making bobbies get undressed
barrowladies look their best
wayside winos sit and dream
hotdogmen to sell ice-cream
but when you said goodbye
i heard that the sun
had been runover
somewhere in castle street
by a busload of lovers
whom you have yet to meet
If life’s a lousy picture, why not leave before the end
Don’t worry
one night we’ll find that deserted kinema
the torches extinguished
the cornish ripples locked away in the safe
the tornoff tickets chucked
in the tornoff shotbin
the projectionist gone home to his nightmare
Don’t worry
that film will still be running
(the one about the sunset)
& we’ll find two horses
tethered in the front stalls
& we’ll mount
& we’ll ride off
into
our
happy
ending
You and Your Strange Ways
increasingly oftennow
you reach into your handbag
(the one I bought some xmasses ago)
and bringing forth
a pair of dead cats
skinned and glistening
like the undersides of tongues
or old elastoplasts
sticky with earwigs
you hurl them at my eyes
and laugh cruellongly
why?
even though we have grown older together
and my kisses are little more than functional
i still love you
you and your strange ways
The Fish
you always were a strange girl now weren’t you?
like the midsummernights party we went to
where towards witching
being tired and hot of dancing
we slipped thro’ the frenchwindows
and arminarmed across the lawn
pausing at the artificial pond
lying liquidblack and limped
in the stricttempo air we kissed
when suddenly you began to tremble
and removing one lavender satin glove knelt
and slipped your hand into the slimy mirror
your face was sad as you brought forth
a switching twitching silver fish
which you lay at my feet
and as the quick tick of the grass
gave way to the slow flop of death
stillkneeling you said softly: ‘dont die little fish’
then you tookoff your other glove
and we lay sadly and we made love
as the dancers danced slowly
the fish stared coldly
and the moon admired its reflection
in the lilypetalled pond
May Ball
The evening lay before us
like her silken dress
arranged carefully over the bed.
It would be a night to remember.
We would speak of it often
in years to come. There would
be good food and wine,
cabaret, and music to dance to.
How we’d dance.
How we’d laugh.
We would kiss indiscreetly,
and what are lawns for
but to run barefoot across?
But the evening didn’t do
what it was told.
It’s the morning after now
and morningafter cold.
I don’t know what went wrong
but I blame her. After all
I bought the tickets.
Of course, I make no mention,
that’s not my style,
and I’ll continue to write
at least for a while.
I carry her suitcase down to the hall,
our first (and her last) University Ball.
The sun no longer loves me
The sun no longer loves me.
When i sit waiting for her
in my little room
she arrives
not cheerfully
but out of a sense of duty
like a National Health prostitute.
she leans silky
against the wall
lolling and stretchy
but mostdays she fidgets
and scratches at clouds.
Whenever i ask her to stay the night
she takes umbrage
and is gone.
Vinegar
sometimes
i feel like a priest
in a fish & chip queue
quietly thinking
as the vinegar runs through
how nice it would be
to buy supper for two
On having no one to write a love poem about
thismorning
while strolling through my head
rummaging in litterbins
i found by the roadside
an image
that someone had thrown away
A rose
i picked it up
hurried into a backstreet
away from the busy thoroughfare of thoughts
and waited to give it
to the first girl who smiled at me
it’s getting dark
and i’m still waiting
The rose attracts a fly
getting dark
two groupies and a dumb broad
have been the only passersby
dark
I chance a prayer
There is a smell of tinsel in the air.
My cat and i
Girls are simply the prettiest things
My cat and i believe
And we’re always saddened
When it’s time for them to leave
We watch them titivating
(that often takes a while)
And though they keep us waiting
My cat & i just smile
We like to see them to the door
Say how sad it couldn’t last
Then my cat and i go back inside
And talk about the past.
Dreampoem
in a corner of my bedroom
grew a tree
a happytree
my own tree
its leaves were soft
like flesh
and its birds sang poems for me
then
without warning
two men
with understanding smiles
and axes
made out of forged excuses
came and chopped it down
either yesterday
or the day before
i think it was the day before
Dreampoem 2
I forsake dusty springfield
to follow you out of the theatre.
You are friendly but not affectionate.
I haven’t seen you for ages.
You now have a son.
I overhear you telling a stranger
that he is called Menelaus
after the son of my mistress.
I follow you through vast antique shops
where I consider buying a throne.
Instead I go out into the busy road
and under a flyover.
You are nowhere in sight.
The searchlight in the citycentre
is still fingering the sky
though it is now well after midday.
Realizing that I will never see you again
and overwhelmed with whatmighthavebeenness
I give myself up
at the nearest marriage bureau.
What You Are
you are the cat’s paw
among the silence of midnight goldfish
you are the waves
which cover my feet like cold eiderdowns
you are the teddybear (as good as new)
found beside a road accident
you are the lost day
in the life of a child murderer
you are the underwatertree
around which fish swirl like leaves
you are the green
whose depths I cannot fathom
you are the clean sword
that slaughtered the first innocent
you are the blind mirror
before the curtains are drawn back
you are the drop of dew on a petal
before the clouds weep blood
you are the sweetfresh grass that goes sour
and rots beneath children’s feet
you are the rubber glove
dreading the surgeon’s brutal hand
you are the wind caught on barbed wire
and crying out against war
you are the moth
entangled in a crown of thorns
you are the apple for teacher
left in a damp cloakroom
you are the smallpox injection
glowing on the torchsinger’s arm like a swastika
you are the litmus leaves
quivering on the suntan trees
you are the ivy
which muffles my walls
you are the first footprints in the sand
on bankholiday morning
you are the suitcase full of limbs
waiting in a leftluggage office
to be collected like an orphan
you are a derelict canal
where the tincans whistle no tunes
you are the bleakness of winter before the cuckoo
catching its feathers on a thornbush
heralded spring
you are the stillness of Van Gogh
before he painted the yellow vortex of his last sun
you are the still grandeur of the Lusitania
before she tripped over the torpedo
and laid a world war of american dead
at the foot of the blarneystone
you are the distance
between Hiroshima and Calvary
measured in mother’s kisses
you are the distance
between the accident and the telephone box
measured in heartbeats
you are the distance
between power and politicians
measured in half-masts
you are the distance
between advertising and neuroses
measured in phallic symbols
you are the distance
between you and me
measured in tears
you are the moment
before the noose clenched its fist
and the innocent man cried: treason
you are the moment
before the warbooks in the public library
turned into frogs and croaked khaki obscenities
you are the moment
before the buildings turned into flesh
and windows closed their eyes
you are the moment
before the railwaystations burst into tears
and the bookstalls picked their noses
you are the moment
before the buspeople turned into teeth
and chewed the inspector
for no other reason than he was doing his duty
you are the moment
before the flowers turned into plastic and melted
in the heat of the burning cities
you are the moment
before the blindman puts on his dark glasses
you are the moment
before the subconscious begged to be left in peace
you are the moment
before the world was made flesh
you are the moment
before the clouds became locomotives
and hurtled headlong into the sun
you are the moment
before the spotlight moving across the darkened stage
like a crab finds the singer
you are the moment
before the seed nestles in the womb
you are the moment
before the clocks had nervous breakdowns
and refused to keep pace with man’s madness
you are the moment
before the cattle were herded together like men
you are the moment
before God forgot His lines
you are the moment of pride
before the fiftieth bead
you are the moment
before the poem passed peacefully away at dawn
like a monarch
A Square Dance
In Flanders fields in Northern France
They’re all doing a brand new dance
It makes you happy and out of breath
And it’s called the Dance of Death
Everybody stands in line
Everybody’s feeling fine
We’re all going to a hop
1 – 2 – 3 and over the top
It’s the dance designed to thrill
It’s the mustard gas quadrille
A dance for men – girls have no say in it
For your partner is a bayonet
See how the dancers sway and run
To the rhythm of the gun
Swing your partner dos-y-doed
All around the shells explode
Honour your partner form a square
Smell the burning in the air
Over the barbed wire kicking high
Men like shirts hung out to dry
If you fall that’s no disgrace
Someone else will take your place
‘Old soldiers never die…’
… Only young ones
In Flanders fields where mortars blaze
They’re all doing the latest craze
Khaki dancers out of breath
Doing the glorious Dance of Death
Doing the glorious Dance of Death
On Picnics
at the goingdown of the sun
and in the morning
i try to remember them
but their names are ordinary names
and their causes are thighbones
tugged excitedly from the soil
by frenchchildren
on picnics
Why Patriots are a Bit Nuts in the Head
Patriots are a bit nuts in the head
because they wear
red, white and blue-
tinted spectacles
(red for blood
white for glory
and blue…
for a boy)
and are in effervescent danger
of losing their lives
lives are good for you
when you are alive
you can eat and drink a lot
and go out with girls
(sometimes if you are lucky
you can even go to bed with them)
but you can’t do this
if you have your belly shot away
and your seeds
spread over some corner of a foreign field
to facilitate
in later years
the growing of oats by some peasant yobbo
when you are posthumous it is cold and dark
and that is why patriots are a bit nuts in the head
M62
The politicians
(who are buying huge cars with hobnailed
wheels the size of merry-go-rounds)
have a new plan.
They are going to
put cobbles
in our eyesockets
and pebbles
in our navels
and fill us up
with asphalt
and lay us
side by side
so that we can take a more active part
in the road
&nbs
p; to destruction.
Noah’s Arc
In my fallout shelter I have enough food
For at least three months. Some books,
Scrabble, and games for the children.
Calor gas and candles. Comfortable beds
And a chemical toilet. Under lock and key
The tools necessary for a life after death.
I have carried out my instructions to the letter.
Most evenings I’m down here. Checking the stores,
Our suits, breathing apparatus. Cleaning
And polishing. My wife, bless her,
Thinks I’m obsessive – like other men
About cars or football. But deep down
She understands. I have no hobbies.
My sole interest is survival.
Every few weeks we have what I call D.D.,
Or Disaster Drill. At the sound of the alarm
We each go about our separate duties:
Disconnecting services, switching off the mains,
Filling the casks with fresh water, etc.
Mine is to oversee everything before finally
Shooting the dog. (This I mime in private.)
At first, the young ones enjoyed the days
And nights spent below. It was an adventure.
But now they’re at a difficult age
And regard extinction as the boring concern
Of grown-ups. Like divorce and accountancy.
But I am firm. Daddy knows best
And one fine day they’ll grow to thank me.
Beneath my bunk I keep an Armalite rifle
Loaded and ready to use one fine day
When panicking neighbours and so-called friends