HUNGOVER
To
drink is to borrow
Joy
from tomorrow.
Now
who’ll repay
Today’s
loan to yesterday?
THE OLD DOG
An old man’s life
is shorter than a dog’s.
One birthday it’s an all-night knees-up,
But by the next his vitals seize up,
And then it’s naps and pap and
moaning monologues.
But these same days
that deal me blow on blow
Enhance your grace to match my
loss
As wise and kind and calm you cross,
Unblemished, middle-age’s
changeless broad plateau.
No miracle will
come. Therefore I
Remain your grim memento
mori.
Oh warm me with reflected glory,
Dear, till this old dog lies down
at last to die.
AT RING O’ BELLS: FOR MY FATHER
This
tented English light, I like to think,
Showed
our fathers’ fathers when they made
Canals
lacquered with sky, rails that gripped
Distance
in cutlery – and cast their grain,
For
the green splash patient. At their bucket’s brim,
The
gleaming mirror reeled but did not spill.
Shadowless
light! Here where their furrows rolled
Over
like swimmers its straight-edge lay;
Their
file found it under rust; it rode
The
new nail hammered home; and blazed
Spat
in the ditcher’s hand. Pacing his map,
Bright
dividers mocked the sailor’s step.
But
look: mum is coming from the cancer wing.
On
this canal bridge her neighbour says,
“Crows
crossed your roof today. I think
Your
man can’t live.” And the x-ray stain,
Black
birds, and wicked old poisoner of light
Were
right, were right.
TO MY YOUNG WIFE
She
buys these flimsy clothes and shoes,
Unsuited
to our northern
skies.
She
has a secret dream to use
These
follies where her future lies.
She’ll
taste a hanging wreath of vine
And
sniff the hidden truffle place
And
tread her meadow’s boundary line
In
floating silk and trailing lace.
She’ll
sleep till noon and talk all night
With
easy tears or heathen joy.
She’ll
be the postman’s sly delight
And
terrify the baker’s
boy.
Her
crazy sisterhood will tell
Tales
from the whole world wide
Of
faithless men they loved too well
And
kindly men they cast aside.
“Alas,
les dames folles come once more,”
The
town will cry to see them call,
And
lock the church and close the store –
And
she’ll be the maddest dame of
all.
Shake
out this lace and shout, “Ah oui!”
Put on
these foolish shoes and dance.
Oh but
I love to think of thee
Glad
in the golden fields of France.
WINTER FLY
January
–
But a
blue sky
Wakens
this fly
From
some narrow winter sanctuary
And
black, fat, out of season
It
tups our windows with a warty snout.
Oh put
the horror out –
Let
the rasping demon
Die
Adoring
the flawless winter sky.
FROM A TO BEER
Let me
get from A to beer,
For
all my so-called friends appear
Jeering,
sneering, insincere
Their
shining smiles a mere veneer.
Oh
hurry me from A to beer.
For
they, I fear, have seen me clear:
The
dregs of this defunct career,
Regret
its only souvenir,
Conclude
another nothing year,
So get
me, friend, from A to beer.
This
lousy Now, unhappy Here,
While
age and worse come creeping near,
Consuming
what I most hold dear.
I’d
crawl the whole terrestrial sphere
To get
myself from A to beer.
Oh rev
the engine, crash the gears,
Let’s
let the slipstream dry our tears
And
flee to be where yelling “Cheers”
We
swing amid the chandeliers,
Refugees
from A to beers.
GYNAECOLOGIST
Gynaecologist
afloat
All
day in your glass-bottomed boat
Cruising
those pinks and blues –
Sea
blush, sea bruise –
How
will you sleep
Having
seen these creatures of the deep?
MY NEW WINDOWS
Where
the autumn wind whips round
Four
floors above ground
I’m an
old man upside down.
Storms
in the far north
Gather
for their going forth,
And
since such beasts can slip
A
blade through the least nick
No
mere measuring will do
To fit
these windows tight and true.
Therefore
I hang
And shape
and shave and smooth and sand –
Quickly,
quickly, since I race
The
planet’s winter-turning face.
Yes
its old face turns winterward
But
still my darling will be warm
If I’m
away, and can’t get home.
CENTRAL RESERVATION
Most
nights,
In the
glare of oncoming lights,
A
thing I refuse to feel
Some
rage or loss,
Perhaps,
and I think to cross.
DAVE’S DICK
Written in his Christmas card
Cousin
Dave, your cheeky wit’s
Wasted
on a prostate tumour.
The
growth that grips your wedding bits
Ignores
all pawky northern humour –
For
cancer’s dull, a fool that fills
Our
lives with boredom, pain and pills.
In
fact the thing itself’s a bore
With
cells that replicate and then
Repeat
the thing they did before
Then
re-enact it all again.
A
carcinoma’s only mission’s
To
grind us down with repetitions.
A bore
of bores that furthermore,
Settled
like a dreaded guest,
Hopes
to provoke an endless snore,
To
bore us all to boundless rest,
And
feels defeated till it’s drawn
Our
jaw to one enormous yawn.
And in
the end, when thee and me
Decline
in time as all men must
To
grey anonymous non-entity,
Homogenised
to nameless dust,
Then
cancer knows it’s done its bit
Since
we’ve become as dull as it.
So
lad, no waggish chat diverts
The
blob your knob is nobbled by.
The
crab that grabs you where it squirts
Is
stumped by your ironic eye.
Old
friend, they’ll mend your end, meanwhile
We’ve
missed that wink, that pirate guile:
Forget
the fool that cramps your style –
It’s
us that need your rascal smile.
(Dave
Heaton is fine now. I said: “You’re
back
to your old self, unfortunately.”)
THE POET’S PRAYER
Let
the bitch, Success,
In her
red dress
With a
glass and a laugh and a smeared kiss
Briefly
a friend for life
Out-shout
my wife
Who
says, “We can’t go on living like this.”
A LANCASTRIAN’S TERROR OF TODMORDEN
God keep
me out of Todmorden
Where
folk will stand you drinks and then
A
pickled egg – excepting when
They’re
Yorkshiremen.
For
Tod, astride the Calder’s banks,
Is
half in Yorks and half in Lancs.
Oh
Todmorden, oh lord, no thanks.
In
Todders folk will say, “Well met!
How’s
t’gout? Are’t courting yet?
They’re
open: shall us have a wet?”
Or
sell their kids on th’internet.
They’ll
greet you with “Ey up! Grand morning!”
Or
kick your shins with zero warning,
Depending
on which bit they’re born in.
Oh
Todmorden, oh fearsome spot
Where
folk will give you all they’ve got
To
ease your lot –
Or
maybe not:
For
even when they’re worth a mint
Yorkshiremen
will say they’re skint
Then
scurry off to skin a flint.
Oh
Todmorden, oh fearsome site,
Where
folk are breezy, blithe and bright,
Or
else prefer their roses white
And
wads shut tight.
They’ll
say “God bless you” when you sneeze,
Or
else forget their “Ta” and “Please”
Then
creep away to pare a cheese.
For
Todmorden’s two-faced like Janus:
One
bloke does owt to entertain us
The
next along need not detain us,
The
anus.
So
Lanky Todders, grab your bikes
And
flee this tribe that no one likes,
The
Tykes:
Whose
scowls inspect us
And
then reject us;
From
Todmorden, oh lord protect us;
Whose
smiles unnerve us,
Who
don’t deserve us;
From
Todmorden, dear god preserve us!
(Trivial quibbles have been voiced about
the changing locations of the Lancs/Yorks
border – but I’m taking no chances. God
keep me out of Todmorden!
PS: Salt and flour with nothing good in
Is Yorkshire folks’
idea of pudding.)
MOON MADNESS
The
moon broke free
From racing
clouds and she
Tearing
her clothes followed me there
Through
the black streets with her mad hair
Till I
turned again home –
Where
I have known
My
heart’s safekeeping
But
now the woman weeping.
EVE’S COMPLAINT TO JOHN MILTON
Joint winner of a ‘Spectator’ competition
O
pitiless bore. O monster. O Milton –
With
bum-numbing dullness you dared to create an
Unreadable
screed, a dirge that dumps guilt on
Me for
intriguing with devious Satan.
Yet never
a word on my manual labour
While
hitched to a hick with his mind on manuring,
Nor,
worse, on the curse of the Lord as our neighbour –
All-knowing,
all-nosy and past all enduring.
Yes I
fell for the Serpent but ask no one’s pardon
Since
tedious Eden had driven me crazy;
And I
thrilled to his sinuous girth in my garden
While
Adam administered mulch to a daisy.
Hypocritical
Milton! So yours was the worst sin,
Imposed
on us all at unspeakable cost:
I
merely damned millions to Hell with the first sin,
But
yours is the torture called ‘Paradise Lost’.
“ROMAN TILE WITH FOOTMARKS OF A DOG”
In
imprints of that careless
paw,
Across and off the tile, we
saw
Wayward
joy that still traverses
Paths
beyond the potter’s curses.
TEACHER
TIME
With his own
Fingerbone,
With his no-chalk
Skrauk
skrauk
On the black, black, blackboard,
He is ignored.
All day
The children play,
Lost in their frolics and fights,
And still he writes,
Skrauking his finger-end
Till at last they attend.
SONNETS
I
Written in her Christmas card
Our
marriage rites are consecrated thus:
Old
jokes, long talks, slow walks; meetings for
sweet
Confabulations
as we fold a sheet;
Shared
desserts, hand-holding on the
bus;
And
then to stroll and soberly discuss
Along
an endless rainy shopping street
What
chocolate treat, or meat, or bedroom suite,
All
things considered, would be best for us.
Yes,
we dismiss those idle high-flown vows
Of
perfect love, and love for ever more;
Instead
with empty chat I thee espouse,
Of
football teams, TV, and her next door.
So dip
your biscuit in my coffee
cup
To
plight thy troth – and then that washing up.
II
Valentine’s Day, in Tesco
The
shopgirl smiles to see me wait in line
Clutching
the supermarket cheap bouquet
With
other sad-sack husbands who display
Their
trinkets, chocolates, cards and cut-price wine –
Absurd
embodiments of love divine.
Look
at this fool, she thinks: creeping, grey,
Disqualified
from love despite the day,
An
ageing, patient, shame-faced
valentine.
Or
maybe not. Perhaps she smiles to see
Plodding
losers gathered to renew
These
yearly tokens of fidelity,
Who
trudge and toil to keep this rendezvous,
Knowing
their dull endurance goes to show
New
rings may shine, but how these old ones glow.
LOVE
She’s
in love with Hate and wants to be alone.
She’s
drawing the curtains and locking the door.
When
Hate loves her up with a dry old thigh bone,
“Yes!”
she instructs him, and “More, darling, more!”
Her
friends sniff keyholes and rattle the cat-flap.
They
listen at drainpipes and climb the wisteria.
Why
are two bony footprints pressed in her bath-mat?
What’s
that xylophone smile in the dim interior?
But
she turns from their words with a deaf and a dumb shrug.
This
“friendship” garbage they’re shouting fools no one.
With
x-ray eyes for humanity’s humbug
She
takes Hate to bed for a fast then a slow one.
“Oh
Hate, my bone idol, you’re past all improving,
Your
kisses as cool as a bone china chalice!”
And
she begs him incessantly, “Darling, do move in
Your
doggie called Danger and moggie called Malice!”
And
she’s squeezing his hand like a handful of dice,
She’s
softly locking her boudoir door.
Her
nipples get stiff in his whispers like ice,
And
she’s not coming out, no never no more.
THE POEM
A confessional screen,
Words thus interlaced
Half show, half stand
between
My clumsy, shame-faced
Soul and you.
Friend, let me through.
TIGER, TIGER, NOT SO BRIGHT
Gorillas
Understand
mirrors,
And brush
off grass
Stuck
to the cheek of their ass.
Less
clever
The
tiger, however,
Overlooks
little
Bits
of stuff unless they tickle.
Unreflective,
he’s
Inseparable
from what he sees:
Today
he ate
His
hate;
Tomorrow
he’ll feed
On
greed.
Below
His
red paws come and go.
His
ear is which
Breeds
an occasional itch.
And
fleas harass
What
he does not know is his ass.
But
his empty head
By
divine right strikes us dead.
ILFRACOMBE
(Burying a coffin displaces a coffin-sized volume
of earth, which must be wheelbarrowed away. At
Ilfracombe cemetery, this was a long haul. When
we buried someone in their spouse’s grave, we
smashed in the old coffin to fill it with earth)
It
must have seemed like Judgment Day, the din
When
me and Charlie stamped their coffins in –
But
yet they did not stir, despite
Torrents
of the long-lost light.
Now I
am old. I see these sleepers will
Keep
their council underground until
Charlie,
me and worlds are gone.
Undeceived,
they’ll slumber on.
MY WIFE IS BEAUTIFUL AND I AM GLAD
(Written in Chieko’s birthday card)
You
say that beauty lasts a day.
I say a day’s what we inhabit;
The
fact her beauty cannot
stay
Confirms
how wise I was to grab it.
So
though her looks are merely mortal
I’ll
frolic like a love-struck lad
And
seize the fleeting joy and
chortle:
My
wife is beautiful and I am glad.
You
say I mustn’t judge her worth
By
chance genetics. But you see,
I
merely like her lucky birth:
I love
the fact she married me.
And
though her disconcerting kindness
Makes
you shout, “She must be mad,”
I
celebrate selective blindness:
My
wife is beautiful and I am glad.
It’s
true we make a funny pairing,
She
all loveliness and I
So old
and plain you keep declaring,
“Chieko,
dear, in god’s name why?”
But I reply,
“This silly spite,
Resenting
what you’ve never
had,
Promptly
doubles my
delight:
My
wife is beautiful and I am glad.”
I’m
glad, though mortal flesh is sinful
And
outer grace defers to
inner.
Of
beauty’s balm I’ll sink a skinful
And
reel around, a blissful sinner.
I’m
sorry if your wife is
ugly.
I’m
sorry if my boasting’s bad.
I’m
sorry but I’m sorry smugly:
My
wife is beautiful and I am glad.
(With a hat-tip to Clive James’s “The Book of my Enemy
has been Remaindered”)
ON THE PROPOSITION THAT ‘PAIN IS TRUTH’
I
stubbed my toe.
The
world said, “Told you so.”
AN ENGLISH SPINSTER, 1928
“Having lost their men, Englishwomen busy
themselves with mankind” – Benito Mussolini
We are
the patient sisterhood
Of
church bazaar and village hall.
We
spend our lives in doing good.
We
sweep the nave. We tend a stall
With
penny scones and ha’penny teas
For
the poor heathens overseas.
We are
the ones who knit and bake,
Who
calm the old and soothe the sick.
Down
every lane for Jesu’s sake
Our
bicycles go tick, tick, tick.
And
willingly we lend a hand
For
orphans in some distant land.
So when
the squire or vicar says,
“I knew we might rely on you,”
Unruffled
at that fearsome phrase
We bow
the head, we vow to do
What
only Englishwomen can
To
ease the cruel trials of Man.
Thus
engaged we do not miss
The
comforts of the married state.
Girls
in so-called wedded bliss
With
husbands plainly second-rate
Unwillingly
like us will learn
The
best of men did not return –
But
thought of “England, home and beauty”
And
marched to meet the wicked Hun.
Each
unflinching to his duty
Faced
the fatal gas or gun,
And
dreamed, perhaps, that there might be
A
girl, in England, much like me.
FOR HIS NIECE
Cruel!
To
send little Charlotte to schoo-el.
Let
her run about in
Her
red hat, laughin, shoutin.
**
Metre,
I suppose, is just the French for yard,
Which
is how I walk you to school.
But
centipedes and millipedes are hard –
All
those little black legs down the edge of your rule.
**
“My daddy can whistle”
With
crimson cheek and bulging eye
Your
daddy stuns each passer-by.
His
Schubert song and Mozart air
Make
double-decker drivers stare,
And
braking hard on Blackpool Road,
Ten-ton
lorries shed their load.
Indeed,
so cunningly your dad employs
This
ancient skill of butcher boys
And
farmers in a turnip cart,
The
ploughman and the thatcher’s art,
That
most of all his talent stills
The
local birdlife’s tweets and trills
With
angel fluting that equates
Their
artistry with squeaky gates –
For
walking you in Ashton Park
His music
mutes the tuneful lark,
And
under shrubs on Tulketh Brow
The
rowdy wrens are dumbstruck now.
Oh see
the sulking song thrush turn
Resentfully
to chew a worm!
**
Here
come the winds of the world
To your
lips to be woven to words,
And
stars of the sky
Swarm
to your eyes
To be
looked upon:
Let it
be done.
Look.
These boxes of light
In a
line are the days of your life
To be
opened on trust:
Yes,
and you must.
Out on
the slope of the globe
Now
you will go –
To
walk, outwalk, this world, these limbs
Till
you are nothing else but movement like the winds
And
would cease if you stood
Like
the winds would.
W.H.S. 1912-1950
Father,
I might call you son –
You,
dead so young,
And I grown
old. I picture you
In cap
and clogs and boiler suit
Tending
the great eight-wheeler,
And
me, some hale old wheezer,
Lonely
perhaps,
Who
stops and asks
About
the road you’ll shortly drive –
With a
strange too-friendly smile.
But,
fond of the young,
Doubtless
I’d talk too long –
And
might advise,
Being
so very old and wise,
The
proper, careful course
For
some young fellow setting forth.
Eager
to go,
You’d
only think, “I know. Aye, I know.”
So I
cannot delay,
Even in
dreams, your hasty going away –
Handsome
and young –
That
made in time a father of your son.
ON THE HUBBLE DEEP-FIELD IMAGE
All
gone, the all-wise fools
Who
said that souls
Cavort
on
coals
Down
in the Devil’s dancing schools.
And
imps will pinch and twist, they said,
To
entertain
With
witty pain
Regiments
of yelping dead.
But
might those folk have argued thus:
“Such
tireless toil
With
boiling oil –
Oh see
Eternity’s concern for us!”
Now,
drowned and dispersed,
Lost
in the vault this light traversed,
We
are the first
To
know death’s worst.
SONNETS
I
Such a
bitter delicious wit – except
We
grieved to see him ridicule his wife,
And she
so uncomplaining while he kept
Sneering
at her staunch devoted life
Of
serving him. A cat-like playing, saying
She
was martyred and glad, she stroked the spur;
Laughing;
laughing at her more for staying,
Until
we grieved, who had not seen like her
This
big man blubbering, down on his knees,
His
arms out, follow her down the hall –
His
tears and the hatstand falling, his pleas,
And
seen his humour’s finest stroke of all:
Self-haters
disrespect us till we show
A
proper judgment and decide to go.
II
Remember
how we met. Didn’t we each
Laugh
at the light in our animal eyes
And
smirk and pose and see no need for speech,
Both
in our pride convinced, ‘I am the prize –
An accomplished
lover, this my small sport.’
So we
laughed, and for fancy pleased the beast
Without
risk: how could a giver go short;
How
could the host not be fed at a feast.
So
what brought on this viciousness and glee?
I
know: your double-dealing was the start;
Then
came the clever cruelties from me,
Till
each perceived we held a hostage heart.
Now
with what vigour, what alarms love lives:
Each
day, new ways of killing the captives.
AT ST LEONARD’S
Cold
on the graveyard wall, I sit
Watching
till the wheezing sexton says: “Maybe…”
And
passes the ledger. Yes, this is it:
Dad; a
stray great aunt; some baby –
Getting
a stone at last. And – as I thought –
Mum,
climbing the steep hill, brought
Grief to
the wrong grave for forty years.
Lord
what a joke! Her on her knees (my god),
The
scissors, kitchen spoon, and doubtless tears,
Titivating
that other poor sod
Also
with no stone. Two rows down the hill,
Dad
was thinking: “Gormless. Gormless still.”
She
needn’t know, I think – she’ll make the climb
Up
that sharp hill only one last time.
SUICIDE
Happiness
Is a
big red button labelled ‘Do Not Press’.
SONG IN SUMMER
Well,
for an old man on a summer afternoon
To
sleep is sweet.
Full
as skirts, the curtains lift and swoon.
Beside
me on the bed a brazen slab
Of
bare sun. The clock stares. From the street,
Birds,
the cries of children, and a passing cab –
But
every interruption comes too soon,
For
with a sigh
I’ve
vowed to let the rowdy world go by.
In
vain, no doubt. But let me wish it true:
Reconciled
I’d
drift unthinking through a world made new,
Instead
of fearful, disbelieving, bitter
That I
never roared, broke glass, ran wild,
Maimed
a neighbour, shagged his babysitter,
Cried
‘We’re dying!’ at the bus-stop queue –
Too
scared to
see
Death
is an absolute, so life must be.
Good
luck to all such nutters in the gutter
Declaring
woe.
Not
for me their hopeless furies, but a
Life-long,
smirking, cowardly parade,
Choked
with politeness till at last I go
Apologetic
to the butcher’s blade,
Considerately
lift my chin, and
mutter
Last
beg-pardons
For my
birth, breath, blood, heartbeat, hard-ons.
Therefore
this sleeping says, “The world has won.
Now
let me hide.”
This
is age. This is what days have done –
While
all those frightened heroes who can smell
Death
in obscurity, and
suicide
In
self-restraint, sing in a prison cell,
Punch
their children, snivel, steal a gun,
While
passion roars
Through
the house of the heart, slamming doors.
No thanks.
I’ll wake, sleep and wake once more,
To
savour sleep.
The
clock is twitching through its semaphore,
The
sunlit curtain curtseys, flirts and sways,
But
once again I’m diving deep, oh deep.
A calm
like hatred in the clock’s blank gaze
But my
answer to its staring is a
snore.
Asleep,
half
waking,
Lord
let me yawn through the great leave-taking.
FIGGED
Rachel
said, ‘There’s a dead wasp in every fig,’
And
now each fig,
Fig
tart, fig chutney, cheese and
fig,
Fig
jam, baked fig, fig and apple cake, and honey-roasted fig
Comes
with the tiny wasp that crawled inside
And
laid its eggs and died.
Rachel,
you made a fig of my head
And
wasps crawl there instead.
THERE IS NO BETTER
There
is no better
Way
than mine to don a sweater.
I’m an
utter
Genius
at spreading butter.
No one
but me
Knows
how best to turn a key.
Not
for toffee
Can
you lot make coffee.
And when
I take a tap apart
With
my incisive secret art
Oh
what pleasure fills my heart!
I will
not show you what
Way I
tie a granny knot,
Or how
I do
That
little thing to wipe my shoe,
Or
drive a screw
And
then to have the screw run true.
I’ll
take my secrets where
Others
wait who did not share
Their
sly delighted private tricks
For
knapping flints or killing ticks
Or
washing wigs or swinging picks
Or
shining swords or laying bricks
Or
trimming smoky candle-wicks,
And
hid their skill
And hide
it still.
CLEARING HEADSTONES, BANKSIDE
Against
the black, cracked, Jack The Ripper bricks
Prop
these worn
Milestones
on the Glory Road.
The
Londoners crumbling under them are dumb
With
the boss
Of
Cockney glottal stops.
If any
soared to the Lord’s front doors
From
their nest of bones,
They’ve
long since flown.
Licked
biscuit-thin in the river wind,
With
names
The
river rain has wept away,
Like well-oiled
old bow-legged boatmen sloping home,
Their
shoulders roll
As
they rock to the rotten wall.
And if
the Resurrection robes of those below
Were
stopped by a stone toe,
Now
they can go.
LIFE
Life
is too long
Oh it
goes on and on
I was
young but that’s gone
And
all day the sun
Shows
what I haven’t done
FOR MY FATHER, WHO DIED YOUNG
What
should I reply –
Lost
between living and dead,
Meeting
his kindly eye –
If he,
insistent, said:
“How
do you fill, my lad,
Years
I never had?”
“Oh,
sleep and eat,” I’d say,
“Work,
too, alas.
And
friends in their fond way
Help
the years pass.
Much
like, it’s true,
A
million others do.”
But
what then if he,
In the
dim daybreak
There
by the grey sea
That
slides between sleep and awake,
Seemed
with his quiet air
Doubtful,
waiting there?
I’d
say: “Look what I made:
Roads,
that railway track;
Seven
years with spade,
Sweat,
and bent back;
And
books, god knows –
Though
there’s never a shortage of those.”
But
then, feeling my days
Of
thin stuff dismissed
Under
his troubled gaze,
At
last I might resist:
“Born
provincial, poor and plain,
I
built a life with back and brain –
“What
more could I give,
What
could any man do,
That
your old bones might live?
Could
I fill the years for two?
Rejoice
how far I came
With
neither money nor name.”
But
the dawn is silent now,
As I
wake to my old task –
To
wonder again how
I’d
answer what he cannot ask,
Feeling
still that I
Somehow
should reply.
UNCLE SIDNEY TUCKS YOU IN
My
child, for once I’m feeling kind,
So now
you’re washed and dried and goodnight-kissed
And
tucked-up snug
With
one last hug,
I’ll
soothe your anxious infant mind
With
this good news: monsters don’t exist.
Yes,
in the night-time children think
Armies
of hungry dark come hunting you,
And
smell your fear
And
creeping near
Will
rip your heart, and eat, and drink.
Now,
now, don’t cry: these nightmares just aren’t true.
And
if for all your fearful screaming
Dad
just stirs and swears and stays asleep,
And
even mum
Declines
to come,
And
granny thinks, ‘She’s only dreaming,”
And
Uncle Sidney smiles to hear you weep,
Keep
calm, my dear, be good:
No
scaly horrors come on leather wings,
No
dripping jaw
Will
eat you raw,
No
ghouls with tubes remove your blood.
So
stop your sobbing, child: there’s no such things –
Nothing
with hooks in either fist
And
gloves of blood to either hairy wrist
Has
come to kill you
And
splash and spill you,
And
stab and bite and rip and twist.
Good
night! Sleep tight! Remember: monsters don’t exist.
HOME AFTER CHRISTMAS
Our
cold house will not forgive us.
Water
perks in the pipes but still it is comfortless,
The
phone as cold as a conch when we say, ‘Thank you for our lovely Christmas.’
How slowly
the kettle boils and how its breath billows
Up to
the ceiling and weeps down the windows
As we
hug cups two-handed, in our coats indoors.
O
house, sulky house, you were left alone
And
winter crept in and soaked to your bones.
But
wake up, cold house, because your friends are home –
Hallooing
through the caves of your corridors,
Dancing
from the toilet on the cold floors
Because
the seat was freezing like Inuit ice holes
And we
couldn’t quite sit in case our bum froze,
But we
shout and stamp and bustle about
Into
every room and chase the winter out –
So
hurry up and stop your pouting, house, O house.
Oh
let’s go to bed and leave the house warming,
And lovely
and cosy with only our noses showing
With
our hot water bottles all night snoring
Then
get up all warm and stare out at folk in the cold morning.
SHUT UP
Shut up, get lost, get out of my
way –
I’m old now and I’ve had enough
Of the world’s waste, folly,
delay
And all the other goddam
stuff,
Also rotten,
That for the moment I’ve forgotten.
Watch out, take care, here I go
To burn, wreck, remake the State
Into something I don’t quite know
But it’ll be great
Nothing greater.
I’ll explain it all later –
Because right now the world’s
filled
With desperate clowns and
liars
Itching to get us all killed
In the belly of their
thermo-nuclear fires.
Yes, I’ll die
soon
But I won’t go for some buffoon –
For a touchy, vain, fragile,
needy
Liar with every breath;
Selfish, bullying, crooked, greedy,
Who’ll blunder us all into
megadeath.
So I say ‘Rage!
Riot!’
While you say ‘Old man be quiet.’
So get lost, drop dead, get out of
my sight
Because our poisoned modern age
Requires my senile spite
Needs my impotent rage –
So don’t make me
ill
With your ‘Old
man be still,’
You insolent pup
With your ‘Old
man shut up,’
You little shit
With your ‘Put a
sock in it.’
Or instead God send
Apathy, the old man’s friend.
II
My health is bad, my mind is
worse,
It follows therefore I’ll abuse
My wife, my life, the universe,
This teeming everything I’ll
shortly lose,
And doomed
to dust
Ease my leaving with disgust.
So let deluded youth declare
That Man gropes towards what’s
right.
Instead, with justly earned despair
I’ll show our hate’s our heart’s
delight,
And
guarantees
Habitual
atrocities.
Thus, through three score years and
ten
I’ve watched our cruel kind return
To joyful wickedness again, again,
A happy hate we won’t unlearn:
Not fleeing from
it
But dashing back like dogs to
vomit.
So yes the hopeless old resent
What now I’m close enough to see:
The little that my life has meant,
The nothing that my death will be.
And yes I’m
bitter.
But yes we’re headfirst down the
shitter.
IRAQ
Tony
Blair
Says it’s
unfair
That
people ask him about Iraq:
They
should look forward not back.
*
George
W Bush
Hot
from “clearing brush”
Sits
in his Crawford orchard
Thinking
of men he tortured.
*
Said
Tony and W,
“Lord,
does war trouble you?”
But
God had no issues
With
the tearing of human tissues.
*
Richard
Cheney
Has
angina again. He
Says,
“For a start,
Don’t
say I’ve got no heart.”
*
Barack
Obama
Couldn’t
be calmer
About
Guantanamo Bay.
“What the
hell,” he thinks. “Let it stay.”
**
The Warmongers
“Our
neighbours stink,” my dog declares.
Our
neighbours’ dog repeats the line.
I
leave my dog to shout like theirs
Because
they leave their dog like mine.
And if
they leave their dog thuswise
It
proves their dog and they agree.
I’m
glad therefore my dog replies.
I’ll
let my dog speak out for me.
But oh
this shouting night and day
Day
and night inflames my head,
To
hear a dog insanely say
The
thing another dog has said.
But
still my dog must speak since he
With
doggy loyalty defies
By day
and night so doggedly
My
neighbours’ dog’s relentless lies.
I hate
my dog for shouting so
But
hate my neighbours’ dog the worst.
I’d
love to kick my dog although
My neighbours
have to kick theirs first.
But oh
this shouting night and day
Day
and night is never done
And
drives my dizzy brain astray
And
can’t go on and can’t go on.
* *
Cheney
Limbaugh Bolton Bush,
George
John Dick Rush,
Long ago
were called to war –
And
swiftly hid behind the door.
But
then they grew too old to fight
And
strangly altered overnight:
“We
must endure. Just one last push,”
Say
Cheney Limbaugh Bolton Bush.
In
Vietnam when bullets flew
His
comrades cried, “Where’s Double-you?
Oh see
behind the door he stands
With
Rush and Richard holding hands.”
With
current wars they huff and puff
And
boldly cry, “We must hang tough.”
But
long ago they said, “No no,
Nam’s
not for us: the poor will go.”
And
thus they hid while others died
And in
a dying vision cried,
“Oh
see behind the door, oh see
Bolton’s
boots fill up with pee!”
Says
Bush, “Once settled on the use of force
We’ll
see it through, we’ll stay the course.”
The dead
rise up demanding, “Who
Is
this ‘we’ who’ll see it through?”
Cheney
Limbaugh Bolton Bush.
George,
Dick, John, Rush;
When
the bugles blew for war
Swiftly
hid behind the door.
**
On the
nine Afghan children machinegunned by
a NATO
helicopter while gathering firewood, March 2011
What
brought
This
bit of lead to the child’s heart?
Here’s
what an exile dreamed, a pundit thought;
This
is a book, this what a scholar taught;
Here’s
what the statesman said, the expert wrote;
Here
they made the gun, here loaded the boat;
Here’s
where a general planned, a soldier fought;
And
here’s what poisons everything they sought –
This
bit of lead in a child’s heart.
**
Sick with
rage I did not speak
Of
Blair’s wars against the weak.
Only
now I voice this hate –
Too
late, too late.
MONTHLY
Eve’s
daughter
Blood
in the water
Busy
thinking
“Quiet
with all this blinking”
Seething
At my
cacophonous breathing.
So why
my pride
As I
cower and wince and hide?
**
Oh she
outsulks a stone,
And I
think
As I
wander alone
“Let
the stone split, and I drink.”
Eve’s
daughter,
Give me the kiss of water.
ME WITHOUT YOU
I
A neighbour-hater, window-breaker,
Sending round the undertaker,
Kitten kicking, infant slappng,
Doorbell ringing, doorstep
crapping;
Pencil-necked, an ineffectual
Snotty pocket intellectual,
Mocking modern men and manners,
Menu spellings, grocers’ grammars,
With snobby comments, snooty looks,
Nasty notes in library books,
Petty letters sent unsigned
ALL IN CAPS AND UNDERLINED;
A bedsit Buddha
Stalled on coulda-shoulda-woulda,
Over-thinker,
Solo drinker,
Slurping turpentine alone,
Carpet cleaner, cheap
cologne,
Then that bedsit sink for
pissing
And missing;
Then with custard, mustard, whips,
Rubber bands and cycle clips,
Horsehair shirts and barbed wire
hats,
Undies made of welcome mats,
Rabid rats in trouser pockets,
Nipples clipped to lighting sockets
–
Pitiful,
habitual,
My messy masturbation ritual;
And since assorted ticket stubs,
Bar-bills from our favourite pubs,
Orphaned socks, a widowed shoe,
Booby-trap my room with you,
Prowling round your darkened
garden,
Your pruning glove to ease my
hard-on,
Launching love notes wrapped round
rocks,
Sighing through your
letterbox,
Vowing to myself “I’ll limit her
Love life with a piss perimeter,”
Starved of kisses, shelter, sleep
I’d weep, weep, weep, weep.
II
Gone bad,
Wrecked what hopes I had
When, with youthful optimism
Offering jism
Far and wide,
None complied.
Wanks
Followed their No Thanks;
My
Soldiers sent to die;
Fish with my face
Lost without trace;
And thought, word and deed
Foul with sour seed.
III
O melancholy
crew
Whose outcast cocks
Have sex with socks
I was and would today be you –
Sick with a
self-disgust
To eat my sins
Direct from tins
While I adjust and
re-adjust
Bits of my
broken dreams,
In hopes each shard
Won’t stab so hard
And what life lacks, a lie redeems
–
But with a kiss
She ended this.
THE SILENCE
Well-fed on the terrace in this
velvet night,
My love and I at ease, too glad for
speech,
Witness each to each
Our satisfactions at the world set
right.
Except … We flowed here down
through easy ways;
Heavy as water now in this soft
trap,
All circles. Paths stare back. Our
silence says
That life’s sole purpose was to
seize our fill
And face this strangeness. Listen.
A night breeze
Sifts the dark. Unease
Deepens beneath our anxious smiles –
until,
Thank god, we are roused by the
evening chill.
AN OLD MAN
LOOKS AT A FOUNTAIN
Bewilderment’s a state of
grace,
And thus we love this mazey
liquid lace.
Let such be so when I
misplace
My words, my name, my darling’s
treasured face.
HOME
Two-up
two-down
House
like a heart.
House
that a child has drawn,
The
coal smoke curl
A
feather in its red hat.
House
wrapped round
The
little boy and girl
Whose mother
held its walls
All
safe, all square
So it
shelters and warms
All
through their lives elsewhere,
Since
we chose to leave her
And
once again bereave
her.
SEA SONG
O Lord
preserve
The savour
of sea on her undercurve –
Anchovy,
oyster, ambergris:
And
Lord deliver
My
lips to her nether
Kiss.
Thine
was the care
That
numbered (like mine) her maidenhair
As
salt as Sinbad’s beard, and fell
Through
buxom waves
Down
to her sea-cave
Smell.
Thou
art the Lord.
Thy
finger has folded her firth or fjord
Or
foamflecked loch. Oh let me be
Leviathan
Drinking
her inland
Sea,
And my
devotions,
Sure
as the loom of Thy woven oceans,
For this
be thus: securely glued
Here
on my knees
Mouthing
her South Sea
Food.
THE LIZARD
Over
again this tale is told:
An
ancient lizard’s coils enfold
The
maiden bright as burnished gold.
Handsome
heroes young and bold
Lie
around him, torn and cold,
For
what he cannot have he’ll hold.
Pity
the lizard grown so old.
Alas
for the maiden unconsoled.
HITTING THE WIFE
That’s
not it.
Never
a hit.
No
kind of blow so much
As a flick
or tap or pat or some such –
Though
it came
From
what I can’t recall or name:
A
black roar
Bursting
the door.
All
this on a day
When
the woman drives her mate away
With
“Old goat.
Bald,
thin legs, old turkey throat.”
And I
Wretched,
a thorn in her side.
We sit
now
And
hope for peace somehow,
Having
known those roaring places
Where
the lonely claw their faces.
But
flick or tap or hit
Yet I
admit
The
blackness behind it.
NIGHT WIND
I am
awake because
A night
wind is bullying the house
Like a
tongue a tooth,
Working
it loose.
Shall
I get up now
And
tiptoe down?
Beyond
the bedroom door
Dark
is at home,
Crowds
the stairs
Sits
in my chairs
While
I lie and listen
And
feel a rope tighten.
I
shall go down
Through
the pool of the night-time house,
And
find the hall
Where
darkness lines the walls,
Where
the door
Shakes
to the tongueless roar,
Where
the draught through the keyhole feels
Cold
as a key
That I
might turn
To make
the wind’s insanities my own.
BURSCOUGH
What
Adam of our family found this place;
Laboured
around its cage of lanes; abed,
Stretched
across its fields; became
All of
the local clay that made his bread;
And
then was old, with rain for miles, and days
With
no one in the lane except the breeze
That
bared his bones at last like winter trees?
How he
would dream – but in the end
Was
frittered into England once again.
**
You
were our Adam and Eve – all foretold,
The
water droplets numbered, dust motes known,
Gestures
weighted when you poured
Light
from the water jug. Such years in store
To
fill with naming of a world!
Now
one lorryload
Carries
us kids, the broken home,
And
you to fifty years of widowhood
Across
flat pasturelands that show
How
far you came, and now must go.
NORTH WALES
Mountains
crowd Bethesda
Gaunt
as chapel clergy
And
display
The
stony road to heaven.
Crosslegged
at their feet
The
quarryman
Turns
from the sour land
From
the wind and the weak complaints of sheep
And
opens the slate like a book.
On
Sundays from their slopes
He
watches with a frown
Far
off over shut pubs
The
red ships on the bare sea.
HAPPY
Happy
the fellows that wed
Their
second wife first.
They’re
bedded and fed,
Then
fussed at, then nursed.
WAVES
At
midnight in the cold mid-ocean
Waves
pursue their proper motion
Pressing
on supremely free
So
dark and lonely, none may see
Their
shoulders turned on you and me.
HOME
(Written in her birthday card)
Perfect
as plastic your public face,
A mask
to meet the busy town
Whose fools
in suits will crowd you
round
But
must not share this private place
Where
you can be
Only
beautiful to me.
Sleepy
and scatty,
Hair
all ratty,
Groaning,
weak,
Can
hardly speak
Except
to say
“Hungover
today!”
And how
you swear
Trying
to control your hair,
And
curse again
Searching
for your purse again.
Sulky,
sloppy, slovenly –
Only
beautiful to me.
Hurried,
harried, now you flee
Perfect
as porcelain out to work
Where
handsome men will bow and smirk –
Oh
darling, never let them see
Your
self behind your artistry
This
private place where you must be
Only
beautiful to me.
PRISONER
I
My chain – a crushed cage, dragging jail,
Dragon’s
back, long frown, crowd’s spit.
Earth’s
tears, the jewellery of slaves,
Mouths
of woe, ready fists. Or this:
Failure,
shame, the weight of yesterdays –
As
each new morning shows
Link
by link how my chain grows.
II
Each day waking
To
what it means to be
The
bitter, bored, soul-breaking
Memories
that are me –
Unless
I
might
Break
this chain of days,
And
stride like the morning light
That
sets those hills ablaze.
A PLEA
Do not
leave me – though
I have
no right to tell you so.
No
rights for the ugly,
While
you grow more lovely.
Except
... perhaps ... only stay, stay,
Recalling
what we were or are,
Or
this or some remembered day.
Look,
I lay my hand upon you like a scar.
HOMECOMING
A
furlong of
turds
Laid
around a lake of piss –
Thus I
have
returned
From
this and back again to
this
Resented
town,
Where
I am sick at heart,
Sick
in a thunder cloud
Of
decades of fart.
It is
the stink of self,
Of
what I can not forgive –
This
cask of
flesh
Full
of the filth that lets me live.
FACE DOWN
Lord,
let me snore
Face down
in her knicker drawer –
Where
beyond all fault or flaw
Lies
the perfection that we weep toward.
Knickers!
And
not reality’s inky scribbles.
BEATEN
The
green Atlantic still enraged
Beats
its brains against the rocks.
It’s
not the headlong hate that shocks
But
how this creature so long caged
Is
unassuaged.
I
walked this seascape once before
Glad
that its passion matched my own –
Then
broke my heart against a stone.
How
can I watch the ocean war
Against
the shore
And break
its claws, and crack its jaw
And
only to advance withdraw?
READY
Man
slab.
The
fat back.
Ugly
muscle lumps.
Hands
for grappling, the shoulders hunched.
Hung
from bones, this flesh
Ill
fits. The chest pelt points
To
where hair coils
Over the
gross loins.
But
the dull eyes watch.
The
feet are set.
All is
tipping forward, all
My
progress a protracted fall.
Thus
and thus. What it is. Just so.
I must
work. Let me go.
THE RULE
From
Parlick Hill I saw
Such a
shaft of blinding light
Stab
through the clouds to the dull fields below
Bright
as a blade, sure as the law,
Sent
down to rule our days,
That I
admired the sight
But
thought, We are happy in our crooked ways.
EEEEEEEE!
The
mosquito
Should
hunt incognito
But so
much longs for you
He
sings this song for you
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
(Just
like me)
And
risks
His
life for a kiss.
‘YOU ARE HERE’ RUBBED OUT ON A ROADSIDE MAP
Doubt
Wore
it out.
So let
us shrug, and smile, and boldly look about.
THE WATCHER
In my
wife’s home town, like something from a play,
This: strong in his leather apron, watching
her,
Hands on his bench, unshiftable as if to
say,
‘I do
not change,’ the calm, fixed, craftsman-jeweller.
But strange, strange, his steady gaze, half-questioning,
Proud
with a workman’s pride, fearlessly
intense,
Till
with a nervous laugh she takes the mended ring
And
turns away – with me, their disregarded audience.
‘He
liked me once,’ she says, back in our rented room,
And
weeps, turning the ring he gave her like a groom.
GENTLE LONDON
Gentle London stands aside
To give an old man pavement
space,
And patient with my halting
stride
Spreads its bland collective grace.
And barmaids smile and workmen
chat,
Pretty girls indulge their kind
Colloquies of this and that
Till out of sight I’m out of mind.
Easy, heedless, thus this city
Sees my vigour
overturned,
Shares its blind unthinking
pity,
Generous and
unconcerned.
TURD
Buddha
Cherub
Dumb
grub
Dead
baby
Slowly
turning,
How
you hug yourself
Smug
in your sulking.
O exile,
outcast, sour gnome
Who
says “I didn’t ask to be born”
You
are corpse-bad,
My
enemy and my end.
Be
gone. I will not listen
To
your terrifying prediction.
THE TENNIS
MENACE
Here at the old folks’ doubles game
Are shrivelled limbs,
Rictus grins,
The almost-halt, the nearly lame –
And Sam whose spine and strokeplay
curve
For cross-court
spinners,
Sideways winners,
Corkscrew aces every serve.
So when like Sam I’m done with
running
Let sly untruth
Stand in for youth,
Raw deceit
For speeding
feet,
Shameless lies
For cloudless eyes,
And let me thrash your ass with
cunning.
CLEVER
You
(Who can saddle
a stallion,
Joke in Italian,
Choose the right
boots
For papa’s
Highland shoots,
Display a deft
twist
In your
fly-fishing wrist,
Exhibit a
butlery
Knowledge of
cutlery,
Ride over jumps,
See when to call
trumps,
At oboe and
croquet
Play better than
okay,
Open the
batting,
Set crosswords
in Latin,
Talk tactics at
Twickers
And vice at the
vicar’s,
Then descant
upon its
Seductions in
sonnets,
Oh, endlessly
learning
Unburdened by
earning)
Don’t have a clue.
FIVE BAD
ANALOGIES
As Wallace always sticks to Gromit
Adhesive as projectile vomit;
Or Tom forever follows
Jerry
Clinging
like a
dingleberry;
Or
Ahab chases Moby-Dick
Fixed
as a famished pubic tick;
Or
Robin Hood must marry Marian
As
flies abide on road-kill carrion –
So
darling, as a dog adores
The
flavours of its favourite sores,
I
hereby bind my life to yours.
I SEE A GOURMET
I see
a gourmet eat his lips,
A
waitress carve her fingertips,
The
butcher’s window makes me come,
Above
a plate I bare my bum,
And
all distinctions stretch like skin
And
thin and thin
Across
the horrors coiled within.
But
more and more is best forgot:
My
hopes erode, my parents rot,
The
killing years
Demand
more scabs between the ears.
So
let me, mounted well astride
This
turdish tide,
Be
once again self-stupified.
For
though the surgeon’s screwing on,
While
knowing what he lies upon,
With
all his lust it’s certain if he
Thought
at all would lose his stiffie –
Yet
how I always picture this
Trench
of piss
While
sucking up a hungry kiss.
So let
me then at least be good
To
other blinded bags of blood,
And
swear my love grows deeper, truer
Though
through and through her
Drains
the dismal double sewer.
I see we
cannot lift our chin
Above
the filth we’re buried in.
I see
our brains must marinate
In
bloody broths of dread and hate.
I
see the warning
Dropped
from bottoms every morning.
I see
it all through frightened eyes
Whose
gormless orbs like bubbles rise
To
briefly
flit
Adrift
across a latrine
pit.
With
fear ahead and grief behind,
Pray
god becloud this raddled mind,
Half
deaf, half blind,
To
walk with filthy humankind.
BRIEF
Stale and
grey
Ageing
flesh rehearses clay.
Tamed
thereby I make my way
Uncomplainingly
towards decay.
**
I’ll not
wage
A fool’s
war against old age,
Since less and less
Appeals in
this wrecked flesh.
The grave’s the place to dump this mess.
**
How awful
My yellow-toothed chortle.
If I
can laugh,
What is your youth and beauty
worth?
**
No one knows happiness
Like a happy old man,
Who has weathered life’s crappiness
Just as you can.
**
A wrinkled face
Blights the skull’s ascetic
grace.
Age rots upon
The svelte unblemished skeleton.
And mottled skin
That mars the lustre trapped within
Demands of me –
‘Let those shining bones dance free.’
**
I wrestled death
Bare teeth to his teeth
Gasping
Bones cracking
Till his white knee
Whipped up and winded me.
Eager,
Feeling me weaken
Now his jaws
Close on my throat.
Friend, in this extremity
Speak up for me,
Who did not predict
Death is a son of a bitch.
**
We who were never
Handsome or clever
Lie here together.
Here in a field full
Of many an empty skull,
We who were dull.
Oh life, life should be wonderful.
**
On the rim of the grave come walk a
while,
You on the outer, I on this inward side –
Not long, not far, but I will be
Glad in your kind company.
And be my love, my all in all,
And when I falter let me fall.
**
Night day day night
Are vicious slaps to left and
right.
Snow sun sun snow
Slap our faces to and fro
Till the knockout blow.
**
But when it’s near
God give me grief, rage, fear.
**
To rinse this cup
Shows I haven’t given up.
I mop this spill
And demonstrate I’m striving still.
And sweep the floor
And wipe the door
And thus drive back
The black.
**
Whatever thrills your body brought
you
In the end it turns to torture.
Joints dissolve and hearts attack,
Our bones our own relentless rack.
But no disease
Stings like these
Lacerating memories.
**
A haiku
In a corner of the bar,
At ease in my old man’s mask,
I’m finished.
**
At the barber’s
My white hair
Kisses my cheek to
go
Where shortly I’ll follow.
**
As the world ends
Let no friends
Solicit my views
On their tattoos
Or their new shoes’
Colour and fit –
Because the pit,
Thick with dead
Waits close ahead,
And I’ve stuff to think about
On my way out.
**
Pilgrim
grains
That briefly become us,
We their
constraint.
An impediment of
dust,
An hourglass
neck,
The nuisance
Where it mutters and
frets
Then disperses to
silence.
My happiness and hurt
This impatience of dirt.
**
To flee my grave across the earth
it
Seems to me’s no longer worth it.
**
Of my three score years and ten,
Not a one will come again.
**
An old man’s knees
Contain disintegrating galaxies.
His clouded eyes
Are where a nebula dies.
He takes a pee
And tastes the nature of Eternity.
Thus and thus
The universe demands its dust.
**
I feel the fate of things I hold,
This plate in bits, this table
sold;
The falling curtains, broken chair;
These socks are lost, these trousers
tear;
My rancid underpants a wreck;
This hat in rags around my neck.
And one fine day
A stained mattress dragged away.
**
How I should adore
To leap from bed declaring ‘More,
And yet more life! Bring
The broad day on – whereof I’ll
sing!’
And indeed, bright-eyed,
Day won’t be denied –
Bursts inside,
Sniffs in corners,
Looks me over,
Bounces about,
Says ‘Let’s get out!’
But I,
sour-faced,
Let it all waste.
**
Why don’t I shout?
I should shout.
I can’t remember the last time I
shouted.
Is this thing in my chest a trapped
shout?
And all the crowds that walk about
Why don’t they shout?
In the street in the house at work
Till the walls step back;
In the park
After dark
Shouting ‘No!’
Not shouting is death.
I’ll shout
Tomorrow. Definitely. As soon as I
go out.
**
It leaves the bladder
Slides down a ladder
Stops for a smoke
A laugh and a joke
A donkey-back ride
The see-saw and slide
Watches TV
Swings on a tree
Never thinks about me
Oh hurry up pee.
**
If a man is snatched away,
Back into yesterday,
And yesterday flies back
Like a lit window by a railway
track
With the small figure lost within,
How is it for him
And all the glad loud folk,
Gone like smoke?
**
Brexit
Our poverty will not be
picturesque,
But drunk thugs, stale potato
flesh,
Puddles ruffled in cold winds.
Not warm dust on honey limbs.
**
Dead this table, dead this chair.
Dead is what I eat and wear.
Mere skin
Keeps death out and me (for the
moment) in.
**
Goodbye, goodbye,
Scar on my left thigh.
Hail and farewell,
Armpit smell.
And faithful legs and pigeon toes
Feeble eyes and pointy nose –
Goodbye all those.
And bye-bye likewise gob and knob
And every hidden inner blob
That mostly (thank you) did its
job.
Farewell flesh that did okay
At giving me a place to stay
But starts to whisper, ‘On your
way,
I’m tired of hauling you around all
day,
Let me be clay.’
**
A weighty window box retains the
sill
Until it falls, equipped to
kill.
And copywriters cannot
miss
A note to self IN CAPS LIKE THIS,
Except they
do
At which it shouts to readers too.
Nukes meanwhile mean war is
banished
Until the day – oh look, we’ve
vanished.
**
Dead, that bastard master who
Suspended me from grammar school.
Dead the railway gaffer pea-brain
Who nearly crushed us with the
steam crane.
Dead or daft the magistrate
Who fined my ass for ABH.
And all those girls who turned me
down –
Grey and fat and dowdy now.
Thus consoled
I grow old, grow old.
**
Wrinkles fell on me like a net last
night,
And I woke in a mist of whiskers
Like my breath frozen.
Over the stone floor I inch to the
window
And scrape away the ice.
Where am I?
On the slope outside
An old dog sneezes at the cold
And then stares back.
The hillside falls
Somewhere I can’t see.
Fog circles.
I’ll go out soon.
There’s a map of this place
In the stains on the back of my
hand.
This is home now.
**
He’s a
Sad old geezer,
Past lust or praise –
Yet how chatter fills his days!
How he chatters, clatters,
Flesh in tatters
Just a yellow old jaw bone
Dropped by his headstone,
But clackety-clack without pause
On the pit’s rim his nasty jaws
And yellow teeth and pointy chin.
Let’s kick the thing in!
JOHN MASEFIELD’S TRUE CONFESSION
And the same sea comes to eat me
in a deep, dark nightmare –
And smacks its lips at the passing ships and arrays its scales like a lizard,
And I’m gulped down and at once drown in the gloom of its greedy gizzard.
And all I asked as we moored at last was to end such ventures
And to stay dry and to live by my display of cut-price dentures.
I won’t go down to the seas again, but pretend to my fellow fakers
That we’re bold tars with the
bright stars as a guide through booming breakers.
And if gross lies of the wide
skies and the cold dark sea, sir,
Are your sole sight of the sea’s
might you’re a fraud like me, sir.
WHEN I
IMPERSONATE
When I
impersonate the old, a ruse
Requiring gout, piles, shingles,
and a vain
Bewildered wrestle with a failing
brain,
Why do you all pig-headedly
confuse
Me with my masquerade? Yes, I
choose
Consistency, and thus sustain
An old man’s rage, sulks, spite,
and rage again,
And likewise heed my mission to
amuse
Even when thoughtless, even when
alone,
Even when this act does not
conceal
My youth from any eyes except my
own.
But think, think – how ridiculous
you’ll feel
When with a youthful joy I’m bounding free
From this disguise you all mistake for me.
THE WOVEN SPELL
This
is what started it:
An old
crone watching me
As she
stitched and stitched
Her
wicked embroidery,
Come
from nowhere
To sneer
at my wheelchair.
“What’s
going on?”
I
said, in my rage and shock.
“Who
are you? Where from?
And my
damned door was locked.”
“Indeed,”
said she
“But
you gave my daughter a key.”
Shock
again, and I thought
“What good
is a cripple!
I’d
throw the hag out
Instead
of sit here and listen.”
Then,
all unknowing,
I said
“What’s the sewing?”
She
showed me at once.
To the
life, on her lifeless toes,
The
dead girl danced –
Again,
again she posed
Her
empty head,
Caught
in the coloured thread,
Alive
on the stitched canvas.
Alive
again, all fire and air,
Showing
the raw contrast
Of my
dead feet and her –
That
wavering flame.
So
that again the anger came.
Because
how am I guilty?
The girl
believed her mirror,
That
all will bow to beauty –
And
gladly I corrected her error.
Therefore
she died
Of a
sulking, childish pride.
But
now I’d pains of my own
With a
cramp, an incapacity
Pinning
my feet down.
Baffled,
jabbing the tapestry,
I
said “And whose
Are
the damn familiar shoes?”
She
laughed, the mad bitch,
Her
thin fingers racing.
Faster
she stitched and stitched,
Stabbing
her needle, saying
“Shoes
you wore,
Friend,
and will need no more.”
Faster,
stitch on stitch
That
held my knees, my hips,
My
wrists. And my back gripped,
Lips
pinned, gaze fixed
On the girl in air,
As
when I found her hanging there.
Since
then – an endless afternoon
And I,
helpless here,
Woven in
a woven room,
Stitched
in a stitched chair,
By a stitched clock
Hoping
for its tick or tock,
And my
heart’s next beat.
O wind
waiting in the yard,
O sun
yawning in the street,
God
damn the cruel hard
Witches
who sent
This
endless spellbound punishment.
THE FOOL
How this confident fool would annoy
and amuse her,
this silly mystery man, with his
cloak and dagger
air, incompetent conman, faker,
smoker, boozer,
everything she hates, a tireless
liar and bragger
about stuff that didn’t matter,
loud small-town loser
with a cheap suit, cheap car, a
cut-price salesman’s swagger
as he aired his assumed right to
choose or refuse her,
to take her, reject her, and (as he
put it) “shag” her.
Which somehow he did. And what a
change! His gross speech
silenced – by clammy-handed doubt,
a disbelief
at having what had once seemed
safely out of reach,
what, clearly, he could never keep.
Hence the relief
when she left him to that sour
counsel of despair
that says, Only the brave deserve
the fair.
THE HOUSE
To the
heron on its hair-trigger,
Past
an armed guard of nettles
And
trees washing their hair,
Fish
drift on the tide.
Press
on, press on where nobody comes
And
barbed wires rust in the undergrowth –
Through
an elm’s great shadow like a circus tent,
Up the
steep lawns, ragged with weeds,
Weeds
in the gravel,
Weeds
mobbing the roses,
Till
the trees step back like courtiers to show
The dirty
windows of this house.
She
creeps between chairs,
Sleeps
downstairs,
Open-mouthed,
where age waylays her.
Shoulder
to shoulder, photographs
Muster
the lost in distant rooms,
Where
Bibles and a shelf of pills,
A dried-out
shaving brush,
Dolls
for the child now twice divorced,
Are
tide-wrack as her life withdraws
And
its last drainings rattle in her throat.