Which Side Are You On? [12.]

Talk of autonomy
won't work here.

There's just
this kid fidgeting
in the cheaper seats

with the lights going down
all over.

Bus note 25

Adrenalin, poison, soaks the hollow muscle.
        The yellow and the orange
        and the brown leaves are sodden too
        (all that falls from the sycamore tree)
        and trodden down flat on the pavement.
I can say this without hesitation:
the private hospital does not exist.
        I'm not sure
        that I'm here myself in any way this moment.
Work is where I'm going to be
between signing in and out.
        None of us will be done with the fog
        until the fog is done.
Old ladies with red lipstick gash mouths
are waiting at the stop.
        Step down into the grey.
Ah, anxiety: this is my coming Winter soup
for every other day.

Which Side Are You On? [11.]

seriousness, mostly
            then set humour times

       Some small boy looking earnest
                        holding mum's placard

             It's very hard for me to say:
             a. We're all in agreement here.
             b. We had such a laugh last night.

                           an icky knot
                     never wholly gone
                           in grandest swim
                     of everyone
                               
               Somewhere else
                  the making of a ladder
                       from the body
              that goes up with
                          rough guts stirring 
                  to stars: originary farts
                 punched eyes

        those rumours that won't be gone

     Back home we keep the red flag where everyone
     that needs to can see it
               (a little soiled, it must be said).

  and yet, it seems the question's begged,
                Whatever have we to look forward to?

            Old boring songs sung unashamedly.

           remember to pine for oldfashioned industrial
                   structuring and worked flesh            
         
              To looking forward, question mark.

                Gather and disperse.
                                                     
             [closing sentences will refer to image
                          in black and white - maybe winding gear
          with majestic clouds of due rain/ smoke going
                   up and out from chimney
                                         in misted over near distance]

Bus note 24

        The boy's blazer's spittle streaked
        and his specs a touch too grown up.
Down from the college
the older brother comes,
        learning to like his not belonging yet
        some of the way in now. He stops
and says in scratched acidic voice, Again!
        Our kid nods, a look made stupid
        with everyday harrying, hurts
        learnt as basic rule.
When the bus comes, the blazer
steps up slow/steady to the top deck.
        It's three stops on
        till the collegian goes up too.
The thing is, you get blisters watching
the same ground tread.
        Repetition.
        A piece of living gets its staying shape.

dry is dusk as

                  littler than you are
         (or will ever be
                          or were)
      small so
    thin and there
                                shinyblack and hid beneath
             (pinching skin of space/
                                 tiny baby pincers)
                     the dirty leaf

               trod mud is showing
                                     also rustred flecks
          and fungal thumbprints too

                                  with a smoke stink all about and
          great pink comic smear
                                         on ageing dayold sky

an almost 
arse-end-of-the-city place
near half a river's course

Which Side Are You On? [10.]

The Camera

       When it came to the die-in
       I could only watch
       this finger press down
       and feel the shutter
       catch the free light
       as the blood beat
       chemical time;
       to run away with itself
       and try and turn red.

       That light could have been staged.
       It gave everyone a place.

Bus note 23

I'm alone on the lower deck
of the number one, a bunch
of orange chrysanthemums
with lime green eyes on my lap.
        The flowers shout out; perverted daisies
        (in Old English, it's daes eage).     
We pass what was the deaf-blind school,
all boarded up now with the stucco stained.
       There are no more lessons happening
        any more, only years and years
of small animals leaving musk traces
in emptied rooms, filling them again with breath.
        The stench must say home to where
        it can't be anything but heard.

Which Side Are You On? [9.]

the waste is an eyeful

in the blast’s wake

blown back to

over here and then

here we go


[exit the spectre]


no don’t pray for us

just try hard

to keep mum



just 

don’t

Bus note 22

Look out of the window.
        The roofs of the cars
        gleam with tedious malice.
        Each one is the same, contained.
These days I go too many times past
the entrance to Cannon Hill Park
        from where I ran, a thin kid,
        out from Singing into the downstream road
        to be hit and thrown up a good few feet
with a picture playing out
of a vase of orange roses
smashed and the whole of everything
getting slower and slower
       till I woke up to an angry driver
       and a halfarsed Sun.

Which Side Are You On? [8]

     never let on
           that you near believe
    as they would have you do
they do

(o the verbal mercury drop)

      or they'll catch hold of
           your delicate frame
                         clinging all eager
 till you’re cast out (the too unshipshape
                  too sweatsharp or the sweetness
on the turn)
              for show then 
for wholly gone

Seascape on Tom Clark's Blog

Tom Clark has posted another of my poems on his marvellous blog. This one hasn't even shown its scuffed-up face in the Wooden World. You should have a gander. Go. Now.

http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/wooden-boy-seascape.html