(Seventeen Syllables About) MOVING ON

My darling, unless

          you’re on my mind, I barely

                   think of you at all.

RATIONAL EYES

We can’t

keep doing

I don’t really want to

stop

it’s my own fault

it’s yours

I like

          and we keep on

need

I hate

you

          make me

feel

IN/OUT

Either

always

          in the corner of

your mind

                   or

completely

out

of mine.

OPEN AND SHUT

The art of playing the game

and never giving it away

of baring all

and nothing

                   at all

of hiding under a neon sign

the art of being

completely

open and shut.

COGITO, ERGO SUM

Some have the gift

of choice –

which universe to inhabit –

moulding from their mantras

          worlds.

Some find it easier

to shatter a mirror

than look at a truth

          reflected.

Gathering the shards

they scrabble

a fractured picture –

a stained-glass filter.

This side, the altar

the other

          the seducer.

Delusion seeks an accomplice

in imaginary crimes

 – a scapegoat for desire –

admits to a vague complicity

          but

never responsibility –

rarely touched by

                             reality

of which

it nearly always

complains.

(Seventeen Syllables About) SEEING

Life in red and black –

          light and darkness dimly glimpsed

                   through eyelids screwed tight.

THIRTY-EIGHT (Certainty)

If thou regret’st thy youth, why live?

– Lord Byron

At seventeen a poet

fancies himself

                   Rimbaud

stomping on tables

and pissing in complacent coffee cups.

At twenty-one he’s Byron

trying out for size

                             his muse

on every caprice –

a madman shooting flaming arrows

never staying for the blaze.

By thirty Yeats and Eliot call

mystical, cynical, bewildered;

enamoured still of conceits

but

faithless in effect;

squinting through swirling sands

at a shadow that may be

a slouching beast –

or just

a marching line of afternoons

          and coffee spoons.

No sane illusion

survives to middle-age.

A poet ages faster

and more slow

digging

with the pen

for unsellable gems;

labouring

          not for an audience or

himself, but

the work –

certain as dying Keats

that his name is writ in water.

F IS FOR FAST

“Would anybody tell me if I was gettin’ stupider?”

 - Faith No More

OMFG! Meerkats surfing search engine tsunamis!

Darting about to sip every squirt from the dyke.

Tools make their users and

dog saved by cat blood in rare inter-species transfusion

plastic brains

their deeper channels

shed L

superficially

skilful

dollar down against greenback

brighter

but less

iPHONE GIVEAWAY!

intelligent

the individual

dies in

one last

shining

burst

do I have your attention?

of

narcissism

shoes J  

1812

A fuse is lit.

The city echoes silence

                             as though

her sounds had fled

with her people through

                   the Kolomna Gate.

Down in the square

a riot that was yesterday

la Grande Armée

mimes a torch-lit fair

trading

ordered safety for

looted furs and brandy. High

above them in a palace window

two deliberate candles

testify

the Emperor

works toward the dawn.

Redingote grise and little cocked-hat

          flung across

a stupidly rococo

and un-martial chair;

arsenic numbed and swollen legs

useless now for pacing

                    he lies

waiting on the captured bed

of the Tsar of All the Russias.

Waiting.

A week ago

at Borodino

massed artillery tore a hole in time

and eighty-thousand dead

groaned across a century at the Somme.

Now

thrust and counter-thrust

realpolitik

and pride’s rationalisations

probe each other’s entrails on the ceiling

 – the hollow calculations

of Pyrrhus’ triumphant vigil.

Stasis. Mute cacophony

of footsteps longed-for in vain.

Burnout – drained

by wrangling a machine

whose levers

shop-worn

jump no more at his touch.

Sleep

 – retreat

into an ice-lashed nightmare

groping in the blizzard

for a peace that will not come.

A fuse is lit.

Beyond the guttering tongues

                   of his propagandist candles

Moscow starts to burn.

(Seventeen Syllables About) INSOMNIA

Counting-down in French

staring at a stand-by light

                   foetal in the dark.

(Seventeen Syllables About) GOOD INTENTIONS

Friends denied Pushkin

          bleeding out on a couch his

                   merciful bullet.

BEAUTIFUL

Precious. Formed in

the very depths

                             by heat and

pressure

                   from

embers of reptilian resentment

squeezed

by the shifting earth’s

convulsions

to the surface

          and spat

                             out

                                      sharp

          and hard as a diamond

its crazily faceted clarity

                             diffusing

light of a different colour

                             relative

to the standpoint of

                   the observer

beautiful

unyielding

and able to grind

                             through granite

          honesty

          is not the same as

                             truth

it’s the lies we believe

to live with ourselves.

GENEALOGY

For Michael Ailwood

“The poet must spend himself with warmth, brilliancy and prodigality ... a violent assault against unknown forces ... ”

 – Fillipo Marinetti

Songs without music and

lens-cap photos;

here and there

a random image sleeps

piled under refuse.

All in battered notebooks –

hard-covers show how serious

in pubs, at parties –

Lowell and Dransfield come in late

fighting Keats and Byron.

Mostly rhyming couplets

about last night

last fight, last fuck

and someone’s hurting –

mostly me.

I saw one in there

          you said

slicing away dead skin –

Here’s how to cook the bones.

SELF-INTEREST SONNET

Churches open to all, but

conformity helps you stay

Preachers drowning in donated cash

cry for a saving contribution

Governments husband the welfare

mostly of those who can buy one

Pundits parcel their wisdom

mostly to those who agree, like

doctors treating the healthy

abandon the waiting sick-room

Worse however is

the surgeon excises a tumour

against the patient’s will

Each has a right to own

          his death.

HUNGER

By Arthur Rimbaud

(My translation)

If I have a taste, it’s for no more

Than earth and stones.

I breakfast on air,

Rock, coal, iron.

Turn, my hungers. Graze, hungers,

          The fields of sound.

Suck the carefree venom

          Of convolvuli.

Eat the broken shards,

Old church stones;

Pebbles of ancient floods,

Bread strewn in the grey valleys.

                   *

The wolf howled beneath the foliage

Spitting the beautiful plumes

Of a feast of fowl:

Like a wolf I consume myself.

Salad and fruit

Wait only for the picker;

But the hedge-spider

Eats only violets.

Let me sleep! Let me boil

On the altars of Solomon.

The stock runs over the rust

To mingle with the Kedron.

VERITE

Je te vois –

je te vois en me voyant.

Je te vois en mentissent –

à moi

à toi

à tous.

Je vois

que tu ne le voie pas.

THE JOY OF DETOX

Exquisite torment

of attenuated days;

dissipated flesh

reconstitutes in slow

torture

senses

sharpened on the edge

of re-entry

burn

hot and cold surreal –

real?

How do you recognise

normal? maybe

normal always

hurts.

OF POETS AND POETRY

Look

where

ever

you

be

unnecessary is

the Kontiki Tour of

hell

Bacchus rapes

the muse but cannot

hold her

resist

the urge to be

a clown –

one-liners are not

poetry

dream

but don’t forget to

open your eyes

YOUR PICTURE

You

would probably

delete it –

you’re so fussy

about

your photos –

angle, expression

shadow and light always

          perfect –

contrived – controlled.

But it’s mine. Unaffected

your eyes

alive with the moment –

a fixed point

frozen

before winter’s descent –

shining at

smiling at

warming

loving

me –

present undefiled

future still unreal –

the last good bad time.

TANKA - Epilogue

Home Helen goes to

          Menelaus, best of men.

                   Paris, beloved

of Aphrodite, succumbs –

Narcissus garlands his rest.

METRO (Aggravation)

Ignorant

that her voice

spirited by

the miracle in her hand

can whisper over oceans

a woman shouts in Mandarin.

Bloody shut up

a middle-aged man

open-mouth chewing

grunts

between cracks of gum.

Opposite

a nod

agreement from a cloud

of garlic

and two day-old BO.

For fuck’s sake

I mutter –

showered

shaven

brushed, flossed and gargled

laundered and deodorised –

quiet

and reeking

of new cigarette smoke.

DIALOGUE (Internal)

Loser

loser loser

loser loser loser

loser loser

loser

loser loser loser loser

          loser loser –

loser loser loser loser loser

          loser –

loser loser.

Loser.

Repeat.

PARIS (False Pretences)

You have

had

time now perhaps

to think that I

befriended

you under

false

pretences.

But

how

having never

tasted or seen

a fruit –

knowing only

its name –

can you recognise

its juice

for the first time

overflowing

your lips?

We both bit

innocent

I stole nothing.

IF

If you can

logically explain it –

if it can

be rationally defended –

if it makes

any sense whatsoever

in the landscape of

your life

as you’ve known it –

then

it probably is

not

love.

BIRTHDAY

It’s nothing new

that my thoughts

in these small hours

run to you.

A while ago midnight

          rang

your birthday –

this

my poor

and only gift

not given

          but

cast to the wind

to waft

if the wind will

to you ...

Tu me visites

          la nuit.

Dans mes rêves tu

m’embrasses;

dans mes bras tu

          t’étends.

Jusqu’à l’aube nous

          nous étreindons –

que je m’éteinde

comme ça!

À l’ouverture des yeux tu

          t’évanouis;

mais la poitrine où

s’appuiyait ta joue

          se cicatrise.