Sunday 29 July 2012

MARATHON

for PR — Athens 2004

Imagine a poem twenty–six miles long:
impossible! Heat kicking off
the tarmac like Noguchi's shoes
as she becomes a willowy mirage
a minute downhill. Tell me Paula,
what do you think about
alone on the road? Jesus Christ,
the thumping metre of your stride
would drive me nuts. Makes me think
of camels carrying T.E. Lawrence
over the Nefud: Akaba by land.
With that for comparison, yes,
you could be forgiven going mad.

Ndereba's shadow ghosts past
as the setting sun hold steady
up ahead. It's like running
through warm water
or butter. Concrete treadmills
beneath your feet. Six kilometres
to the finish and almost
silent. This is how
poems end; stumbling
to tearful, bewildered halts,
empty as water bottles
on lonely roads, where slow claps,
like camels, must carry us home.

Thursday 26 July 2012

LOVE POEM (TO THE ONE I LOVE)

I wish that your eyes would fall out
and all your teeth blacken and your hair
would grow greasy and thin or come off
in clumps in the shower, where red swirls
the water from the blood that would puther
from your burnt, peeling scalp and your face
would turn jaundice and bloat like a corpse.
I hope you get cankers and lesions, pustules 
in your armpits and kneepits and groin.
I want you to pant, knocked sick with pain,
fall bent like a coat hanger in arthritic agony,
go bunion, go bone, a death marionette.
Then will I come and rub oils on your flesh,
kiss life to skin, raise dead and you'll thank me.

Saturday 21 July 2012

A DEATH KNOCK

They let them sleep before they told them.
Last night their daughter's car had clipped a curb,
pitched right and tipped
squealing to a halt on its roof.
I wonder if her hands were hot as she knocked;

if she'd done this before, did this all the time?

Friday 20 July 2012

THE LONG NIGHT JOURNEY OUT OF THE FOREST

1.

It was easy going in, 
an assassin's hands
opened the bodies like lovers. 
Decked out in black, 
only the owls and night 
creatures saw me
descend the wet path
from the moor to the forest.
Night ego. As in dreams,
they were mine, but not mine,
that twisted the rope,
snapped it tight in a crack
of rainwater and lightning.
God, I felt so powerful
breaking and smashing the bones
with my fists. I was free,
a howl at the moon that echoed
to morning. A crescent
of blood still crusted
at each finger's tip
like an unopened eyelid.

2.

When they dug me up
I told them nothing, denied
I had been there, never seen
those boys in the photographs
nor heard their names whispered
along the bar, caught their breath
in my ear and promised them
paradise. I improvised, lied,
gave alibi after alibi 
for each night they described.
I rang true as a dented bell
then fessed up to stop
their questions and accusations.
I pled not guilty on account of 
my diminished responsibilities.
My father had hammered
the sense from me. They weren't mine,
but his, yanked the cable ties
tight round their wrists. I was mad
at the time, mad now. Crackers
on account of being given over
to the state in my youth.
Violence and survival were all I knew.

3.

I go to the forest each night
to watch the man hurt the other men
among the trees. Night sounds,
rainfall on leaf dropped to sludge,
the insects bickering over fungus.
He is no different to me,
but powerful, a horse-high, at least,
a barn door broad. He cooed
them like lovebirds to his forest,
his hide beneath the bracken,
a trap he'd primed with knives
and axes. But he loved most
to use his fists, manual work,
a thumb to bust an eyeball,
fingers to choke a scream.
I cannot escape their visits,
these fascinating ghosts that shiver
under his control excite me.
His muscle, his tower of flesh,
trembles in moonlight.

4.

The long night journey out of the forest begins
with an interlacing of hands, a kissing of palms,
a step away from the dead. We will walk until dawn
up to the moor, to the lay-by where we parked the van.
We will not look back at the forest, its secrets,
but keep eyes front. The engine will stutter to life
and drive towards sunrise. All things are waking
before us on the road, blinking and not looking back.

Wednesday 18 July 2012

DRINK

I fell in love with you when, talking,
your lips lingered by the tip 
of my nose and I felt your breath breeze
across my nostrils, and smelt liquor
droplets exciting the hairs inside.
It was scotch and ale, warm and rising
like the first red flushes of love.
I was kind of embarassed, in crisis,
could have kissed you then to taste
the booze that pooled inside your drunken
mouth, licked you dry, supped your eyes
that caught mine staring, undecided,
second guessing if you smelled it too,
intoxicated. You went on talking,
leaning back in your chair, spittle flying,
left me woozy, slurring, hammered, words.

Friday 13 July 2012

SPACE INVADERS


for SM


The docile turds that curl from under skirting boards
at night, then labour round the carpets and laminate
like ponderous, fecal figure skaters, are pernicious,
though they seem dumb. I catch them by the fridge,
investigating seals with probing stalk-eyes, hunting
weaknesses in pizza boxes left in slime's reach.
Aliens, that come from Mars to drain the juices
of your fruit and veg, may slither by your genitals
as you sleep. You will know they've been by morning,
when a semen slick is pooled around your thigh
Their vapour trails that start and end at nothing are a threat:
you never saw me coming and will never see me leave.

Thursday 12 July 2012

NUDES

When I surprised
a woman showering,
sorry towelling
her hair, I did not see
the full beaver
only its tail, say,
peeping through
her modest fingers,
the coyness transfigured
to a nervous smile.


Here, before the mirror,
the shame returns
in rolls of hairy flesh
that falls and folds
about the hips and ankles
like a towel, dropped
in a communal shower
at a swimming pool, say,


his body, younger,
leaner, firmer,
turned to catch it,
caught instead 
my eyes, snagged
on the tip of his prick,
erect. Flushing red,
I swear, he lingered,
showering in my gaze,
before he lifted the towel
and hid it away.

SISTER

for MH

I was Meatloaf. Sindy watched
you stalk towards me in mum's heels, too high
to walk in. You were her,
hanging round that joint, I didn't know
anything about you sister. Dress me up
in mum's old frocks, take photos.
Dance the lyrics; deal cards, laugh,
Dark Lady paint black magic.
We knew the strut to Turn Back Time,
arse bumped for kicks. It was your first
CD album, mine was Texas.
I remember Christmases, top-to-toe;
Rocky Horror, Halloween, Child's Play.
The video woman was a car boot of death.

Thursday 5 July 2012

TURING

His beautiful theory was witchcraft; the mind
spun into wires and NAND gates, NOT gates refusing
the tentative feeling of NOR fibreoptics.

This was his dream; love's electricity mapped
on a circuit board. He wanted to love
like a machine could manipulate symbols.

His hands were the same as the hands they met;
in size, in shape. Fingers that interlaced,
shared hairs. The sweat on his brow and eyes.

Something furtive; he never lied,
but kept the secret cracking secret codes.
His 'proclivities' were 'known' among his peers.

He loved and was refused; society redacted
him from history and castrated him chemically,
gave him a record and blanked his achievement.

Broken, oestrogen fat breasts and humiliated;
he took Eve's apple from the wicked queen,
leaving love's splayed cables puthering sparks.

Wednesday 4 July 2012

HUDSON UP TREND

I knew the Paris lines before they melted
onto models on the catwalk; furs, feathers,
leathers, synthetics, moulded round the tit
and cock. Models walking to me like a cocked
pistol. I was doing sketches of the patterns,
looking for codes on the front row; Anna Wintour
knew the crack, VOGUE! Her Chihuahua 
was a bitch in Louis Vuitton, always biting!

Somewhere among the waiting staff, a spy,
a glass of champagne and cyanide.
I report back on the future of fashion;
buttoned to the left, trousers worn knee-high,
sartorial semaphore, scuffed shoes.

Tuesday 3 July 2012

HUDSON DINES ALONE

A luncheon alone. A secret code
of crossed forks and knives, napkins
folded half lengthwise and doubled
back on themselves. Somewhere,
among the waiting staff, a spy
with a plastic gun, bullets hidden
in the cistern. Death on every plate.
The punters suckling meat from bone,
oblivious. I am far from home. Snow
smokes up the windows in mid-June,
out of kilter from the sun.

I wear dark clothes, dine alone
incognito. I am Smith, Jakobsen,
Chavez, Jones. My overcoat steams
on the hooks of various fish joints.
A false identity, bait. Somwhere,
among the waiting staff, a spy,
the prey assigned to catch me
catching them. In the end a menu
whispers clues; Ungai, Saba, Tobiko,
a shiver of gold on green tea,
crossed forks, an unpaid bill.

Monday 2 July 2012

ANTICIPATION

for DS and MH

A balloon trembles at the point
of bursting, champagne corks
unpopped, the bubbles dormant
waiting to be drunk, beer hides
unglugged in pumps unpulled,
unfilled glasses shivering in light
that spills through curtains,
undrawn, to lamps unplugged
and lights unswitched, a bar
unstaffed by men in bowties,
not yet clocked in to sweep
the floor of confettit that remains
unthrown in bags and hands 
that fidget unclapped in laps
of mouths that wait ungasped
for vows and questions still 
unasked, unanswered til an unworn
ring fits the unmarried finger
of a now married man, understand
then and only then they can