Sunday 19 August 2018

In Memoriam Tom Clark

Last Friday, Tom died. He was a poet of critical intensity, alive to the possibilities of language. Given the man's intellectual courage, there was something beyond the pale about the work. He got the game too clearly and said so.

Billy Collins said he was a lyric imp. Well, I suppose. There should be no mistake, though: the play led to serious ends. The work mattered and, and times, bit with bright incisors.

I'd corresponded with Tom for a number of years. He was a dear friend and a mentor. I wish I'd had the chance to sit and talk with him in person. I can't overestimate the importance of his friendship. In writing, he'll remain the first reader in my mind.

All my love and thoughts are with Angelica, who shared life with Tom for fifty years.

Saturday 4 August 2018

Set Time


Excrement spreads from back to front finding creases and somehow the order of a day how fear

sets vertu aside how the soi-disant decision gleams yes one girl in the corner arches her back

the wrong way then up straight and settles assertions stunted slither from front to back

a doll face and you know there's a conversation to be had but wait but wait a lulling smile


Sunday 22 July 2018

Shop Front

His gelled hand shakes in time
with shrinking sets of feels

Balloon face boy he stumbles
over dayglo bag

Westernness
Oh for an OLED vista glass overwrit

Evenly, she says,
I will take you at your word
as if that meant

Drinking craft soy milk
at some repurposed school desk

Touches quiff
with too clean fingers
for pretend war sign

Light on egg hub stutters and
KAPUTT

Sunday 15 July 2018

Post Crem June

At the seam that runs up
the retired solicitor's crotch (effortless
           structure/ small
                            beast tempo)
a darling bluebottle sends out a bright array
           of as if rays

       Deadness lawn of the course, we surrender
       and go mushy here, the air thickening
       with sticky suits alchy phyz pics

Henley only whereno  .  broken posts

recit. angels of Arden, eh, ardour
arbor, ARDEN

Big dog barks laughs and far away

A glass mouth in a cloud of face

       What will
       you pay?






Sunday 13 May 2018

A conversation

Caretaker has on and off eyes
that midway don’t work
a pause in breath/ affect
with face like sponge contracting

I do my distancing but

As branches curl about
biowaste bins at the back
look up to see bent up cross
in white trails above
the spectral froth

He says the key sticks now and again
and laughs there and then stops

Monday 16 April 2018

Summerfield Park


      gasses from the chicken shop
  glaze our pauses and
                        two girls vape pretend clouds out
         while shot up faux silk skinny threads
weave through the vomiting cherry tree as if
        that’ll do for now
                         says who



Monday 2 April 2018

All the heat gone


Frayed tarmac in 4pm February sun and
furtive moss clusters be gone

neon tube hiss           
              shrugged off antennae

Now all the oddbod crocus fingers creak
a yellow stepladder floats from his big arm

So bird lime at the edges of the wired glass
            history cakes  
   and blisters and 
                       half hid 
        stains on the waterbed too

No magic vestiges
                      even in felt tip flowers and leaves

                Quiet is an hour or so hung up for afters
before hometime hands say