Sea view

Now, in Llandudno,
all the Angles are
slowly aging at the arcade.
What you wouldn't be forgiven
for forgetting again; The forests where
A, lebensrauming, came to die
over and over until they learnt
to do B in again and again and again.

Somewhere down the coast line there's
the tongue fluttering flames
like the spray of nails,
the fist full of history drying ;
muted, unfolding enmity.
The tongue, held in, itches.

Out there, in the cadaverous steel soup,
the seal heads are holy rising
again and again and again and again and again.

This is history! [part two]

Wouldn’t you let me in where the coat gapes

to the clay pit where I found the snapped owl spine, scuppering gentil casuistry

        We're doing magic and scraping away with the teaspoon

until the writing happens to be pristine. Glamour, spittle shined and scattered willfully

                                           the steady head imperfected

                   I don’t want this any more: folded arms a shield; feathery blue veins at the foot.
              I keep writing anyway

                        There is a singing like fly shit spread across the roof of the mouth    gathering at the fingers, tipped

The clay pit gives way to luscious prejudice here.                                 How many historians coughed up the blond hairballs how many ached after knocking one too many off

Let down your hair your hair so that we may tell like wet eyed boys with our treachery wrapped up and bowed: our way through.

This is a body

This is a body

Made up of money

All stitched together

Stuffed with dead memos

Stepping out surely

Owning the pavement

With white teeth and hard on

Looking for nothing

Working a good word

And giving out signals

And tearing out secrets

And getting the picture

Giving up silence

And small words that matter

And slips of the wet tongue

And hurting of kisses

Taking a place

And making it matter

Crowned with the bruises

And soft tears of lovers

This is a body

Seamless in stitches

All put to order

Closed to each question

A ready made answer 

An Apology

We are not going to the party although we thank you for the invitation.

You have forgotten how we broke your mother’s ivory boat, drank the old, old sherry and rolled in the ornamental grasses.

Tomorrow we will gather in the garden at around 3 o'clock and piss on the roses. This is how we write our romances and teach you to love us the long, unsteady way.

There is nothing for you to understand. It may be that we give you cause to smile or that you find a place for us in the gazette. There are things we are grateful for.

The secret is always in the other hand, the one behind the back. We know what you think you know. This we allow you; a gift for your trembling curiosity.

Please remember, dear heart, frail flower: we will never ever neglect you. 

Dry day adventure

    My barbarous Sun
blurted out something like light
    the sightless corrupter
making markers of each piece of

              What bad work we do
        we do in time

                               Some days ago the rapist drakes
                       gathered at the very point
                          to splinter the fine tracery of flight
                                    and for this you hated god to silence
                               with interrogative jewels

    Today I cling to father
by his Freudian slip
    listening and not listening
and I want to rest
    a cupped hand
behind his head

clean, steelblue air cradling:
        post natal motives
        and unwritten letters and the great dark
        of the near disasters

Our tenderness:
         Who trembles there, shifting
                  from each branch
                          eyes open and frayed

       Scratched pictures fell
       from pocket holes
       to be dispersed as common signs

       Let me tell you
       there is no sacramental trail here

and so, we're clearing our woodland throat
    for our blackbirded song

Coming of age

From slept sweetness
to the eaten quotidian face
From green curled sense
to each flower's tyranny
From homeless vocables
to our office lieder
From living, wetsexed nite
to seen and dying day

No more wandersongs
or crushed crowns
or glistening tips
or blood filled stops of skin
or unfinished laughter
or the leafing leaves
or fungal poetry

only the common and guarded
the homogenised milk
of human kindness
spilt across the body's electrics
till it sputters and
sparks and
arches one
last time

Small pieces (2002)

1.

There's said and unsaid.
In a room somewhere
somebody
pretends to sleep.
The windows
were wet with clouds.
Listen. Measured breaths.




6.


Objects hurt us.
Eyes are made
at the edge of
an arrangement, or
distance crumbles.
Some ends are
the next best things.




8.

You're here for now;
your little moments,
writ in big letters.
The tripped up story
gives way to
a slick history,
sequenced and shining.




13..

Your reason? maggots;
a rust accountant.
to learn how the world
turns and does not turn.
All things are clothed, then
one day all undressed.
You'll get shroud-hungry.




14.

Considered money;
a mouth opens,
dispensing coins.
The mint finish
of that speech wills
a world frozen
with idiot style.




15.

All doors are
opened to
this stuck mirror grin.
Your schtick is arch, ruled.
Living thinking sours
while your children
are educated.




16.

He wanted
to love her
in a certain way.
Certainly he burns.
I think that
it's better
to be cold.




19.

Every day
is laboured wishes
spun or struck as traps.
As if there was
a reason,
I saw you smile
as the whole street shrank.




26.

Kill this classic scheme
with fucked words.
We dribble. They stare.
A nature chatters
uncontrollably
while auditors
crack fingers, as if




28.

Babylon allows
for no nearness, love.
It'd rot us here,
where the words come out.
What jumps from our throats
are now Levite swords.
Chant down the whole grid.


These poems are taken from a pamphlet I wrote some time ago. There's minimal redrafting; it was hard to hold back as there were phrases that seemed a little gauche to me.

Sonnet 007

Down, down we go as frosted thoughts gleam,
Spitting questions till everybody's gone
But the upstart boy, his unreal kisses
Thrown to empty stalls from his patch of light.
His cub scout hygiene shines like a new law.
The flesh falls soft from him; a red silk dress.
All alone, his thoughts stretch limbs and he laughs.

Till the cleared throat from the dark undoes him.
And this is how the theatre always goes:
Kicking out the punters, making spaces,
Some corner for a solitary fag.
The old bruiser's always there in the wings,
Waiting to make his omnipresence felt
And call halt to our solitary games

Don't you go telling, second draft

little blue books    
tucked beneath the skin
will tell out the hurts    
(like nobody knew)
                                       they patterned us with




What I did.
What I did to you. 
What I did I did to you.


Another gift with the surprise poured out.            
 
forever, we clouding the air 
with gracious smiles


pretending to forgive and
working 
at our fine stitching


Should we ever shake free
(us skittery birds)            
hunger would show plainly


And the jittery senses
are like crooked flowers
blooming semen strings
willow thin and clingy


Let the lovely bruises be.

We are the map of uneven pressures
and mattered delight


Our arthritic tongues quiver close to words
because we cannot be bored




The sun is cruel to everyone
curing us as accidental meat
              stripping us of thumb prints
                       fixing the toothy grin




We'll throw the rope to the raggedy shore 
on the raggedy shore we'll sail no more
 
stripping to our shivering coordinates
before the energy of almost there 
a bleeding and corrosive light


Let all the blue books everywhere 
burn up to the fine silver ash
that waits for the green tips 
of our paysan fingers
to dip in


Now love, let’s you and I be friends
and shake our dirty hands

Sonnet 006

The bleak heap of stops and starts you sit on;
It won't stop growing. This is called a life.
Allfather, hunched and hid in the shadows,
Swallows your thrown words and laughs like a wall,
Forgiving nothing, taking it all in.
No place for you to stand and yet you do,
Trembling with facticity and bad light.

Why are you here? You're nobody's answer.
You are a piece of burning information,
A nugatory sheet of rotten codes.
The umbilical grip of history
Holds you to other people’s promises.
Pressing yourself forward, you’re pulled back hard
To the bleak heap, the ache of yet again.