barnacled blue arm
and throws you
a Roman coin.
It isnât beautiful.
Neither are you.
But you pray
its sea-roughed Emperor
will somehow benignly
see you through.
The gold-melt moon.
The aroma of gritty six a.m.
Turkish coffee.
Harsh warm Hebrew
pounding the air
like a confounding family
squabble.
The marooned marble column
on which you dry
your shabby old towel.
This glittering port city.
A sophisticated paradise.
Where Pontius Pilate thirsted
for the humanity
of face-saving lies.
You are only eighteen.
But thousands of years
of brackish Biblical history
sweep into you
and catch
like a thousand sharp
glass beads.
Sometimes a new place
has the ferocity of a gale
ripping the calm
off a safe harbour
making the drowned bells peel
Hallelujah
for all your future
false prophets
and glorious. glorious.
lost gods.
BLACKBERRIES
I canât shake
that ghost-town pub
whistling empty-bottled
through its black windows,
and its strangled verandahs
creaking with a terrifying
ancient thirst
under a two-storey coat
of bristling blackberry.
Is it taunting me
with the dancing skeleton
tune
of my own lifeâs mystery
struggling for rhythm
and lyrics?
I hold in my hand
the greedy, bleeding
pen
that has always
gorged itself.
The bliss-mouthed
gluttony miracle â
that stained Keats
grape-purple
that had cynical Byron
reeling on the ceiling â
when the plump berries
sing
and your pen slashes ahead
like a pain-hungry prince
hacking through
the brambleâs dragon teeth
to the heartâs most longed-for
comatose, but ardently ready
princess.
THE ENCHANTED ASS
So tender is the Queen of Fairiesâ
mouth
on all your unsleeping parts
her kiss
arrives
like summery moonlight
her kiss is the moleâs bliss
the blind
blinding way
her green magic breaks in you
like a warm storm
you grow
ears, tail,
and a hee-hawing
lightning.
A WALK IN KENSINGTON GARDENS
Solitude is where writers
chatter best
a soothing static â
the ambulatory, admit it, happy
ticking over
like this afternoon
in the sweet green cold London
spring
I watch a tall grey heron
stomping down its reed nest
thatâs sprouting everywhere
like garden-sheared hair
and all my living
and all my dead
run up my arms
like squirrels.
THE SILVER BRACELET
We were lost.
The map was a useless tease.
The afternoon was golden-green
cold.
It was old Ireland
after all.
Things happened that afternoon.
The dwarf at the door.
The strange dirty man on a bike
with an impossibly narrow face.
All gave false directions
to what we were so doggedly dreamily
looking for.
We pushed through an old gate
into a meadow
dancing with green light.
And found
the stone circle
so clearly, so mundanely
marked on the map.
Lichen-tipped, warm
as if squirming
with old friendly blood
the stones stood.
I canât remember how long
we stayed.
We danced around the stones
and took photos.
I still remember
the thin tune playing
in my charmed head.
On the ferry back to Holyhead
my bare wrist pinged
where my silver bracelet used to be.
Was it just something superstitious
young Yeats said
that made me believe
the fairies had taken
the silver bracelet
instead of me?
THE HOUSE
Is this what middle age
does to the imagination,
setting up haunted
house
in every idling cranny?
Itâs time I sent
my own premature ghost
scarpering
to a cobwebbed nunnery.
AFTER BRUEGEL
Let me join the frilled and flying
damned
and live vivid
as a wet dog.
THREE SONNETS
I . I S IT NOT THE THING ?
After Byron
Trying to get a gutless friend
to get it
Byron wrote
Is it not life, is it not the thing?
He was praising the bawdy
spurt
of his own poem, his own
ballsy Don Juan.
Every poet wants to write the poem
that penetrates
with the ice-cold shock
of the Devilâs prick.
The poem that will fuck you awake
or kill you.
II. W HAT A PLUNGE !
After Woolf
This morning
and throws you
a Roman coin.
It isnât beautiful.
Neither are you.
But you pray
its sea-roughed Emperor
will somehow benignly
see you through.
The gold-melt moon.
The aroma of gritty six a.m.
Turkish coffee.
Harsh warm Hebrew
pounding the air
like a confounding family
squabble.
The marooned marble column
on which you dry
your shabby old towel.
This glittering port city.
A sophisticated paradise.
Where Pontius Pilate thirsted
for the humanity
of face-saving lies.
You are only eighteen.
But thousands of years
of brackish Biblical history
sweep into you
and catch
like a thousand sharp
glass beads.
Sometimes a new place
has the ferocity of a gale
ripping the calm
off a safe harbour
making the drowned bells peel
Hallelujah
for all your future
false prophets
and glorious. glorious.
lost gods.
BLACKBERRIES
I canât shake
that ghost-town pub
whistling empty-bottled
through its black windows,
and its strangled verandahs
creaking with a terrifying
ancient thirst
under a two-storey coat
of bristling blackberry.
Is it taunting me
with the dancing skeleton
tune
of my own lifeâs mystery
struggling for rhythm
and lyrics?
I hold in my hand
the greedy, bleeding
pen
that has always
gorged itself.
The bliss-mouthed
gluttony miracle â
that stained Keats
grape-purple
that had cynical Byron
reeling on the ceiling â
when the plump berries
sing
and your pen slashes ahead
like a pain-hungry prince
hacking through
the brambleâs dragon teeth
to the heartâs most longed-for
comatose, but ardently ready
princess.
THE ENCHANTED ASS
So tender is the Queen of Fairiesâ
mouth
on all your unsleeping parts
her kiss
arrives
like summery moonlight
her kiss is the moleâs bliss
the blind
blinding way
her green magic breaks in you
like a warm storm
you grow
ears, tail,
and a hee-hawing
lightning.
A WALK IN KENSINGTON GARDENS
Solitude is where writers
chatter best
a soothing static â
the ambulatory, admit it, happy
ticking over
like this afternoon
in the sweet green cold London
spring
I watch a tall grey heron
stomping down its reed nest
thatâs sprouting everywhere
like garden-sheared hair
and all my living
and all my dead
run up my arms
like squirrels.
THE SILVER BRACELET
We were lost.
The map was a useless tease.
The afternoon was golden-green
cold.
It was old Ireland
after all.
Things happened that afternoon.
The dwarf at the door.
The strange dirty man on a bike
with an impossibly narrow face.
All gave false directions
to what we were so doggedly dreamily
looking for.
We pushed through an old gate
into a meadow
dancing with green light.
And found
the stone circle
so clearly, so mundanely
marked on the map.
Lichen-tipped, warm
as if squirming
with old friendly blood
the stones stood.
I canât remember how long
we stayed.
We danced around the stones
and took photos.
I still remember
the thin tune playing
in my charmed head.
On the ferry back to Holyhead
my bare wrist pinged
where my silver bracelet used to be.
Was it just something superstitious
young Yeats said
that made me believe
the fairies had taken
the silver bracelet
instead of me?
THE HOUSE
Is this what middle age
does to the imagination,
setting up haunted
house
in every idling cranny?
Itâs time I sent
my own premature ghost
scarpering
to a cobwebbed nunnery.
AFTER BRUEGEL
Let me join the frilled and flying
damned
and live vivid
as a wet dog.
THREE SONNETS
I . I S IT NOT THE THING ?
After Byron
Trying to get a gutless friend
to get it
Byron wrote
Is it not life, is it not the thing?
He was praising the bawdy
spurt
of his own poem, his own
ballsy Don Juan.
Every poet wants to write the poem
that penetrates
with the ice-cold shock
of the Devilâs prick.
The poem that will fuck you awake
or kill you.
II. W HAT A PLUNGE !
After Woolf
This morning
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