Marching

I looked up in drizzle

to see the far hills;

knuckles of a fist inching forward

as I walked

And in the lowing grey

a mourning moon rested 
her hymnbook under 
that famous round chin,

then dropped it to shine

unexpectedly,

like the outbreak of laughter at a wake

or the fast march home from war. 

The Entertainment

Hers was a stuttering demotic voice

All it’s aitches dropped like a stich

For effect, and the tautening of

Conversational canvas, bringing

The audience in like lobster pots

Full of scuttling claws,

His was a declamatory style

Of the old kind, pier end stuff

Bellowing fondly through

Wind rouged cheeks

Netting his catch with a twirl

Familiar from TV in the days

Before phone-ins

And with routines dispatched

Half laughers and kids off

To hunch over flip-penny

And shoot-em up, to take in

The sweet fat of a donut

Or to sit on the sea wall

Chucking chips at guls

He turns his wiped eyes to hers

Her hand, clairvoyant or just 

Well-rehearsed finds his and tightens

With all the promise of a life

In lights, which may yet appear

Like a rescue mission or plans for

Lottery funded re-generation

They are relics, waiting to be found

And young enough to have no

Property or place, outside the ricking pier

Nothing to stop them coming here

For the faltering applause

And the indifferent sea whose waves

Could hardly choose these shores.

Stitching

I was holding the edge of your skirt;

it was tough fustian, 

the kind of artisan thing

with the hard stitching

of a babushka

which it has become fashionable

to fashion and indeed wear here

in Brooklyn, when I finally woke up;

and shook off pain,

if not killed it,

with the waking up of words I first read,

or heard spoken on warm lips

not above crowds really

but really above a vent

and the backdrop of an apartment

block.

And it was cold but not truly Christmas.

I favour the truth now älskling

it won’t hurt to say,

a thing like; I love you

and the tough edge of your artisan’s skirt

though you’ve never yet worn it

or owned it,

and once again I’ve let

the appropriateness of an image

take truth one stich further

than I oughta,

because it sounded better. 

Desert

You were with the Sufi,

last time I looked,

holding on to his skirts,

as the red eyed hashishin,

offered you small glass cups of tea, 

sweeter then a child’s voice

from the damp sheets of a dream

I will look again, one day soon,

and I don’t know what to expect,

except a sand storm, 

crumbling ramparts, 

the slow hooves of a camel

and you, sheathed in silks,

protecting your eyes from the sun. 

Lawyers

All I said I’d do is sit here,

waiting for your hand to lift its fist

clenched to hit, waiting is all I did

"I share your frustration" you said,

as I clenched mine,

and in the rattling of a sabre,

or the snarl of a dog, it was over,

all those careful acts scattered

and now in boxes, stacked

jumbled in storage, or half tumbled

from cupboards,

this was never the way of war,

armies should range in rank

careful generals assess the valley

and the direction of the wind

before their volleys are cast;

because it’s a serious business 
to hack the flesh of men, 
it calls for doctors and poets,

but when we came at eachother,

the war against terror 

was year younger than us; 

and we had only lawyers.

Soft-focus

I’ve been thinking of walking

with you to the beach

because it's there I’d like to see you,

I’d weave in and out the waves with you,

And you’d wet your feet

as I laugh like a crashing gul.

and as it began to rain some

soft and easy arpeggio

I’d capture you forever

legendary like the Leitz thamber 90mm

the epitome of soft-focus, before high street

snappers, lost forvever that edge of 30s cool.

And I’d keep you there, in my image,

to look back on after the waves have advanced

higher than nostrils

when all we hear is the

laughing of crashing guls. 

Anenome

Your hand on my lip,

testing the hardening bristle

finding dimly;

baby simplicity nothwithstanding,

your father there sure as any rusk

And he feeling flimsy for you,

not tough enough to take

firm hands to your wavering grasp

like coral, or a polyp

in the terrifying sea, anchored

to it’s maternal unyielding spot

I am the passing diver

or maybe even still 

just a flickering fish 

heading back to shallows

or perhaps I am an anemone

filtering these cold currents

for nourishment,

and my hard worn hand,

flashes with yours, reaching

ever hopeful in the darkness. 

River Stories

You said if the river carries more than mud 

you’ve yet to see it, but I saw a tern take an eel, 

and in the challenge of slower beaks drop it.

And I know that eel wriggles it’s Sargasso desperate dance

into banks where mudlarks take their chance

hoping for storied relics;

the musket ball with tooth attached,

the jawbone of a bronze age girl 

whose mission for mussels ended in a muddy trip

and countless rings thrown in anger 

or lost from fasting fingers 

when the boatman dropped an oar

This river carries more than mud, 
and hides a world besides

Stories folded in the filthy loam 
and sent on a spring tide home. 

Old Eyes

He's in frames big enough for a child to climb

and being long-sighted his eyes loom large

lids like giant moths fan lenses,

cooling perhaps the thoughts

which overheat his mottled corneas,

constricting the pupil who’s learned too much.

What longed for return to easy times,

before lines linked nose and chin?
what devastating dreams of days when skin

less grey stretched taught across that

sacrificial skull?

It’s no secret; time makes an enemy of our cells

and when the dance of summer days is done

we’re left to search the dimming light

for children climbing, 


their sharp eyes not sharp enough see

the place they’re climbing to;

the wise and wizened eyrie of the old.

Ball

Here I am now; standing hat-tall

A man, with all a man’s fears

All those crouching gargoyles

Pissing freely into my

Beaver damned stream

Of consciousness

That’s why adults seemed so hard

At times, when as a child

All you wanted to do was play

Have them catch a ball

Which had been hanging impossibly

On the breeze these 30 years.

And the trick of your child’s laugh

Was never quite enough

To crack the surface into a real

Smile, because your innocence

Served always as a tough reminder

Of what was lost

and what will surely come your way

The ball, in mid-air frozen, never

Caught in happy hands but

Hanging impossibly on the breeze

For another 30 years

When foolish fond ideas

Might free it at last into the hands

Of a grandchild. 

Swan

Under the tarpaulin I expect to find

the remains of a battered tractor

three decades in this ditch,

its fucked plow all dints and dirt

rust chewed, almost again

organic, like the jurrasic mulch

refined to feed it.

Instead, on lifting the green grimed edge

and jumping back shouting “bollocks”

as a pool of rusty rain runs 
and ruins my jeans, I find

an almost perfect swan, save for a few

quills stolen perhaps and sharpened

by retrogressive poets,

neck broken in 15 places

leathery black feet dying scraped

deep grooves beneath a king’s belly

and eyes like lead shot dead,
but somehow also winking.

Capture and Release

Who could ask for days like these?

or in receiving believe them?

we’ve shaken leaves from trees

budding and bursting their season

tasted our way through mist

wished in a whirlwind for tethers

to tie down the beast in my chest

to pluck your wings of their feathers

Try catching a tornado on a church spire

holding back  a Tsunami with a spade,

rearranging bits and bones; the shattered escapades

of a terrorist in the crosshairs of an Empire

as frail as the wreaths laid

in the soft solemnity of a fist made

from a handshake at the foot of the rescued tree

whose leaves scatter ashes while architectural dentistry

fills the empty lower gum

and Manhattan bites again.

We are chaos and order

quarks bound together

in the heavy heart of a nucleus 

the indefatigable story of us

fallible too, we cling, two fragile faulty things

blinking, glimpsing,

gently breathing. 

Supermoon

I thought I’d never start a poem like this:

the moon…

it seems too cheesy

a bad joke, like that bad joke

but it is the moon seeming

larger looming, slicking

roofs sick of frost on the first night of spring

offering us; the bewildered

                                            answers

not found in rolling coverage of earthquakes,

a shoeless girl weeping the soaked tatami

where isotopes dare her wait a half life for love

or in the cracking of Africa’s burnt crust; 
the sudden end of history 
as we knew it the last time our moon dared so near.

Realpolitik in its ghostly glow breaks

free of the dossier haunting headlines

but doesn’t seem as mad, 
as you and I dear, raving
for nights as bright as this,

feeling wolf hungry, daring the lunatics

to draw their curtains, and set us free.

Your little finger

Your little finger

is a match in my hand

I strike it like a cartoon cowboy

on neglected stubble

to light your cigarette

You’ll need a manicure now,

and the flame surely burns,

But the smoke is consoling

and your eyes reflect fire

like amber in the sand.

Brain Heat

The bed is harder than asphalt

hotter than tar cooked

to a gritty treacle by July

and although it’s March, winter

still grips the roof with killer’s fingers

the heating thuds guilty carbon belches

and I writhe with the brain heat,

cranium cracking like a fault fired pot,

flames finding weakness and licking it.

I made this mind a crematorium

and for assembled family roll us in

corpses on a barge blaring

all the rock songs of summer

and winter’s dreams of heat                      

lost in the absence of consoling sleep

Season Song

We’ve known now 

the cold to come

and to go.

We’ve known its ferocity 

on hard embankments

and we’ve known the rich silty flats

to give off ordure,

in the renewal of compounds.

Seeing, as we have, love’s angry dogs

attempt to break the leash

when rain lashed handlers

heading for the heath

wanted only to reign in, 
hold back the frothy jabbering.

It’s no wonder our eyes are sore.

But, my love
there are sights for those eyes,

along the chill embankment

where the river throws itself

at the cold sea.  And warms it.

Lost Tools

You ought to have had a shed, moss musty,

You would keep some rank booze there

Which we would drink from chipped cups

Rinsed in the water butt

Not clean but clean enough

Because this is my idea of being a dad

Borrowed from an old idea of yours,

An apparition out of doors,
A bonfire curling lazy late daylight skeins

Around knock-knees and varicose veins

You ought to have had a shed,

Where the tools could wait for me

And might have forced

My unskilled hands to work

At the sweat black wooden handles,

Not clean but clean enough

Those tools in their oiled sack bag could tell

Of hands that dished out lollipops

Shot unthinkingly at hotentots

And steered a wounded Hurricane back

To medals, the cold metal applause of wars

The tools are gone,

And although they’re probably in use

They don’t have a story,

Beyond this one of loss;

You had no place to put them,

No shed, musty as moss

But a garage crammed,

Not clean, but clean enough.

The Lady

Who was that tapping at the window?

Pain like bolts in her curled fingers

Arthritic yes, but betraying perhaps

A past, more delightful, yes light

Full life, lived through a domino

Display of opening doors,

And years of tipped hats and applause,

Giving her the strong back of the

Perennially loved, and eyes still

Fired to flirt even down two generations

And we flirt back, we boys, to her at least

But men to all others this side of the window
Their backs turned and already beginning to curl.

Going for a drink

Ok then let’s go,

to where the evening waits

like a mugger

to rob us of our faculties,

and yes, let’s wander

the headline making streets on purpose

we are fodder after all for stories.

And let us lurk in corner bars,

sinking a few jars,

celebrating the gutter for its reflection of the stars

and swapping tales of those same stars

and how they bounced off puddles

to take their twinkling place above these

poorly maintained roofs, locked like empty lovers

in an architectural embrace of stained ceilings,

witness to the couplings of broken men and whores

but let us never have cause

to fall too far

through the gaps in the bar,

where the drink

we sink

takes chunks and lumps of life

when it promised to restore it

because there will be time,

in time to call time,

to hear the bell tolling us into those same

bruised streets where we’ll pick up pace

and head each man to his anointed place

somewhere between the puddles

and the stars.

Detox

When you put the bottle down the day comes on dull

like the ache they say of a lost limb

but in the sandy residue poured for tired cups

you can feel warm summer still

discerning in that purple grit the vine’s renewal

and its giving up of treasure;

orbs crushed leaking life into second hand barrels

patina producing pleasure

now withheld to end a deep winter’s draft

which once warmed fallow hearts

consuming themselves, wanting more than wine

and saying no, no more this time.