A PRIVATE WARNING

for JO

You can't come down this road, it's private.

If you come down this road you'll be arrested.

Not arrested by the police. This is private

business. It is dealt with by somebody else.

No, you can't contact them. Their details are private.

They are to be kept on file. You will hear

from them soon when they get your file which is not private.

Your details must be shared. You have trespassed.

Ignorance does not excuse your transgression. Private

parties have a right to know of your sin,

have a right to know you have entered on private

property without permission. You will be sent

to a private correction facility where your private

parts will be exposed and mocked.

There is no right of appeal. This is private

business. Private business. Private business.

CANCER TRIPTYCH

These three poems are designed to appear landscape on one piece of paper, with the first poem on the left, the third on the right and the second poem nestled in the middle.

Cancer (1)

for AS

We wished the cancer on him.

Prayed the carcinoma

would enlarge and spread

like fungus

through his lungs and heart,

swell his bowel with tumours.

We hoped he would not die

but live instead

in clawing spasm,

jaw contorted to a groan

that could not ease the agony.

Sadly, anger could not trigger

a metastasis

and the NHS tend bruises

of beaten women

as they treat cancers in men

the size of fists.

Despite everything, he lived.

Cancer (2)

for LS

The cancer was sudden

and thumped her with pain.

Under the pummelling

the tumours blossomed

like chrysanthemums. She died.

Cancer (3)

for JH

Some things had gone wrong.

A depression into which

she disappeared for a year

was like a domino

knocking into another

from the suicide of her brother.

When she got better, her mother

got cancer and died

and the father who abused her

got cancer and lived.

And then she got cancer.

It was as if the anger

had concentrated to a knot

in her breast

When the doctors removed it,

everything was undid.

Despite everything, she lived.

CHOOK

The slaughterhouse set my head pounding:

all those chooks jostling along the disassembly lines.

All the men there who shake hands with corpses.

All the codeine lighting. All the flesh.

I'd never though flesh was grotesque 'til I went there,

'til I saw what men do to chooks with knives.

Yet there was something arousing about it -

The chook chook of the machines? The conveyor belt?

Perhaps. I'd rather it was the men, elbow deep

in chook meat, groping wet innards,

packaging them. The fact they do all that here

under one roof. None go home. None have wives.

I think I began to like the smell of men and meat;

the mechanical nature of work and lines.

I began to want to be a chook, paralysed by light,

manhandled on the belts - torn - reformed - repackaged all night.

HOMOPHOBIA

In the bars boys sip neon coloured cocktails and talk prick.

We’ve been looking at yours at the urinals and in the park.

Anyplace you strip to the waist, we’re there, remembering

the exact line of your cut groin, the exact weight and hang

of your balls in your sweatpants. Every time you undress

we go further. Someday, somehow you’ll wake in our beds.

This is a threat. There’ll be three of us bruising your skin

with kisses. Three mouths to promise again and again

not to tell. Your girlfriends should worry and stop

patronising our bars like we care for their lip-

service. You are not safe. We will commit acts of sex

as a lesson. Lay back. Smoke. One of us has to relax.

AUDEN AND THE SUN

It is hard not to laugh

when you see the great poet

finding his balance atop

the world's tallest ladder

in a pair of dungarees

Indeed, it would be

downright foolish not to.

These are things to do with grief

as boxes are to do with moving house.

Imagine him, his face red

from all that sun and work

and sweat. His paper face

puffing in the breeze

as he spanners the bolts free

and removes the supports,

slicing off wedges like cheese.

As boxes are to do with moving house,

these are things to do with grief.

And what does it mean

to drown yourself daily

in darkness? Here he comes,

on feeble legs, down

the last few struts at the foot,

all that weight on his back

heavy as a black hole.

These are things to do with grief

as boxes are to do with moving house.

In a moment everything

can suddenly be gone

like a street where no-one is.

His paper face is blowing

round the sidewalks of New York

as the subway rattles underneath.

There is space in air.

As boxes are to do with moving house,

these are things to do with grief.

SAUNA GOING

Out of foetid darkness rose their groans

like a draught flown up a cellar stair

a door was opened. A secrecy of sweat

pervaded the air, my nose hung thick with it.

Ah, the flesh! The flesh that pressed against the beams

and benches in a violent creaking, an effort to burst;

bodies tangled and untangling, limbs clawing as after a bomb.

HOTEL 2

for GJ

Night is a tumbler of whiskey.

This is a sequel. The actors

are acting the lines read before.

Somewhere a man laughs a laugh

laughed before. The audience remember

his laugh. They laugh. Nobody worries

if the plot is rehashed, if the same

sets are used. This is a sequel.

Exactly the same, but the gore

is exploded. Whispers down tree-lined

lanes of the murders. Everything

suspected of truth becomes true.

In The Church of St. Bernadette

of The Cross a woman trims candles.

The altar cloth shows Joan of Arc.

Evensong starts. The choir sings incense,

footsteps echoing in the aisle and apse.

A laugh. The stained glass explodes. Static.

HOTEL

Night is a tumbler of whiskey,

Welsh should they ask me.

Should they ask me my name,

registration, nationality, I will say

not here. Not from the carriageway

or the unlit B-roads, the places hares

scatter to from headlamps on full-beam.

I could not tell them the names

of their towns or the grid reference

on an OS map. Nor could I guess

the martyrs their churches were called for,

the woman who trimmed the candles,

the last witch burned. The evening

is filling with voices, doors opening,

footsteps in the corridor nearing

with urgency. Somewhere a man laughs.

The television explodes into static.

PRELUDE

I offered my throat to the King's knife at dusk,

as the dust settled in a chorus of cricket song

and the sunset stitched the fading light with stars.

The King was lusty with red wine and spit

flew from his lips like arrows when he spoke.

I toyed with his beard and laughed at his jokes.

Later, he heaved me up on his barrel chest.

I knew death was near. As he pressed his coarse tongue

to my nipples, I leant and whispered in his ear:

Once upon a time there was King

who caught his wife fornicating

with the help. He sliced them in four

with a single stroke of his Scimitar.

The King paused at my words and held me above

him by the throat. Demanded to know

what became of the King? Was he arrested? What did it mean?

Behind his eyes all hell burned. I knew he thought

to murder me by dawn. With my hand I sought

out the rope which tied his pants and undid it.

Knotting my fingers in his crotch I said,

Tomorrow, tomorrow. I will tell you then.

And he threw his head back and gasped as he came in my hand.