Some poems

Notes if you want

****

Street

"I refute him thus." - Dr Johnson UTTERLY DESTROYS Bishop Berkeley by kicking a stone

Bishop said to wear this street
as a phylactery,
welded well to eyes and feet,
lucid, refractory:

good, at least, for shouting down,
dancing (the time's right),
or limping like a half-cut clown
late past the lamplight:

recalling always that the scene -
camber, trees, bakery -
is (under God) mine own to screen,
edit, or Take Three.

Thus, of summer promenades
I'm pioneer -
nothing but those trinket façades
is really here.

"Course, it's 'finely' (bishopspeak
for when you're dead)
just a game of hoyden seek -
the Lard in yer head,

Which, loikewise, isn't dare at all."
That part convinces
until the lunchtime siren call,
when mingled minces

wrest the prehensile from mine eye
as, in confusion,
I'm turned into the droll fall guy
of Eve allusion,

when hard-pressed semaphores of skirt
debouche from the bus
pausing roundly to assert
"We refute him thus."



***

My Soul doth Magnify

Wild chapel on the moor, shelter that herd

whose northern hymns enlarge the hummingbird.

A lullaby of colour, sung to a sleepy child –

pages curled to enlarge the hummingbird.

X-marked on faded maps an ocean away:

Who quest for gold enlarge the hummingbird.

That’s when our masters quiet us with a word:

Lest they protest, enlarge the hummingbird.

All eagle in her mind, though every feather's

designed just to enlarge the hummingbird,

Obliquely she treads the gauntlet of my gaze -

the ways she sways enlarge the hummingbird. 

***

Whatever


Why write? Why waste whole weekends waging wars
with wayward words which, white-whale-wise, will whet
wild wants, while whaler’s weapons whistle wet?
What word’s worth waiving warmth with waving whores?

What welcoming whoops – what wisdom – will we wrench
when, wearily, we watch while what we write
wilts, waterless – wan windfalls waxing white –
without what wads would woo what winsome wench?

Will words which westward wrestle what was weedier
withstand world’s witlessness, when welterweights’
(Walt Whitman, Wordsworth, with worse wankers) waits
win wondrous Web write-ups with Wikipedia?

While wondering, we would wiser wordsmiths warn:
What’s weakly written won’t wash white when worn.



****\

Giving up Giving up

A flinching salmon-thrust from night to day
or sinking back slowly down into the silt?
Muddle we little choices while we may,
we all would rather what we built stayed built --

or, sinking back slowly down into the silt,
could find its level: a swamped, polluted mere.
We all would rather what we built stayed built,
and that our still unrealised belvedere

could find its level -- a swamped, polluted, mere
netherland being so easily risen above;
and that -- our still unrealised belvedere,
implausible only in distance -- lets us love

netherland being, so easily risen above,
and find the frogs that croak in our own mere
implausible only in distance. "Let us love," --
so simpering morning whispers -- "what is near,

"and find the frogs that croak in our own mere,
"and smoke this dog-end night's sweet lips have glossed."
-- So simpering, morning whispers: what is near
at least is real, though belvederes be lost --

and smoke, this dog-end night, sweet lips have glossed
to a becoming red, suffused. A stubbed-out past
at least is real; though belvederes be lost,
they may be drawn from ashes -- while these last --

to a becoming red suffused. A stubbed-out past,
two empty glasses, the little they let us feel --
they may be drawn from ashes; while these last
I flick, obliviously, wound back to the real,

to empty glasses. The little they let us feel --
muddle we little choices while we may! --
I flick obliviously, wound back to the reel:
a flinching salmon, thrust from night to day.


*****


Unmissed


And what exclusive parties you were bound
always to star in! where bright spoons are licked,
the parcel's passed, the mulberry-bush gone round,

and only sugared pouts and ringlets crowned
your enemies. Then, headier juices kicked;
yet what exclusive parties you were bound

to doff your frock at always stuck around
solicitous, admiring -- till, unpicked,
the parcel passed, the mulberry-bush gone round,

it came to my turn. Late gatecrasher, drowned
in doubt, some restless sense of hours that ticked
and what exclusive parties you were bound

secretly for by those slow hands, unwound
more inner wrappings; tired balloons then pricked,
the parcel parsed, the mulberry-bush gone round,

I'm left to watch your scramble to new ground
rules that, once you're out the ring, restrict
to what exclusive party you are bound:
The parcel's past; the mulberry-bush, gone round.

***

Lullaby


The woofers, where this neighbourhood deigns to praise you,
sing no sweet Delius, but a churlish cumbia.
Some northern cur’s gone mauled your sun, seen foaming
rather too madly these days over your cradle,
weighing you against the insects it’s enhancing,
curling its lip at the troubled cream of your skin.
You chuckle up at a queer carousel of buzzards,
expecting food. The water here’s not good.
That war trickling in your ears, we worked for weeks
to pay for, that it should rill just so:
now, nests of reporter-girls infest the patio --
we come and go, a hand in our back pocket.
Look! we’re mutants: a volcanic time did this,                                       
and now we suffer from Tremors; these scarred faces,
hangdog with the heavy implications of bacon
fetched and lugged daily through thief-rife hillsides,
drip over your crib, apologetically hideous.
Your brave bones curdle and set as the days fly by,
fighting through feeding’s traffic to catch the last
wine-dregs and wet sarney-rinds of the party
humanity inconsiderately had without you
(to judge by the trash, it must have been a good one);
it’s not to halt you that I would hold the sun
still if I could, but only because infant
rolls over infant, breaks, and ebbs into albums
faster than I can find the matching music,
faster than I can find your thoughts out for you.
Already, you shake a tiny fist at Prokofiev
wolf-whistled from a departing door; already,
you seem into soft-focus close-ups in a big way.
Sleep? -- there’s a plan: through the fizz and foison
of the cells, sleep is something we can keep
safe from the clutch of stalking disappointment,
safe from the blasted clearings, while lost
innocences cluster round your head like petals.



*****


The Eggbird


Search me! for the Eggbird
Is never seen, is only heard

We beat the jungle night by night,
Converted natives to The Word
Except one little tribe so trite
Left clinging to the Eggbird.

"Search them!" for the Eggbird
Is never seen, is only heard.

The Eggbird, they explained, when dead,
Doth turn the sky to ash and rain
But later crawls out from its bed
Gets dressed, and takes the train.

Blow me! for the Eggbird
Is never seen, is only heard.

"It has no eyes, is made of choc.
It is the creamy Egg, in fact:
The centre of the monocoque
Inside which people act."

Praise Him! for the Eggbird
Is never seen, is only heard.

The rain belabours giant leaves:
A tall prat meddles with your hen.
'Tis then the cry comes on the breeze -
The Eggbird dies again.

'Swipe me! for the Eggbird
Is never seen, is only heard.

If you would with a hundred sleep
And swive, and jive, and stuff like that,
Be bountiful, but sure to keep
An Eggbird in your hat.

Search me! for the Eggbird
Is never seen, is only heard!

*****

The Plagiarist

"Even Maeterlinck nodded off when Debussy played through the score for him at the piano, though, from all reports, Maeterlinck had little sensitivity for music."  (A. Tomassini, NY Times)

No Socrates this doorstep! Un dentiste,
bicephalous, brusque, businesslike, d'estime 
an assured succès, says Mirbeau: that last dream
of Fauns he musicked, pertly symboliste,
disarmed Mallarmé... well, I let the beast
plunk his horny way through what you'd deem
a version churchified to the extreme
of... but Georgette! ton oeuvre, si, j'insiste!
And then, I fell asleep -- had that same dream:
the teeming sheep of Allemonde, star-fleeced,
staring from trains. Nearby, the termite-stream
flowed out the mouth of a filthy naturaliste.--
This is, you know, what artists call l'abîme --.
On Monday, I've a new essay released.

****

Letter to an Ex


The hills here “crawl with crime”: this, you’d not like
(There always was so much you dared not lose) –
Yet, from a distance, huddled wines and blues
On quake-forgiven housefronts only dyke
The eyes from too much dawn, which here’s so light-
Fingered you scarce notice what’s not there:
The gecko on the wall takes in its stare
Houses, people, governments, and each night
Winks something out - the hill’s mosaic of lives
Sighs and shifts; but who or what is missed
Next morning, next week’s learned not to exist.
New losses evict the old, and what survives
Has to prove useful in the heat and flies:
Rice, shoes; a girl’s small bike; another’s lies.


*****

Black Peter


A blood-bespattered pillowcase that seemed
Badly cleaned: the mappamundi here
Tracing a continent - a puked Pangea
Of Black Peter's projection (says I screamed
My heart back and the blood out: but I dreamed
Of nothing); my groan doesn't reach my ear,
But peters: doctors in sheep's clothes appear.
Where now to ink a continent not so seamed?
My head floats on the breakers in the year,
A want of woman or toilet, spiritually themed -
Of vanishing behind that linen. Fear
Cut off by drift or ischemia, somewhere schemed
A continent apart, in mud and blurred veneer,
A thing bereft like me, only redeemed.



****

Footnote


To set fire to his feet required the fumblings
Of three young hags, a stake, a dispensation
(“Their Culture”, strained through “Nation unto Nation”)
That marries microwave to tribal mumblings;
But since mens rea, in lynchings, is belief,
“Which” damning tabloid versicle doesn’t signify -
Hard, surely, for a TV flock to dignify
A groan like that as issuing from a “thief”?
What’s left, distilled, is four or five cane shacks
Crammed in the marketplace between the news and sport,
A sparse-ribbed dog, a near-the-spot report,
A tricycled vendedora in tight slacks,
Dust. A life which won’t mean that much, soon.
Useless, charred toes. Flies. Late afternoon.


****

Eldorado


They cover him in mud, the rest is dust
Washed off in Jordan, Ganges, River Plate;
Tar him a pale-plumed headdress if you must,
It doesn’t mean he wants it. It’s the fate
Of any birthmarked out upon the shores
who squat by reeds and try to conjugate
the gadfly glances of the common whores
with senses which the superstitious fete.
Laurel or stake, he’ll see sense in the end:
Tinctures in water, golden or bloody, sun
Low west… and lo, wet silhouette portend
A wider ripple, rise a wiser son!
Then cover him in mud, the rest is ore
Washed quietly clean when villages chant no more.



*****

Simples


A crone, she croons and crows a newborn mite
into ataxia, worries it with dill,
spits small deft prayers at horrid eyes. The sight
of so much skin not grown yet into still
unsettles; is there time to reunite,
in burgeoning child, what demons stoop to kill?
A young girl’s next – an eye, imagined spite,
requires, she says, the herbal woman’s skill
applied ab ovo in a simple rite.
As hen’s egg stencils her, I note the spill
of pleistocene Nativity to my right
(Three Wise Men meet Triceratops) and will
her better; past the garden garage light
a sudden flock of doves, disturbed, takes flight.

 

***

…Pig

The fat and furious sows around my feet

come snuffling for a more luxurious slop.

For years I’ve wanted little other meat.

Just one I had, light-footed and replete:

her taunting absence was what raised this crop

of fat and furious sows around my feet,

whose scripted squeals were helpless to repeat

that stuck, sad smile on hearing poleaxe drop.

For years I’ve tasted little other meat,

but carved from succedaneous hams, to cheat

the grunting hours, and whittled pens to prop

these fat and furious sows around my feet.

For though each twisting tail’s a failed deceit,

and tender trotters never cooked a sop

for years I’ve wanted, little other meat

is cured in old men’s larders: “Be discreet

and what thou wilt”, until the swillings stop.

The fat and furious sows surround my feet:

For years I’ve wanted little other meat.

*****

Birthday Photo

She's on the left, half rising from her chair,

her lowered eyes on me, for I'm that cake.

Intently, in a predatory prayer,

she leans towards the action she must take;

and there, I clown her age in scarlet wax,

hopelessly, and offer her those flames

that lean as she does. Past her parents' backs

some dappled shadow haunts containing frames

and silent yellow roses. Is there doubt

still lingering between that yearning light

and those approaching lips? This doesn’t say;

nor will the candle count itself blown out

as long as limpet pixels crowd out sight

or cakes live on, forgotten for the day.

**

The Loathsome Grin

Once I had a loathsome grin

That bothered folk a lot:

A lopside, lonesome, crooked grin -

A loathsome grin that worried folk.

The Voice accused me of a sin

(But what Voice ever does not?)

It said I had a loathsome chin,

And that I was “a horrid bloke”.

I grinned at people, fat or thin

(Someone should have me shot):

My loathsome, lonesome, crooked grin

Made everybody gasp and choke.

I wish I had a biscuit tin

Or small transparent pot

To keep my toenail clippings in –

I’d grin at them a lot. (No joke.)

****

Neoliberal

How doth the Neoliberal

Improve his shining Bonce

While entertaining ghoulish Guests

With hollow vol-au-vents?

How stealthily he smeareth Poo

On Georgie Porgy's Pud,

While cunningly neglecting to

Exist in flesh and blood!

*****

Tonadillera

These chords help housewives keep faith with romance

despite the lack of real-world evidence:

dull years surrender to a descending bass,

while wind-chimed ritenutos dust her face

a shade less weary as the minors tumble.

Is this the Ministry of Mustn’t Grumble

broadcasting through a cunningly plangent sax

(the push theory)? Or (the pull) Dost Thou This Axe

take to be Rebellion, stupid bint,

because slick feedback clings to it like lint?

*****

 

Passenger Seat

Lacy-edged gauze imploding into thighs

that splay from hitched-up skirt, astride the wheel

of her Fiesta, street-lights posterize

to vanishing delta, bride-white to the steel

of framing monocoque; next door, past the years

and fumbling gear-shift, shiftily I linger,

still scowling at the same pedestrian fears,

still helpless to drive home a hamstrung finger.

  Near misses remain eternally the Styx

legending the unknown, where even grander

canyons can be spanned in single kicks;

on this side, twisted belts are worn as standard -

borne if only for a picture's sake,

glimpsed in reflection, one foot off the brake.

****

Frigate Bird

Slung under long, kinked, supercilious wings,

he scalpel-scores the faintly breathing sky

routinely as a surgeon, pausing by

the downstroke, as the glittering seascape sings;

unflickering, he wills the world to sink

or soars through scrambled viscera of spray,

still, passing huddled gull-plucks on the way,

smearing distance to a skating rink;

scorning to turn, he turns the sea at will,

reflectively, the tweezer tail ungripped,

until, in an instant, bellying water’s tipped

this way and that, and seagull’s latest kill

becomes his, in as long as proof need take

that pirates, like doctors, feed on your mistake.

*****

Gallinazos (Black vultures)

At dusk, these gorging prelates may fold flat,

becoming branch-growths, jams of frozen nodes

giant against the sky; daytime, hot roads

have them gavotting to where the carrion’s at --

flushed first from a tree’s outrageous hat,

shooed by breezes to where the wind unloads

into your wing mirror; circumflexed like toads,

a surpliced lumpenproletariat.

What god takes care that roadkill come out pat

every twelve miles -- that kitty’s head implodes?

Some jaunty jesus is there, fixes that?

Had I that faith, you’d see me in the roads,

screeching epiphanies there among the gnats,

barefoot, scavenging kitchen-scraps and odes.

*****

 

Sepia

Still, we were golden then, a Tendency

among the crowded tables: our caught pose

of forelocked surliness you might suppose

a trine of spine-bound names, some destiny

cloaked by a turncoat camera cunningly

(the martyr wistful, the fascist poet lustlos) –

our wine-stained glasses winking through the throes

of ink-beclouded iconography;

a lifetime on, again I’m served this plate,

its garbled light still dappled in old wine

from saturnine surroundings; crawling things

they seem now, in this gloom that falls of late

past fields of garlic ancestrally mine,

campfired to brown, diet of stricken kings.

*****

 

Rubble

Sheol walls you in, is what you walk,

Be-Mosesed, squinting. Therefore begin to smirk,

Day-bwganbrain: go haunt the throng, whose work

Is cut out, where yours, rybelwr, all talk,

Dodges the clenched hand, buzzing like a fly

At buttermilk. No bargain man, you balk

At these wet chains: will preach to us New York?

Hold chisel, boy: tonight we’ll finger pie!

  Ships is it? This rock hull-high, yet you’d run

The rubble mile and mount for Sinai? 

Pizarro’s cleaner slate? Such I’ve heard done:

Honey and milk, yes, past Porthmadog sky,

Where righteousness, etcetera. Look you, son:

Who went were water-charmers. See you try.

 

*****

To Fernando de Rojas

"Love is the New Black!" Hearing which conversed,

his nouveau brains burst out on old white flag -

Calixtus' comet, comically accursed,

plunging unladdered, unshriven as the hag

whose hissing stars were hoist on our New World;

alone, an old man, seeing no lights changed

(an Old Profession, lachrymarum), hurled

descendance to the dogs and the deranged.

  And you and he were right, true to that Law

that makes our faiths and brains repast of snake

and it, of stars; yet knowing that your whore

still liveth, flagon full, we choose to take

our comforts, now as then, where we can find

a shack for drink and love, the aspiring blind.

 ****

Aunt Agatha's Blind Date

Darling, the gentleman definitely has worms.

Observers less discreet than I might trace

their lineage from those blotches on his face --

well, really: one might hazard ugly germs.

Perhaps that's why the fellow moans and squirms

every four steps, and -- claws his eyes, no grace

about it, none. That's why, dear, in this case

I thought it wise to keep to one-lump terms.

  Of course we dined in just the pleasant place,

no waitress there caught pert or wearing perms --

although one may take issue with their lace --

but really dear, his frothy hair confirms

my earlier reservations re: his race:

they prize their females less than pachyderms.

 

****

Boue to a Goose

I

"Strive to be unforgiven, except by me.

I'll see you right down by the riverside."

That I am garbage I think was implied

though not by her, since such convexity

bounces away wrath; but mud reflects, I see:

I find here plastic bottles, rats inside

seeking release, old moulds, infanticide

borne by insect vectors, busily

indiscriminate in the rain.    "Reality"?

Pock-mark patterns spreading to where I hide

out from forgiving depths, continuously

overwritten, undecoded as the glide

of snake through water, cleaving jittery

fly-generations, renewed with every tide.

II

With salt in the offing, the sluggish river declines

to rush: her flanks flag, dawdle, take in the sights.

Sea-lettuce scales the brackish backwash, slights

canoeists, drifts in egret-priested lines.

Death commingles here with life, and dines

in wayside kitchens; where the fly alights,

cross-hairs twitch silver; sudden appetites

explode even the mayfly's mild designs.

  The deep ahead now scarcely pulls this blood,

which curls and clings to talismanic signs,

backwater reconstructions of remembered mud:

here, when a certain tidal swell reminds

of old affairs mistaken at the flood,

the subtle serpent drools her anodynes.

III

There were other rivers. I’d be late

home from idly courting Memsahib Thames --

her water streaked with faint reflected gems,

swans lately upped, loud ladies at a fête:

A child could creep across a white lock-gate

to anglers caught compleat upon their stems,

where coot or moorhen plucked the water’s hems

in a green shade, still, oblanceolate:

  cantankerous Edens eked along a vale

where boys drowned every summer. I survived

to overfly, years on, the serpentine

monster, whose suburban, glinting tail

sleeps beyond the glass, to be revived

by no false step, nor any word of mine.

IV

No page is blank enough. The watermark

Cues trash along the long, stagnating shores

And marginal gloss, a flotsam of Best Befores,

Moss-scalloped, lurks behind the pilgrim bark.

I haven’t written, only traced the mark

Of shorn-off leaves inherited as flaws,

Emphatic with contained wrath, stern as laws.

I never thought, though, it would go so dark.

  A sloughed-off town’s skin glitters in midair.

I’ve come to cast out all but my own spark:

No rising star, but now, what else is there

Beyond the sound, what’s left but to embark

Quietly, under the cape of Finisterre?

I didn’t think that it would grow so dark.

*****

Marriage Proposal

Romance is for the young and histrionic –

Our age begs quarantine, and so do we.

Come live with me together something chronic;

Let’s gather dust and rosebuds, in laconic

Reverence of the evening past the tree.

Romance is for the young and histrionic.

If you would have your morning chat moronic --

No counsel take the place of toast and tea --

Let’s live together, darling, something chronic.

If ill-filled Kleins versus the Philharmonic

Inclines to Eine Kleine, let’s agree:

Romance is for the young and histrionic;

And if you wish your wash-days catatonic

And liberation’s drinking until three,

Let’s live together, darling, something chronic.

Marriage entraps or frees, is gin or tonic;

May end on the rocks, or rock on endlessly.

Romance is for the young and histrionic:

Come live with me, together, something chronic.

****

Us and Them

Like porpoises, they take the kids to school.

Like fools, we curry spuds in lonely dumps, 

pumping what doesn’t matter, as a rule.

Our days gunpowder up the throat, which clumps

drool to a cruel cud as we remark,

judge and prioritize departing rumps.

Lips red as highway sunsets nark the dark,

hump-back our bridges, rust wild urges stalled

mid-turn, a country mile from Bosco’s Park;

downwind forever of shrill cries, enthralled

by less than wind, by echoes, we let go,

not knowing who or what has us blackballed,

or why, with all those careless wares on show,

our sovereign wishes won’t so much as rent

jostling-room at a penny seraglio –

or where that snow-blind “yes” the years sent went.

We gaze with basement eyes at all our powers

indentured in an unpeeled skirt’s descent,

and scent the petulance of bee-lorn flowers

long stalked by ground frost, evening-mulched, yet such

a murmured discontent of place (theirs, ours)!

-- Do we, in asking nothing, ask too much?

The schoolyard lane’s trip-wired: stones of old goals,

Crunched by motherly SUVs, still clutch

(polvo enamorado) burning coals,

and bowing predator-trees across each face 

predate the shining of the morning shoals.

Life’s purpose hurts and lurks around this place.

Like eyes, we linger in its vestibule

hopelessly out of contact with the race.

*****

After Quevedo

There was a man attached to a dome:

a dome of superlative design,

a palpitating web of vine,

a bearded jellyfish clothed in chrome, 

a clock that Dali taught to roam,

an elephant bathed in calamine,

a dome no Jack Ketch could refine,

one BF Skinner could call home;

like a belly-up submarine,

like St Paul's in its tricentennial,

of domes the unsurpassed Sistine; 

in domeness quite beyond millennial,

an archdome, greased in vaseline,

a growth of luminance perennial.

*****

Martha, Cincinnati Zoo, 1914

Back then, our need was all for meat and wood:

A dusting of the sky signified nothing.

So, seeing clouds crouch and stack coal past the fence

downfield of Petoskey, we'd remark,

drop back into the village for our guns,

make ready spit and pot for all your coming.

Back then, remember, folks could shoot, and coming

down the hill the easy way you would,

well, you was meat for childern's chattering guns.

Millions say? but nothing, we meant nothing

more than a man might a neighborly remark

crossed in the frost of spring, mending a fence.

'Cause girl, we wasn't looking that the fence

circled a land that wouldn't brook our coming

and all the autumn glory we remarked

piled up cloud on cloud, our evening would

most permanently put to bed, leaving us nothing

but lakes of plumes, a weariness of guns.

And now you look at me and you see guns.

And you - you blur to cold wire in a fence.

You want a husband, and we're saying nothing.

I would not sell you laundered Second Coming,

or barnum you the good shots in the wood,

those fireflies in the dark, of scant remark;

let's walk perimeters we both can remark.

Down here, among the down and rusty guns

we drowned in pies, to buy a tamer wood

no longer stirring up birds in self-defence;

nor what the wind will bring will we see coming.

We traded kit for blanket, now we`ve nothing.

So I'll be learning, now, to peck for nothing

outside the common columnist's remark

- the better buy, the warmer winter coming -

and, weighing the balance of the foreign guns,

find my jostling perch there on the fence:

not what you wanted, girl, nor what we would.

(Forgive, then, if you would, that we did nothing.

Across the fence, an old man might remark

thunder again of guns: we have ours coming.)

***

Heatwave

Scattered with dry grackle
an afternoon's bramble
envies the sudden trousers
their brushed diplomatic serge -

hears heavy halitus,
"art'noon" (faint), the odd oath,
then lights upon a trickle
stickying the bramble.

Scattered the dry grackle
in sun-dappled bracken,
afternoon's faint cackle
haunts the wooded verge.

Scattering dry crackles
an afternoon's bramble
envies the pyromaniac
his brushed phosphoric surge.

*****

A Tzantza


We draw our science from men with smaller skulls,
whose flickering quarry footnote every cave,
so painted, girls will not infect our mulls.
Lest we should sink, through internecine lulls
into the unplumbed swamp-gaze of the slave
we draw our science from, men with smaller skulls
and souls provide the hide for skintight hulls
that globe us in a sloth-festooned enclave --
so painted girls will not infect our mulls
of chicha-beer, but cheer the warrior-culls
and weep, as needed, for the shrivelled brave.
We draw our science from men with smaller skulls
whose canopy of superordinates dulls
the darted, bristling thisness manhood gave:
So painted, girls will not infect our mulls
with mother-food that, yearning-deep, annulls
the dyed ancestral cresting which we crave.
We draw our science from men with smaller skulls,
so painted girls will not infect our mulls.


**

Usenet Ghazal

You'll know how he felt, once you, too, finally get
joyously enmeshed in the girl who ensnared you's net.

Tired of staid women in lycra stockings, he logged
on the Net, where he met gorgeous girls who dared use net.

He might have taken some of them swimming, but sadly,
they just wouldn't wear, on top of those hairdos, net.

One was a tennis fanatic: he could have seduced her
if only he'd managed to clear that there deuced net.

Another complained of mosquitos that buzzed in his bedroom:
he told her they could, if she really was scared, use net.

In a coastal village he finally met his sweetheart:
her father fished, while her mother repaired used net.

At the altar, he thought: "what bliss there is in a kiss
got by lifing the bride who's finally paired you's net!"

Now, a frugal but cheerful existence is theirs, ekeing out
the surplus from school fees and "free" Medicare dues (net).

Thus, OB proposes, for those who seek love at long distance,
the plan that your cannier Spanish au pair'd use: Net!

****

Wistful


These eyes still ply your body's winding route,
half-hoping hands, afraid to follow, suit.

Your young knave's sword's a mere adjunct to steel;
a breastplate bravado, made of hollow suit.

A knot well tied, though he is in his cups:
the posy's tossed, a maid will follow suit.

To clubs repairing, he knocks back the question --
why shouldn't she up spade and follow suit?

Our coin's all gone to counsellors and judges,
and friends and neighbours paid to follow suit.

Dead leaves, in obverse, fall across the table:
an old hand left, unplayed, to follow suit.

****

Letter from an Airport at Midnight 

In backward pounces, gone the crowded flight,

the kindly light's led off into the wings

to wait there till it isn't missed. Outside,

deserted cars like jilted lovers sleep.

The night's a drunk that fights revolving glass:

I look away abruptly, stung by thought.

This terminal, in which I once had thought

to offload all my baggage with a flight,

this vast aquarium of vaulted glass,

is everywhere that can be reached with wings

and every night that can't be spanned with sleep

the same tail-lights will wink and wait outside.

And there will always be the same outside:

for absence pins horizons flat, like thought,

and there are always reasons not to sleep.

- A night-time south, the savage evening flight 

of paper doves from steeples bloodies wings 

against a heaven domed and hard as glass... 

Spurning Vallejo for the half-filled glass

before me, I watch wilted girls, outside

non-smoking range, spread shyly under wings

of bright oasis lights, cornered by thought

of stockings, boyfriends, Rosamunde Pilcher, flight

made fun by fragrance flirted in one's sleep;

but you have, like this coffee, murdered sleep,

and their night-music only glints the glass

beneath the skin, these splinters of my flight;

for none but you would ever steal outside

unclimbed perimeters of permitted thought,

to where the body's soul imagines wings.

And as for this letter, there will be no wings

delivering my words to where you sleep.

If I'm to haunt you, let it be a thought

hovering around the reflection in your glass,

as somewhere in the sleepless, warm outside

you hear the skyline speared with roar of flight.

P.S. 

Throughout that flight, I felt pursuing wings 

that, keeping pace outside, beat through my sleep - 

a face in pale glass, gently clouding thought. 

****

An English Homunculus


Like maiden aunts in Twickenham, his feet
are rarely visited: such sheltered lives!
Their stencilled chintz on milky tea, effete
to a fault, a bath-salt offering contrives

to pacify each Christmas, to "keep sweet",
sweet as the morning Kew they never kicked at.
He has legs, too, he found, one day in Crete
when they refused an unimportant diktat,

leaving him sprawling in Aghia Galini.
Notwithstanding (they did not), he shunned
cheap bribery: some hirsute native genii
are better left to hessian than the sun.

Arms and the man I'm on about maintained
a formal correspondence over lustra:
those BFPO pungencies restrained
by soft soap, pumice stone, Simon and Schuster,

and the self-deprecation of the jellyfish.
His hands, about a 38C, inert
as wet, white hubs on a Pirelli dish,
murmur the new Guayasamin convert,

with airs of pianistic pedantry
carefully folded around those air quotations --
their grimy crannies, like his dentistry,
preserved as tribute to a postwar nation

of sloping shoulders, Brighton rock, and scabies.
The rest of him, a coy parboiled crustacean
with folds he still finds prescient as a baby's,
his unrolled abdomen a revelation

reserved for next weekend's inamorata --
who may perhaps be pardoned for not quite
grokking that vast conceptual harigata
that beetles over the keyboard as he writes;

still, if his topological map may sicken
exclusively inwards at the merest "Profile:",
that shy connecting glade inside yet quicken
with your surprising eyes, last Anglophile

to see through this chaotic Mandeville
of a fabulous monster, else "RP C2",
to unmade aren'ts. If you would like to fill
the form below (email required), please do.

***

Make her moan and scream in Skegness

Make her moan and scream in Skegness:

Play the ocarina.

The world's yer barrelhoop, son: happiness

Seldom come much cleaner

Than seafront Exceptionals togged to the nines

Soused in a birthdaze of pink calamines

Huddlin' up to them "jelly divines"

that yer Dad - when he was seener.

Bring back a pontefracts, son, if ya can,

With a glue-like surface?

Course you'll be wantin' to take her to Cannes

The can, eh? (pint o' Murphy's).

Give 'er one up the back ginnel from me?

Don't tell yer ma, lad, it's quart up to three -

See now what's doin' when Cold Roe For Tea

Snarls up all yer peterpervies?

Give me regales to Your Fathers Moustache.

Colman's cut the mustard

Them days, we made a go on sauce panache

(You finally got a custard).

Be catchy with trains, if you see what I mean,

Expectorate only as much as the Queen,

And on no account let yer clodhoppers be seen

Either scruffed or (still worse) lacklustred.

Make her moan and scream in Skegness:

Them's standin' orders.

If you have certain Valves, then it pays to beg less:

Take in thin boarders.

We'll see you at deathtime and Christmess and like,

With a trivial kid on a hard-to-find bike,

playin' puppies and poppins and Damn Dick Van Dyke -

as we venerate all her disorders.

Make her moan and scream in Skegness:

I'm for the hutch, now,

Or for heinous beans spread on a thin charcoal mess -

Not all that much cow.

Curtains of snot hide the Space Age from view,

Worries and wars and worse, hearse sixty-two,

Devil it up lad, I'm countin' on you -

Here come the Dutch now.

**

What Has-been?

What can be "unburdened by what has been"?

We all are prey to some obscure obsession

locked away in lifelong quarantine:

Even a ton of benzodiazepine

Will offer but the fleetingest impression

Of what can be, unburdened by what has been.

When we abjure the past, what do we mean?

Simply that we subject it to repression,

Lock it away in lifelong quarantine.

And yet it lurks in every damascene

Conversion: never trust the saint's profession

- "What can be, unburdened by what has been!"

Her hates and fears, unvisited, obscene,

In all her words and actions find expression,

Though locked away in lifelong quarantine.

Of course, these words may equally be seen

As no more than the tortuous confession

Of what can be unburdened, by one who's been

Locked away in lifelong quarantine.

***

El Entierro del Conde Orgaz

Heavenly throng, martyrs perched up front,

Trails off into murmuring eternal hush.

They couldn't help but cluster round a cunt -

Concealed behind the broad strokes of the brush,

The legs parted, the reddened gash in the cloud

A funnel to heaven, one all men rush in

Where seraphs linger. There below, my crowd,

Our piety shored against the stalking sin:

Their litany, my monstrous regiment

Designed to find us wanting when we prise 

Stolen moments away from their intent,

Both gawped at, painted on unpeopled skies.   

Today, we still hand judges all our power,

Fearing to seize the breeze, or pluck the flower.