ECHOLOCATION

for SM

This was our way of keeping in touch.
Touching base with the time.
The time I had woken before sunrise.
Sunrise today is at 07.33.
At 07.33 you were frying eggs.
Eggs were eaten at 08.10.
08.10 in two separate counties.
Counties that yawned the country open.
Open the curtains, 08.22.
08.22, clocking off.
Off into the day like a train.
Trains of thought that spirograph back.
Back out and back into the dusk.
Dusk, 16.14, and a prayer to home.
Home, where it is just gone sunset.
Sunset today is 16.36.
16.36 and I go outside and watch bats.
Bats echolocate here and in Yorkshire.
In Yorkshire are you hearing this?

ASH

The nursery was plagued
with white and black flecks
on the tender skins.
They had not hardened to bark.
The fingers had shed their leaves
and the limbs had shrunk.
Stumped to obscure shapes.

They tried burning the bodies,
but the disease spread flies
through the forest
of sparks and smoke.
Everywhere foxes and rabbits
squealed from the spiral.
The charred witness of the trees.

IMAGINE THE MOON

Imagine being up there.
Imagine picking up handfuls of it.
The trip of a lifetime. 
Imagine the white cold sands
on the shore of the sea of tranquility.
Imagine losing fifteen stone
to weightless drifting. Imagine your ship
anchored to a meteorite cut crater.
Imagine the dark side.
Imagine the silence out there.
Imagine a telephone that never rings.

Think of a porch at midnight
in the country
without crickets or fireflies
and your muttering and clenching
and unclenching your fists.
Imagine the moon.
Imagine yourself imagining it.

IN CLAY WOOD

24/11/2012

Masonry tumbles like trees

at the halt of the treeline

that darkens the crumbling

stone into leaf mould.

Ivy choked stumps reach up

from the thorned net

of brambling snares that catch

rabbits and leverets and walkers.

The city is nowhere to here,

it's another turn and stile

that goes deep into sludge piles,

another puddle to drown in.

ROCKETS

In Jerusalem they could see the flashes

of the fireworks they volleyed

at Palestine. They were Roman

Candles, Catherine Wheels and Air Bombs.

I counted four traffic light flares that returned

over the border towards the Knesset;

red — amber — green — amber.

The upturned faces burned in the afterglow.

WEEKEND

These are just blokes drinking on a Friday afternoon

after getting off work early after working like pigs

at something they’re pig sick of. This is where they let

rockets off to the moon, where the moon glows

in fruit machine flashes and flashes of tempers burst

like fireworks bursting, obliterating the stars.

The stars are all over the pavement. The pavement

is strewn with celestial beings and extra-terrestrials.

Angels and extra-terrestrials are singing, singing

alleluias from every street corner. A busker is singing

in excelcis deo on every street corner in town.

The shout goes up and is hoisted aloft and carried

through town like a varsity rugby captain 

hoisted atop his teammate’s shoulders and shouted

round bars like a saucy joke. Their shoulders are round

where they’re worn like a threadworn blazer or jeans

in the knees and crotch. They’ve been on their knees

all week and year, a decade of prayer. Praying the work

keeps on coming after the weekend. Until then their crotch

itches at denim and nylon skirts. Stiff nylon electricity.

AMIS SHRUGGED

for JB

New York was flickering out like a faulty light,
and the skyline was tapering out like the fuse
fizzles on the opening credits to Mission Impossible.

Should you choose to accept it, even the Statue
of Liberty crooked her right arm and dropped
her torch in ocean, where it splashed and sizzled.

Simmering. The great beast in shutdown heaved
it haunches up under itself to winter it out.
The cash registers were done with singing.

On television in a bar where the neon still burned,
the English Professor was sighing his opinion
to the anchor in London who asked one more question.

Amis shrugged. And the world began to run
like peas on the deck of The Titanic. It tilted, 
gaining momentum as it broke and buried them.

LATER LIFE

for MH

Her fingers are fussing the big, green

button that holds her cardigan.

Taking pills to remember her stockings.

Getting dressed each morning

to sit in her chair. Her velvet mauve

slippers. A white crocheted shawl.

The television is silent as a wall.

Two raised stripes show she has worn

two bras, but no other underwear.

The clock fingers race and whirr,

eager to have the day done. The world

spins an axis about that chair.

The old–style bulbs fizz and stir.
It seems one is about to burst,
threatening with lengthening flickers.

Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Dark.

LANCASHRING

for BC

Riding out of the ice crevassed rock.

Horwich, Buckshaw, Lostock Parkway

Every station stop is business.

Buckshaw, Lostock, Horwich Parkway

Midnight misting across like hail.

Lostock, Horwich, Buckshaw Parkway

My hands were lost in a mobile's light.

Horwich, Lostock, Buckshaw Parkway

Headlit motels at a taxi's halt.

Buckshaw, Horwich, Lostock Parkway

Fox eyes stared from a terrace window.

Lostock, Buckshaw, Howich Parkway

Railways unspooling from under wheels

Edale, Chinley, Grindleford, Hope

GOLDFINGER REDUX

Gert Fröbe. Fingers walking up her thigh
leave silver prints of perspiration, paws
that track his intention. With a hot sigh
her vulva opens for his gilded claw's
inspection. A knuckle duster of rings.
From the gramophone Shirley Bassey sings.

He has the midas touch. Shirley Eaton,
stretched and painted on virgin hotel sheets,
glisters in his afterglow. Half-eaten
plates of oysters, caviar and cold meats
glitter on the nightstand. His vapour clings.
A sparkling cloud of bourbon burns and stings.

From the gramophone Shirley Bassey sings.
From the gramophone Shirley Bassey sings.