I’m aware
of my disarming honesty.
Please remain armed
if you wish.
Dont worry,
I can handle myself.
Disarming
Dictatorship
You can try weighing out
the evidence of days,
of cycles of the moon,
of years, of millennia.
Even epochs and civilisations
will perhaps tremble at your threat
to evolution…
the divine
retribution
of your mighty scales.
But guarding
the future’s threshold
is a thankless, endless task.
No creature passes through
but no one comes to relieve you.
Your legs grow varicosed
your countenance fixed,
your body stiffens
over its outdated blacklist
and finally
through lack of exercise
the exercise fails.
Crystal Gayle
I listened to Crystal Gayle one day
I was in Paisley
(well nobody’s perfect)
with a rampantly gay
young man.
We both loved her..
we were her fans.
When I asked him to smack my bum
he got so turned on I thought he’d come
but that night things deteriorated
to a scenario I’ve since then hated….
I was hot but couldn’t open enough
and he was hard and pretty tough
and when he started to cut up rough
he cut the balls off his bit-of-fluff
rather roughly.
Crystal Gayle
still means alot to me
Cracked
I cracked
A Joke
It was very funny
“Dont you think Dad’s funny, Mummy?”
my daughter giggled
My ex-wife
looked on bleakly
as I fumbled in my pocket
for The Maintenance Money
Cottage
This is difficult.
Why don’t we just live together in a whitewashed cottage by the sea
with white sheets flapping on the line in the dazzling ozone?
We could buy a threepiece suite and watch test cricket in summer
and tense psychological drama in winter.
You could make bread and butter pudding and I could erect fences.
Even though I hate dogs, I think we should have a couple don’t you ?
Or maybe you could have children! They’d slurp out from between your legs
along with half your ego and three quarters of your ambition
and with luck, if they were mine, in the evenings I’d stride
in with my wires and pliers and the warm joy of fatherhood
written all over my beaming weathered face.
Later on we could die within months of each other
and get buried in the same grave (plenty of flowers please)
near the West beach.
Why dont we do that?
Because this is difficult.
Consider
dedication
and addiction
the first is just a presentation
and attempted justification
without much foundation
of the second
which is an affliction
not a fiction
Cold Snap
He had always enjoyed a sudden drop in temperature
responsibly leaving a tennis ball in the fish pond
so’s they could still get their oxygen
and stay in their sluggish half life through till spring.
He’d take the children sledging
encouraging foolhardy levels of speed and steepness
brushing them down when hurt
holding them with his rough idea of comfort.
They grew up with high and exciting pain thresholds
a bright love of the patterns in ice crystals
a lust for rushing wind on rosy cheeks
and a fearlessness on frozen lakes when they creaked underfoot.
He was always there in the vaporous air for them
even into adulthood, when other people started to matter
and make claims to their dependence. Father, unreliable and indestructible.
Mother,serene and cautionary…..
They were a perfect team in a cold snap.
Then one January day he wandered off during a time
when the weather was indeterminate, not knowing whether to plummet
or soar into summer. It was as if he had been restless in between seasons,
perhaps gone to a more extreme climate
where he would be certain of his role, clearing snow, cutting firewood
gritting roads, showing children how to shine in the frost
and keep on the move to stay warm
….anyway he didn’t come back for years.
He showed up at his wife’s door many Novembers later
dressed in worn mitts and foreign skins, offering to make himself useful.
Frostbite had taken several fingers, but he was able and deft with those left.
She gazed a tired gaze into his pale blue eyes, and closed the door on him.
Then there was a cold snap.
Some days later the children were called to a room across the city
where their names had been found next to his stiff body,
they asked the policeman for the cause of death.
“Hypothermia probably” he said,
“Alot of it this time of year”.
Chernobyl Child
I’m selfish and sorry but it was high time.
The fragrant mud, your mother’s and mine
wreathed leaves on our bodies as we made you.
Lives had craved but deaths delayed you.
Now , growing bold in that round brown belly
kick all you like at what’s on the telly.
That news just tells us what to say
We dont watch telly anyway.
And if you think your dad’s complicated,
well maybe that’s why we procreated
over the earth and into you.
I didn’t sell. I only grew.
Grew from the mud into all those factors…
Coca-cola, starvation, nuclear reactors,
grew into clouds with hazy eyes…
the cotton wool of compromise.
But you you’ll slide out without a name.
They’ll have no clue how or why you came.
Chances are you’ll scream and burn inside.
Another Jesus crucified.
Even so the fragrant mud will remain
Seeds sow, things grow exactly the same
as they did last time the planet exploded
as glacier gouged and fire eroded.
Out of plague and hurricane, famine and thirst,
the unthinkable holocaust, H bomb and worse
Someone will wander
You’re first
Chair in the Loft
I’ve been here for years.
Dust lies drifted in the polished place
where warm-bottomed
and curvaceous creatures
would once have been supported
by my kapok and red leatherette.
My seat feature,
was pride of the kitchen
when I and my mistress’ bottom
long ago first met.
Gathering dry dirt in a woody gloom,
this monotonal terminality …
cast in the home’s last room
and resting place…
decays and depresses
objects such as us
who were once allowed some grace
and functionality.
Each 15 months or so, and so
a chimney sweep
or an aerial contractor
visits us
and also now and then
a fresh discarded victim
joins our haughtily resigned community.
We make no fuss…
we are devoid of opportunity.
Old settee covers
balefully receive the chipped stares
of plastic soldiers,
the letters of old lovers
now addressing new directions,
VAT reports
in case of State Investigations,
books and papers from a time
when life was just the future
and this information could be used
somewhere along that endless line….
The pram, and then
the doll’s pram waiting
for an unlikely retro-taste
in some new toddler’s
strange or mystical demeanour….
the nappies that were outgrown,
the heavily branded lid
of the handed down
handy-pack dispenser
caught in an unfulfilled function
that doesn’t matter any more
and perhaps never did
(but it gave them something to shout about
took on meanings
it had never had before),
the broken guitar
the grotesque toaster
the fruits of work,
paintings,
all the still parts of humans
that become impossible to sever
because their physicality
goes on for ever
As useless objects we are immortal.
We lie in chinks of ginger light, beamed
where a roofing contractor may arrive
some time next summer
and we might hear him coming up the drive,
the leather-squeaking tread of him
by-passing our captivity.
So they bequeath us.
So are we rocked, in our silence
and acceptance of passivity,
by the process of forgetting
going on beneath us.
Cast
In the grey light dribbling
through the thud
of dull machinery
he searched for a
friend
A red hot metal skate
with a crucible of gold
dropped onto his glistening pate
instead of the mould
they’d made for him.
He was cast
as a misfit
in the end.
Cars
Cars dont turn me on one little bit..
They crush toddlers’ skulls into the gravel.
They box in our imaginations.
They change the climate for the worse
They make us sit in lines, calculating
the road tax and the deaths of our marriages
through psychological cruelty on dual carriageways.
The best thing is the death of a car
but then we get spanners out
and treat the resurrection of this monster
as a weekend hobby.
Or we polish the old ones till
they gleam in museums so we can
reminisce over the shapes and engines
of the old killers instead of the new.
We even use them as chicken coops sometimes
what an insult to the egg.
Chicken coops?
Museum pieces?
Weekend hobbies?
The march of progress?
Give us a break
Cars may get us about, cleverclogs
but they break our spirits
and we asked for it.
Carapace
They staked out
the smashed carapace they had
forcefed for months with jelly and glue
to make it fat for this special time
daubed mustard on an exposed lung
to make it twitch
and danced to that rhythm
round and round
round and round and round
in a cruel cycle of cleansing pain
a ring of sacrificial vision
pulsing with evolution
and ritual ablution
like the madly puckering
wet sphincter of an oyster
sex-changing every year
in its spawning bed
The giant loggerhead turtle
dredged its jugular up from the slime,
flexed its flayed and oozing legs
uprooted the restraining birchwood staves
croaked an ouch that hurt but felt nearby
a sense of crashing waves…
and heaved itself back into time
to lay more eggs.
Burnout
I’ve just walked to
The South Pole
but all it did
was leave me cold.
Why dont I ever
feel surprised
enthused or zapped
between the eyes?
Am I too old and wise?
Did I try too hard,
is that the truth?
Did I somehow squander
all that youth?
Has all my hunger
and desire
burned up the heat
that makes the fire
and were those years
I worked and waited
hung on and hoped
and felt frustrated,
in fact just dissipated?
I was the first
to reach the top,
went round the globe,
I never stopped!
Should I have seized
more of those days,
have I missed some trick
along the way
and now do I have to pay?
I feel
enthusiasm
for nothing
but my own orgasm
though children
seem to have some worth
(I do feel moved,
affected by Birth)
What does this mean?
Did I do wrong?
and will my Death
take very long?
Do I have to carry on?
I’ve done my odd experimentations
magnetic turbulence and variation
sundogs, cancers, capricorns
forties, fifties, roaring storms
twilights, blacknights, dawns.
Not only deserts, edens, calvaries
but kisses, tears and cups of tea
Is that the end of me?
There must be more
to this than that
an apocryphy
a caveat
a dream, a thrill
some indication
some subtlety
or some revelation
of a purpose,
something new
some thunderbolt
out of the blue?
Do you
have a view?
Perhaps its something
in my soul
that made me walk
from Pole to Pole?
Having circumnavigated
the Earth’s core
you’d think I’d be close
to being sure
just what life’s for
but shouldn’t there be more?
QUESTIONS! QUESTIONS ! QUESTIONS!
Frankly my dear
you’re damned,
so stop bugging me
You’re already going
through Purgatory
Get on with Death
then go to Hell
or will that leave you
cold as well?
Buried Alive
No air can reach through that,
nothing gets past soil
pressed into its brown wet self
and densening in the downward weight of
microorganism.
No force can push through that,
you might want to bloody a few nails
strain back, knees and shoulders raw
in the dark box of this enormity.
No avail.
No sound can rise through that,
try your lungs until the time of breath is past
time will go slowly, time will go fast
and neither matters.
This is the end of all banality
the ultimate finality,
the big one
at last
Bulldozer
I dont have anything new
to offer you.
The earth has been moved for you already
by several pieces of plant
on temporary rental.
These JCBs
were tough, robust
not sentimental
lifted much soil
and their gleaming hydraulics
were a requirement
not an attraction.
I’m a kid’s wheelbarrow
by comparison,
no brakehorsepower
whatsoever
and very little traction
even in action
which I am now
but rarely
barely had I reached
my prime
when they started saying
you’ve reached the end
of your earthmoving time.
Bulldozers don’t get put out to stud.
they get left in the mud a few years
then scrapped or broken up for parts
hearts
have the biggest
market
but they’re
often overgrown with weeds
which is not
what the customer needs.
Brussels Centraal
In restaurant land
on a damp submarine morning
the sous and commis chefs
prepared crustacean displays
stuck chicory heads and lemons
in banks of shaved ice
stuck temptation in your face
as you breathed in
to pass the leather tourists
who in tall thin streets
came groping thin wallets
then groped each other
licking each other’s lips
as if in consolation
for the exchange rate
and the state
of their nation.
The waiters came
with red and yellow roses
placed in cut glass
placed on stiff linen
placed on tables
placed on cobbles
worn down by centuries
of looking up at
leather skirts
and dogs’ crotches.
A dog came,
a large one from Alsace
and sat and shat
a rare mass of thickly
tubular waste.
Then came a weak tide
of bladder wrack drizzle
moistening the stones
and lightly glazing
Sheba
the Belgian’s chocolate
doings.
Then came the day’s
beer delivery
with a flatulent duodenal exhaust
and a fat set of Pirellis
holding back the shrieking
tour of guided adolescents
who came after it, thick
like in the neck of a bottle
treading in it
and spreading it
foot to foot
restaurant to restaurant.
Then came squeals and giggles,
clods of matter in random flight
olfactory chaos landing on heads
as they tried to shake it off
their trainers treads
Damp brown footprints breeding
like a genetic mistake
amongst empty tables,
the air, gastronomically expectant
desecrated by flies foraging
between the table’s legs
and the eggs
and the fish
dishes.
Then came the Eurocrats
and Diplomats
talking policy responsibly,
talking anyway possibly
as a dozen fresh oysters
slithered down the slackened throat
(much more of a slither than a munch)
and an unpleasant odour
slithered up the puckered nostril
like a surviving worm
emerging from some newly opened can
and forcing an undiplomatic
lunch.
Weekend End
To be so broken, wet, saying things
you don’t care about, croaking for warmth,
strapped by the state of me
I’m illogical. You’re critical.
I go for material stuff, the standard lamp’s shine,
I smash it for company, violent like my heart,
you see scales on my skin, the comic hun, the bad egg,
the monster of dependency,
a hunched public enemy,
and dealer in the unacceptable.
You put a brand to my brow,
I scream, it scars, permanent disfigurement,
“unforgiven” it reads.
I become the bad sadness of me
as you turn away, your tones
frogmarching the raw sob of me
back to my shit-smeared cell.
Then later, in solitary, a bash of keys
and you come down on me,
a sudden lust for company
violent like your heart
a rubbing need, a self-determination.
You are muscular and meaty, globs of liquid
fold from your lips.You know the physical, using me,
you know searing me with softness
you know to ruddy me with pink, going beyond
the rude in me, you know breaching the edge,
for I showed you this in stronger times.
You appropriate all of me, I am taken with you,
emptied of bronze, melted for your statue
and what a monument we make to you !
Then you slacken, sigh, linger at my given thigh
and the smell of birth swaddles us.
You mutter opinions in your dawn
while I dress, damply stoic to repeated severance,
stoic to this door closing over again
then Monday.
I back into stained pavements,
the flyovers of humanity,
places where no one stops,
the open prison of the exhausted
and the meek.
Boo
made outdoors
in a puddle
one winter
quite magic it was
getting her
started
learned to say boo
round the bedpost
as her parents
disintegrated
there
at five
an egg and spoon race,
stood wide eyed after
the race had started,
wondering…..
why……?
at ten
the same look
with new friends
glad to be part of it
not sure of
her function
tried saying boo
to melt ice
found
boo worked
Boo! she said
at sixteen
some second hand
rebellion
she never quite
believed in
more disbelief
she could have
gone that far
and still
be liked.
then her wedding
squeezed into something
whose shapelessness
she wondered about
said boo to a goose
or two
boo to her husband
and his lover
found a child
at her bedpost
Said Boo
to you
too
Bone
Your earlier remarks
were a bit near the bone
of my contention.
Its not a big deal,
I just thought I’d mention
it.
Bone Two
Your earlier remarks
cut very near the bone
of my contention.
I only mention it
because the flesh of my body
is getting so macerated that
people are beginning to see me as a pulp,
not a person.
If I dont heal up a bit the situation
could worsen.
I’m afraid I dont have the skin of a rhino,
I can’t contain my organs any more,
I should warn you
my heart might fall out and make a terrible mess
on the lino.
Splatfest
without guns, razors or a chainsaw.
Blackjack in the Air
The ace was high
and was changing his suit
as we flew over Azerbajan.
I was a beginner, a lucky man,
all my jacks were red,
but I’d always played a different game
in my introspective wishywashy head.
Who’s winning? The losers would stroll
and ask in the afternoon light
somewhere over Erzurum…or Ararat
on this undersubscribed flight.
You see, there needed to be a winner,
damage needed to be done,
it was an exercise in hurting others
healthy some might say
by releasing base instincts
in a harmless, social way,
but each player had three lives:
by the time we’d passed Kabul
and The Punjab winked up at us
through the inky heat
the game was tedious
those destined for defeat
still dreamed of comebacks
laps of honour
but I was so hopelessly ahead
I wanted to die soon
and go back to my seat
Dentist
He peered down my epiglotis
and spoke briskly with a glottal stop
just here and there
as if the airs deposited at Dental School
had been rinsed away
with pink liquid.
“No injection?” he inquired
knowing my answer would be No.
“Well just yell if you change your mind”
knowing full well I wouldn’t.
He had been the master of my mouth
for 18 amalgamated years
ever since I could afford to pay
for this character building
this stretching and loosening
of my pain threshold.
I had seen his drills go hi-speed
his chairs go hi-tec and full tilt
his landscape photography improve immeasurably
his whiskers grey
his nurses marry
and his rubber apron
cast into the skip,
(though the smell of it
hangs always
like an ethic)
He tied the light plastic bib across my chest
reclined me to the supine position
shone the bright light
into my inner tubes and cavities
and flashed
a tray of stainless probes
towards my chin
his face came
flopping forward
gravity presaging
his fifties
jowl tied up with white paper
eyes absorbing
my wasted cusps
looking past his ear
(vast and lightly dusted with dandruff)
I noticed the silver
bi-planes on the mobile
were flying backwards
and there was a new mountain
over the fireplace
the drilled nerve
gave me spasms
the nurse aspirated
eagerly near the rear
of my tongue,
and I dealt
with the pain
as normal
by opening
wider and wider
to help
later he scaled me and polished me
and found a dark curly hair
stuck behind the porcelain crown
I scrub twice daily
and always after cunnilingus.
Did I detect
a human glimmer of remorse
behind the white mask
that it wasn’t his
but that of some sallow
foreign muck?
Bad Trucking
Once I let a man drive an artic
through my heart.
He had a great carburettor
in excellent condition
was a distributor of sparks
a specialist in ignition
a setter of points
and he rolled good joints
he picked me up at Charnock Richard
and by Knutsford
he was tearing along my major arteries
abusing his choke
burning blue smoke
stoked with Yorkie bars
from a throaty stack
and gunning his throttle
round the back of my neck
where flecks of pollution
blocked my pores
while a dark engine rumbled and roared
and made me want more and more and more
as if this was the last chance
to get love trucking.
It was in Knutsford we decided
to give the wheel a spin
making me grin
like a Cheshire pussy
when it came up a deuce
steering us both along one road
to the transport cafes
of eleventh heaven.
I had been on the road so long
had never hitched my skirt high
nor been suggestive with my thumb
never bared my breast
never showed off my bum
on the hard cold shoulder,
never kneeled before
the crown of the road.
The dark
juggernauts flew over
their marker lights hissing
in a pre-stressed forest
rear double tyres kissing
under the weight.
I tilted up my
tramp lady chin
to spoon a cold tin
of spaghetti
the red juice
spilling into
my secret dreams of an interchange,
of leg-shaving,
craving
a certain
betrayal
of this independence thing
I gave in, enjoyed it.
We were married in spring
He was on a long haul
for Aberdeen Shore Porters
one dawn
when the frigging rig
just jacknifed
and ruined my life.
It sliced my aorta
bloodying the mud on my walls
taking my barriers with it,
chevron painted wastes of space
spilling its load of frozen plaice
all over my arterial routes
when the fish thawed
I was raw
in shocked pink
damaged, saddled
with baggage
sent to a shrink
and a course of primal scream
I screamed the obscene
while the silver darlings rotted
with the stink
of his failing
prevailing
Since then
I view the state of the art
of the heart
with a frosty eye
almost arctic
and though articulate in the main
my lips and tongue are numb
to heavy transport
and the roar of 18 wheels
in November rain.
Since that artic articulated,
since trailer fell out with tractor
I’ve thrown away my Gillette Contour II
and other crass symbols
eschewed the tacho
and the HGV macho
and accept rides
only from women motorists
because they’re better at it.
However I have a plan
one day to pull a speciman
who’s fit and cute
and carries weetabix perhaps
or Mr. Kipling’s cup cakes
or something vegetarian
and will be honoured
and enlightened enough
to make light of driving
one light delivery van
once carefully up my junction.
you see I’d like to procreate
but I dont want to be a driver’s mate
hearts fucked anyway.
through bad butch
trucking
Bad in Bed
I’m well-hung
lick-nippled, six-packed
great-buttocked
but bad in bed.
Chicks doze off
as I grunt away at them,
birds get bored to death
with my pecker,
geese fly off in a flock
slandering the gander.
With you I nibble your ears,
use lips, all the things I’ve got
with slow sensitivity.
You moan with the tedium
of this intimacy.
I kiss your thighs
they twitch a little,
I do that thing I do
with one hand at your perineum
one at the down of your neck
and my mouth at your pearly gates.
You dont open them
you dont scream for more
you snore.
Baboon
You called me a baboon.
Last time anyone called me that in a derogatory tone it was a cheeky little Thompson’s gazelle.
I smiled and cradled it in my arms for a while, feigning fatherly magnanimity, then ripped off one foreleg cleanly from the shoulder and ate it.
The Savannah Star stirred up a stooshie (or a fomentatious stew as they say in some places) the way it nearly always does. The Tommies all got together, formed a committee, demanded an inquiry, campaigned to have me thrown off the reserve. I resisted of course, saying “I’m a baboon! I have degrees in both mimicry and violence. How am I supposed to live without a degree of bloodshed? Thats the trouble with you people and your degrees. Am I supposed to eat nothing but acacia leaves like those ridiculous giraffes? And what about Acacia? They may seem green and benign but they dont half do damage if you get one of those spikes in your nose. Maybe they evolved from the sabretoothed tiger.
And if you’re condemning me for deceit, the fake nurturing bit is just a technique, a technique I learned in baboon kindergarten where one learns how to survive and sustain life, especially one’s own. I suppose you’re going to suggest that the art of camouflage is not fair game, or that snakes who drop from trees are just not playing cricket, or that flyspray aerosols are cruel. They’re only cruel if you’re a Jain Buddhist and I’m not, I’m a baboon.
Degrees of this
Degrees of that
I’ve nothing against young gazelles in principle. On the contrary I feel very positive about young gazelles because they melt in your mouth.
Isn’t it strange how raw nature gradually gets cooked and loses the vitamins of a global system? There was a time when no-one would have batted an eyelid at a baboon doing what it’s meant to do, but now there’s all these ragged edges of evolution scurrying into the millennium…and some of us, especially the ones with bald patches on our arses, are just not ready for it….everyone living in harmony, self-regulated mating programmes, old-gazelle welfare schemes and what have you. Maybe my grandson will have evolved into a flying fucking fruit fox or something but me I’m a baboon, and I can’t change that.
What’s happened to good old hunting imperatives, the urge of testosterone, the need for males to spend a bit of time together at the wadi of an evening, the odd fight over the girls?
I am a baboon and I’m still proud of it. I’ll drop the subject for now. Its a bit of a poisonous snake of a thing and I want a peaceful life. But if we get hitched and you ever start giving me gip about boozing with the boys, or spending too long at the office I’ll tear your arm off and throw it to the lions. Then let’s see where your vegetarian and slightly gazellist aspirations have got you.
She Always Talked of Austin
how the nights there
were like little orgasms.
“Did you feel that one? ” she’d ask,
the way girls do in Texas.
“Houston, Dallas, San Antone…
no match for being young in Austin
the best town to come together in,
the worst if you’re on your own.”
She wanted to take me there
eat light cosmopolitan bougie-lit food
fuck me long and late and hot
into a bed of cool music,
then the slow woogie waltz
in a morning of hedonist senses,
fresh-ground coffee
and the scents of imagined
permanences.
She went to LA, got married
to an indistinct figure
named Rick, or was it Joe,
wrote to say “Save me,
my best years are here
but so’s they dont just disappear,
hold on to Austin
where the young ones go”
I’ve reached Austin now.
On 6th Street I dine alone,
watch the kids all coming
to a 6th Street saxophone,
their charged laughter sweeping
like an instinctive mistral,
and fatherly law enforcers
on fast fun bicycles
policing urges that are natural……
…..but I’m twice their age, these easy ecocops,
I’m unfatherly, dirty-minded, free
and the only part of Austin left with me
is the loss of it.
Austin, Texas
was never meant to be.
Arsonist
When I was five I suffered greatly from the cold,
despite wearing warm mittens on elastics.
Sometimes I’d run home to mother
with icicles hanging from my bare knees
and frozen tears on my cheeks….
…then I met Janice, an older woman
(she was six, at 4’2″ a head and shoulders above me)
and every inch an arsonist.
I immediately knew she was different.
She taught me how to play with matches,
we joined the Bryant and May Club
and subscribed to Swan Vestas Weekly.
We started with small twig bonfires by the river,
then graduated to litterbins.
Oh the joy of the colour of flame
curling round things
black bubbles
columns of soot
thick as thieves!
We thought of trying petrol tanks
but decided to wait until we were older
and could handle it properly.
Then one day we set fire to a whole cornfield.
The Fire Brigade had to come
and interview my mum…
…she skelped my bum
and sent me to bed
with no supper.
Lying there
I felt so much warmer
round the bottom
and at the bottom
of my burning heart.
Janice grew up to be 6’6″
and every inch a role model
for terrorist men.
She became an IRA trainer
but I never saw her again.
Arctic Coast
Listening
to a web of strings
under a frozen ocean,
groaning as it
wrestles its own
surfaces
listening
in a pile of tin cans
with a few tin cans to live in;
they used to link them all
with lengths of dirty string
stretched taut across the hemisphere
in some boyish bondish
dream of interception.
Here, listening in, were
polar bears and foxes
the line rubbing on blue ice
where the woolly mammoth fell
and the Siberian tiger, shot
between the ears
limped off into wilderness
trailing scarlet.
(Us next? they said)
Here, the over-vivid reds
were sent.
Their voices would echo
in frozen fields
of solid sperm,
unwelcome thoughts
detritus, concrete
execrable words
and muddy excreta in spring,
a grey prospect
in an unchosen place
of spindrift and chill warnings.
The bleak fifties
were
the tin can
era;
so many had died
in their boots and ushankas
through lack of tinned food
suspicion
was taught in all schools.
It was known in the west
they could cross straits
and lurk under beds
in apple pie towns
or jump into tincans
leaving the earth
to see it better
and
write a red letter
home
(Best do the same
they said.)
listening, always listening
except when the aurora
paraphrased the paranoia
and sang like saints around the sky
stinging mortals with reminders
that their tincan technology and
superpower psychosis
was scrambled by the
supercharged states
of darkness
and light
of all colours
no listening then
for a while,
God’s electricity
would silence
morse tappers
keep fingers off buttons
make nuclear heads
benign
and ears sing with crisp life
in this cold fossilized war
when the singing faded
over that great shared pool
with the planet’s wildest edges
big men and big talkers
took sides again loudly,
tapped phones
ate meat
and drank bourbon or vodka
to forget they were
being listened to.
Apple
You are the eye
of my Big Apple
the core of my world
a perfectly ripe
Cox’s Pippin
of a girl.
Dont let the wee tykes from up the road steal you.
Annie’s Gone to Baltimore
If Annie’s gone
to Baltimore
she didn’t say goodbye
because we weren’t there.
We were somewhere else
sorting out another place
and living in a time
that wasn’t her’s yet
despite her
global proximity
and proclivity
to travel.
I was her last male bedfellow
to my knowledge…
there were murmurs of love talk
for a few short years
but this Dublin streetwise waif
would have been hard to convince
that what she needed
was a handsome prince.
She thought I was
the most female
of men
the way I moved
the way I spoke,
I had a female feel to me
and when she felt me
I was her princess
I guess.
I always suspected
I was a Lesbian.
One day, looking down at me
after another marathon
of moaning sensuality
she said “You’re a very serious young man”.
With every lover since
I’ve known she was right,
she gave me this forever
to keep as a jewel
of self-knowledge
meant to come in handy
whenever I feel randy.
Annie went
to Baltimore
to take up sailing.
We heard she took it hard
when Baltimore
didn’t understand its gain,
but Annie’s tough,
she sailed on
like an Irish immigrant,
raised on blight and pain
I think she did it single handed
rather than in pairs,
and from the little that I know
Annie could still be sailing there.
Had Annie stayed
she might have gone all straight.
Had we persisted
in that particular yacht race……
I loved her fingers
reefing in my face
and the exhilaration was in danger
of getting even better……
most likely I’d have gone all bent
but then in any case
Annie went
to Baltimore
and never sent
any letters.
And All
Warts, lots of them
breaking out like molehills
nodules of smut
his farmhands knobbled
with them
snagging
on passage walls.
“Cowdung sourced”
someone said in a dry room,
“these eructations are
God’s little joke
infectious and misunderstood
hillocks on the lifeline
lumps on the loveline
impeding
myriad journeys
to public places
and private.”
then one morning
all gone
knuckles and palms
smooth as plums
able to chew himself
with a little relish
less gristle.
Where were they absorbed?
Which nurturing surface
which environment
drew them in
to itself?
An Affair
You rub knees in the restaurant.
The others dont seem to notice.
You enjoy that. Its easy.
Easy peasy kneesy.
You drink, make each other laugh late,
You seize the opportunity for animality
in this rather grim position of formality.
You stumble to your hotel room
then you’re naked,
she’s wearing only a leather belt,
which enhances the theatricality.
You’re hungover and spent.
She says she’d like to do that again.
You hear yourself saying you would too.
You exchange numbers.
Is that what you really meant?
You go home to wife and husband.
You go to a phone box.
You’re already working
on the whiteness of lies.
She invents a weekend conference.
Its no surprise, fits.
You invent delays one Friday,
You’re tired and the drive’s too long sadly,
but not too long for her,
she needs it so badly.
She wears silks, scent
You trim your nose-hair
draw in your belly.
You meet in the middle of some other land
where there’s nothing but discretion.
You need a bed so badly,
an arena, somewhere gladiatorial.
You search for a hotel.
Price doesn’t matter,
nothing else matters
you need it so badly.
You must couple.Its destined
and its become conspiratorial.
She greets her big old friend.
You drink at the cup of her universe.
You both take brandy, steam rises,
staff are sent away,
silk is stained, cotton sullied
you are pink and chafed with rubber,
you rest, you go to eat unwashed
keeping the smell that links you,
you rub knees under the table
you’re at it again
you need it so badly
you’d suffer any pain gladly.
You say you’re not in love.
You drive her to her car
her perfume lingers for weeks
on the passenger seatbelt.
You wash it like Lady Macbeth
taking the strain now,
a sense of approaching death.
You do it again
and then another time
nothing else matters
You’ll drive further and further for it
You are driven.
She’s driven
a coach and horses
through you
and you need it so badly
you’ll drive anywhere.
She will too.
You are raw
You use creams to heal your member.
She writes you a driven message.
Her husband finds it,
phones one chilly dawn.
Its November.
You meet him,
talk, lover to cuckold.
His name is Bill, a bank manager,
He doesn’t knife you,
he asks about his wife
You talk about your kids, football,
where to get his car spares,
what she’s like, what to do
about this sorry state of affairs.
You part benign, almost drinking friends.
It is the end.
Your wife asks where you were.
You tell her.
You need to tell her so badly.
The family Christmas that year
is a little strained, sadly.
Amparo’s Husband
Rosa introduced a man to me.
“This is Amparo’s husband”
she said.
We shook hands and grinned
at each other.
I had met Amparo, a dark
handsome but unadorned
45 year old
mother of three`
some days earlier.
She was usually about the place
peeling vegetables,
helping her mother
attend to her father.
I knew her husband was away
for a while
(I had been told this much)
but I had not seen her
all that blistering day.
It was a thick Spanish night
hot and big as the plains
of La Mancha
which brought no breeze
other than red ovenlike breath
to this scented citrus grove.
A number of cousins, uncles and aunts
were assembled for supper,
their children placed and neatly indulged,
the aunts yelling with filled bosoms
and deeply sonorous senora voices,
bringing food to the little ones,
the uncles mumbling in chairs
or staring at their toes,
perhaps making an odd chess move
with a teenage nephew.
“This is Amparo’s husband”
Rosa said.
We shook hands and grinned
and as the man shook
I noticed that he barely concealed a hurt
behind his robust familial gusto.
“I am not just Amparo’s husband”
he said as jokingly as he could.
“My name is Balthazar.
I am Balthazar.”
He turned away
still laughing like
a tortured stag
and there was Amparo
wearing make-up
silver
and a shorter dress.
Alien
It was then I realised
you were not of this planet.
We had found soft shingle
on a hard flinty beach
sat side by side
watching island life
when I stood to swim.
I left two loveable curved indents
behind my behind
and when I turned from the sea
I saw your indents were
just conical holes.
You are not anorexic.
You have not been slimming.
Then I noticed you were only sweating on one side…
something adrift with the drainage ducting
or extra-terrestrial style features?
I considered your endearing thin spiked ears
remembered you cannot abide
going anywhere slowly
and the look of startlement
in your green antennae
when I mention
washing dishes
Albania
The militia of Berisha
trundled their tired old uniforms
into the town
for a show of strength
there was
smasmodic shelling
at the failure of pyramid selling
and salvos at the failure
of the point of pyramid saving
the rebels were poor, male, angry,
they wore wild hats
and had given up shaving.
I could have told them
it was an iceberg with no tip
especially with the Mediterranean
melting your backward flanks.
but its a good excuse
to wheel out the tanks
and counter the atrocities
the feudal animosities
hanging on in turmoil
to the longforgotten
state of it
Aimara Reques
runs round a reservoir in the rain
her Nikes and popsocks punishing the po-faced ground
and the heart in her dark bounced breast
beating the dreary wind. Those Latin locks
curled damply round her cheeks are black-blasted heath fingers
pointed witches of somewhere chilly and wet in the west.
Her ringlets might be sensual on a hot pillow somewhere south
traced by a spent lover’s hand, smelled like the best coffee in a morning.
Resting there she could be unfit, fat and taken warmly
not flabfighting in a place where everything she likes is wrong,
where lovers can’t be found
because they’ve all gone
to Venezuela.
Age of Commitment
The business gurus tell us to commit 100%
to the cause of selling it,
then someone says just bear with me a bit,
I’ll get back on the mobile later,
last minute fast minute
like we like it
then we’ll need it yesterday
so we’ll bike it.
For this is the age of keeping options open
This is the modern age the modem age
the instant access to the sage-advice-page age
the fast car undertakers and road-rage age
the age of expectation, choice
the age of the voice. Male and female
keys to making all these sales,
are uttering buzzwords (no is not one)
dressing to declare that you’re the hot one
and getting a dress if you haven’t got one
addressing the stress with a guru book,
for volume sales make our figures look
better and thats a restful stress
that harnesses our stressful stress.
And oh how
know now
we must all connect, believe, state our mission
focus, cascade, network, work out, make decisions
have a vision
but I cant see it
my search engines find
the more I know
the more I change my mind.
Adam and Bill
He wore his bleeding heart on his sleeve
this fretting Adam on a log with Eve.
He left her on tiptoe, lonely and bereaved
(he was, I mean
and she was left swimming
in everything
she believed)
The growth industry of retailed listening skills
those gently manufactured self made cures for self made ills
the kind that make you reach for alcohol and pills
foundered. They were flawless
and boundless…
but he couldn’t pay
the fucking bills.
Bill stepped shining out of an ad for sex by phone
the contact was made, he made Adam his clone
and chained him screaming in the basement of his home
made kind of love. The boy
did well….grew to like
being rubbered stretched and owned.
Adam grew old. Eve and the kids were gone.
His hair was greying
and Bill in his terror often went out playing.
Adam looked for God by kneeling down and praying
but he didn’t apologise
and soon found
he was
still paying.
The Lord in black leather later met him in a pub,
said “Let’s have more sleaze, I’ll take you to a club…”
The Lord asked: “Giver or taker?”….ah there’s the fucking rub!
Adam dozed and dreamed
of the erstwhile once-upon-a-time-long-gone…
he smiled at days no longer halcyon
days when when young girls might have called him Dom
but now
he was clearly
Sub.
Abrogate
It’s a judgement isn’t it, by thee of me,
this so called abrogation of responsibility?
So now that the social skills police are out
do you think I’ll pass muster?
If this is about social rights, the system, all the law enshrines,
then give me back the right, the right they say is mine….
the right to be dull, lacklustre
a sheep, uninspired, uninspiring
the right to be quiet, shy, boring , tedious, retiring
the right to fold up, cry like a babe, shout like a football commentator
the right to be humble, receptive to the total sum
without planning on a calculator,
the right to love without wit or charisma
plead without pride ,
lose face, slide,
scramble back up towards self assurance
scratching, slipping, straining,
without ever getting there,
just the right to care
without being entertaining.
New Bar
A new bar in Partick
in the old Glasgow style.
All the short forgotten men
in cheap carcoats flocked
to drink whisky
and argue over the merits
of Partick men
compared to
Dennistoun men.
(I saw their sons
supporting their sons
this morning, shouting “Hit it !”
from the red blaes byelines
to the under- 5s first team
who were playing Dennistoun
in the toddlers’ league.)
When I grow old
I’d like to be one of these men,
men with a place to be in
a place to be proud of,
unrepentantly
taking their drug
on a Saturday
with no hanging baskets
at the door
no cappuccino machine
under the gantry
and I’d like to stay protected there
till my good woman
comes looking for me
to say
my tea’s ready
and its mince.
A Jump
She thought she’d go beyond
for once live a little
do something memorable and bold
before she got old.
It was scarily enriching
and not all that hard
apart from the ground
when her chute failed to open
They scooped her up with a shovel
into binbags
put her in a young persons grave
and forgot about her
The old worms licked
their rubbery lips
73
Checking for blight
I met her first as trainee potato inspector
for the County of Angus.
I heard she’d become executive
moved to The Capital,
must have met someone, made a choice
for here she is on the 73 bus
with baby slung on her chest
steering her toddler.
She’s lost alot of weight
through the Islington years
acquired contact lenses and confidence,
but something in the shade and style
of her check jacket
is still there like a birthmark.
She doesn’t notice me
and gets off at The Angel.
Busy bus this 73
the people curse the conductor
for restricting numbers,
the people curse anyway,
either unready for work,
their grey isolation
furrowing their faces….
or too ready by far and knotted
by the altered individual states they’re in.
I wonder whether to offer a seat
and if so to whom
and if so how to do it
without shedding too many drops
of this precious self-containment I was taught.
I stand up for an old man with a stick
then a young woman
I seem to recognise
stands up for me.
It takes time to register my new qualification
then I smile my thanks and sit,
amazed at all the people on this bus
that I used to think I knew.
A Dump in Ascension
“Have you ever had a dump in Ascension?”
the man of the world asked.
“This reminds me of it.”
Inside the old CCCP regional building
the men queued for their morning relief
clutching pages of pravda
at doorless cubicles in ascending order.
The commandant used to shit first at the top,
then the major and less major players
then the squaddies squatting
in the great levelling position
which slopes till the lowliest
egalitarian condition
is to proffer your bottom
at the bottom.
Here the entire party’s neoclassic discardment
conforms with the monument of its architecture,
slides hugely along a corrupt
back channel of emolument
and down down down
that huge hole in the argument.
You need a coat….
even though its 80 degrees
there might arise a chilly breeze
on the way to the chip shop
when you turn a corner to the west …
best be ready
no the weather’s not steady, not really your friend
it’s bound to turn nasty in the end
you need a coat.
…a good coat is a must
it makes you feel bigger, more decisive, more robust.
and whiskers help too.
Why
do these dirty cheapwinedrinking
skinny downandouts with only one leg and bad teeth
who hang around in the square smoking
whilst thickset hardworking men
in royal blue overalls come with hammers
to fix the paving stones
and keep the pale tourists in shorts
safe from tripping up and falling over
and perhaps contracting septicaemia
and needing permanent healthcare
and whilst lactating mothers
wheel their little ones in perambulators
and stop to gossip about this and that
and then shove off to buy disinfectant
and something for the tea
when their husbands come home
with tales of responsible graft
and flawed management
and the possibility of a promotion…
why do these wasters with straggly beards
and a funny look in their eyes
have to make so much
noise about it all ?
When You Were Three
you’re 90 years old.
we talk of weather and sport,
the longterm primitives of a longform life
needing to get free
there are scores to consider…teams to appraise
so we watch the match
on your Sky TV
you and me
you doze, you start awake
you need to know what you missed
was there a goal, a penalty, a foul ?
you need to know
you need to see.
it’s the same bright fight in your eye
that you had when you were three
TV Breasts
I will take illegal hormones
I’m prepared to take the chance
If I grow breasts on my shoulderblades
I’ll be sexier when we dance.
Things to do with your Arms
Saw them both off
(you may need help with the second one)
Unburden yourself, arms are weight
and carry weight.
You dont need them,
throw them aside
with a flick of your torso.
This will give you wings.
Boil the limbs, degristled, in a stew
of onions and bouquet garni,
forearms have the best eating,
the hands must be removed…
you could make a fine stock
for the freezer
Use your toes
to work the ladle.
Or use arms to hew rock, loft bayonets
pan streams, punch for gold, serve aces
write War and Peace,
open the jam jar
for your wife.
She may lie happy
in your arms…
or your arms may not
be strong enough.
Be disarming or alarming,
but charming to those
who are willing to hold you up.
Reach for your mother with your arms,
use arms to keep the peace.
Thincat
I use my claws
to get rich
but I stay slim.
I’m a Thincat
not a fat.
I could ask you
what you think of that
but it doesn’t really
matter.
The Blob
A blob of blattspinat mit kaserahm
dropped like an act of God
on to the Rotary Club Vest
of one of the best in Westphalia.
His napkin furled and cutting
to the west,
the strident slap
of his wife’s haddock,
her wet tattoo,
his iceberg lettuce
shredded dignity
How was he to convince,
coddle his wit, serve it
under this slime stain
this greenish slur
so early in proceedings?
The Afghan Generals
To Salisbury Plain
the Afghan Generals came
to train
wearing medals and those proud
mountainous
Afghan gazes
Late each evening
they would buy ice lollies
in the 24hr Somerfield
and at the Holiday Inn’s revolving door
I’d often meet them…
smiling…..licking the
chocolate or strawberry
off their
fierce moustaches
Taipei
Sick and fitful
from timezones and bugs,
a waking Taipei skyline
through my window
I scan my memory’s relief map
and see I am closer to you than
for many years…
just one ocean, a desert or two,
a few thousand miles of bush.
Nothing really.
Backwards I fly in sleep
to the time that somehow
seemed our last chance
before we got old.
With your almond face
more beautiful than it ever was
in youth
and your back arching into
the full curve of your hips..
I am in amber light. Its dawn
You prepare for me
the icy sadness
expected in your eyes,
gently drink me as I turn to water
you know about this liquidity
..nothing solid in your own life
You were the untouchable one…
and yet you let me touch you….
I never thought I would touch you
that wasn’t meant for me.
and yes I was right
for it passed again
just like a season does…
Are you skinny or fat now,
are you happy,
still wet between your legs
like you always used to be?
I noticed you were this morning
in my halfdream
Once more
I almost fell in love.