| 2007 | 2006 | 2004-05 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 |
Poems 2006:
 MILES TO GO
To play ‘seven steps to heaven’ in 1964
In a subterranean club
Or a philharmonic hall
To stand like a fleshed out silhouette
In a sharp Italian suit
In that smoky low lit air
A toot of raw cocaine
Making the next decision for you
Toward the next squall and squadron of notes
Clustering in bloom
Invisible light
Pouring forth from the Horn
Redeeming you
for all you’d do or done
Then sippin’ at Bells Whiskey
In the afterglow
Of the solo
Out there on the floor with the rubes
Till you condescend to the stage once more
Later
The club and then back to your brownstone
Fucking the beautiful dancer
While your suit hangs watching from the door
A French cigarette burning happily alone
In a Hotel ashtray
What a fine life it was
As is this one
It’s just that if I went into the details of why
Very few would get it
EXTRA TIME
You had forgotten
That toast could be soaked in tea
That warm summer mornings
Come even in October
That acts of kindness
Forgiveness
Call unannounced
Just as horror and sadness do
Moving through the undergrowth and gardens of your sleep
You struggled to follow the thread
You had left leading to the so-called waking world
“Come let me kiss you
I’ll tie up your shoes
Light summers inside you
On a verge in bloom
A season of pollen
A new song
We have so much to do”
MEMORY OF THE BLACK FOREST
Suddenly an image finds me
Of a man called Gerhard with George and I
On the outskirts of the black forest
1996
A wooden hall
A Beer hall
Too many men (Not enough Women)
Outside is the ghost of Baal
Happily haunting his forest
I stand now in this scene
A ghost myself
Ten years on
Watching from the coat rack
Through smoke
As the me of ten years ago looks off into the air
George and Gerhad talking German
I catch the boy’s eye
And I return again to smoke
He doesn’t recognize me
At all
UNTITLED (Part one)
“Another year another demon”
“Wooden gloves”
“A virgin in Babylon”
“Worlds greatest dying poet”
“Gone but forgotten”
“Unlucky Jim”
“Bees dream of flowers”
“Born in a bullring”
“Life under striplights”
“A demon by September”
“Vanity as a survival trait”
“The king of priests”
“Blind at the cinema”
“A Korean orchestra playing Stravinsky”
“Alternatives to college”
“Blind minatour paintings”
“Look at the dog not the owner”
“North Ballad fallen”
“Fear of lightspeed”
To these titles I apologize
Given the present circumstances
This is the best home I can offer you
J’Accuse
Did you fail to grow sunflowers while neighbours grew huge ones?
I did
Did you knowingly follow the wrong path for what seemed the sake of an easy life?
Umm…not completely..err..
Did you jack off much too often and for far longer than healthy as a means of absenting physiological pain?
You bet
Did you allow the worse side of your nature free rein over your better?
Occasionally.
When drunk?
Yes
Did you sometimes treat sex as nothing but mutual masturbation?
If it was good…
Did you avoid people and ultimately yourself?
I did
Did you fail at winning?
Kind of
Did you wish your friends would stop saying what they were saying so you could hear yourself talk about you?
All the time
Did you cheat on yourself and tell someone at a party that ‘I don’t cheat on myself’
I did
Did you wish people dead of natural causes so that you may benefit
More often than you’d think
Did you put off writing poems like this?
Yes.
Did you eat for the sake of it and then hate yourself for being fat?
I’m doing it now…
Were you born alone?
Frequently
Finally
Were you consistently unlucky?
Yes
We find you guilty.
You are free to go.
You have already served your sentence.
The thing about that is
I have no religion
No god
Little faith
Except in gravity
And the consequence of energy
I don’t like or dislike on account of beliefs or custom
Jew
Arab
Christian
Most are counterfit
And what’s become of the Satanists? You never hear of them anymore)
I have minimal family ties
Am unmarried
Childless
Have lived with the same
Woman for ten years
Have five cats
A horse and two spiders
Like to drink chilled wine
At dusk
Read in the garden
Nibbling sunflower seeds
Take much delight in Flocks of geese
And yet
And yet
Despite all of this
Or maybe because of this
I am inexplicably
Inexorably
apart from this world
The green eyes of Peggy Malone
Those green eyes of Peggy
Are the same age as her
Yet older in this Irish spring
Gazing down the rough shod path
The rolling hills so lush begin
She knows she’s poor
Senses her sins swim
Beneath her baby faced skin
The boy from town
His moonshine breath
His powdered lap
Her defenceless dress
Sky above is black
With rain and tomorrows news
The coast always in range
The bibles stacked
The tattered shoes
Chapel and church
Dark against a spitting sea
Of sky
Peggy was born chanceless
Soiled by fields of rape
Grain and Rye
Peggy is the mother of my mother’s mother’s mother
We meet
Tonight
So strange
In kind
North by Northwest
How could I know
In retrospect
What would I have done differently?
The dust unblooded by my spit
In a cut off T-shirt I shielded my eyes from the sun
Where the fuck was I
These were not moon rocks at my feet
Yet this was as far from home as it was possible to get
‘I blame you –I do’
I actually said this out loud
While heat warped the horizon
Ahead
There
A plane blinked into view
Inevitable
Impossible
Coming straight for me
Through corrugated desert air
I stooped
Picked up a fist of red earth
Stood my ground
Mouthed a long neglected prayer
Beginning to cry
Stations of…
It was no part of any plan
I had a say in
These dreams four years on
Ridiculous
Marking my arrested evolution
Petrifying the forests inside me
Desolation showing up on my obscene baby face
The guitar
Once rusted to my hands
Now floated free
In a smoggy algae of wasted days
Surrounding me
I was sinning against myself
At a rate of rosaries in reverse
Stations of the cross performed anti clockwise
A butterfly anointed my fist
I neither freed it nor kissed
Hypnotized by your question
The ghost of a glow: internal Hiroshima’s
Shadow tattooing my knuckles
The absence of the real you
This sick dream
This fetid taste
Green butterfly
As green as pale cabbage
New butterfly
Green as the leaves it fed from
(Is it chlorophyll or chloroform)
Trying to learn to fly
To fall without landing
Struggling from its nursery
Stumbles flips
a folded ticket
Among aphids and ants
Tangled in the jungle of its origins
The breeze of
My morning breath hardly helping
Disturbing the currents it would take flight on
I’m breathing its grid out of tune
Down there it tries again
With tiny snails
Identical to the budding flower buds
New butterfly
Only last week it was a bug
Tumbling rectangles in reverse
An equation in the garden
Finally up
Up along those tiny vines
So green
Too green
Pollenized
Beatific
Waking in the afternoon
To lemon Water
Heavy Red curtains
Hayfeverless
The clock duets with the sleeping cat
Clothes murdered
On the floor
Later
To walk
Through overripe
Gardens
Meadow style
Gathering pollen and rain
Upon slippered feet
Moving
Like a question
Toward its answer
Becoming Still
Beneath tall
Silver June trees
Sexless
Like a Buddhist monk
Still Drunk
From morning prayers
Summertime
In a darkened
Baking room
I take a rag to myself
While you tend the horses
In a nearby
Rented field
Ordnance
James Baldwin and Miles Davis
Bullshitting each other
Laughing like motherfuckers
Lying outrageously
Fantastically
Brilliantly
In a garden in the south of France
The drink and the jive
Pours freely
Rich
Scott Walker
Getting drunk with Gary Walker
In a south London pub
February 1965
They get on better with each other
Than they do with John
They order Scotch and Coke
And the world lays down before them
And whispers
‘Fuck me’
Einstein
Kissing Marylyn Monroe
The place between her breasts
Eyes rolling back in his head
He is
Cramming a hardon
Into his Chino’s
He never wears socks
And outside it’s Broadway
Oscar Wilde
Considering
The dirty sheets
As his darling Bosie sleeps
These sheets will be used as evidence against him
And he knows it somehow
Unable to alchemise
The faecal stains
Into poetry…
Everywhere
Anywhere
But here
In this house
Where you and I
Have ceased
To be in Love
Butterfly season
Butterflies came
Year after year
April
Every time
I was surprised to be here still
Amazed
At the new season
Astounded
But not excited
Butterflies
Alighting
On the rubbish
And the daffodils
Of course
I Knew
They weren’t the same
Butterflies
From the year before
Yet they were
The same
Somehow
As was I
Butterflies
Butterflies
Butterflies
Came
Self knowledge
“No more than a minor figure
An addendum to the list
Of also-rans
And luckless contenders…
His films had been knocked off at the rate of one a month
For a year
And they were made
On a budget so small
So far below the amounts required…
…It was a wonder he had managed to produce anything at all”
My Black glasses
My Black glasses and I
Dominating Boardroom meetings
Stern but passionate
The slightest Smirk
Beneath
The dark heavy
Frames
These glasses
Speak through me
“I’m sorry gentlemen, but these terms are not acceptable.
And may I say, futhermore, that the presentation was …inelegant.
Perhaps some other time.
Good day.”
Striding out the door
Through the corridors of power
Vintage Yves saint Laurent suit
Hair mahogany highlighted
Blow-dried to perfection
The Black heavy glasses
Then suddenly
The keening secretary;
“Oh, excuse me, I…”
Quickly.
Into the stationary cupboard
The office girl
Unravelling helplessly
As she opens
Soaking
Beneath me
“Please…” She manages to get a few words out
“Please, keep your glasses on…I…I’ve always had a thing for Henry Kissinger”.
Me and my fucking black glasses
Away on the current and flow
Of a thousand air conditioning units
Self-contained
1000 leagues beneath the sea
A hundred thousand feet above the ocean
I’ll never take the fuckers off
Me and my bastard black glasses
We’ll take this fucking world on
And win
You fuckers
You bastarding fucking shits
Watch
You cunts
As my weaknesses
Becomes
Strengths
Another spared
Wings framed and frayed
Sky dust
Ink clouds in its wake
Can you check the pulse
And guess your age
A hawk cuts through a crowd of ravens
This train window not staying still long enough
To Focus
The heart incessant as you drop off to sleep
In time with crickets
Locusts
Sheep
She never did reply to my request
Perhaps I never sent it
I return the book to its place in the shelf
Browsed
Unread
The prophet
Wondered once in sad romantic songs
Sang in anticipation
Visualised
A time when old friends would cease to come around
It was 3pm seven years later
That this occurred
The drink waits in the freezer
You brew tea
And hold yourself
While the kettle boils your life away
Faulkner’s dream
Retraced feelings I saw with fingers only
Lead me to a place of wet air
Blossom cotton from the fields beyond
Had settled in your hair
As you slept
The window open against that southern yellow heat
I watched from the doorway
Took the slippers from my feet
Crept so not to wake you
Took that blossom from your hair
Clenched my fist and crushed it
Over you
Took it outside
Let it go
No wind to catch it
It fell to earth
Fell Sad
Drifted low
And when you awake
I wont tell
She shall never know
HAPPY HOUR
Its cocktail hour
Six o clock
Make me a drink
Ah!
Don’t look at me like that
Like I’m about to step on a kitten
I don’t need no doctor
Don’t want a shrink
Nor your opinion
I need a drink
And I was wondering
If this new blue
In your eyes
Is just you getting old
A kind of bruise
Either way Hon’
It’s a prize
And
On a related subject
I was wondering
When this staying faithful to you
Will start paying off
Two parts myself one part other
This must be my Jedi training
That I must learn to wait
In cold
Cold fire
No light
No guide
Wings beneath moon
And an oceans liquid spires
I must talk in words
That never form
Love in ways
That pierce only air
I love the rose
The petal
The pollen
The stem
I want to Swim
In those oceans again
(This neediness in me
Kills the wanting in Her)
| 2007 | 2006 | 2004-05 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 |
Poems 2004-05:
I
South Amrican quartet
I awoke from Aztec dreams
Desert bones and moleskin
With you caught in my throat
I tried to come clear
But could not cough you out
The sheets so suddenly bloody
You grew tumour like
Inside me
Located a rusty steel blade
Somehow shipwrecked in my gut
Too scared to look
I explored with my fingertips
They came back menstrual
The pain became
Instantly
bearable
Annoyed enough not to confront the mirror
Embarrassed that I might see your imprint in my hangover
I stopped shaving and turned to dieting
Reading
Lightheaded by the question you branded into my psyche
Who is this adolescent in me
Disturbed still as dusk comes
Night’s tiny anchors parachuting into me on behalf of ‘kingdom of sleep incorporated’
So, I knelt like a true geisha catholic beside the bed
Found that the blade had crystallized
Becoming a sword
I positioned myself ancient Japanese style
Before the full length mirror
Drew the blade painlessly from me
It flashed dully
In the daylight
Etched with your name and your destinations name
The letters corresponding with each other in number
Engraved in it’s hollow
It said
‘Mexico’
II
Restless for warm blood
Just below Capricorn
In the heat of a late Aztec afternoon
You will find us
Gambling in shady alleyways
Suited up in linen
Like a native
Amongst the handsome locals
Spinning dice
Drinking rum
Roasting locust
That corner café
Where the academics meet
They drink from glasses thumb sized
Their clothes
White
Their hair cut neat
Back in the alleyway
I throw sixes
My peasant king soul still intact
While in the apartments toward town
The corner clock
The sundial
The pocket watch
The radio alarm clock
They will work
For only us
killing time
Until we meet
III
London dissolves like an aspirin
In the carbonated rush of my blood
There is an almost invisible thread
A steel thread
Between the summer moon
And my neck
The plane
It is waiting
For others too
Fertilized by us passengers
Over the runway
So hardly there
So neutral
Flying at night
Damp and cramped between the reluctant and familiar stranger
I sip from my private supply of brandy
My fingertips housing
Tiny birthday cake
Candlesticks
My palms and arms waxy
I rub that wax into my 4-day beard
It disintegrated
Like Joseph Beuys’s fat
To close my eyes
And think of you
I let the brandy bottle rest
And put my hand toward my chest
Locate the heart
Press flat
IV
I am remembering tomorrow
The cube of sugar beside the squat white cup
The matchbox of cocaine
Beneath the herald and tribune
The beer glass still warm from its recent rinse
The cigarettes silk cut
The sky above retreating church like into darkness
In deference
of your entrance
And then the sound of you approaching
From behind
Footsteps in synch with pocket watch and church bell
Infidelity
East pacific time
One of my afflictions
It is true that people have often told me that they have dreamed about me
And my vanity chooses to take this as a compliment
But saying that
The dreams are almost always depressing
I mean
No one ever says
‘I dreamt of you last night, you came to my birthday party and you were made of light’
No,
It’s usually
‘A hearse pulled up, a door opened, two silver eggs rolled out, stopped at our feet and when I cracked one open it had a note inside that said;
‘He will never get what he wants’
In others
I am chased by Russian bears that Speak English
Alternatively
I am drowning
on fire
both
and/or a ghost
The latest records that she dreamt of me and her selling old albums in the depressing streets of our hometown…
These dreams are
As I said
Always mundane
Verging on the depressing
Nightmarish even
Yet
I am secretly glad that I am in your dreams
It gives me a sense of being that is outaside myself
I don’t care if the dreams are miserable or frequently horrific
Dream what you want
I shall feign disappointment
And turn away
Half hysterical with joy
Glad
That I get about
Ever
The milk malted
The brandy buttered
The owl caged within a suitcase
The lamb bred and slaughtered
Those headlights on the cost road
Ever drawing nearer
That Sound is…
The ghosts of mosquitoes
build the sound of cathedrals
The sound that comes of silence
180 seconds after the heavy wooden doors have closed
A sound of far away
That is right there in your face
This sound is there
It is called
‘Singing’
Sunday PM
I moved westward through the afternoon
Light toward darkness
Hallway toward sitting room
The day mapped out in four hour bootlegs
I fixed machines to save me time
To give me time
To fix other machines
I went on line
To sell junk
To make money
So that I could buy
Other junk
Turning the lights on all over the house
(I was lucky to live in a house)
I retreated to the view
Manned the kitchen
Bath running
Heading west
West?
Dreams are what we wake up from
Dreamed of hunting my shadow
Through a boarded up foundry
Buried alive
I missed the world so
Once awake I almost immediately took everything for granted
The torn empire of African cobalt sky impressing some part of myself that no longer impressed me
I unscrewed the top and considered the odds of beginning a new life in Hollywood
Thought of how dying in the passenger seat of a convertible in the desert-after having your friends try so hard-thought how this seemed beyond corny, outside of touching arriving finally at meaningless
Suicide
The strange retreat
A way in
Marked
‘Exit’
the world and how to live in it
Let it now be known!
That I once got lost on purpose in Paris, France
And on finding myself finally convincingly lost
Became suddenly exhausted
Then frightened
Dark, tired, my feet killing me
I wanted only to be immediately unlost
Back in my hotel room
With my gare du nord bought magazine
That I couldn’t read
Bought only
For it’s graphic content
Lost
Lost
Now night had fallen
The shop assistants
Suddenly only spoke French
Could not help
Did not care
My body blinking out of existence as a customer appeared behind me
I was on the border
About to give up on everything
The old fantasy
Of street sleeping
My life as a bum
My career as a ghost
I can’t recall how I ever made it back
Something no doubt
That seemed miraculous at the time
We must forget the miracles
That take us on
And
I do forget
However
I also remember
Two miracles
One
Coming across a closed art gallery
And in the window
A giant glorious fiery Basquiat painting
It said to me;
‘You’re home’
‘If I can make it anyone can’
And the other
A weird sound
Alien
Futuristic ancient
Southern Mars
Pouring from a bar like Southern light
It was Elvis
‘In the ghetto’
The bistro clientele spilling out onto the street
But as usual
I had no money
Could only afford to be a witness
So I moved on
Not wanting to prolong my agony anyway
But for a minute-two at the most
Lost in Paris
Moneyless
A perfect painting
The sound of a jukebox
The end of a centaury
I knew exactly where I was
Perfectly at home in the world
And glad
To walk up and down in it
| 2007 | 2006 | 2004-05 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 |
Poems 2003:
A shadow over the park of saint James
We fed the squirrels
They were cute
We fed the crows
They were cool
We fed the pigeons
They went
‘coo’
All goofed up we were
Chucking nuts over the park
It was raining
It was Sunday
No Cows were there to Moo
No dogs were there to bark
But there was me and you
And we fed the cool
The dumb
And the cute
We both loved the squirrels
And though I know
It was no test
I wondered what it meant
To like
The crows
The
Best
Future passed
She wants to
Live what is left
Of life
Purring
Nuzzling
Crusty
Grizzled
Black as a smoked pipe
Getting on my nerves
Until I remember
How soon
The weather changes down Here
How quickly
Fire
Become embers
How ashes merge so wantonly with sleet
Waterstones
I pressed the button for the 12th floor
The suite
It had already been booked in my name
12 years in advance
Now I was exhausted
Years and years of work
And working to find work
At last
Time to relax
Enjoy what I had earned
Imagine
How it felt
When the doors opened
Not onto my luxurious portentous suite
But onto the dark
Cratered landscape
Of the moon
This 15 minutes
No Sudden flair
Lit a coming sky
No ticker tape parade
No far off fires
But our time passed all the same
Sand to snow
Sea breeze
And the barbeque
Rusty July rain
Fills our boots
I am too embaressed
To look at you
A moment in a camera flash
Our shadows momentarily huge across desert dunes
To return to blackness
Darker now in contrast
We wait minutes to go
For nothing
As it turns out
That one momentary flash
Was it
The way ahead barely imaginable
A memory fading
At it’s conception
Our time in the game
Not even
Not even
Half-lit
A day out
While passing through town
The high street
Etcetera
You overhear two respectable old Birds
Yapping to each other
Just as you pass
The last thing you hear is
‘Oh, he’s such a lovely man’
You know that this man they are referring to
Is a nightmare of heavy blandness
Comfortably overweight
Held in high professional esteem and social regard
Has some authority in the community
Was once almost handsome
Knows little of truth
Masturbates while thinking of his children’s Friends
Has no taste of his own
Not even bad taste
Will die knowing less than what he started off knowing
Abuses those close to him
Talks non-stop nothingness to strangers
Yet says hardly anything to his family
Is predictable in his opinions
Common in his behaviour
Is a landlord owed money
Never skint
Is a walking living death
I speak with complete authority
From my own experience
And yours
Farringdon
Weatherness falling around her
Bending in rain
To tie her shoes
A pedestrian in the financial district
Two days
Into a world war
You tied the lace
And stood there in rain
The streets swimming before your eyes
The double deckers
Commuters
The billboards and the newspaper sellers
The office girls
Librarians
Vendors
Sandwhich makers
This is what you tied your shoes
For
To stand in rain that’s easing off
Once more
Stupefied
Unborn
In Farringdon
View from a bridge
The medics
On the road
Beyond the fields
With their wet
Overalls
And torches
Cold wind rain
They are tidying up a car crash
I watch through binoculars
From my warm lit study
While a cat
Furls
Uncurls
Furls
Around my legs
The geographical location of Her
I carry you with me
Wherever I go
In the bookshop
Beside me
In a station
At a show
You are there above my heart
Just to the back
Left a bit
A mostly silent anchor hung within
Tied to you I am
Between long dead stars
And heavy Corporate ground
And this
Is why
I don’t
Sleep around
It Starts the minute you wake up
Screws will not unscrew
Doors slamming shut
Books and plants
Topple onto you
Shoelaces
Snap
Buttered bread falling face down onto filthy floors
Sunny side up
Toes caught on the edge of the bed
En route to a midnight piss
Stepping onto upturned plugs
Balance thrown
Hands that break falls
coming into splinters
tacks
lamps
Cat sick
Why do you suppose this is?
Autocue
Wolves
Happy pinewood
Snow
The supply truck burnt out and on its side
Glassy water
A fake moon
Mercury
Railway tracks
Ending at the studio gate
We checked out
Gave our passes back to security
And just kept on walking
Up and into
The beautifully fake looking
Hollywood hills
| 2007 | 2006 | 2004-05 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 |
Poems 2002:
S.F.A
The cost of what’s at stake
Does define
The Love we make
Or should I say
The Love we do not make
Each
Time
We meet
The dreamer in me
The dreamer in you
Prowling beneath skin
Clothes and vows
Starved
Aching
For the other in each
Played out in restaurants
Bars
Behind the August rain
Staged on the same old streets
And
I won’t give in
I will not eat this peach
Rather watch
While it withers in my hand
The carnival moves on
While music plays
A mariachi band
And your nearness moves the seas in me
Blackens Sky
Warps the land
Very Saturday
Sodium lights
Saturday night
But
We are not going out
No
Homeward bound
Driving home
The years die slow
So
We’ll have a drink
All along the motorway
Bottle between the knees
Then
Passing tiny gardens
Corner shops
Pubs chucking out
Street fights
Police
Coming home to cats
Silence
Suckle of Honey
Time out
Before the war
That we must fight every day
For an evening’s peace
Spiderman
I am a spider
In the web of my life
Caught up in my own design
Moving sparsely
Staccato
I sip raindrops
Silver in the evening light
My mind on the fly
Who will one day
Eat me
A Bachelor sometime remembered
Cock sure
Thin
Beneath London Stars
The bodies we were in
Were sometimes ours
Talking rubbish
As a prelude to sex
Then over
The taxi to tomorrow
The next
Islington green
Bethnal
White wine
In sunshine
Fresh peaches on our breath
A nightbus into tomorrow
Some other place
Pollen
Cigarettes
Returning home
Taking out my keys
To look up before letting myself in
Checking my bearings
By London’s Stars
Elvis Presley
Twilight was your time
Saw you rise with the dusk
What could ease a troubled mind
When tomorrow ain’t enough
Disappeared in Spotlight
Silenced by the sound
On the road and searching
For what you’d already found
Where do you go
When beauty is all you have
It’s never getting late enough to sleep
And the words ‘I love you’
Sound so sad
‘Send me the light
I need it bad’
The Birds
From the pages of this book
To the sky’s hanging Rook
A Crow
So black
As if it’s a shape
Was Cut from Sky
Measuring the exact weight
And blueprint
Of the loss
Behind my eyes
Ballad of an Osmond
Moby was an Osmond
Born in Branson Missouri
He was put on stage
Before he was a baby
Produced by Donny
A & R’d by Uncle Cletus
They got Moby on that Stage
When Moby was a foetus
He sings;
‘get me to my mind on time/set me loose on the sweet pea patch/gonna sprout me some limbs/Gonna put flesh around this soul/someday I’ll wear boots and stomp in the sun/ grow me my own moustache
350 shows a week
Triple time on the weekend
Matinee and Sunday specials
Spotlights were his nightlights
PA speakers, mixing boards and Soundchecks
Were his only friends
He sang
I need love and care/you give me toupees of human hair
A culture dish to call my crib/placenta stains all down my bib
Blusher on my umbilical cord/I’m a mess of genes and DNA chains/I miss the runways of fallopian avenue/I look more like your sperm that I look like you/ Driven me/insane in my membrane
Strange fluids on the rider
A heartbeat you could see
‘Why he’s like a lizard thing up there’!
A drunken usher did declare
He sloshed as formless as the sea
Melancholy
salty
From Womb to incinerator
Sing Moby Sing!
Being born was not our sin
But the Family we were born in
He sang
My name is Moby/I hope one day to be a baby
Papa Osmond says it’s early days/ I could grow to be a Gentlemen or Lady
My form is the family nest egg
My gloop my kin’s own gravy
Can it be
I’m heavy with another child
Extend the tour
I’m due a baby
Sing Moby! Sing!
| 2007 | 2006 | 2004-05 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 |
Poems 2001:
Beer memories
Who is tired now?
Left unravelled and undone
By the life you say you led
The bottles on the kitchen top
Brim with mercury
Wormwood
Lead
Windows open
On the garden
The fog bleeds in
Connects furniture to light and flesh
The world made
Whole again
Sort of
For what
Where do words go from here?
Words flew from your throat via mist
Through the opening
Into fields
Cut to
A concert hall
On paper wrote a plan
Wrinkling like skin
Dusted with sand
Wet London
A rained on Sunday eve
Cocaine after taste washed guiltily along the streets
To drainpipes and guttering
Residue remaining
Rushing now already late
Being unprepared is your only preparation
To be there at all is the prize
Forever between a bed and city stations
Ducking in
Wet
Calling out for a pint
That smell
The money materializing in your hand as an afterthought
Your clothes steaming
As out on the platform a guard whistles time
The warm Sunday Pub
Friends
At last
The counting of small change
A pause
The folding of a heavy coat
Respite
The cool glass against lips
A soft beer Light
That’s all it is
It’s alright son
Still framed child
The bedroom warm
Tamed
The night outside
Alive
Wild
Look up
Open your eyes
You might fall
I mean
A galaxy and all
So bright
So wide
But be calm
It only reflects
The stars
You keep inside
What is the difference between a Raven and a Crow
In my dream I am on the kitchen floor
As if praying
Before the back-door
I cannot reach the daylight
And it’s on my back
Scuttling
I am chest flat against Linoleum
It needs to explore my skull
I reach behind
Awkward
As if crippled
My panic fingers taste grease and feathers
Come away ink stained
And filthy
It has to get
Into my neck
I awake
And in the day
Strange shadows
Across the carpet
Of my windowless
Bedroom
A Blue flame
A Blue flame
Above the bed where you lay sleeping
A Blue flame
Above the book where you lay reading
It follows you about
Our spacious house
But only I see it
A Blue flame
In the corner when we make Love
A Blue flame
That frightens the horses
You are dreaming of
It’s brighter by the day
I don’t know what to say
That’s not obvious
It is all to do with you
It doesn’t know my name
Or anything
About us
Let me count the ways
The first to go
Is the Mouth
The voice could still be heard
But Kissing
Disappeared
Then the Hands
Limbs Generally
Sexual Organs
Airbrushed away
One could see
Straight through
Where the heart
used to be
Soon after
The eyes
Just weren’t there
Leaving bulk
A Torso
Some shadow
Some hair
And washing up
And bills
To pay
And the shadow
Of a shadow:
That promise
of our first day
| top | 2007 | 2006 | 2004-05 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | |
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