I AM AT HER WINDOW WRITING

I am at her window writing

Her terracotta legs down

Pottering in the garden square

Plugged into the air around her

A swallow measuring tailwinds

The yellow cotton dress billowing

On the lingering zephyr, I linger

Watching the floral pattern drizzle

The skyblue flowers rain on her knees

An ovation by an audience of one

She slips through the window

Like the ghost of a young deer

She has a bunch of grapes on the vine

And she coyly throws one green bulbs

It hits me and lands deep in my centre

While dried to a raisin it remains there

Waiting to be chewed and remembered

DESERT DREAM

She turns the tables, dancing upon them

Is there room in this elephant? Sitting drinking

From the skulls of enemies in the hollow white belly,

As the four trunks stampede madly on, fury-hot

Behind the ears, mad with syphilis, rheumy eyes

Closed and our skulls rock a little as the beast

Collides with a tree and the acacia spins on its head and mops

The desert floor, a tiny boy offers himself up and for four

Pieces, gyrates with Her and the four wooden poles, swinging

From the ribs and doing turns in the air, we careen right to avoid

A passing car of poachers hunting tigers and each other, crisscross

Gazelle and trample the sky down in front of us like cloth until

The city where we open the grey matter and cut the tusks and play

The bones like drums.

AN OLD LADDER

The early rungs are cracked,

Treacherous as they are old

Many have walked upon them

Flecks of green, blue and red

From paint jobs inside and out

Of other people’s houses.

It is warped something

As if once a stanchion to someone’s

Home, a crutch for a brick giant.

The top is not in view.

Making one’s way to the big top

You might never reach

The rungs are younger wood

The rings shrink, tight on the finger

From here with keen eyes,

You might see the roofs of

Every home ever lived in

Every grey mile ever took

The eye of the sun and

Wink of the moon, all the world’s

Design presented before you,

The unveiled buffet table of life

But my sight is short, my fear

Of heights is a great one

And all I see before me

Are my shivering, ageing hands

And the next bar of ascent

THE PAINTED DOG

Bit off more than he could chew

And kept on chewing

Ate cigarette butts, tobacco bark

And coffee granules

Till he were the yellowest dog

That look in his eye, more glazed

Than treacle on icecream

He’d shat out all his meanness

He was your doggy dog now

We put make-up on him

Lilac and blue velvet facepaint

Till he were some garish slut

Those that did not want a piece of him

Wanted a piece out of him

Talk of the town

That painted dog

EATING SNOW

You move slow -

You sink

You go fast -

You fall

Down the mountain

At unknown

Speeds

Unknowing

What moves,

Shifts beneath

The white

What browns

Yellowed-greens

And hard blacks

That sometimes smile

Out of the white,

Baring teeth

Could cut your planks of wood

Two by two

And you with it

It is this danger

That bares my teeth

Almost touching

A heaven

I make a move

Fast and slow

THE MOUNTAIN KING

All is below me

The shaved treeline

The birdsong and flight

The air weak and thin

I breathe deep and rush out

The steam of me covers

The hiding sun, all is below,

And as arrogance tends to make

A fool out of everyone,

I fall hard and strong.

An avalanche of selves

covering all between the two boards

The mountain king, cracked crown,

Withers quick to old

Leg bones shiver out

Cold and rattle in their black

Waterproof plastic bags

In the steep pass of the valley

I look up with all life

Above me

FLOWERS BY THE ROADSIDE

The sweet, regular smell of dried, forgotten

Flowers by the roadside, tied with red string

To the steel lamppost. I could not say

What kind they once were.

Did you, a lost one

On the straight road, born

With the face of impermanence,

Look into your reflection

On the parallel sapphire window

That for a short while,

Contained the whole world?

Did you, before walking into that grinding

Thing’s path, that could not slow its oiled cogs,

That moved you through the world

Like new paint on a clean canvas,

Did you see your face, that clear beauty

Ground down from your many years

To one single moment?

And the others

That knew your face, heard from it

And held it, are now faced with your slow

Annihilation, the parts of you that slipped

Through the ink in the photographs, finger-

Prints where your head should be. They mark

Your point of movement from the Earth with matter

That fragrantly wastes away

I am no witness. These words, like you

Are bits of wreckage, shards of sapphire

Broken from the one-way glass,

Your others; Loved Ones, like me,

Will see you in dreams as another,

A stranger who can be known

By how your blood passes

As it flows on through the street

A DONE FOR DAY

I lay in the sediment of the dirty tub

Beating gravity and that for a while

Outside the open window

Were a storm to end all storms

Many have said that but it was

The rain’s arrowheads broke against

The pane and ran down like quicksilver

The big one flexed the lightning

A car exploded into starting

Sounded like a dog being shot

I pushed my head under

Two monstrous blowholes

Sat above the surface

Rippling the water

Breathing in the storm

Electric blue and spilled dark

Like a bitter lover has thrown

A humming television in

It would show two mating tarantulas

The smell is of moss and damp

I feel cobalt lichen grow

Over my tongue the day done for

Don't want for anything

I have nothing to do

THE MOTHERFUCKER WORE HIS LONELINESS

The motherfucker wore his loneliness like a cloak

Mouth wired shut from lack of use:

A metal gatepost meshed to the old oak tree trunk

Eyes bagged and heavy, when you sleep alone in the city,

The world queues up to trample on your dreams

Ears; 2 huge satellites detecting the very rumbling

Of the Earth’s belly

Employed by the Seismographic Insurance Company

Working out the next big quakes

Clearing out the customer base

On him, you could smell this line of work

Like a miner returning home reeking

Of his subterranean hell-hole:

Coal-dark, black sweat. He exudes

The smell of toxic gas, yes the world

Was a screeching canary to his air

And this all explains the motherfucker

And his being

Alone.

BROTHER ON THE CROSS

Snow slips from the branch arms

Flumps against the powder

Makes odd holes in the ground

My brother’s body is contorted

He is looking up at me

His leg is pointing down

His skis are crossed, a crux

An inverted lauburu

‘I think there is an icicle in my leg’

I nod, watching the wound

It is similar in its sharpness

But is also red like raspberry rippled

Ice-cream, the helicopter’s blades

Wind down to the ground

They are also crossed like lauburu

The morphine makes his eyes go out

I ski to the bottom of the mountain

With a body filled with ice-cream

MAKING THE ROUNDS

White morning sun

Like cold eggs for breakfast

Takes a while to get going

In the long grass of the lawn

The pronounced path

Of our fat housecat’s belly

He must strut the same route

Dayindayout as a paperboy

The willow tree sways

With its yellowgreen rain

That will always only just touch the ground

Like two lovers in different cities

The imaginary caressing of each other’s backs

On the pillow’s interchange

That phantom touch

That lasts the whole day through

We make our rounds

It takes a while

To warm up our engines

WHO IS BOSS

The tail lights

Of the planes

Move across the sky

Like flickering cats eyes

And the last of the birds

Say bye for now

And the gherkin

Turns the red

Oculus

Of the baby squid on

Let’s you know

Who’s boss

PROWLERS

It gets to dusk

The warm green

Goes heavy black

The streetlights are broken

There is weight in the air

Cats begin their prowl on it

The city birds dissolve in it

So the cats get no bird

So the cats have it out

Mine came back

With half an ear

And a red nose

But a look in its eye

That was bold fever

ERUPTIONS

See it now

A new light

In the back of her throat

Etna’s gorge

Strange the sulphuric laces

Tying up the nose

She spits unseen globs of fire

Stick to the ear

Burn later when alone

Emptied of adrenaline

How she glows tonight

The inner sun god

Waiting in the pillars

Holding out for worship

The seething of it

Of not wanting it

Really wanting it all

I lie, say ‘suck me in

Melt me till I am no more’

A lie I cover with my tongue

In the many geysers of my head

Blown from existence

KAPOW

I am hidden beneath layers

Of igneous held fast till the next

TOMB OF HEAVEN

No death valleys or holy mountains here

No blue Elysium Fields with the asphodel's

Yellow sheaved swords and grey gloom

Shields, this is the steel pendulum of man

Colliding with the tomb of heaven,

Watching the sky fall on the temple roof,

The silverlined cloud come crushing down,

I pick a brick rounded like a skull

Where engraved: 'this too shall pass'

The house of Yorick toasting, breaking,

The red paint-stripper wine; ochre strychnine loaf,

The blood and the body of release from the I,

Goes down a treat with the congregation

While the walls unpack themselves,

Each searches for an apt verse,

'The poisoned cup has passed too often'

Mithradates speaks, all nod and listen, all

Hurtle on. For some, to populate

The following chapters,

Others, to where ends the book

BURNT OFFERINGS

There are days where the crows

Are burnt white by cosmologic fans

And the sun spots simmer down on

You, me, everyone.

All the SAD, bi-polar suffering

Children are out on the bleached green

Playing with darts and irregular shaped globes

One that looks like a golden eagle’s head flies

Past whispering something in my ear but

I don’t talk to animals and it seems

The inanimate always want to talk through me

However you look at it, the catch was missed.

Ugly lovers on the bench devoted to a dead dog

Are linking their lips and it is truly good,

These two orange spires, already toppling as the sun

Descends, I sluice the weakening pink light into them.

The scorched trees begin shrug off their colour

And I look back upon this blue burial ground

Of description, now so many ancient clumps of ruin,

You could say it was definitely one of those days

APPLE IN MY EYE

We had good talks

The old man and me

We highlighted the creases in the bedsheets

With a neon blue pen

He got pissed and told me

I talk only in semantics

But he wrote poetry too, said

‘You are too much like me

For me to like you’

Beard like a stalactite

He brushed it when he thought hard

And his frown lines were busy waves

I would get caught in them, forget

What I was talking about, the breakers

Became more furrowed and I forgot

Even more, who I was, who’s the prime

Minister, what did I have for dinner, ribs?

He certainly died

Christ crossed him off the books

Though, old iceman had burnt his bibles

Long before, said he liked the smell of those

Wet words: words of love in parts, words of

‘Everything But’ in others, but like any good

Book, you can ignore the things

You do not understand

At the funeral I did not attend

I heard he woke up and asked

For a glass of water, quenched

He went back to sleep, a gala apple

In his left hand, so he could, at least,

Watch something decay

THROAT CLEARING

He crunched the words,

Cracked a filling

His tongue shot out

The Lizard: a scaled red,

It stuck to the window pane

Made a transparent O in the dirt

The world inside the window

Peeked out

He coughed up chest hair

And wheat husks

And black bullet bones

Made holes in a billboard

Advertising pubic shampoo

He plugged the holes with hair

The pretty woman in the photo

Had the longest lashes you’ve ever seen

He stood at The Wash

Skimmed his teeth on the surf

As the red knot, white waders

And oystercatchers bent and twisted

The silver clouds into bizarre shapes

Over the tide's edge.

The water was something rotten;

Granddad’s boat twinkled in his eye

He hacked up his hat

And called it the moon

He hacked up the moon

And called it his friend

He hacked up himself

And called it his wife:

A most beautiful dybbuk,

His throat was clean