A CALIFORNIAN TRIANGLE

The Buick of my enemy has screamed
off the Coast Road in California
and mangled on the cliff rock
where it fell. I have pulled over
by the beach to stare at the steaming
wreckage with glee.

The body of my enemy has been pulped
by the steering wheel and gear-shift,
the shattered windshield,
crumpled dash.
His eyeball, dangling on an optic nerve,
makes me want to puke, but I don't turn away.

The screenplay of my enemy has blown
along the coast. Pages float
In the sea mash where it hits the sand
and pages flap in the air.
Vultures are coming from the canyon.
They have come to pick the bones.

IN ANOTHER TIME

The old King agreed to entertain
The Empress. He stroked
his short beard
and worried the country
would come to grief

as if shook from a dream.
The old King slept.

Someone off stage shouted, 
"Get on with it!"
and a floorboard creaked.

She bowed. The Empress said,
"I have come for your Kingdom,
your jewels, your pearls
and your people.
I wish to break chains and unions."

The old King gave some crumbling pages
his signature. A castle wall collapsed.

"Take what you can," he sighed,
"but spare my feelings.
We who came before made the world
you want to make afresh.
We fought the same way.
Do not tread the battleground again."

The Empress conceded with a curtsy
and crossed fingers.
She knew better than this old sod.
Off with his head!

Somewhere in a foreign field,
a corpse
in bloodied armour grinned.

LONDON ROAD BY JACQUES ROUBAUD

London Road
across from The White Lion
a public lavatory
closed
when the station closed

By the entrance to the subway
to Heeley station
also closed

LOVE POEM BY BILL MANHIRE

If you asked me
to choose, I'd hesitate
some.

Love. Not there.
Unseen.
Being near

when your limbs bend
and soften
like sand under seawater.

I'll talk the ocean bed
to you. A tentacle that grips.
The abyss.

WHY I DON'T READ FICTION

for DB

I dated brick and mortar.
We drank Moet
as it frothed off the blast of a bursting star
in space.

At home,
he always itched to fix the pots,
but the dishwater churned with piranhas.

An eyeball grew in his brain. Sally waited. 

DRESS LIKE A DUCHESS

Dress like a Duchess in Tory Burch.

Tory Burch is a key designer 

for elite ladies who lunch 

on the Upper East Side.

George is a very cute baby.

Our obsession with his mother's style

is too strong to ignore.

And the good news is this 'Paulina' dress

is available to buy

at Net-A-Porter. Just click to add it

to the Kate themed section of your closet.

POKELOGAN

Here she will come to rest, mother of weeds,
stanching into algaed waters,
grey waters, red and green
and brown. She will come to a slow.
A stir of mayflies on her surface. Among her reeds,
a slicked brown mammal slips under her skirts
and is mud. She comes slow grown down,
roots down into silt and stillness.

Among the cricket song a yellowed eye that blinks,
scales, a tail that fans the shallows.
The flit of dead leaves falling like drift rain.
She has come and will not come again.