled keys & no one lingers in
filmed exercise yards/ Big Brother
is resplendent on my widescreen –
congratulating us – more mastery
in endless wars – Minitrue speaks
truth to all on Twitter feeds/ Take
us to Jura [to a thought distillery]
& let us sup on literature & porn –
awed by Geo. Orwell & Jade Kush
& their prodigious outputs! Spied
favourites are reduced – they slim
down to less choices [PornHub &
TikTok] to laments off inmates/ It
will be good to hear no complaint
[Quiet now – our children will sleep
in air-fed bunks & no longer weep]
& my rooms expand to exclude all
those narrow channels/ I grew up
with three choices [an abundance
of voices – not many mattered – so
we absconded from cells to fields]
When we can enter a cinema & sit
in rows – to be bugged by others –
who distract – then normal is back
but ’til then return from your one
trip [for essential avocados & fags]
& tune in to 10,000 choices of crap
There is no science in daily tariffs
of death-by-country – our morbid
fascination pulls such in to dinnle
& talk [still kids die of preventable
pneumonia – that remedy’s rate is
is set too high] & auld statistics sit
in our yet-raged throats/ We’ll not
give a fuck until it is us – or closer
relatives – then we’ll read degrees
of temperature & sweat it out – no
herd immunity talk will suffice for
us – not with infected lungs to lug
from our bed & back in lost hours
& then we won’t care for numbers
of others read out in PM briefings
An island’s evidence [pitted – rimrose]
lies strewed between deserts & roads –
as if scattered wide by petulant thugs/
They infer hellacious avians feeding on
everything! – held in scythe-sized talons
& other such asinine stories trolled to
travellers waving tourist-green dollars/
Their eggs – hacked to shards [almost
aged vases] now a cracked paradox of
parts – too widely cast to dig up quick
answers for Sir David Attenborough or
others with questions [& audiences to
thrill]/ Madagascar remains a blast for
khaki-shorteds & battered Landrovers
whilst fady fables unsettle local heads
who will whisper elephant bird stories
on & on [Fear was man’s earliest mace
but giant eggs filled his ravenous face]
There were lights & sounds
late last night in our funeral
home – busy on newly dead
[quick-quick] as subfusk inks
wet let awry on diary pages
& penned onto calendars &
thumbed into ‘phones – Tick
to remind me [alarms set for
his not-attended ceremony]
& has anyone told Uncle Jon
& other missives texted out
to those who knew our Jim/
Facebook reverberates with
grief – Jim had locked them
out – Try CFC1964? – Yes! Of
course – his words [in posts]
say nothing of worth – they’d
been liked fifty times before
& are left alone – revelations
have been read/ Timeline off
I read that a 13-year-old boy died alone
& aged souls will be let go [if there’s no
hope] to free machines & carers restrict
access even to medics & death is not a
sweetened ride for so many & songbird
rips loud beyond unfastened windows &
governments put stocks & shares afore
people & all footballers are capricious &
PPE & ICT & ITU are wings of Mercury &
lies travel wide via internet ties & nature
may not be to blame & China now plans
billions in gains & kids go hungry here &
women are hurt & not by this sickness &
our nurses fear illness & prayers are one
way our hedge-priests comfort us & it is
a pensioner who circles his lawn to raise
NHS cash & men in suits have plundered
by betting against hope & we will wonder
when & how & what & can & ifs & whys &
more questions than answers rotate & in
what year will our egregiousness return &
kill again & when will we learn our lesson
& not repeat old mistakes & settle for life?
My braiding-to-shuddering swirls
off your words – my reddened eyes
rub to wetness – sweat – squeezing
& grabs – your scuttled sofa inches
across your tenebrous room – mine
scrapes to make underlinings/ Our
roles – story writer & finer artist – in
spoken minutes of type & hatching
[by my swift stylus & your staining]
So we couple [no apparent contact
sitting x-miles asunder – forming a
coupled hollow mould by whisking
our word-dipped tongues across a
twin heave of breath – ’til we come]
& then to morning’s reunion in light
when my recall sharpens – not soft
markings but laid words & artwork
heavy enough to leave love’s scars
For S.L.
Foolishness had us locking fingers
into grips & crooks [urgent stuff of
other times when sex was not that
covetous act ] My mouth forms on
your name to recall our illicit graze
[perhaps too many times we found
our lips on bared skin – a corruption
of advised distances] but time riles
both of us – no brakes – no restraint
against vantages – not unless other
voices scold to disappointments [&
telling-off] Yearning smites us – but
this is an exoneration against more
dead-end lives – humdrum times of
panic in pandemic & other vile stuff
[so let us tussle & let us fall to love]
Coupling bees are falling [Thut!]
Over-wrangled & humping – as if
there’s no tomorrow – they know
how things are & how things will
be – now our lives are set by rays
outside/ I am not clocking on [or
off] – I am welcoming primordial
rhythms & sleep’s brenne of fat/
I am back to my Neolithic ways –
food is sparse – a scattering – by
dusk none – then rest under dark
until more calls of birds/ We are
slimming & dying/ I have plans –
my lover & I will leg it to an isle &
walk naked – uncloaked to loose
ways ’til sunset aligns our return
to a bunk – there we will fuck [for
hours] then a night [torn covers]
& all that time our children sigh –
Mother – Father – What? & Why?? –
but outside Shiants will whisper –
by tides & gust – Yird yer watches
& bury yer clocks! – as we gyrate –
to eye each other’s wanting face
& lips – then less timorous in kiss
& contact [in our perfect isolation]
I want to lose my face [connections –
as you exalt – as you inhale]/ Imbibe
for four seconds – let your lungs rub
& keep you alive without new gasps
[hold it ’til you burn] – as your oxygen
thins – as my tongue paddles across
& down [I am not moving from here]
Your mouth is clamped by one hand
to bind/ My tongue probes – educing
fluids below/ We suck on your aches
[from that which is left]/ I fill on your
residues – I am not moving from you
[from our euphony]/ You issue air to
a count of eight – as my mouth rests
& we rest – still deep – greed – in love
[both robb’d of air.. one water drown’d
Donne’s epigram will not be applied]
An aspen curse & other malices
grew among our fearful Easters
& sod all alters – we live effraide
since a plague is [again] among
us [under lockdown’s new rules]
Inserted tubes keep some alive –
ministers sit apart & upright – all
that distance between them & us
is to Save Our NHS [they claim it
as prized] but post-C19 it divides
into smaller bounties [& insurable
quotas] After such zilch is cushty
[there’ll be a hike in future prices –
because our pound is weaker – but
our fighting leader has won a war!]
Bring Attlee back [fuck Churcillian]
& find better ways – no feudal sale
of state & society – no Tory boys in
suits of Armani to praise/Fill each
bare shelf/Veto war-won dividends
Tear up plans for Austerity Again –
it will be our pain [assuming Covid
hasn’t taken everyone]/ We will eat
our words [Only flu virus] – it will be
our last meal – they’ll serve it to us
Number 8 Upper Uckfield Road
have laid a cross on their lawn –
it is cobbled from fence panels
I mistook it for a plague symbol
but they are a God-fearing pair –
Mr & Mrs Riverdoom at # eight
A miracle if their grass regrows is
what my godless voice says – no
one hears – excepting their Lord/
One day Mr Bell you will feel His
sword – until then Mr B will laugh
’til His blade cuts B by edge or PD
I own a sixth of this beech tree
but do not have deeds or titles
to prove which parts are mine/
My claim is now on its shifting
shadow – April is in overdrive –
& I will move as a minute hand
around our shared garden/ Sit
with me [but be prepared] – my
view turns more conservative
with passing days [now willing
to profit well off nature’s ways]
Please pass me a Daily Telegraph
You almost trip on another
tipped mound of grey sand
Turned soil reverts to fulvid
shades as our strides drop
us down to a black expanse
of foul-water ditches – thick
as if cooled off tarmacadam
& stinking [once kicked up]
A retreat to my childhood &
set aside meadows [framed
by dead streams – ore-stain
& pollutant slicks – no fish]
as July sun seared a stench
without equal – we could be
smelt at 100 yards [told off
we stood peeling outdoors
to shake off boots & scabs
into pleshes of dirt & blood]
There would follow bickers
of hungry voices – boys at it
with daytime treaties forgot
when hauled from outdoors
[our at-the-end-of-my-tether
mother cannot stomach us
Why four boys – Jonathan –
not a girl – me #3 a mishap]
Best left buried – eh – Mike?
Stay keen – about molehills
She’s tallying paces to renovate
her revenge body – now she is a
blithe thing – it implies she lied –
lies [she had screwed so many]
& disquiet is rising in her family
& for those near-to – ones stuck
by her sugared tricks – for fools
who breathed her sour spoor [&
who savoured her nasty spittle]
They can start to see she loved
herself [her sweaty selfishness]
& you [blinkered] hauled her cart
until turned – to see her offer out
to quicker mules [her payment in
favours – a sorbitol-coated listing]
& her chubby cousin [in her head
for thirty-ish years] on hotel beds
with men she took in confidence
& propped up in her sore head as
shafted fiction [mere echoes now]
A low cowbell pells on her loose
neck/ Running will never heal her
cellulite & other time born scars –
Good luck with repairs – you said
as lost years of hauling fell away
1.
Our line [slightest sand] was crossed
& it was my transgression – my steps
to you & my selfish need to kiss – so I
broke Rule One – foolishness isn’t my
way [but we don’t live in normal times
because normal is only a selection on
white goods] So – our modest tasting
of intimacy [shameful stuff!] – what if
they walked in? You my metrical clue
Two Down: Tryst keepers (6) – Answer
LOVERS
2.
This is mine – momentarily – a puzzle
of parts to understand by eye & lips –
decode – I want to pull you loose – all
your buckles & buttons to read aloud
your marks – scars – curves & then to
learn from you – how to? How to grin
& be so serious but not too much – it
comes with love & practice & time – I
have rushed these affections – crime
continues now – normality is omitted
& calendars erased – we should kiss –
again?
What day is it? Does it matter
to anyone - perhaps for those
itemizing them now? I dunno’
I’m a chancy man [chav & liar]
among low canopies of song
Envy is mine – their names are
half-known – all descants new
even though I have listened to
them [countless times] before
in other coppices – other ways
We freewheel blind & armed –
so forsaking archaic relations
to & with & of – as if moments
no more matter & we are not a
scientific fact – we are an ugly
creature keeping to First Laws
of Motion [we become forces]
& having writ such rules shiver
them apart – with no remorse –
no hang of head – unless dead
& then we count those missing
souls & breeds – no songs left –
& we howl had-I-wist as if it did
really matter – as if we cared &
felt – but we are liars – perjurers
For S.L.
I can see your open mouth – then
your aspect – curling hair turning
in a breeze – blackbird songs are
now your words [amid saplings] –
long strides quit – you study your
land – & I take a look at your arse
in your jeans – figuring how I can
slip a finger between your skin &
waistband of machine stitchings
in order to lear [more!] about you –
a sudden being [my chainsaw girl]
I am feeling your blind skin under
my pressing – it gives – it returns –
as blood rushes – you are laid flat/
Your hands direct my nod of head
[our worn minutes bear no weight –
no bedim of lights – deadlines lost]
We meet with mouths & breath of
shots from sex – oozed into youth
of timings – but with a [brief] rusty
fumble – then we come to concur/
I find myself [with my sudden girl]
You can hammer glass [& ascend]
– my problems fall away – knocks
& beatings lift as my bruises fade
from sight – there is a rope – a drop
within reach – no loop or noose – it
was my one necktie [for too long] –
& shall we stop? Can we pause for
my fingers – rough fingers – to rest?
Everything will be alright – hope sits
between us – at nearly two metres/
Their rules demand flouting – as my
tea cools & your laughter rolls from
you – we deny all fears – no contrails
above – now – only our recalls taigle/
Nothing but curious deer will query
our behaviour – foolishness is such
affective stuff – we flirt by looks but
do not reach – this foreplay is yet to
involve skin & lips – that first joining
of limbs is a faraway thing – so we’ll
sit under sunlight & stay – patience
& other virtues settle in this space –
your toenails are purple – you finger
your necklace – you have made fun
of yourself – these are so attractive
to me – we browbeaten men melt in
your presence [we embreathe your
beauty]/ Deer are disturbed on that
land beyond your posts & low wires
[once enough to stave their closing
out & foraging]/ Here less distance
is a thing of value – you guide me in
For S.L.
Here were colours in sex [flesh-tones
first & then white clues of bone under
blonde hairs] – bent wheat – then curls
on skin – lisps of subtle fur – no whims
bristled – not yet thickened by years &
years of age & concerns [woven greys
of every hair turns]/ Gloss by vowels/
Taste that lit blood under your eyelids
as visions percolate [red] between our
advances – off-white emissions curdle
on my bare thighs with my submission
to your words [colours you’ve spoken]
Our clear sky’s brightness
is less reflected in frosted
glass – get back to locked
down beds & keep warm/
Grind against your other’s
offered hind [be she lover
hound or hand] & create a
frigged mess of sex/ Don’t
spare your rare toilet rolls
There are no stiff upper lips
on our spent lower shelves –
no Spam [& no Fray Bentos!]
sat in line/ We were short of
stuff back in 1944 – but then
we made sacrifices – & other
myths/ H.M.S. Great Britain
is our ghost ship – her holds
laid bare by ugly mutineers/
Spivs do well/ Priests desire
faith/ Old rich remain rich as
solace dispels for those ill &
poor & old – those cast-offs –
not one will be let off [unless
you make a bob or two from
virus antidotes – there’s dosh
in infections & Amazon crap]
A minister decries those who
hate free enterprise – political
malice is forever contagious
among our more prosperous
[who declaim stiff upper lips!]
An Adler typewriter centre on a desk –
in a remote mountain resort [actually
Elstree – London ] – tricks by chippies
& gaffers – a fake Apollo landing too?
Eagles & minotaurs vex up on walls/
Locations by a second film crew/ Off
white to grey to haemorrhaged hues –
to a scene of clues – or red herrings –
or subliminal lies – no commentaries –
no sense by floors or corridor routes –
just a tracking shot following a small
child on his trike – pedalled & steered
as if another level of plots – carpets &
wall coverings set to confuse with all
eyes on another viewing/ Metaphors –
intents – a room examined every time
by film buffs & message seekers/ RIP
Stanley Kubrick – dead but still reeling
Also on Medium
Gavin reads an enamel plaque
on a concrete birdbath below
four blue clocks – true north is
implied by one of those faces/
God is too far to register every
minute marked over lead paint
& see countenances [his angle
set by our old misdemeanours]
In this churchyard [alongside a
stone set to recall a long-dead
missionary] my pain redounds
on a thought-chiselled bench –
In memory of.. a soul loved too
much to forget/ A yew denies
seeing anything as it watches
every headstone tilt over time –
witnesses to a wearing away of
names & dates & rarer refills of
flower pots by bent mourners &
then observed left alone – bereft
in this acre of dearly departeds –
I wait on time to halt – four faces
to stop & squeeze on my breath –
to take my life [my full measure]
but it passes – hour-kept treaties
of scribed plans keep me alive &
a cog in God’s plays [impromptu]
one stage for us indigent actors/
Perhaps Gavin fed birds here – on
this bench he would sit & scatter
crumbs to [now rare] sparrows/ In
time we’ll be him – a worm feeder
Also on Medium
Your Queen is dead –
Long live your King
until you shove him
on your guillotine’s
carved collar where
he’ll nod off – upon
love’s scythed arm –
it will be his dreamt
moment of demise –
not quite enough to
still torments [but it
was built to behead
without a quagmire
of blood & plaining –
a quite polite death]
Charles coughs into
his plucked ‘kerchief
as his butler exhales
to stall Covid’s creep
Also on Medium
For S.L.
I can see you on that island/
You’ve no eyed connections
to newscasts or family ires/
Besort as a neolithic settler/
Greater lightness in solitude
will mark your return to auld
ways – to pull you to undress
[& be stripped away]/ Let me
find you under lordly clouds/
It would be so worth crossing
crested water with grumbled
descants off a [breeze-burnt]
ferry-man… I see she’s gone a
wee bit odd.. Aye it’s isle-fever
& it’ll only go by frostbite’s nip
..Is she a close friend?.. You’ll
get close.. as a bawhair.. Aye!
[& other lewd remarks about
your naked ways are so cast]
as his rusted craft stammers
into slamming waves – I’ll not
respond – I’ll hold to my word
[borne in my light backpack]/
There’ll be only one question –
Is there enough space [in your
borrowed bothy] for me to set
out my now-removed clothes?
Also on Medium
RB: I didn’t fancy much staying alive
MP: Really.. you contemplated suicide?
RB: No.. you can drink yourself to death…
I had a go…
Parkinson – Interview with Richard Burton, 1974
Richard in his beige rollneck
tossing off impersonations –
playing at thy compleat fool
for Mr Parkinson’s audience
of pre-pub gathered viewers
[under bared studio lamps]/
Chat turns to drinks & death
& rotten innards – digging at
Burton’s slag heap of failure
sat so high – ready to slip as
any of us could – mortalized
by Michael’s polite enquiries
about public love affairs – no
stones left unturned & noted
as bottles are numbered & to
entertain & enthral he has to
talk of longings for Elizabeth
& hoves [to his worthier self]
I urge for Burton’s love affairs
Shall we embrace military ways
of fighting & furloughs – of a war
vying unknowns? Rhetoric wins
when we have battles to be won
[& rulers plump before their gilt
mirrors & spun doctors – Should
I sport khakis today? Honey! Do I
look grand in green?] As leaders
preen & try to mask their smiles
from us as our medics sudate &
have their dripped brows wiped
by twice-gloved hands [we’ll not
see a shortage of any politicos!]
They put padlocks on our doors
to save us from ourselves [such
Maoist thoughts surely reserved
for communists – not dear Boris
who bends to scientific advisors
for seismic shifts of old canons]
His Tory party is stuck at prayer
as funeral homes see profits up
What’d Mrs Thatcher have done?
He wonders – Shown some balls?
This phoney war will bloom unto
bodies in bags [of which we don’t
have enough] Honey! Do I look OK
in grey – a single zipper – done up?
It’s a trendy thing in NY & Lon-don
When emptied high streets return
to trades – to lattes – to crowds of
grazers – when our herd re-settles
what will we have learnt from our
months of one tiny pandemic? Will
we regress to pack mentalities – a
need to fly & travel at any cost – to
tarry & forget? In war there is less
[but more is embraced once those
words of speechmakers & priests
have been fired off & we look at all
their echoed shells] & few are sure
Also on Medium
I perched – waiting – at The Crow & Gate
No beer or trucked food today – CLOSED
It may be another end to our world [who
cares?] or a glitch – a hard reset request
by Nature – it may be Far East iniquities/
We live in fear of failures – but not major
fuck-ups – they aren’t Western dilemmas
[only in movies & games]/ Her hell-black
crow sits immobile/ Mother will succour
rich pickings once morgues see queues/
Nature knows best/ We are a mere virus
with a lifespan determined by conditions
beyond our reach [we perch on surfaces]
You’ll have to get
use to these every day
adjustments of feelings –
now unequal & unnamed –
no numbering of sequences –
except dead or infected totals –
more or less – your view is framed
by your windows & your bright screens
Solitude is a rehearsal for death – practice
is good – as days run out into that fact of life
& you then fail to recall decent & dull normalities
[you’ll fall out of love with your locked-in companions]
It feels unwell turning from friends
as if they are not responsible or to
be trusted – all our rules are re-set/
My kids gather outside my house –
delivering care in scouted carrier
bags of love – expressed with veg/
Aircraft timbre is now uncommon –
instead swards vibrate to song – as if
Nature has re-taken a layer from us
But it will not last – still we will sour
running ditches with farming drugs
as we brabble to be overfed/ & on &
on we crawl [not quite in reverse] not
yet that slouch back down our chart –
primate – to rat – then slid primaeval/
There are empty benches at sunrise
& I take my seat as terrors sleep/ It
may pass [nb something’s changed]
I want you to come in
& then to explain it all
& then to speak truths
to those who’ve heard
your initial false words
Revisit friends – minds
you’ve inflamed by lies
[& those younger ones
who heard sour words]
Set straight our furrow
before your seeds take
hold & their wiry roots
cannot be re-wired/ To
all those thrown grains
return & pull into line/
Until then each ridge of
turned soil will become
odd distortions as crops
rise [no equal tramlines
once misaligned seeds
are amplified as blown
heads across your field
of low yields] They may
mow your thrawn crop/
It will be a poor harvest
P.S. Nelson Algren has disappeared
Kurt V’s postscript lay four lines on
after his enquiry about sex with his
[K.V.’s] wife in another letter home –
I awake at 5.30, work until 8.00 – our
writers – our sires of factual wipes –
live dull lives – but Nelson could not
Also on Medium
Roll [once more] into sleep’s spindles
& those coils of dreams – of rapid eye
movement – of phases of oat moon in
your turned back eyes – roll with every
fade-in & out of your dreamt phantom
[let sleep be your muted counsel now I
am not asked]/ Pull that drag of duvet
back from my vacated space – as your
body rubs on my flaked flaws – risings/
See those particles after bed-making?
I will float high over your future lovers
& enter their sleep & be a disturbance/
I’ll sprinkle a truth [motes never settle]
Also on Medium
I am sure – Jack Daniel’s
never used to have this
moulded wrap [tough to
peel – do blunt drunkards
cope?] – my biting knife
splits its throat – Ripper
Jack’s wrist in my hand
as nip-pours of whiskey
connect in me – fusing –
by my sips & swallows/
She spoke – talked – how
do I tell you how it went?
She blew honey flavours
over my bourbon spikes –
she offered me her drug –
without a fumbled sleep
of interruptions – just my
too-keen talk – I chat too
much – it is my downfall/
My tip-empty glass sits –
waiting on her confect of
words to sweeten my sip
I lived with a courtesan –
an escort – a whore –
& I charged for every hour –
so I was one too /
She laid in hotel suites
whilst men came too soon –
& I designed layouts
for their meeting rooms
Also available on Medium
Conquer yourself rather than the world
RD
René dreamt [far too
much] – three dreams
in a night/ A desirous
fucker – with such wit
as to only think – take
away his numberings
& his measurements –
you still cannot count
out his words/ Where
I fell is a marker – it is
alongside others who
gave up on de volonté
for love & loosed hold
[no misuse nor excess
in passion – RD]/ Sex –
it was her way to fix &
fill her insecurities – a
mother’s love is never
confection enough for
a woman who follows
sweeter scents into a
bedroom & opens up –
do not think too much
or else your dreams’ll
fill to fix unfixable lies
unfolded thigh-wide –
I’ll stand at my marker
& respire seven-eleven
Also on Medium
In 1984 our enemies
were evident – easier
days to direct choler
with words – we spat
sneers & swilled gob
in our mouths [oiled
for French kissing &
tonguing]/ AIDS took
fun from a bare fuck
& for a living I lugged
monitors & F.X. racks
on & off worn stages
& up rippling ramps –
rubber castors wrote
truck-loading songs –
pre & post-show arias
of drugs not taken – I
waited for love’s rare
rush to suck me off –
I was born dreaming
in Technicolor’s hues
by weekend films on
T.V. – fewer options to
blight ourselves by –
pubs were our forum
& dating site – easier
times to get a fuck &
wake without staying
I see her so-blue eyes
but not her real name
& other such recall of
lost time & time lent –
we dealt in our now –
we had no time travel
via handheld devices
Also on Medium
We will accept our feelings
& live with pale hopes of a
chance – one more chance –
to right things – not capsize
this craft of love / Pull back
before we’re wrecked / Our
eyes no longer work as well
as young ones – sight is my
luxury & hindsight my curse
We have forgotten our arts –
we have written off our pen
& ink capture – I rarely cross
hatch with Peake-aspiration
in my hand [but I do share a
way with long-dead Mervyn]
I will sit in a meadow near to
Lewes & gauge my painting –
I will cram a final canvas – so
be spent – no more creations
Also on Medium
So how will this [sh!]
viral infection expose
modern insecurities –
will roaming decline?
[They sit at metre spaces sipping slow coffees – quite
European – now forsaken until our anxieties rewind]
Our thin copper wires
were not designed to
grip our selfish loads –
ties bind us tighter to
[My client rings & we laugh off sicknesses & dire ends –
but our retirement policies have taken another thump]
extraction & supplies
from far places – ores
& cereals will stop as
ships halt & we watch
[She is over seventy & feels as if this was planned – as
if this was a useful plague to rid our NHS of zombies]
as emissions pale on
charts [Inversions of
doubling disease may
balance it all] We fail
[Careless talk costs lives – I see they have contingency
plans – they had social care sorted – this’ll do for it all]
again to incite [or thrill]
on pole-pulled cables
[imported a while ago
before talking ended]
It is possible to pause & think too much –
that much I know – having considered it
too many times / My craft is assembling
piles of undertakings & to inspect them /
Do you find your mind in such bunkers of
indifference? If so join me in my refuge –
below one last high tide / Hide your face
as our space fills with brine & our escape
is no longer probable / Swallow & depart
through that other passage – we can hide!
Also on Medium
RULE ONE – Do not write poems
about your night’s dreams – but
who cannot when slept delights
fix so many things [without glue]
in one night’s defragging of our
slipped loose & veered to left &
right past sell-by-date thoughts?
Mr Mc. sat in his estate car [with
his son] praying as I scalded J.W.
on his forearm with a hot spoon
[it looked like an accident – I was
digging for facts] – A.S. divulged
truths as P.S. fell apart [even with
her so-commonly-known history!]
as C.M. stated her mucilaginous
pearls were strung by more men –
But shocking them most was A.B.
& his list of six lovers [it silenced –
S.B.] / Why not versify a dream?
Her enigmatic smile has been hidden
behind her 3M N95 respiratory mask
[a blank stretched surface – looped to
pull & reject] / Her lips are not shown
now she is responding to C-19 rules –
now no one is seen smiling in Europe
Also on Medium
Every day I pace not one less
than ten thousand footsteps
[as documented on my Fitbit –
it syncs to my smartphone] / I
have no other duties – except
to write one poem & a charge
to entertain & pay for my four
kids [& to walk my small dog]
I feed myself & avoid excess –
but booze [& grass] shout out
alongside my bottled rattle of
my prescription timer app / I
keep myself clean / Domestic
chores tire me but now define
me – my work no longer does –
I used to be important [in love]
Also on Medium
My [fake] Eames Lounge Chair
waits in her house – emptied
of me – two studs long lost –
because it was cheap [& not
quite real] / It sits – a lacquer
facsimile ferried from China
& gifted to me by her family –
one Xmas long gone / In it old
bits of me flutter – left cells /
It was not very comfortable –
no softness in faux leather /
I was told to put it together –
that fooling not-Eames Chair
My son asked – Dad – do you
want it back? / How could I?
Also on Medium
“Even the apostles were tent-makers
..They had to live just the way we do”
Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar
My mother insisted No one’s happy –
everyone is miserable [back in 1982]
when life unnerved us teenage boys
[fearing obligations] But we couldn’t
stop thinking about sex & of getting
off with assuring girls – Go ugly early
was our pre-drinks motto / But I fell
in love with Fiona Malyan / She was
beyond my grip – my roughneckness
glowed / Then I tempted Marguerite
Donlon [her stage name] – but I wept
in a call box – She is not wanting you
was quiet advice from her gossiping
friend / So between lust & fucks with
several women & men [& rolling from
dirty beds] my ability to grip at things
rescinded & my mother’s insight rung
again – too now true / Rien ne change
Also on Medium
I do not want to know – NO – if
you fall in love – headlong / NO
Not about your new happiness
& any such stuff / If you appear
arm-in-arm with one of your [at
this point delete inapplicable –
Lovers – Clients – Sugar Daddies]
then my vision will lower [again]
“It was reported pigs
were moved to safety”
as Olives Meadow [&
lowly places] readied
river defences / Bags
of sand had been set
to safeguard that fine
dry cleaners down on
Bell Walk [no relation]
Locals dozed [steeled]
for damp renewals of
a [now] normal trouble
as my ex’s shed [sorry –
‘office’] sat tormented /
Such sudden erections
should be kept high up
[to miss wet torrents of
our flood-thrusted Uck]
A coy yellow rose
under cellophane
[bound by taffeta
& one knot’s haul]
I found it outside
my door [propped
with an envelope]
I almost cried – as
I am known to do
[when accepting
unexpected gifts]
A few loose words
as a prize [Bloom!]
& my soul erupts /
No one EVER buys
me flowers!!! / But
she had cut for me
a [coy] closed rose
& it then bloomed –
[n.b. Freud inferred
origins & erections]
Fork
clumped soil into air
& so be obliged to remove
damn stones under loam /
My early lessons from my
Dad
lent me bent to crafts
but my art was opposed
by other’s cuts & too easy
takes to clear rooted fixes
Weeding
out requires hand
& eye to both bury & break
forged weights of laid clay –
to open seed-set places in
all
our turned out robust beds/
Not digging to evade duty –
instead a modern victory if
we agree to those older rules
Also on Medium
He who arrives late
has no bed – said to
me in jest but truer
now that our world
finds loathing easy
to spread / We will
contaminate all we
love with infectious
hate / Long unions
will succumb [to ire
their lessors] / As a
couple bore at love
[& its dried-up rub]
they’ll find in others
keen relief in sex &
overpriced drugs in
hour-rented rooms /
All our rules shifted
when re-connection
was offered for free
by cheap lying silos
[& wi-fi two-timings]
Disconnect & return
to our former arrival
Also on Medium
I centred my bottle of opened bière
on Leonard’s forehead as I revisited
my circulated Lazy Susan of history –
If we had fucked in Paris in ’68 – if our
false histories were purchased items –
I would have bought extra time with
my French friend in 2018 / A summer
gave up / I cupped her right buttock
in my left hand & we kissed as if all
others no longer [only for an hour?]
mattered – as another re-cycled her
suckers [her paying lovers] / I fell in
love for one last time in my only life
[under another’s misdirections from
her downstage position – she recited
lines that she had written out as lies]
Her claims of drunken anger survive
whilst my sobriety stings in wounds –
Leonard would’ve totally understood
why love was my way to pare to truth
[as my French friend said… plus serré]
Also on Medium
I sit at an unstopped bus stop
sheltering from Jorge’s
spit as my takeaway reflection
stares back at me / It
is shut – Mr Joe Woo’s Canton
Chinese – Late Hours
Woo has posted a handwritten
note – No trips to China
have been taken by any of our
staff in recent months
[above SORRY WE ARE CLOSED]
Also on Medium
I grow old – I grow old
& fear eating peaches?
[without knowing how
poetry works] – Mr T S
is read out by Mr Irons
whilst my feet splinter
into thousands of thin
reminders / Pain is my
diary / My dog cannot
know that our days of
walks are numbered /
Swallowing is a luxury
on lead-strolled days /
I yank her past shards
& keep her lead tight /
My hands still work at
my doggerel healings /
There are evenings of
such lonely aches that
I rest on hard benches
to calm late walk pain
before being led again
in an orbit of suffering
by age & malfunctions
& adulation of another
I’ll lie [but without her]
Also on Medium
I found a vibrating
cock ring
[Google told me
what it did]
It was buried
in her knicker drawer
[where she kept
her private bits]
Six men sit – perching –
on suffering bar stools
Six etched chunks – an
almost-even arc offset
[nearly of Stonehenge]
A curve with no motive
apart from supping ale
& muttering objections
& unruly explanations /
They grumble together
to a misogynist ‘banter’
There’s no women ‘ere /
Their justifications pool
as pints are dispensed
[equally tipped out & in]
If standing stones ever
fall then fools fill gaps –
to stone imposed rules
[of concentric intervals]
Also on Medium
You bent to sleep – again
drunk? Lipstick is slipped
Do not wake – not to me –
not to my modest veered
dream at daybreak’s kiss
You rang stored numbers
I will answer [to my own]
He’s long-divorced – hope
snatched by a cock & bull
story of whatever fits you
[not his 3 kids with issues
as your mother points out]
As your mist-breath-of-gin
cools [& sleep evaporates]
you rise drought-mouthed
unable to repair loose truth
[lost by your mounting lies]
I can see his fingered grips
in spotted sooty bruises on
you – your evident hangover
Also on Medium
A sheen of grey-blue rises up
as if a timid ghost – a shadow
in a poet’s lounge [lick-curled
in her bed] – thin-faced – near
to equine – from her forelock
down to her pointed muzzle –
but never a quick bet at t’track
against unsighted hares under
floodlights – she knows not to
take stakes – she’s sure of that
One lap of her garden is quite
enough – slack – no mad rush
She finds her still-warm centre
without a sound – no fussing –
as if my duty hasn’t been done
Also on Medium
Travel to a 1970’s grey suburb –
to my dad’s father’s door – here
be greeted by my dad’s father’s
second wife – Dorothy [a demur
woman in spectacles – quiet as
a mouse [a dormouse] A docile
creature in my recall of frosted
history] We were pulled by Ford
& Austin engines / We surged &
occupied – four loud boys upon
relatives’ homes [orders – not to
touch anything – all breakages to
be paid for – in too many ways]/
We were a quick swarm of flies
[characterised by Golding’s law
of maleness] / We were tucked
in & deposited – our parents set
straight by pre-war handbooks/
I remember my tiny hope [such
as those that offspring nurture]
that my parents were beautiful –
under their obvious ugly masks
Also on Medium
The sea hates a coward!
Eugene O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra
This is my sketchbook –
it is my weapon [of first
choice] & my therapist –
It does not exist [as you
guessed!] A poltroon is
a person who sits alone
writing off scored hours
[or until fears of outings
& being met fully fades]
This is my looking glass
[focus on what she said]
Here is my volatile focal
point between light theft
by clouds – it fastens at a
height held over words &
will blacken a surface /
We persecuted insects &
revelled in our mastery of
magnified nuclear fusion
This is my targeted bomb
Also Medium
I had exhorted myself
not to watch –
but my capacity to let
myself down
wins old momentum’s
slow ways/
A four-times-father-of../
More times
worse with [or without]
four of my own
on an uneven grey road/
I am alone –
having left her ring from
my limp finger/
She exited - from home/
I wait [bare]
without a firearm on us
[in my palm]/
No weapons left - apart
our deaths/
On that road from home
breath tires/
Pull - breathe out & watch
The Road
A poem about ‘The Road‘ – a film based upon Cormac McCarthy’s novel. I had promised myself never to watch it, but recent events have dulled my sensibilities
Also on Medium
Dear God, please
send me to hell
will be received
& then hung up
equal to Sylvia’s
phantom cattle –
Mr Jarman & my
Aunt on my wall
[beside my very
grave self-portrait
in charcoal 1984]
My [almost] queer
gallery [There’s a
BBC Radio play in
that line] I’ll heed
my wireless every
day – streamed &
free on-demand
[til they agree it’s
not by decrees of
licence abolition]
I’ll mind one God
[my other Aunty
Beeb] & pray that
our public T.V. is
kept from Azazel
Also found on Medium
To buy your own piece of hell visit Prospect Cottage
I am walking backwards [untrue]
after hauling recyclable bags of
Reduced Now [Oh – how we live]
up to my hill-high home erected
above floods [but still fearful of]
I cried on pain’s prompt outside
Cinque Ports [my affable orders
placed there for beer & friends]
because my payload of shopped
stuff [to bake & to cook] clipped
me – homemade bread obligates
carrying pounds of [a finer] flour
When my cold loaf is divided by
my [prudent] knife it re-balances
me – my crust of too deliberative
junk – cutting off hungry concern
On some days my prescription
is missed [on purpose to tease
this condition] Not very clever!
But you don’t know how good
it feels to let go of notifications
& ignore my piling medications
It’s a fleet distraction [so let me]
enjoy befuddlements [For once!]
Let me take my illness – denuded
& stripped of drugged make-up –
let me wake up & walk [naked] to
her house – shouting – See – I’m ill!
But – still – she will suck maternal
teets & lie about my miracle cure
He had returned
from his sojourn
& his wife stated
I squirt now when
I have sex & You’ll
see I’m re-waxed –
It wasn’t done for
you / He knew he
was fucked [True]
I am on a long-bet flood plain
An elevated gravel path leads
beside pumpkin-cut grimaces
Eight grin-lit detached houses
bid shameless sharp views of
rooms & rooms & rooms [It is
too early to draw our curtains!]
& I walk [spectral] below sight
lines of slipped lounge lizards
on an orbit back to my ghost’s
town / Not much has changed
[apart from rain] in my scarcity
Troop-hoofed paths capitulate
to further boot tracks – to trails
of dogs & bikes / There’s more
rain on its way! / Amber flashes
heighten concerns for riverside
mortgagees [reviling long bets]
Here pebbles melt into grass &
a playing field – untouchable to
kids at this time of year – now a
playground [of sorts] for nosing
dogs & their equally dull owners
[my tribe of lead & turd carriers]
A hill rise – between doped rides
of swings & slides – then there is
my grey Ex-wife – I pray she can’t
see me – but prayers never work
on side-raining days – & my plea
is unanswered as she raises her
voice as if to her dog [but to me]
& I’ll vomit [spew?] all her letters
back at her – spit – no matter how
wet it makes her [Love is a route
to hatred – if your lover lives a lie]
There are no wagers now for our
solicitors or mediators to pursue
My climb finds me sitting – a rest
as my dog runs rings around her
bitch – I’ll call & she’ll return – see?
Bruised – another abrasion – her
skin – I bumped into a table or I’m
not sure [responses # one & two]
Perhaps she bruises easily? – too
easily for me / See – fingerprints
by a quick-gripped hand on her?
They pool to clotted black blood
Her exotic self – her other life in
other places – her imperfect skin
followed her home – it was in her
breath & clothes – off male scent
So drunk she couldn’t remember
& I’ll leave her rare truth to wane
She was never an Olympia –
as daubed by Manet – pure
as marble & egg white/ Her
stripped shots [varied fresh
lies] refined by Photoshop’s
smears & smudges [across
normalities] Mme Meurent
& her [a courtesan] Ms Tess
[her selfish self – no Venus]
let pounds of flesh & hours
be tolerated at higher rates
to buyers of fucks & artists
too / She sells her sexuality
& feelings in blurring layers
A relief she never did Freud
because his art was honest
I never drew her naked – no
there were too many others
taking her poor idea of self
She knelt- as if to prayers
before dealt men & women
Manet raises her left hand –
unblocking his subtler clues
Also on Medium
They nailed James Legg up as J. Christ
[flayed – undressed of skin – purified]
Carpue found employment – scraping
They pinned Legg up – pinned him for
artists in life studies – to see him still
& then moved to their pegged sheets
[shifting corpses from gallows works]
He is held high – Christ’s body double
I am dreading how this
bout will [now] play out
as my stability stiffens –
as notions & conscious
steps re-hire – unloosed
Every inhale is a severe
noose looped to my neck
[pulled] – so swallowing
[or gulps of air] crumple
[choked] Now conceded
so let me abdicate to my
ways of sipped red ales
Let me fall slow without
doing me in /Settle now
[Michael] to an outcome
E120220
Here sandbags are stacked
up against our rising river’s
[repeated] flood warnings –
malleable dams sit readied
to halt [almost alike Ximen
Bao’s shouts to halt He Bo’s
desires for perishing flesh!]
Massage-with-benefits lies
above & so raised enough
for A Special Happy Ending/
I pray for rain’s imbalance
to crawl up her gully-stunk
yard to her shed & labours
[as if impersonating my ire
of through-nights-to-rising
of-sun – my working hours
will be one way of gaining
She cashed out – less won
So she will pull on others –
with her grind & fingering
of re-worked old foreskins
But [only] her worthy men
screw – priced – in her grip
of pitted arse & old thighs
Do not marry a younger one
Buddha’s [misheard] advice
is no longer ill or imprecise
Younger sex craves excess
as our old loads diminish –
I feel sorry for her hunted
I’ve been through all the vices & now don’t have any
Marc Almond
Let coitus & narcotics take a back seat
[there is always time on your deathbed]
Sip tea with your feet put up or commit
to an indoor religion – Quakerism offers
mute reflections out of Sunday AM rain
Masturbation requires creative thought
so relieve not with rapid wanks but with
poetry / Repeat episodes of Morse can
offer a beat for those who like unlawful
acts & a sprinkling of crossword clues –
there ain’t no cure for love – dependence
[on somebody else] rarely ends too well
She is brittle & she is still bared –
she was unfurled [then exposed]
enough for magazine publishers
to earn off her coyness – a crime
to let quaint Honour turn to dust –
No gilt frame / She singed minds
as she lit up a tawdry stronghold
of gin-sopped members & others
A luminous giantess over thieves
Light does not linger long unless
it scars someone / She cools her
bared back in private – not meant
for voyeurs / We grabbed at her –
cruel – sex-creeps – seeking thrills
by bravado’s drunk calls [Bollocks
to Lamarr & Others] Her unsettled
identity was sold by red top sales
[Keeler junctures of snapped skin
& disconnections] & she careened
from clubs & parties past one-eye
tricking followers – rash snappers’
captures / But [still] her apologies
bubble between bursts – but better
appears from living now – not from
ploughing our rum sins or tempers
We rip our surface until blood runs
out [clots]/ We turn as shells – frail
Her’s was a parvenus route without
valid qualifications – apart from her
betrothal to a provincial manager &
his executive home – such stiffened
allures are a kind of love – a security
[rarely bodies]/ Her yearning to f#ck
a young builder was never a shock –
see her hubby [such a bore tuned to
Radio Two] He always answered to
loud calls of full pints & pulling men
beneath pub beams – sharing gags –
[old misogynists & racists always do]
Her love re-ignited [for her husband]
after she found she could not afford
to live without his pudgy currencies
Half of everything was never enough
Half a life of sadness – her new price
He paid for her new hard tits – they’re
rearing her lover’s grin [life’s still shit]
Circle your bed with salts
as if a white loop or hoop
or halo [a round God ring]
So my terms of surrender
had read – I had skimmed
her documents – then laid
her anticipated line / Fine
print we can see – but will
not read / Her nudity was
a perfect sans script font
Easy for eyes to examine
even if we find difficulties
in deferring to one who is
wordblind [her old excuse
used too many times – No
read as On – A lie rewinds]
She always expected holidays
from home [as if a pre-booked
excursion would hoist weights
she wore since prior escapes]
A fortnight’s sunburn [day one]
& then recover – thirteen more!
We walked from rented rooms
to rented sunbeds – later off to
nights of rented booze & Good
food – but not as good as home
cooking – I miss a decent cuppa
Our kids sat abroad on devices
A family respite & memories of
what holiday breaks gave to us
I cannot loosen that weight she
placed on me in our last resort –
She didn’t deny her love for him
as she talked – she lied – abroad
I do not think enough
[but what do I know?]
Do not urge to things
Time is an urn set to
boil / I have elevated
my unaware body up
& down to my stomp
[I do not know much]
in wood lands – but a
month of rainfall has
ruined paths [here I’ll
rest & rewrite lines to
coppice my hobbling
thoughts] My writing
[I do not know much]
diminishes [by rained
engineering] washed
by a bowing stream’s
volume / My throat is
of that choir – its hold
turns down my levels
[I don’t know enough]
But what I still know –
when breaths expires
we’ll be glad for more
until it sucks from us
tight Parkinson’s calls
Poets noted in his address – a list –
Keats – Hopkins – Frost & Chaucer
then Owen – Bishop – Lowell [bow
to] Kavanagh – along Raglan’s Road
But Stevens & Rilke required heavy
ink / Ducked into Dickinson & Eliot
& then around MacLeish on [far] to
Akhmatova & then off to Yeats – via
Celan – Beckett & a nod to Orpheus
But it’s W.B. who finishes his speech
As if too bent – forwards – tipped
& bare-assed with such? Scents!!
Perfuming @ a short distance [@
my length of such average-ishing
extent – perhaps that is that ‘why’
we fell – that was it] Sex was less
& not enough – screw of old love
[of poor man hugs under that lie]
You cannot place cries? Hear – &
now – a maw of new-ish troubles
by wet grips [heard – Let ’em go –
& slip on others now – his words]
Never let your body be a corpse –
do not fall for another’s cold grip
even if you can suppress all slips
This is love’s first cry / Sent/deny
makes you a joke before old lies
We should curl among shadows –
finding finger-lengthenings first &
then white flesh – almost burnt by
undressing – listen out for taunts
We are naked boys – not normals
as our bare backs rub sunlight in
Such a vast straw-pricked holiday
Stepping out
into traffic &
not leaving a
note – RTA &
not a suicide
[eased facts
for my kids?]
My tendency
to stop & cry
is drying out
I cannot drop
under any car
Not any more
We are among my elderly friends
& not much has changed below –
a ripped fence has been propped
with roughly sawn timbers – mere
matchwood – if such a comparison
is asked for [but none ask – not in
in Uckfield’s online forum voices –
of bores & groans & of loud howls
about foul dog mess – ’bout Brexit
& [quite feasible] immigrant boats
being hauled onshore & not so far
from Uckfield’s so anxious voices
On my first day back it is raining –
God doing prophesy? Maybe not –
not in Uckfield / Here He sprawls
benignly – a delightful white chap!
Wealden stirs – but then it demurs
Post-Brexit glee is their new duvet
There are no barriers
to our slaughterhouse
There’s an easy way in
Our course will not be
blocked – it’s true – our
entry is eternally sure –
a repository of breath
where our sighs shrink
You’ll slump & I will be
next in line / None have
left!! / Not yet!! Gallows
stuff tween a hangman
& a stun gun operative
I will suck your floated
mist – that last piece of
you – mixed together &
then you will forget me
Also on Medium
We are feral troops off to our
home ground [trudging on a
route levelled by worn boots
on almost every other match
day’s summoning to paid-sat
places] They don’t adore cars
so we make our own footway
Such a commitment [of never
really knowing how it will play
out] is not appreciated – ‘Sad’
when eyed by non-believers &
feeble snoots [f#cking snobs!]
who’ll never speak our prayers
or sing in our choir – It will be
another afternoon of elevated
expectations not-possibly-met
[football’s a game of 2 halves]
We are halfway back to my car
He pauses his TV to work out what he’s watching [engage Google & explore]
Do you recall? Our effortless recount [any digits] ‘off pat’ [as we said] – Who
knows that motor? It’s an Aston DB2 being [too-hastily] driven with a brace
of fake lovebirds in Hitchcock’s first scenes in his film of The Birds / Driving
feral in pelts – heels & a rented motorboat – No, no bare dips on this road trip
She was clawed by Brylcreem Man & an insatiable gull / Neither artiste won
an Oscar [as we Google & explore] / Tippi Hedren lives on / Pleshette is dead
Is it that [noticeable] difference between [all of] our estimations of how our now life develops & our realised truths – confronted in our [day-to-day] attested life seen by one self? My loneliness materializes as a near-to hollow arousal & interior conversations alongside familiarities – without sex & kisses – to make me slide
from my oh-too-dreadful times I come to – after fearful dreams of her rousing weaves of scent – of that stuff been slept through It forms into a recall of my dark
night’s one act of creative work If it wasn’t for those sighs from my sleeping dog my loneliness would suggest – Never wake up
Watch his eyebrow rise
See its thick arc
He affects such
when reading French
[Monsieur est un crétin]
He will take longer
to delay our waiter
it is his petit way
of being quite superior
[Ma vie est trop courte]
But – I agree with my dog –
My life is too short
for such bullshit
Please order – now
Almostmarbled
[bluetranslucen
t]nothisnameno
thingleftofthatre
moved/Drawnfr
omparents&sibl
ings&thenworke
dalongsideanop
enmouthtrench/
Arethereanywor
dsleftaftertheyb
urntgoodbooks?
There are no creaks
of floorboards & no
uncertainties inside
my recycled breaths
[in my shifted place]
A quiet confinement
is my manly product
off separation – as if
its presence is a sent
to blessing – no curse
So leave me alone to
enjoy my equilibrium
[it is my silent prayer
said within to no one]
Kölner Dom was a calculated
endeavour to reach unto God
using a scale rule as thin men
scuttered [up] trusting ladders
leant steeply gainst Him [risen
beyond rotting oak dominions
of nails & squeezed joinery] to
heights reached by remixes of
mortar & prayer under priestly
old ways below curbed Rome-
grown arches / Ropes hoisted
them up to Above / History is
temporarily absent – known by
one God / From there – beside
their still standing twin towers
[built by slow breaths expiring]
of 2 apexes – few construction
plans rolled from old centuries
to tell our awed senses – what?
They eliminated arcs in arches
& found art in flying buttresses
Below it [bony] three wise men
are weighted down in a golden
box claiming to bear wry relics
This is their sky – glass – iron &
lead – delicate tinges too far to
decode without bound psalms
Incoming lights are a material –
detailed perception – also frail –
& so bent-framed – to be a sun
Carved bridges [exact masonry
scored to heights in sandstone
as chastened blocks] As finials
grip – after drop-bomb-damage
Trachyte was their first choice –
but [their] Lord dismissed loans
Their roof is both a rib cage & a
vault – a weight willing to plunge
to earth & to employ geography
towards glass-grains waiting by
furnaces / Sand’s wish to backfill
is digging under Nature’s way to
[one day] curtail man’s Cathedral
[For DS]
He was always just holding on
well before his loosening was
wired by composed workers –
He was fitted out in the smoke
by a huddle of rarefied fixers
of minds & boulder-ish skulls –
fine line runners of pinstripes –
each hand-threaded between
his head & a re-setting within –
He’ll sleep for now in his so still
body – & he will be slow at first
& slow to know if all his moves
are all his own / He is fettled
in bedded days – recuperate &
be re-tuned [his dreams know]
He sees his agog kids on Skype
at a distance – his dried-mouth
words are haltingly delivered –
a rare chance of infection – & his
missus looks around for a data
cable / Re-connected – just so
Here – floatin’ – ish-whiffs
of desiccated weed on a
glass neck – of iffy-sniffs
of dope & somethin’s – of
beer’s belly-round settles
I prefer a bottle of Newci
because our local pumps
are n’ swilld thrugh – see –
look at my remains there
[shy b’low] an obtuse polo
mint seat – relief is clipp’d
& wiped – flushin’ m’ recall
w/out looking down again!
As if lined Nazca will ever be deciphered
Geoglyphs were man-pressed passages –
a way to work out their god’s failed plan
among desert rocks & cracked ceramics
Cahuachi collapsed after deforestation –
as if a quiet prelude to our imminent ruin
By satellites [& drones] their paced paths
confuse all hypotheses & feed ignorance –
they growl with each dug hard exposure
of bone & cracked container holding only
air – will our remnants also crumble – will
we leave any account of why we declined?
‘Admired for his deathbed performance’
& ‘infamous in his time for his life’ – two
lines of internet biography ensnare his
four decades of crimes / A seventeenth
century existence – before our futilities
bled online [when we danced with men
& vanities & lines of sovereign-sourced
lies] Those immediately-crowned social
influencers – we click on & receive futile
lies / We will visit long enough to review
as subordinates bow & divide / Our poet
Rochester would have flourished – under
wit’s re-tweeted cries – as inferior artists
fell under Facebook’s clamorous denials
E210120
Kurt Vonnegut Jr didn’t believe
that your glaciers would thaw –
they are frozen [eternal] as are
man’s wan desire for a crusade
[as enduring & always present]
Those to-war fools [& oil-dupes]
will not agree what will slacken
beneath / Battles will be fought
for water’s last spill [So it goes]
But glaciers will not be involved
as our nations burn without war
& our conflicts shift [So it goes]
E270120
And if I could remain upright –
as I do on this drop-down seat
with my bowels hanging open
& my dog slumped at my feet
[being of that post-crunch age
of never-offering-another-f*ck]
I would be so happy / And if it
was possible to never have to
wipe & so avoid pain’s leak of
tears – made by turning – then
it would be good to stay here
overnight & on waking rise to
warm water in my hot shower
to remove my air-dried faeces
Picasso stood beside a finger
signpost showing three ways
to places from a raised island
of rough grass & wheeled ruts
as if caught painting in a beret
& brumal layers – wool-clothed
for changing English elements
He was marooned – Crusoe’d in
Muddles Green contemplating
CHIDDINGLY – raised up in iron
under others – GOLDEN CROSS
& LAUGHTON – places reduced
to state GOLD LAUGH by Pablo
Sex isn’t interesting
what with odours &
bent-to discomforts
of bodies & hushed
subterfuge – like my
stories blown in her
shell-like / Sincerity
is yielded for lesser
thrills to make such
effort humdrum for
me – one not in love
Even kissing isn’t it
or anything else – if
sorrow is your thing
you’ll see that sex is
best done by others
In ’84 it was dire to live with
my so-unendurable shyness
I thrived when unheard – hid
behind a re-bolted fire door
& my off-the-hook landlines –
it wasn’t as if I’d veer – spin &
hit head-on / James B. Dean
did it first & last / No return
from a crash of startling light
No more – no one still insists
on their self-destruction – not
without writing an awful note
Back then I used leaked pens
& pads & ripped clear sheets
or a self-addressed envelope
A singer poured his lyrics out
to us – a crush of hot punters
We fingered each sleeve note
until we seeped & transferred
in whorls – inked fingerprints –
& I hid from provinces of cold
looks – regards – until fearless
pretence found me still extant
but with no shy ways / A lost
modesty in my last songbook
‘Grant me chastity and continence
but not yet’ The Confessions Book VIII
Like Morse [& St Augustine]
my desire for sorrow swells
in readings & discrepancies
& ageing & in old intentions
Anxiety is in my every hour –
not in a lost past / My fiction
creates loneliness in a lit cell
of rented space / We end up
poor in temporary lodgings –
paying for bright biographies
& hope to be lent an apology
before a modern novel writer
has entwined our plots & lies
Time can be limited by love’s
hard labour & its indifference
in books we’ll never look over
To get her to release
push your finger into
her mouth & she’ll let
go – it’s easy – I agree
We followed our path
of likely slips in mud –
negotiating slopes &
wind-lowered boughs
as our foolish puppies
spun around at blind
games of crashing &
jaws – snapping wild –
their paths expanded
to take them through
places suited to their
unknown hiding prey
But not us – we hiked
on that marked route
without a way around
storm-dropped pools
& then talked about it
Me: Your thoughts plot
your happiness – easy
for you to say – unsaid
by her – So I have to let
them loose – unhooked
& not attend to what is
carried in their mouths
But she’ll always worry
too much about riddles
& puzzles set by doubt
Dog walks taken by us
are a way to talk freely –
without tied constraints
of cups of tea or facing
each other – we walk on
Opposite me – at this table –
an elderly couple bend over
their equal servings to mine
[chicken & assorted salads]
We wear similar work shirts
Steel dishes chime cutlery’s
made scrapes & complaints
& return me – by breath – to
school time & a lunch hour –
cooled on a tray / There are
no records of my [misspent]
fretted lessons served there
[my certificates were defiled]
It is easy for me to retreat to
my childhood – to wait inline
Sat in this kibbutz dining hall
[playing too easily in history]
I diminish my grades – lo tov
E270120
I bake this daily bread –
but my art is reduced –
Another phase – it’s like
his daily poetry / Every
slice slumps – my knife
exposes inner risings –
these harvested loaves
sit better in my gut than
bread off a shop’s shelf
“..it’s like a good fuck,
half is worse than none at all”
Maeve Millay
Westworld – S1 Ep 9
Extract my whirl of memories
so her censure [when I wake]
isn’t my recurring cauchemar
after another disturbed night
of wily gledges by our rewind
[a play] of misconstrued sex
My raw dreams need removal
from my eye along with paths
that we wandered & we knew
[those we crept before access
was removed – after our lands
were sliced in half by our hate]
If there is a switch – or a code –
then engage such to re-set me
before we met \ Let me forget
& not abrooke more nightmares
set in mortal time’s witherings –
half my mind needs defragging
to do tonight & every other – be
cleared of her malicious wraiths
Now let me [finally] rouse alone
Me: I am calling it a day
Not a thing to offer out
loud – others will argue
against my final remark
with their ignorant talk
I will translate it – then
& fewer souls will spew
their complaints aloud
about this last decision
Me: Ich mach’ Feierabend
I was scolded about
my outfit for church
Make Mama happy –
& Our Lord too! Girl
you wear your finest!
My everyday choice
was far from perfect
& required replacing
with a printed dress
My brothers yanked
at tightened braces –
loosened shirttails &
cussed – Shhh! God!
I will lie under a tree
& reel in my impulse
to throw off my stuff
before God & Mother
Such sin will abide in
my mind – Hush child!
Is there a morning-after pill
just for me? A drug to snuff
memories & rippling recalls
filling dull minutes after she
bared herself outside M&S –
She sat stony-face & stated
I’ve f*cked him again & stuff
but never why she wished to
confess her doubling of guilt
I had exculpated her before –
St Michael! Easier if ignorant
of whom she was giving it to
Why him again? Why tell me?
She answered – No comment
Too-quick gifts to give & take
like headache capsules – pop
them out & absolve your pain
[or not -compel me to endure
hangovers – after sober days]
[Me] It was easily missed – shared threats
of World War Three – Not being there – on
social media & spending one le week-end
bunkered – sat – before sport from Africa
& so few – too few – clicks of stately news
My hunkering against thought [to protect
& survive in our Brave New World of ego –
of tweets & news] Choose your consommé
& your plat principal – feed on your choice
but do also ask from whom it was sourced
Mea máxima culpa
Through my most
terrible defect – He’s
behind you! Beware
of snaps & slapstick
& other whip stories
loose on barebacks –
Don’t e’er coddle me!
or beat me to excess
for my sins of saying
bad words ’bout God
[those howled out by
me – we disbelievers
see overturned hulls
not huge cathedrals]
Perhaps we shall sit
as a cleric counsels
his penitent puppets
One Punch & Judy’s
papal prank or two?
Don’t tip a sugarloaf
hat to any old Devil –
Doctor – or snapping
Crocodile – every kid
has a fear of clowns
A brief confessional
erected on beaches
to entice children to
our Lords of Misrule
That’s the way to do it
Let me enjoy a show
of robes in your vast
theatres of comedy –
then let me with fists
steer Mr Punch home
& to pivot my neck
& to kiss again lips
unbuttoned an inch
& visited just once –
just briefest of – not
enough to keep her
at a critical distance
& such was our way
together that losses
have mounted under
years of recollection
of a shared latitude –
but your lust haunts
Go on a ghost hunt
in your family tree –
see other such falls
& only then find me
to blame for my old
urge to even scores
set by kissed ways –
& especially those –
especially those of
lovers who should
not have been ours
I pause at my controlled crossing
where old friends & rare relatives
are greeted – at this stop junction
of cautious approaches – of fading
lines – dripped paint – thin hazard
markings keep me safe – Familiar
with braking distances – not from
my theory test – but passed in real
time – my father had told me that
you’ll not drive well until you pull
away on your own [My instructors
has stepped away from this car &
my emergency stops are too harsh
Now it is time to master hill starts]
I yearn for her expensive
scrape – nails on itches –
not our lost irregular sex
for which I was charged
at highly inflated rates of
compromises – of house
extensions – of her added
value & our pension plans
Not for her sport of social
climbing alongside family
friction Not for such stuff
I merely have unreachable
discomforts – on my back
My first body pumps coal blood –
strata – not veins – my black toxin
dug at by my antecedents & now
burning in our ravenous furnaces
My second body sucks stuff from
machined seams too deep to see
& bays for copper & tin heaved by
poorly-paid labour in toiled places
My third body will not take painful
slights of air or sunlight’s touches
& will only feed on what remains –
toiled-thin soil & scarce resources
My fourth body will not know how
we managed to f*ck it up – just so
My second body will be disgraced
by a dragged out record of shame
My third body will not be able to fix
such avarice – a beneficiary of less
& will worry more than I’ll impress
upon my fourth – my nefarious self
Her list of old grievances
has now been rescinded –
she’s had sufficient hours
to swivel her sour history
and spin thin complaints
about his anger & fussing
But she had [too quickly]
re-f*cked her first cousin
which she had amended
as a second cry for help –
a spoilt child cries loudly
when her preys have fled
and breaks her old toys –
until nothing loved is left
We will promptly
re-settle at 7/10 –
after that burst of
short-term delight
within swift gains
of lottery prizes &
oh-fantastic fucks
We will drop from
our 10/10 heights
to an unstoppable
senescence – sins
& timings conspire
to keep us [almost]
at eight’s euphoria
But not any higher
This is our ranking
of [real] happiness
Into a sweating pit –
By Christ – it stinks –
I am sense-rammed
by fag-drags & heat
& rude spits of beery
shouts from those held
outside by smokers’ rules
Inside it is a narrowing
of elbowed glasses –
of tipping arrogance
Booze kisses of men & women
who – between love’s swigs –
turn their eyes up
to high screens & updates
on their long & short bets
on their Main man –
Seconds out – Round One
& not a place for me
& my Waitrose bags
A howling car alarm – It isn’t mine
They will pound on house doors –
‘Oose that fucker disturbin’
our fuckin’ peace
It does not need carrying –
Fuck you!
& other words travel outside
under a disturbed grind of voices
I cannot keep eight hours sleep
anymore – & four is not enough
They will not let me drive –
because my grip has gone
so that mechanical disturbance
is not my concern – Fuck off
His resting place is
constantly watched
One-eyed witnesses
around Marx’s tomb
at 30 frames/second
to corroborate those
radicals’ movements
between cold marble
and cracking granite
Plunderers – robbers –
aim their spray paint
on his entrenchment
and paint sauvistikas
instead of swastikas
Ignorance & politics –
they’re restless again
Economics 101 has no value
GDP is a fallacious Godhead
We cynics were once singled
out by that quotable O. Wilde
We confuse prices & values –
my poetry does not pay cash
My drawn lines do more than
feed final demands & threats
Perfect knowledge did for me
I yearn for a retreat
from my devices &
my vice of red-eyed
hours – do not wake
me – space spills in
as funnelling sand &
bottles of spilt wine
knocked back in my
bowl-sized cut glass
Instead – pull emptied
tumblers & tall flutes
from breakable lips –
do not kiss thin rims
& try to get shut-eye –
Michael – try to sleep
There is … nothing now
No weather to speak of
No kicked-up teasing of
litter to torment my dog
No layering lakes of hail
and no struggles of heat
No stern frosty response
across this opened field –
no boot-cracked ditches
No complaints & nothing
re-touched or tipped into
a bending under old rules
There is no compulsion …
I will loosen four circles –
four can yokes/four loops
Four collars – four nooses
or four buoyant garrots as
a fifth still holds them all –
no – I will not save our sea
It took one of my forebears
off Sunderland’s cold shore
whilst my father was pulled
underneath for days & days
in submarines – an unnatural
act – a voluntary Mr Bartley?
Whilst my five rips will never
keep any ocean or turtle free
from tugs of alcohol – instead
I will get drunk again & recycle
‘Fragile’ is equal to ‘fragile’
Alexandra was too honest
as women fabricated their
bare lies – Lying to seduce
(a more) common practice
among pretty women – My
quoted line [a French film]
My kindly therapist spoke
with her Sussex lilt – about
a ‘petite pute’ – translated to
a little whore – familial stuff –
we men create such trouble
& get caught by translations
Time has not yet inclined enough
to coerce any kind of difference –
perhaps later – sometime in June
when we’ll see our pined-for light
[stuck as we are – in addled mud]
Our need for summer dried paths –
of kicked up grit – of lifting dust –
of seeing our harder route ahead –
no more digging out trod-in ooze
Scorched days will be our saviour
is a rumbled thought under clouds
But we forget how humour sweats
under a higher temperature in our
too quick to exsiccated landscape
Longer days will not find us shelter
from any localised weather events
& so we reshape our collars & caps
to make this shortest day bearable
Tarred feathers
in seam wings
laid heretofore
as if thoughtful
– a crisscrossing
of arms behind
& into clasps of
fingers – lightly
lip-touched rings
Breeding vanity –
expanding skulls
& slowing retorts
of our black-eyed
priests – fattened
by wine & bread
They’ll endeavour
to find weightless
flight in short-time
Their slow parades
under raven capes
instil a sort of fear
into those weaker
fellows in our flock
Attend such priests
I have slipped into being
one who staves day wear
& who’ll settle to waking
up with Bacalov & books
in his sitting chair below
his reading light – within
reach is his worn remote
My grandfather tuned in
to waves @ distances on
a glowing horizon – other
places – medium & long –
measured in x-kilometres
We both return to voices
on another old continent
But no newspaper barrier
Perhaps a remit for print?
A walk to a newsagent &
my reason to get dressed –
before settling – it is easy
under my long diagnosed
excuse for ageing quickly
You ajudge men by the state of their teeth
their yellowed smiles scratch at your nerves
but you’ll greedily bear money’s bad breath
You seek out arrangements – love’s not enough
there’s a deal to be done – his cash will be burnt
You ajudge men by the state of their teeth
You wear his bare gifts – binding handcuffs
kiss his foul mouth as he fumbles his words
but you’ll greedily bear money’s bad breath
You prized his gold gifts – I found out how much
your use of rich men stilled my worked worth
You ajudge men by the state of their teeth
Then he used words that suggested his love
so you steered your tongue to trigger just lust
but you’ll greedily bear money’s bad breath
Leave poorly paid men – we are not enough
because you’ll always put a rich man first
You ajudge men by the state of their teeth
but you’ll greedily bear money’s bad breath
She was always too innocent –
pious in place – spinning a thin
yarn out of love songs of Ovid
& my over thumbed amorets –
she plagiarized The Art of Love
& broke its spine – antagonised
with folding outs – not discreet
openings & seen one too many
times in public places – a pudor
& then her flighty generations –
Then my exile to an empty bed
where ill sleep is tidal unrests –
here my rolling hull lies broken –
split under my lip-stained sheet
of blank verse – of bare rhymes
& her hard done lip-sync of lies
She never ‘got’ books or poetry
citing her childhood anxieties –
but she could quote her mother
who had helped her spell spindle
& other such troublesome words
stitched together to form her lies
She will pass on her art & craft to
to her graceless daughter – & spin
You reel in light – disturbed
by thinking’s whipped pulls
on your weightless lines –
not intended to really catch
Sleep is disturbed – it disturbs
with a spinning glinting fish
which is yours – a wide cast
to not knowing what is met
below a slowly-oiled surface
It hooks onto one more loss –
a fix into tender bared flesh
in his bloodied open mouth
Bubbled – his words of hate
spit in a heaved landing net
of bed sheets wet with sweat
And you see – as yet awake?
That glint off slapping scales
in sunlight – he is thrown back
But he still disturbs your night
I don’t really know
my reset rationale
could be one way
to try to & decode
such heaving fugs
of chronic thought
in my rented place
with no rowdy kids
in a silenced room
I will keep making
money & take time
& sit at my window
Outside is another
way of being there
& finding existence
Pottering will save
me from my ill-hell
Attend an Evening
Class & take up art
Renew one’s library
card & hang out in
Romance & Poetry
Or find Love online
It has struck me so
I don’t really know!
And sex can get boring
under such bright lights
on cellulite Under looks
at clocks set to a work’s
re-schedule of comings
and goings across days
of other such hard stuff
It was intrepid Dunkirk as
our only solution to avoid
300,000 on-beach deaths
Enough then to refill every
C of E graveyard in Sussex
in rootish wooden crosses
but for our inexact convoy
of a minimum 30ft. vessels
as forgotten fighting men
died – a diversion in Calais
of given bodies and blood
for those withdrawn from
a bloodied slip of lost land
Timepieces were embedded
into ornaments – weighted –
& photos were braced in gilt
frames upon wooden desks
Now & then were contained
in mounted spaces – visible
and in turn – reached by keys
or invitations – to appreciate
all time now & that time then
I have seen
our constant arc
curled up
from its underside
Nothing else serves
as a call to us
We fight ourselves
Our only enemy
is our old master
Look up at our fay
of refracted blues
that backlit show
yet to be owned
It is always equal
over others’ homes
On my circular dog walk
there is a tidy treehouse
with no way to climb up
It is likely to be reached
by a foot-propped ladder
lent by someone’s parent
It has been made to last
by some eye-aligned tools
It is not my younger prop
of wood hefts – sly thefts
off a builder’s dry bonfire
by our ever-hapless gang
to make our cobbled den
of swiped timbers – to lift
us – half a century earlier
above wired private land
in our splintered cockpit
of near-balanced planks
But this one has fat bolts
to hold – and a guarantee
of an adult’s supervision
On my circular dog walk
there is a tidy treehouse
with no way to climb up
You almost kiss me with that dry smile
made by my your mouth
and your half look
You listen to me – and like me –
you hear near scatterings
of circled cross-table talk
I feel those ricochets of consonants
in split lines
as they pass across your eyes
Then one shuts to wink?
Those slices of others
have fixed on your slide
You capture just enough
to turn from me and find a twist to focus
to a floated idea
A reflection off your plate provides backlight
for you to use your microscope
and its monocular view
Below blae whirs
of imminent rainfall
two not-too-distant
butts of voices
needled each other
leaving loose stitches
of unthreaded words
on a path above us
as your hair licked
in that same cut wind
which blew their ire
across our track
Blackberrying was
never an easy thing
with sprung thorns
and others’ sour pickings
There is a translucence
to my inquiet sleeping
with waking seconds
pulling consciousness in
Do not unglue your eyes
to hold to a small hope
of returns to confusion
to comforting dreams –
such ruses wear thin
in later decades of trying
Give up this hour and
read until your eyes give in
My blood rubs
partly explains
my old disease
Hourly beaten
without seeing
my aggressor
A fucking awful
tiredness – sleep
no longer works
A rattled alarm
for medicine to
still my tremor
Enough to fool
those who eye
my demeanour
Night is when
my best is said –
quietly – to no one
My orgy of clients
has rolled from my hands
There were too many to love
My light-fingered art
is now copied out
multiple times
by bent-to silent monks
re-daubed
by Christ’s forgers
in long-dried blood
and pushed into gilt frames
To be sold as seen
Scattered indicators matter –
The Census at Bethlehem
offers a dozen cartwheels
Each is set with thirteen spokes
turning fortunes for one unborn
You play Gustav Mahler’s
Symphony Number Five
in C-sharp minor
at a rolled-up volume –
to entreat my bloody senses
A record of your being here
will eventually be found
under wrist-spins of microfiche
by sharp-eyed descendants
who never knew of you –
but they will itemise your turns
of date born and date died
and try to fix found gaps
between registrars’ comments
to know your place before them
You’d spit in my beer if you could
but not whilst I’m up here
looking down on you
from behind this thin mic stand
that I hide behind
You could ask for your money back
Cos there ain’t enough laughs
but you don’t have the balls
being British and so polite –
even when fighting – stay quiet
and let me tell you how it is
as I try to extract a laugh from you
That way we’ll both feel better
about this cash-based relationship
You’re funnier on the telly!
This will be my last show – Ever!
and that gets me a huge laugh
When I get such a response
you know what – I’ll use it again
and again – and again
There are too many to read
or understand –
no chance
in our burning time
of warmer days –
no time left
between climbing high tides
We will never comprehend
what we see
when we look
overhead at spitting lights
beamed at 186,000 miles
per second
And then even more bared
by your long-gazed appraisal
as we chart
our growing ignorance
of what is beyond our reach
No time left for us
to fuck them up as well
That gift of three hundred
and sixty-five
handwritten notes
I sealed inside
separate envelopes by
my spit-worked lips
and ink-numbered them
by my pen-curled fingers
They were a year’s reading
Few were opened up
And I
never took account
of your leap years
or your reversals
or your taking advantages
So my short works
are now fiction
yet to be finally read
She has our crushed boxes
of wedding pictures
and our Christmas decorations –
our cheap jewels brought out
on a shortened day –
a day requiring a ladder
to help us lug up
our November weights of Sussex
that bonfire costume crate
pushed through our knocked out
loft’s gape
and exchanged for seasonal stuff
This will be my first Christmas
without our hung reminders –
without her late anniversary card
In that moment
when your cup tips
you will sip
on emptiness
It is already too easy
to taste nothing –
too easy by delineation –
another failure
but a profitable design –
a greedy manipulation
We pass tipping points
as lost time is re-defined
by low mutterings
about our obvious losses
but still not openly
noted –
not tabloid-known –
Still unseen less stuff
Enter no payments
against overdue bills
Forget out-of-print
backorders sought online
Dismiss forthwith
learning other languages
Possibly embrace
Morse Code’s flat voice
Forget your mortgage
and overseas trips
Come with me under
a protective stairway
Pray – It is now too close
to that fearful time
of no refills or top-ups
Old bombs will drop
I am not blood-steamed
by spine loosening grunts
across bare white backs
laid out below Istanbul
on arse-warmed marble
Instead
I am pinned and pressed
sweated
as if sleeping badly
but up
awake on a chassis-rattled bus
sat with other stained weights
drawing my dank suspires
Old condensation cools
on glass
almost rolled tears
on soused windows
There’s no near side view
Above a wettened aisle
fellow devotees look on
with a quiet resignation
We are gathered
together
in Our Driver’s
rear-view mirror
It is
again
my lost route
of timeless sways and whines
of an engine in county lanes
taking me
a cold damp traveller
I am compressed
and sat stop-blind
I am not
sauna-wrapped
this time
Don’t tie me a tight
heaving line knot
like those used
to gird monks
to Mister Christ
or to add weight
to throws and casts
of messenger lines
Three loose ships –
Poverty – Chastity
and Obedience
pull at five rope coils
to match five wounds
in a fisherman’s side
They are out of reach –
no looped hawser pulls
Make me a postulant
for nine months
Make me a novitate
for twelve months
Make me take a vow
not yet launched
or knotted by love
Not bound by any God
I am your blown out wish –
rich
with birthday spit
I inflate wanted lists and
your every year –
every anniversary – craving
for gifts
I hope you like it
A fool’s longing is my trick
turning dry thoughts into thirst
before hunger grips
Later your rubbed lust
will open other’s yearning lips –
both set to work
by my dictates
How can I thank you?
I will let you sleep sated –
but cheated
I’ll come back with your waking
Her high heels
clip-clop
on and on
She wears a brooch –
Number One
She’s selling herself
yet again
[She still sells herself to so many men]
Her smiled offer sours
if cash runs short
She lives for herself
She’s an airbrushed whore
Creased net curtains
with stocking details –
old man’s smoked glass –
a soiled two-way mirror
His fag-stubbed ashtray
brims high with butts
Half-read thrillers
sit sliced by bookmarks
Yesterday’s puzzle –
cold clues unsolved
Ink stains his skin –
a love deeply carved
She remains in him –
his beloved strife
He is now alone –
a Brighton still life
You can walk with me
along another path
It’s not too far
but be aware of fallen trees
Watch for twisted boughs –
turned like a lover’s thighs
crossed – coyly – enough
to keep to wedding vows
An overnight layering of leaves
masks raised roots
A wild rose curls – armed
with thorns bared like teeth
Without broken clouds
there is less to see –
no backlit leaves
to play out a sideshow
It is this gate now
Your brief candle will light
my abdication – write it down
Please – remove my crown
before its weight crushes me
Fatigue feeds on my blue blood
Pain gifts me my hangman’s name
Those two princes of discomfort
underscore their dungeon games
in a discord of old tower songs –
far too loudly at times for my liking
Let me walk from my obligation
of parades – of polite conversation –
of waving and doing dull functions
Let those two would-be kings loose
upon my sex-ensnared queen
and leave me to tighten my noose
Have you witnessed
her cast off on bow-side
whilst tautened ropes –
messenger sent –
are pulled stern-side?
Have you seen those
flicked-to wringings
as tensions are taken –
as lines stretch
from an oil-glazed sea?
Have you watched
as that stubborn
house-high hull
shifts in boiling water
of her own making?
Have you heard
terrific complaints
as her immobility shifts
from its visited place
on a paper chart?
Have you waited
until silence returns?
You have stood dockside
for too long –
you have seen enough
Can you rouse your future
without looking at your palms?
Whilst they are pressed together
will you forget your past?
Each space between each timber
appears much tighter now
as if my clenched memory
has squeezed a recall held
She sells to opened hands
once her’s has weighed your coin –
palmistry is a sideshow
positioned to profit a void
I watch you squint in daylight
and take those four steps down
I watch those gaps expand again
as if they wish you drowned
Two crows in black robes
ghost into my untrusting
edge of sight –
that miscalculated corner
of slights – of misinformation
A pair of hooded monks
float across this field
angled south
of Golden Cross –
a hectare of grass pasture
We take a triangulation
of boot-dashed footpaths
Here
a temporary centre
of a loosened ruin of bales
We follow b2 from a2
towards millennial years
of old adding ups
before
Pythagoras came to c2
Let us compare
our old notes
regarding ruination
[Mine’s a pint]
and then
put a rounded-down value
on our statements
Slow now – sip –
and assay our undoings
Ignore your familial
misdirections
We should keep our peace –
you – your king-size needs
Smother your grinding
snorts of indiscretion
and offer me wordless
quiescence
Do not read
my poetry
Inextinguishable thoughts
said Mary
My
verse
stacks
are
[more than ever]
shored
by
wrecks’
timbers
Here is a quaint inn
of unshaven drunks spewing
small pools
of table-brewed hope
Ageing men sicken
with what they know
They compare
fat volumes
of pub-roughed notes
You now look
like your blood-tied
carrier
[Some women
bear
hangovers
like their mother]
She stands as she presses
[a hot flat curse by her sex]
at an obdurate crease –
not her finest ironing
Her reproach is thin mist
over her too-quick
Welshman slumped below her
Lovely – as ever – is unheard
inside their stained rooms
on steam and smoke days –
coughs of poked coal
suffer too by spotted damp
She is not loving anger’s
post-war monochrome –
Kodak and snapped charcoal
sketches will not hold her
6lbs of jelly babies, Mister
A smack ’round yer head son
Her boredom swells
and she is too gone to stop
and prepare for blood’s colour
From foul names and bin-dirty words
he is sent to meet an apology
Rain tips needle him
He’s only a sweet stall keeper –
but a good son to someone
We had lots of fun –
me and Ma – just being alive
Everything was a slow exhale –
his soot trumpet breath blows
He looks baritone to everyone
but she sees a pathetic man-child
I am a slugged sum of rum and Coke
(Zero)
without any fixes – no bookings
or drag of attachments
that may – in others – weigh
too heavily – like small kids
But this is my trick – see –
Watch where your nickel goes
Look – it was always there!
My audience pays afterwards
only if I am good enough
It is a fair deal – I get to stop
when I want – they want magic
twenty-four-seven – a good deal
I have instant cash for rum and Coke
It requires –
wrote an author –
a total abdication
of intellect
It does not offer
easy balances –
less so under
a tightened blindfold
It kills your craft –
a single bullet
spat through
a silencer’s hollow
It is every other
compromise
which nuncupates
slyly exclude
It explores you
with a soft tongue
turning your voice
into foolish gasps
It demands stupidity
and subjugation
Do not confuse them –
love and wet sex
Walk on air against your better judgement – Seamus Heaney, The Gravel Walks
I am getting drunk
with Seamus
He still rolls
his soot vowels out
from his distiller’s
mouth
We are considering
fallacies
from our buttressed
high attics
[Aloft in our crosstrees
he wrote]
My English accent flattens –
avoids rolled port-barrels
I will not sweat his peat
or grain
I once got pissed
on my brother-in-law’s poitín
I then sweated poetry
for days
It is impossible to maintain
a constant perspective
Heraclitus often reflected
between wept moments
Democritus often laughed
at blubbed floods of words
A month’s worth of rain
fell in one single day
Hellingly’s bi-sainted church
sits above our Cuckmere’s threat
from change-swollen reaches –
wet acts of Peter and Paul’s god
You stood naked in our risen river –
that serpent slips – a gelid rising
You were bare at its quick confluence
with a rushed stream – name unknown
I found you in bed with a clay figurine
Sussex has a hundred words for mud
She rolled her stone-grey eyes
around my emptied house
She stared – hexed –
under her god-given right to be there
She – again – screamed too loudly –
I’m not going anywhere
She was present – moored safely
by her storm-dropped anchor
She unfettered her throaty gob –
spittle built in her foam-filled mouth
She spewed thrice-sworn spat words –
hatred spluttered out
She shouted again
and her vent dripped down my open shirt
She was an execrating creature
with stitched-back red lips
She turned her unmarked right palm out –
this pain was her last gift
She glared from grey marbles –
clicking – as her eyes flipped wild
She slapped with her right hand –
opened out – she rouged my cheek
She looked more frightened than me –
she being an arrant fool
Hola – I’m Lucky – you may know me
Buenos Dias – I don’t understand
that played out Spanish soundtrack
I tune into every morning
for my barefoot Yoga exercises
My filter coffee steams like road tar
as it thickens and fixes in minutes –
as my scarred white lungs enjoy
a smoke set off by my lighter’s click –
Look – another pack’s easy stick
So – Listen – I’m lucky to survive
a first deadfall – a foolish indignation
At my age – about tortoise-ish –
things slow down too easily
like a ship – a Large Slow Target –
like that sprung clock of death
which will not stop ticking for me
Truth is – it’s all going away
It’s fucking tough being Lucky
But I ain’t a convoluted piece of shit
My constant dæmon
is a glass-eyed rook
which openly buries
stones – not food –
and then steals others’
stocked supplies –
my beau-pere’s quick
to utilize
Each crow’s
pinned quill
branches out
becoming barbs
then – suddenly –
into barbules
and finishes in
gripping hooklets
of a so-necessary
huge smallness –
clasped to take flight
from groundings –
such technology
we cannot match
Just south of Nash Street
lies an eye-straight road –
not laid by bent-to Romans
or rutted under lost pilgrims’ carts
but a later by-way pegged
between tool-twisted turns
of fleece-carding pricking wires
nailed to long-paced posts
Untouched oaks claim sunlight
in their overhead boundary
Their bare roots act as hazards
for my blind spot boots
which then slip on acorn grit –
that loosely rolled resurfacing
of brittle spawned shells
under emptied boughs
All found-hushes are lost
to door slams of a far off shotgun
At a saturated junction
unknown mushrooms stand
as if randomly placed bollards –
circles of tipped fragile caps
standing more connected
to this land than ourselves
We take a hard turn
to find – again – our east
to leave that subsoil route –
to tread on returning home tarmac
You have done nothing
for others
for over two years
Your sworn word-burns
scald all – lovers’ lies
marking your rum time
of pulling stitched truth apart –
almost mounting it –
as if pinned butterfly wings
You have cruelly removed
hand-rubbed angel humps
from your whipping boy’s back
Your milk-souring kisses
off your offered-up mouth
leave a caustic residue
of almost almond sweetness
off your cheap red lipstick
smeared on sagged cheeks
Multiple ugly marriages
stiffen your dearests –
they do not want honesty – truth at last
E051119
Play a required symphony
by a long-dead composer
in a suddenly quiet moment
during your commuted time
Then – perhaps – then scroll
to old depressing stuff
by now-dead-Leonard –
No – not Leonard Bernstein –
Life ain’t a fucking musical
you scream outside your house
as you pause – then insert
and turn your copied key
to unlock home’s passwords
of Bletchley-worth codes
found in confusing texts
and misunderstandings
between desk operatives and you –
their long-suffering field agent
And in this domestic setting
do not spill jargon weighted
from your second language –
work’s double-speak words –
such is unknown by those
sheltered in your safe house
where what is said is often left
unspoken
E061119
I do not want
one more named illness
that would be a sublime act of greed –
a selfish huzzah –
more drowning in remorse
as others swim carefree
in lakes – in ponds and in seas
without fear of sinking
Suddenly – an unexpected recall
of a place – almost lost – Coxes Lock –
that maleficent flour mill
stood above a hand-dug waterway
Exclusive apartments –
says Google –
still with brick-skinned faces
over that ever-dangerous depth
A near-redundancy
was obvious to all
forty years before
as a slow decay took hold
Above stuck sluices
hammered signs
denied access by trespass laws
and for all to Be Aware – Deep Water
With its old labour came cuts
to flow – they filled reserves
to increase their grinding speeds
so reducing depths downstream
We were three boys
adrift in a rope-tied boat
pulled by our father
at his towpath distance
Coxes Lock and its dark pond
were not an option –
even for him
an old submariner
so we were towed
through shallower water
below those
high seeping gates
Now I have no anchor
in this floatation tank –
drifting in thought
and easing my set of pains
from a day’s equation
of hour-paid time
I cannot afford
one more named illness
Nostalgia –
Don Draper said –
is of Hellenic origin –
an old sensation –
pain from a wound
Don Draper pitched
in a dimmed meeting room
as he – Don Draper – spun
his so-subtle remorse
via a sentiment-filled –
brand spanking new –
Kodak – a Carousel!
Don Draper quoted Greek
at less fortunate men –
Kodak’s suited marketeers –
who shed rolled tears too
as Don Draper sold his love
on an advance button
That softest sell –
a hard-pressed remote
connected to a hot projector
made in Rochester – New York
Never buy quotable poetry –
even Don Draper’s will not do
Nico took me on a trip
across a leatherette couch
at young Mr Warhol’s
last gallery party
We sipped old absinthe
from filthy egg cups
with that desert blast
from Jim’s
selfish rasps of eremic air
played back through
Andy’s Bang and Olufsen
speakers
We didn’t talk that much
My wet mouth was fixed
upon her age-pitted skin
There was a second time
but she was not counting
scores in ninety eighty-one
once punks stole her songs
My unpaired bookend
An unescorted
thought-prop
found not wanting
to take her slotted weight
of a ripped hide binding –
of one more unreturnable
borrowing
No end support
for true-life stories
featuring her bends in time –
of tippings and double backs
under fading recall
as a distorted monologue
No squeezing into space
left on a packed bookshelf
No loose dust covers
to keep at bay
her sparkling particles
Now half a brace stood
for others’ volumes
Poem #1,596 of 10,000
Scores of lady’s gloves reach
out on this chain sawn patch
whilst less urgent saplings
have slower ambitions
There a sometimes-killing –
but also useful – fungi
sprouts from a rot-set
silver bough
You see it too –
but as a foreign shell
washed up far from tides
without a limpet’s blind tenacity
I tell you – it is also known as
razor strop fungus –
due to its rough edges –
many lost uses – like fire carrying
We crush this season’s litter
stopping at bright busting
sweet chestnuts –
buffed peel-able virgins
to be split by my heeled
crush – to an extraction
Along our crackling path
of bitter acorns – those
discarded ancient fruits
of last week’s storm –
we see where swung blades of gusts
broke a woodsman’s coppice
It is as if
every clock
is set to
other zones –
subject to
singularities –
hours mooned
by round faces
and seen from
wider angles
by those
qualified
A diagnosis
does not tell
you at what time
all will be right
I am a tightrope walker
with my filled wheelbarrow
steered – nervous weights
before me – held dead-straight
You act as if you are
just another Harry Houdini
balanced above Niagara
for a long bet against gravity –
quivering inside – all of us do
when stepping so high
Such is fatherhood on days
of bowing mistakes
We have no diplomas
just higher circus learning –
without safety nets
There is such scant chance
of any long term escape
from your rusting suffixes
now all time is in a half-light
since your last offered dance
to your half-known songs
of romance –
you unstitched their looped lyrics
in your head
Love is not found in white lines
or knocked on hotel doors
or where an hour is charged
at exorbitant fuck-me rates
as underwear is slipped down
and another breath is felt hot
through a nipple-bitten-minute
of house rule-settings
before a stiff affirmation
of your being so beautiful –
that feckless gauge of worth
which has been set
by years of dressing downs
within your three-way coven –
they fucked you up
and left you to look – still looking –
for more than them
Lucent – your erstwhile
shining was
stolen from my eyes
but still seen clasped
in old retained rings
You mislaid one stone –
you put in a claim
for a weight now lost
but did not notice –
refractions also rattle
An email
dropped –
nearly junk
mail –
through
my inbox –
But
not an invite
to a gig
Just a
sad note
from a
fat lip fool
Blocked
is such
a Godsend
Remember me when I am gone away, / Gone far away into the silent land
Christina Georgina Rossetti
[Goblin Market and other Poems, ‘Remember’]
You upset too many people –
you cannot recall their names
You speak too many times –
you imbue too much pain
You suck on charmed fruit
of ret love –
then spit out lies
You wonder where you’re going
as you stroke your sex-soaked thighs
You look in long-blown mirrors
to greet your red-eyed burns
as you undress another woman
to whom you cannot now return
You seek with rolled-back light
without seeing ageing truths
Consider an apology –
before you look twice to seduce
My core temperature
has dropped
a few points –
Yes – I do allow for
seasonal differences
All the while
working timepieces
make veridical turns
between here and there –
ever evenly placed
like fixed hard chairs
in another time-sucking surgery
Sit with me –
It’s cold outdoors –
Stay – before my reminder to move
to face a dog-tired doctor
sat in another swivel chair
He / She will be leant forward
squinting – screen-reading
throughout my consultation
This giving wooden bench
faces due south
as if aimed by a pagan
rather than – truthfully –
at that required angle
to watch a ghost-stepped
amateur football match
After sitting in so many
bright muzak rooms
my huge catalogue
of Chairs Used
in Waiting Rooms
is now complete
[cancer wards excluded –
touch wood!]
I am ready to be published
Stud imprints in dragged mud
and ball-thumping boots
have mashed this playing field –
churned those naked goalmouths
with a good old-fashioned kicking
Standing is not too easy these days –
my cold bones
and low moans meet
Let us get to another bench
to talk some more about life
This is my digging hand
at those exhausted seams
turned dust to dust
in my late soundless hour
to prop whatever up –
perhaps underpinnings
beneath presses of kilonewtons
into compressed layers
All this darkness was once painted –
as if in tar –
by a Welshman’s guided tour
through an exhausted mine –
it saw my hard-hat lamp-dim
and my eyesight drop
to where my father’s coughed up
black blood stuck – fool’s gold
Other dead men stand
in a wall-mounted photograph –
to tell of them and others who went to dig
at that hand-bared stuff
I will sit alone – propped by this revisiting hour
as my recall waits for sleep
to take me from my tunnelling
E241019
Thanks to Helen Ivory @nellivory for suggestions via National Writing Centre @WritersCentre
I am to return
to my adopted small-town
of mischievous lies –
laid out unmarked –
landmines left for me
to put my weight upon
Until then a tardy parade
of rental days in Golden Cross –
in my contracted place
with easy-to-keep
plastic grass and off-street
parking
I will build a wooden porch
to sit upon – there to look back on
leases – my temporary places
from my bought viewpoint
above my adopted small-town
and there to lose sight
of other – older – agreements
left to other’s disabuse
with a sofa for my dog
and a hammock for me –
no need to put my burthen
on that small-town ground
Half a waking aspirin
now taken down
and half a headache –
again – left to take
but screw her –
with regret –
more than tight enough
to avoid any off-licence visits –
or as an underlining
of twisted sorts
before not enough of her
causes concern?
A woman in a dress –
high chested –
so highly-grippable
and sweet-kissed in red –
her designer label states –
Mis en bouteille en France
[F.F.S. NOTE: In memory of a part played by J.K. This was written after an actress had passed away – but really in memory of the character she played in LOTSW – so an extension of that character into death – after the actress playing her had died: An exercise in stretching thoughts on a dull and lonely day made slower by reading of others’ misfortunes. The character I am ‘grieving’ for was a hen-pecking (Northern) wife chasing down her feckless husband – god only knows what effect it all had on her fictional family (never seen). No more misdirected anger if it gets misappropriated, again, please.]
Being a matriarch
was propounded as her
Greatest-ever-role
in their first draft
of an online obituary
Mourners hovered
and affixed false posts
marking up an ever-altering
wiki
Her kids had been suckled
under a tarnished scent
and they never lost their
fear of men
We were not taught
how to erase –
how best to rub out –
how to remove errors –
instead – we were told to
Put a line through it
Those eye-ruled
mistakes –
our slight aberrations
in our cobbled
curriculum
They were honest flaws
Being seen to fail
won gold stars
against your name
on that constant chart
of
stuck rewards
Now we suffer
others’ comments –
sickly – green-ish –
spilt on social media
We are ink-stained
No dabs of blotting paper
Those mob-mindful
leaders –
your haters –
your righteous orators
have raised
their volume to that
once of The Left
They mop up swathes
of disaffected souls
in insolent heartlands
by underhand sales
of hope on Amazon
Post to Facebook your prizes
And Left-Wing resentments
seem to threaten more
than resolve
as old moderations are now
spoken of as if weaknesses
in politics – else whipped
Extreme measures
are needed
Politics is now a
vomiting disease
Their work is a helix
of holding patterns
A vexed blackhead on
a narrowing radar
Making no sense
to us
Look across its eyes
at your broken reflection
Pass over its light speed
of thinking centrifuges
Be left behind
on our side of thought
We are not quick enough
to read their flight plans
We are fixed lives –
we are their filth givers
My medication-taking
app’s notification rattles
as if shattered bones
pummeled in a bag –
like marbles shook
in school uniform pockets
to test competitors’ nerves –
as sudden as foul complaints
in response to
an unexpected doorbell –
it hits out – shattering at
a kid-tipped glass of panics –
like a parent’s blunt trill
of oft-repeated commands –
and it is a wake-up-to-me alarm –
sometimes fresh maracas in year six –
and then its repeat is more equal
to all of that mentioned before
You will allow yourself
to re-settle
into old comforts
on his threadbare sofa
and then enter into
a layered removal
from this other man
full of arguments –
from a disagreeable
who lives uneasily
by designing trip hazards
and elephant traps
In that room air will double
beyond that level
required for meditation
and a balanced life
Find a neutral buoyancy
by letting your lungs
half-fill with his kisses
Do not sink to him
I contemplate
setting it all to
Off
(even my
rum scuttle of thoughts
from toils)
By cutting connections
to swealing news
on my device
By undoing clicks
to remove agitation
and find a hermitage –
perhaps a bolted
space
with my tumbler locks
We cannot blunt their knives
We cannot nullify politicians
of any kind –
they who
make us into banshees
and howl monkeys
When that switch
is flicked
you will not hear me
He dropped in and
shifted everything –
not my furniture
more of a loosening –
a reformation of views
without drugs or booze
as dark coffees cooled
in talk’s elbow space
Nothing in that time
was left untouched
by his too-close-to-truth
Revelations etcetera
E251019
Thanks to Helen Ivory @nellivory for suggestions via National Writing Centre @WritersCentre
Into that swear grip
and stench of spittings
and leftover breath
from their last collapse
into a hot huddle
of balms and rub downs
as each scrummed
body locks into an orgy
of one sexness
It was too easy to accidentally
stand stock still in Blondie’s
unlocked dressing room
at a fleapit corporate gig –
their’s – another £100,000
act – should-be-has-beens –
but always being better than me
by dint of being so old cool
and untouched by rushes
of lame fame-struck stuff
off us eighties peak-teen kids
Now dull mums and dads
we recall a loucheness
on Top-of-the-bloody-Pops
We ached for sex – not knowing
their’s was breathless lip-syncs
We predated MTV’s tape heads
and VHS and widths of Betamax
I saw her standing – she turned around –
Debbie’s lips still blew my mind
If I paid you in cash
would that make
meeting up
an easy trade to do –
without those afflictions
brought on – again –
by your loud dam?
(How she stage-whispers
in your shell-like –
that ear-piercing hiss
about your choice of men
and your other failings)
You never liked her
enough – be honest – love –
your mother’s devotion
will not be won – not yet
If I paid you in cash
would you lie down
for me? Currently (I see)
there is no queue
but then my appetite
for easy ways
seems long spent –
Let me pass on that deal
So we look alike –
a connivance by genes –
but he smiles under higher
cheekbones
He is (still) crowned
by bottle-blonde hair –
we both have enough on top
to brush aside – for now
We make such
similar guttural grunts –
as if our low voices
have just broken
But we have been
split
for so long
without knowing how
to deal with sour differences –
our slighting jealousies
and curdled
misunderstandings
It is up to wives –
and ex-wives – to try
and fix things
Spilt milk leaves a stinking stain
which is hard to lift
from trodden-in places
Perhaps our ways
will not cross again
Look! Waking white etens are tailwind-struck by onshore gusts. That tall flock of unfixed turbines. Into Kemptown they will march by France’s orders beyond La Manche ..
A readied Grandpa story – not yet –
not now – not pinned – not aligned
above high tides by unseen wordy fixings –
by birthdays – yet again – by cakes with candles
blown out – Once more – and finally out
Those one-legged giants were plummeted
into cedings – by borings into seabeds
through lost layers of petrified trees
into our once-forests washed off-shore
Let me tell giant stories to your children –
about hundreds of acres before this began
Our grandchildren do need to learn
that history is scribed beyond this land
It is impossible to maintain
a rooted perspective –
Heraclitus observed
as he openly wept
It is not the same river
but we are also
not the same people –
that will be my shooting stick
to lift me from stiffnesses
of age and old iniquities
Those rivers now rise
under too-warming urges
My car’s curved high glass
requires less screenwash
through summer-flown months
There are no insects to smash
All through it my kids sit blind
behind their bright-eyed phones –
we do not know how much less
they see on their screens now
Those days of old kindnesses
are not stroked into any recall
by my finest of sable brushes –
not weighted by sweet squeezes
of rollable toothpaste-ish oils –
now it is my turn to sweep colour
inside out – now that other tongues
have given up their generous ways
Take my hand – my copier of colours –
and let if cover your unkind mouth
There are no gilt frames to contain
your cold-hearted complaints
There are kinds of poets who give poets
a bad name – not me guv’nor
Perhaps bejewelled ones in headscarves –
those hosts of salons or saloons –
Sorry – my attention suddenly dimmed
Those who do nothing for our honest lies
in verse – with Mr. and Mrs. Thesaurus –
knocking off – and out – in parked cars
No grandiloquent words for us plebs
Revox B77 – high or low speed –
from my easier analogue ways
before everything got too fast
DN300 and DN360 graphic EQs
in 19″ racks – screwed and mounted
Even electric drills were rare
I could load a truck – but only after
being shown how to lift and turn
a case in the air
so that rubbed case knuckles fitted –
Tighter than Jan’s crotchless knickers
Sex wasn’t online or easy to understand
when fellow loaders joked – analogue days
For Beth and Sam
If you both show kindness – then your love will survive
Within such an offering is your ever-guiding light
Sam, do not hold her too tightly and leave dark marks
Do not hold her too closely against your fear of loss
Do not hold her at distance and ask her to change
Only hold her tonight – So you can hold her again
If you both find compassion – then love is enough
Every kind word will settle and not be rebuffed
Beth, do not hold him too tightly and leave dark marks
Do not hold him too closely against your fear of loss
Do not hold him at distance and ask him to change
Only hold him tonight – So you can hold him again
If you both find joy – then there is a fabulous passion
and each kiss will seal and assure your marriage
Sam, do not hold her too tightly and leave dark marks
Do not hold her too closely against your fear of loss
Do not hold her at distance and ask her to change
Only hold her tonight – So you can hold her again
If you both offer freedom – then your love will flourish
All lovers are separate – but less separate when married
Beth, do not hold him too tightly and leave dark marks
Do not hold him too closely against your fear of loss
Do not hold him at distance and ask him to change
Only hold him tonight – So you can hold him again
Love is pure regard for another’s well being
You will find love forever if that’s all you are seeking
We sit stuffed
inside
our bleak dioramas
alongside reduced in number
pandas –
just another
close to extinction creature
which thought it was
way beyond Ma’ Nature –
now tipped by selfish
imbalances
Her cruel
countermeasures
will not let us survive
our
climate changed summers
outside
Do not throw anger
back at your other
unless you are ready
to stoke their ire –
redoubled surelye
by your avoiding eye?
Do not find focus
by pin-pricked pain –
held in narrow
concentrations –
unbroken – then set
to scorch again
Your steady point
of magnified aims –
that glass you do not
use to explain –
instead is held
to summon a flame
Do not mark your other’s
yet burnt skin
with borrowed light –
such scarring
will not fade
with time’s passing
Let us idle by pints
and half-cubed shorts
to steady our nerves –
to refine our remarks
and look without trying
to see less censed lies
If you can not see this chirbit, listen to it here https://chirb.it/MdCn4h
There’ll be
no anniversary –
it was a date
you always forgot
No doubling
of wrapped largesse –
I always gave you
far too much
You still wear
those gifted stones
Does their weight
not bother you?
Dimmed jewels
set in your flesh –
whilst you grip
another fool
There’ll be
no family parties –
no dates fixed –
no invites sent
Your time is given
up to strangers –
it is with them
you’ll celebrate
Fabritius chained
his blushing goldfinch
in exacting dark brush strokes
His bird stares malevolently back
at us – perched – wing clipped
in abeyance – dried into a charm
as those wind chimes swing again
on an equally thin link chain
beyond a high wooden fence
where our slow and elderly live
in stacked rooms
They’ll perch there for a while
Dignity is my now tattered flag –
white by surrender’s tradition –
a message to my sworn enemies –
now limp over my fallen nation
You rolled unbroken like mercury –
vermillion in my palm – as poisonous
and ungraspable as quicksilver
You then scattered as if flick-struck
in a bent-to game of clicking marbles –
a crackshot with one eye open aims
to split our glass constellation
and to win with a swift ball bearing
My treasures rattled in an old sweet tin –
now my drugs settle in a smaller one
There are games set to be unwinnable
by that first spread of an opponent’s hand
From our solemn mediator’s
lined notepad – Just a cheap thing –
he referred to his underlinings
He instructed you to observe
Some basic ground rules
now he knows how you are
Do not put aside your husband’s
neurological condition
His Parkinson’s cannot be ignored
It all went wrong weeks earlier
as you pulled out your own pen
when you wanted to Strike a deal!
It all went wrong when you roomed
not for love – a family trait – equalled by
sisterly disruptions of vows
I could not fix that drugged damage
when you stumbled from Brighton
Off your tits and smelling of builders
Our mediator knows who you are
as he gives me a look of concern
and says Are you able to carry on?
We want to be heard –
us mutterers – we discontents
who can mussitate
I told you so –
because our righteousness
is so bloody close to Godliness
But we do not carry confidences
in such overbearing entities
and we would rather
leave prayers to those humbled
souls who kneel before altars
with their bare-faced soles
We malcontents will feed
in fast flowing streams
until they run with our blood –
torrents drip-drip-dripped
from our nail-hammered
word-wrung hands
Pinned up and posted –
just another Jesus Christ
expletive – re-fucking-tweeted
I lift up Leonard’s
microphone
He had kissed
this windscreen’s
black-eyed foam
His spittle curdles
from his song
I can tell he had sipped
on bourbon’s whore
Tell me Leonard
what
was that
golden chord?
An incessant ring – ricochets
off cold button slappings –
leaves me rolled by misses
off others’ flickering wrists –
in a too-fucking-quickness
Punched untouchable parts
sing in summoned recoils
of ringtones – ready taunts
as another highest score rolls
against my own low tally
These lights and chimes
of mechanical retorts
wear down my defences
as my bent-to body flips
in my mind – fantasy ways
We keep quid balls rolling
We paddy-whack in arcades
of resized penny slots –
now upgraded to pounds
into adult-paying games
This skin on my foot
is turning to cratered scales –
like that of F’s
re-homed grandpa –
with his octogenarian husk
flaking from
his bared feet and shins
as if he had been set adrift
on the sea and salt-burnt
That old combatant held court
in his Surrey nursing home
thirty five years ago
His layers of recalls and of dust –
his remnants in a rented room –
have long been hoovered up
Perfect –
perhaps there is hope for me yet
A crop of prime turf
is to my back
My thin brick perch digs in
to my lowered leg aches
after a blind walk from Ripe’s
church across three fields –
now sat stiffly in Chalvington
Here they face me –
Picknell’s dead family
Engraved stones staring out
at an unmarked boundary –
was it laid in my eye just now –
was it suggested by Robert
Who Departed This Life
February 7th 1869
A slab is sunk tightly
between three yews
It bears equal surnames –
set to unequal end dates –
to be kept In Loving Memory
More of his
relatives crushed
in their compressed beds
Then a blackbird’s repeated
yack-yack of late insistences
lifts me from that moment –
away from Robert’s ghost –
to have me rise
from that low wall
and to leave them all
well alone – for now
and to walk back across
that even outfield –
around his unmarked boundary
Do not be sofa bound
by reelings –
by spasms
off muscle contractions
under that uncommon label
of dystonia –
a low waiting room
for our stiff unknownings
Lift a half glass fully
to your lips
without occasional
spillings
Try to sleep for eight hours
without rum disturbances
and rise to daylight with ease
without drugs – without slowed fears
of standing upright and all
alone
again
each morning
Do not be afraid of night
or day
as your unseen naked pain
rides tight on your skin
For WM, on yr 15th
It is now that time
we scan around
and make honest
our current account
of fouled landscapes
and our – ever – endless
opaque cloud makings
by cheaply-oiled flights
over raised high banners –
bearing boasts of growth
and much-much-wealth –
as if such heavy hauls
leave no poisons – no trace –
no residues – no spillages –
no inhaled lead in blood
And tell them how
it will be
in ten years time
or twenty more –
or whichever
we can hope to bear
And look with me
into their eyes
and say –
Kids this will soon be yours
to fix – Good luck
Repeat after me that long-known word
Our first-person singular pronoun
I
Now hold off your birl of cogitations
about other lives spinning from you
Too fast!
They will only weave loose concerns
into your mind off slip stitched threads
We warm containers of
best before
do not sit too well if left too long on shelves
Sleep without disturbing your private view
Do not crowd others’ centre stage marks
Give in to rested dreams – only to those –
and you’ll not be sliced on such barbed wires
This floor is piss-sweated
as are those swilled bowls
at Cinque Ports in Uckfield –
more beer-strewn puddles
of splattered cock misses
across slipped wet tiles
Old men flatter too-tight birds
by sleight of words of fucking –
we old fuckers are cursed
There are no greater spurs to human indecency
than cheap shortcuts to wealth
be they lotteries or lies – they are muted calls
to hard work – to tilth
Plough blades rub to blunt – our ground is dry –
our blacksmith has gone
No more steady blows – that loss of his honest hammer
has left his anvil to ring with rust
Old fixed courses of love are smudged in your soft hands
on your quick-to-hold screen
where you advertise yourself to an online world of touches –
you’d resist them if in public
As if everything is circumvented by launches and innovations
as if every previous minute
of humanity is evenly compressed – every way is left to be forgotten
Everyone just wants to be rich
I settled on love
before I fell – drunk
on your kissed-sips –
your wet heat
on my unfurled tongue –
as if a roll of embers
tipped from your glass –
were left to tumble –
to trail a curlicue
of your intoxications
from your open mouth –
burning to my core
Your infusion
has turned me into
a dance floor fool
I study there in your sudor pool
which through this night is drip-fed
off your hips and thighs in twists
where your legs are no more your legs
but become – as shown in textbooks –
your annotated groin – with pointers
Here is your barrow – lightly grazed
Here is your sliced mound – raw
In my geography – in my history –
in my biology classes – I looked away
Now – older – I work at my lessons –
although I am coming to them late
on this foundation course – of sorts –
of how-to and not-to evening lectures
You kneel down – as my flesh lectern –
and with your open mouth
help me regain my lost confidence –
under instruction – you guide me in study
Those three words
were declared
too quickly for you
by my slow tongue –
with a cluck of uv
Spilt – splattered
like my milk
from my missed
breakfast spoon –
three spills
mopped by you
Let them dry
and mark our time –
still too short of hours
to curdle
to ferment
to be quite – yet
those three words
were spent
by my slow tongue
having found
no other words
to gift to you
To live at all is a miracle enough – Mervyn Peake
He wasn’t a signwriter by trade –
These dabblers have other uses
A wartime false commission
to inscribe – For Officers Only
on lavatory doors was sufficient
for Mr Peake to steal drawn hours
and cross-hatch his written lines –
to give rise to Lord Titus Groan –
to see an Earl born under Arundel –
for Mr Peake to guide Steerpike
to towering observation points
below matched scowled brows –
before our artist set his slow eye
among Belsen’s drawn atrocities –
before his mind was drained –
Mr Peake was a miracle enough
Entwinements of sweat
fill this floatation tank –
flooded by drips off sex
as we lap at salt and skin
with gluttonous tongues
in our unbashful fucking
All we see is unseen
fingering and penetration
in our deep-diving minds
as we couple-up into eases
of our ache-numb limbs –
softening in worn lips
We fall into that sudden sleep
of found love’s discomforts –
Never wake from such reverie
I share with Sylvia
an early hour-ness
of eyes on cold art
It is such a ruinous
family trait – bred
in the bone –
larks in flight before
other brooding risers
We are creation
before shift of days
have been abroad
and life has unfolded
Remain alert –
art theft and plagiarism
feed on daylight
Again –
it is that time of year
of carcasses picked apart
by visits of daggered beaks
of leavings
of black stains
of crushed-to berry juice
of later felt stomach aches
[spread like buckshot pellets]
A stag is stretched –
set upturned –
laid out of the way –
dead parallel to passing traffic
with its legs rigid
in its last-struck gallop
Roadkill –
it is that time of year
of car strikes
between Uckfield
and Halland
in Sussex
Again –
another Fall
There must be a word
for that gritty-ish crackling
of a blackberry’s uncomfortable
remnant – unground – jammed –
bloody unsuckable
from your pitted left molar –
stuck among soot succulences
and odd-chanced bitternesses
Seasonal pickers had a word
for every moment of pleasure –
and one for inequal measures –
such piques are now called love
Mad Max offered me shares
Fifty-fifty in a gentlemens’ club –
I could
Taste their wares – test their tits
was his opening roadside pitch
Girls ain’t the problem –
undergraduates aplenty –
it’s the bloody bouncers
with their qualifications
That’s now our problem
Max is missing some teeth
his breath stinks of dog food
Turn on your heel, Mike
and carry on along this lane
Strange men lurk in Hailsham
To J.S.
It is now measurable –
this effect of you –
by improved
qualities across my skin
You are layer-healing
a soft fixer of
my ripped tiers
and light filler of erosions
You are still as radiant
when back-lit
by another day’s sun
as you run to me
Across you
my dared fingers scan
with ten eyes more
than first had looked
This is our skin tale
of with in and with on
Our time teases us
by obligated constraints
Record it in a diary of sorts –
typeset in italic recall
Dance for me
and my eyes will join in
To J.S.
Waking without you
stretched and pinned
like a readied canvas
bared and laid to light
to be brush-touched
is my missingness
Where my fingers dip
is temporarily lost
along with each kiss
placed as unsaid love –
that naked word
sits readied on my lips
Hear them – those
too-near rushes
of combustion over tyre-rubbering
There – beyond my fence
I am just fifteen yards
from others’ entered destinations
This is a hermit life
but one with too much –
too much man-made stuff – such is soon useless
My sleep has re-aligned
as it did thirty-odd years earlier
to that of shift workers – once more an hour earner
I am a slow returnee
to my hollow house
of paid-for slept protection before one more day
This Bank Holiday Monday
sucks on my date-fixed time
as I lie bared-as-born on my artificial lawn
I must plant
some lavender in pots
My garden is not an insects’ paradise
My skin will blemish
under our turned-to sun
as my spread chemical vest of UV block – of factor fifty
unlocks and rolls off
under man-made laws
God wasn’t always for burning our butt-naked torsos
L. RIP
Let me push a pin
through your ignored Torah
and hear you read every
mounted page about your
butterfly death
You will not
Let us escape from shuls
with my love-foolish help –
you as another migrant –
you beautiful Jews are artists
too with guilty divisions
My choice
of this avenue with no shade
It is scooter-and-horn split
from Miaara’s left dead
Let me bury myself in you
instead
If you must
Thank you, KP
We were sent down by a tipped sign
along a flint-chipped footpath
on Seaford Head’s composed arc
where we were done – smothered –
along with other unwary invitees –
by crowning flights of insects
which stuck to spitting tongues
and set knots in our tousled hair
Another small equalling by nature
We could only escape that plague
of on-the-wing silent irritants
by upping our uneasy walking pace
Then driven salvation from behind
And a car’s slammed-door
for our shutting out of flying ants
We were ferried down – in his Subaru –
by our grinning artist on his return
to a gentler swarm at that Cable Hut
His twisting right foot
takes him past that door
where she had twice –
maybe more –
quick-scurried through
up double-took steps
to a fat goatee face
which she’d anointed hard
with two monkeys’ worth
of her itching kisses
One thousand more
than he had accrued
in those thousand days
of running aways?
As his turned-on-heel
takes another’s embrace
which lifts him higher
as his suddenly-lover
No more counting
or care
of steps now rhymed
and left unnumbered
For J
I had not been woken so
by a kiss
in living memory
I am set alive
And other old weights
have been lifted
by her lightness of
kind eyes and soft lips
upon my ageing nakedness
unknown so
since teenage kicks were first felt
hurting
through unresolved desires
but we are now old enough
to not blush and to do it well
Sex was invented
in the sixties for us
Their remote
houses of joy
have stood
for far too long
to be immune
to upgrading
With new comforts
they’ll shelter
those seeing
only such changes
and those only
seeing nothing
Allow alterations
over our lives
into our ways
and time of living
for later ones
to revere by eye
and they’ll agree
change is good
1.
Ill-faced white people settle
and preen in that afterglow
off their stoked shit-storms
as fools refuel on Facebook
2.
Deceivers take to easy airwaves
with urgency and loud spittle
as puppet-fisted politicians
unroll scrolls of lies on cue
3.
Carriers of an alt-right litany
cannot sleep soundly until
their prayers have been spread
For them – fear must be shared
4
We do not mute screaming
hit-buffeted streams
of spitting alt-voices
found by lost innocents
5
Your drawn eyes must rise
from teleprompters that blind
to see over such tilting screens
and to read between their lines
From my Mass Observation Notes 12th June 2017
I am both fully awake and in pain at seven-forty AM
I am now learning a new word – Imprimatur
I am feeling a rough poem coming on
I am taking the rake of our stairs with care
I am making two teas in the fitted kitchen
I am climbing the stairs with two mugs of tea
We are drinking cooled tea in our double bed
We are discussing how much the day will cost
I am reading the headlines on my smartphone
I am now stiffly rising from our double bed
I am now stood showering
I am singing loudly to Clair from the shower
I am checking my emails as I dry my body
I am dressing as Clair showers and talks
I am listening to Clair’s words
I am listening to Clair’s tone of voice
I am watching Clair dry herself
I am telling Clair that I love her more than chips
I am leaving our house in a sudden rush
I am walking with my stick to the high street
I am at breakfast with four other husbands
I am ordering a Full English Breakfast and latte
We are talking about last night’s comedy show
We are talking about imported lawn mowers
Glen is now paying for all the breakfasts
I am walking back to the house on my own
I am now stopped at my favourite park bench
I am on my smartphone checking my emails
I am now standing up and turning to home
I am now back at my emptied-out house
I am suddenly greeted by our small dog
I am walking the dog up and down roads
I am sorting the recycling bin on the drive
I am lending Otto my Karcher pressure washer
I am walking up the garden to my shed
I am sat at my desk in my shed
I am sending and receiving emails on my PC
I am doing kid management on my smartphone
I am redesigning Cars3 experiential space for Goodwood
I am re-rendering FatBoy Slim’s DJ booth in Lumion
I am reading a new brief for a design to be completed today
I am walking slowly from my shed on uneven slabs
I am eating a rushed lunch of cold beans and toast
I am walking back up the garden to my shed
I am being hassled by clients by email on my smartphone
I am Whatsapping our kids to sort childcare tonight
I am opening my shed door and stepping up with care
I am sitting at my high desk whilst waiting for a reboot
I am listening to The Archers whilst working on my PC
I am hassled by another text on my smartphone
I am hassled by the wife to get to personal trainer at four PM
I am managing and meeting my design deadlines
I am rendering out 3D models in Lumion
I am designing an exhibition stand
I am listening Gardeners Question Time on Radio 4
I am making more more changes to Cars3
I am postponing the personal trainer on my smartphone
I am thinking about tomorrow’s poem
Clair is now back from her hair appointment
I am commenting positively on the change
Clair is setting me a countdown to theatre-leave-time
I am finishing what I can to meet my deadlines
I am now shutting down my PC
We are rushing to get out the house
Clair is driving our car
Clair is worrying about her mum
Clair is not saying much
Clair is filling up the car with petrol at Tescos
We are now in Eastbourne
We are watching the first half of the play
We are now sitting outside in the interval
I am watching a smoker light up
We are discussing the show
I am conscious that my legs are hurting
I am checking social media on my smartphone
We are now heading back in to the show
We are leaving the venue after the show
I am now stuck at fifty-three
I am now treated like I am eighty-three
We are looking for our car on the seafront
I am being driven home in the dark
I am trying to find out more about Clair’s feelings
We are now arriving home
We are entering the house in silence
We are being greeted by the dog
I am locking the back door
I am switching off the last light
I am climbing the stairs
We are now in bed
We kiss goodnight
She is turned from me
Here – I have been orange-dotted
as if another fungal-blighted tree
Spotted on for obvious lesions
My fate sprayed – eyed – to-be-cut
and then left to rot – an alienation
for the good of these woods
My body bears an odd contagion
as does our less common ash –
as does our elm – both under threat
as am I – stuck – until my balding crown
is tipped to unstable and then falls
to leave me without my honest Cordelia
For J
A loosened thought
was unexpectedly set adrift
like a sea-wetted sandal
sucked into whisked white foam
off foolish seventh wave treaders –
those salt-splashed day trippers –
as my viewfinder caught you blown
and turning to me – iso-fixed
in my camera as it framed that
installation under which you stood
You as my suddenly important art
buffeted upright below an artist’s
weather-required turned response
My portrait of beauty in Brighton
RIP Chris Bell d.24.08.87
A decade mislaid since his
lingering disappearance
then Latin’s alphabet surfaced
across a white stone – struck
below a dusty Israeli suburb
Ness Ziona stands over him
He had jumped his rusting ship
another twenty years before
leaving a trail for investigation
How he ever got to Tel Aviv
ending up an eager volunteer
only him and God now know
sharing – as they do a bench
slumped – stalbet – in a cemetery
under high apartment shadows
you you spoke far too soon
’bout your last sandman
’bout that last sandman
’bout your spare fuck man
you you spoke far too soon
’bout men and squirting sex
and bad sex in warm rooms
you you spoke far too soon
’bout a man ’bout your sandman
’bout your sniffed white lines
’bout men limp in your bedroom
you you drunk you you drunk
in a bar with a man not Oman
with a man whom you you knew
a first cousin on your account
first cousins count as last lovers
you you spoke after five hangups
you you answered five before were
five unanswered lies after lies after
you you gave it a week a week
post-valentines after your card
cards swapped rarely by you you
control-alt-delete you you soon
In another waking moment
with five AM forcing light outside
my conscious breath found
an angel’s littered question
How many of my earliest
friends are still alive?
Coruscating queries – lit fears
address us slightly older men –
of loss of crowning thick hair
oh – and recent deaths of muckers
Bill baulked at Paul Simon’s song
of ‘old friends sat on a park bench like..’
I had one pal hang himself
and another fall from a height
whilst others have taken to tumours
and less humorous routes off
My hairline is still a low-set feature –
light verse on such matters suits me
Ageing is that earthing and digging
forcing us all to bend under groans
as we push on equal spade widths
on that same cost of soil to everyone
No dead human kept his riches for long
They will clear your grave of treasure
A wise Israeli once advised me
Do not make it your precious métier
to outlive everyone in your world
No one will be left
to be impressed – לילה טוב*
*Goodnight
I scare sheep
far too easily
to become
a true Welshman
Affinity with any
wandering mutton
does not seem
to suit me –
apart from that
solitary ewe
in a cold field
in Llandovery
Enough said
for now?
has been withdrawn
to leave my altered
place hollowed –
no valued fixtures –
no matter what
is placed within
My cooking practices
are poor –
as you foresaw
a year ago – when you said
I’ll still look after you
but I’ll be making love
to someone else
He walked her to her car
because his rare chance –
a quite rude assumption –
of a kiss could improve
Their talk skipped to weather
and about recent high rainfall
and that expanse of blue sky –
those age-old silence fillers
They stood facing each other
He fumbled under his bravado
with a quickened giddiness
of mid-teen awkwardness
even at – his guess then –
their nearly-fused ages
of just over – or just under –
their shared centum of years
How keenly he craved
to sip fresh desire – at his age –
in a pay and display car park
having over-run
his paid-for time
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 