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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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