WASTED SPACE

Been writing in

pocket notebooks.

Poems have been

short

and very thin.

Must start buying bigger notebooks.

COLOSSUS, FALLEN

–       For Lawrence Edward Price, Dad.

You were somebody.

Younger then and slim

hair now cropped and grey

waving chestnut to the collar

of the white Italian suit that

          on race days

replaced your railway-driver’s green.

Wide-eyed I’d watch you walk

          the grandstand—your manor

while faces I knew from television

called your name

waved or shook your hand

waited on your words—

precise choreography of

verbal momentum

timed like a cavalry charge—

pouring from the call-box

herding the horses around the

track

flooding out to fill

a thousand country

pubs and TABs.

Saturdays, delivered

in Sunday clothes

through the turnstile from

Mum’s world to yours

I crossed a crumpled wasteland

of discarded betting-slip dreams

and met you at the bar.

STREET-CORNER FASHION-PLATE

Flip that empty Coke bottle

buddy.

Cigarette perched

jaunty on your lip,

leather collar turned up

to keep in the cool.

One hip jutting,

leaning on a lamp post

checking out the girls.

You’ll be standing there when

      the sky falls.

DOCTORAL THESIS

You’re not really interested either

you’re reading this or worse

       I am

and when it’s over hopefully

we’ll both forget.

There only ever were

four poems one

       about

love one about

       lost love

your father – mother – your youth

one about flowers

trees – hills – dales

and god-damned pretty little birds;

one about

       them all the one

about the poet.

Cave wall hand tracing

       self-portraits in sable or

ear-bandage

dissolved in abstract expressions

filtered through post-modern un-irony

sprayed again at last

       on walls in darkness;

painters over and

       over paint themselves

ever shifting

mood style and form.

Musicians have played

the same four songs

       since

learning to hit

a log with a stick.

All artists are thieves;

if you meet one who isn’t he is

also a liar.