Memo 1

Down below the Guildhall where we stuck categories on with a small gaping machine.

Sunshine as irritant. We crawled from the drinking club with maps of blisters pinprick red.

And everywhere the vicious silver bell music.

Sometimes along the heat tunnels blood shifted from the head.

Methods of unwaking. Skips full of slung lit.

The Weather Around Here

 Hail at the pate aches smashed bottle auguries till Smethwick lemsip sun

              Hairy graphemes all over
    plane with mangled arrows showing

        Gaping dead cafe
  the fossil epic lamps whisper

           erred set pieces

Fall back eyes you
stall unhook a grin

        all the ivy ghosts
        all limpid eyes the somewhere engines shudder

    Lights from the sports club

Low broke wall before buddleias raised struts alloy grid tremble

       a thinning persistance thinner

   see-through arbour

Red Yellow Blue

The hazel's bunting scrives
        at side of psych hospital

An alley/ a little way
        where stunk planks arc
and split sacs are

        There an half inch seen
the green leaves curléd so
        with minims frayed

This man rolled a little bike
        and yelled out MAB
to puncture or to make count

        He had a penned on 'tache

The smashed pink tiles 
        they flare forever 
bright and about there

Dead intent zone

one knuckle raised

post derm and shrug off lizard gleam

world of blonde children (dropt

from loins of skinny solicitors)

is doing me in

the salon framed by unreal trees

Winter's leaving

Rain on the burner ashes
on petrol traces till
a bleating o-mouth Sun
a spare hedge lonely for

Memory of sheep fear vapours
with a stained work coat
and tempo fag

A dry bad painted wall with flies
behind posh boys out from Edward Rex

Our eyes are becoming too on steady
dry itches from prescript dream tedium
and I wear sticky glasses now

langsam    langsam    four four
     till it's curtains again

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