My latest poems can be found here
but here are a few oldies...
Angel Alley
[this poem was to a degree inspired by this great website, www.derelictlondon.com]
we walk through the Heathrow streets at dawn,
we gather in the local pubs east of Angel Alley
and the flat skies of England above
the rows of houses gather slowly to permanent dusk;
and how I went to Fulham in the night,
in the dark lonely London night, on buses,
the black Houses of Parliament,
near where I worked on a building site
and heard the bells and chimes from the Abbey
as I swept floors and carried wood.
London still exists
afternoons in the coldest winter of my soul,
going all the way to Speaker's Corner
just to hear people speak
of damnation and sex
and sporadic ramblings of the innermost bell-clang
of jumbled thoughts.
London still exists
and we went home through the streets still cobbled with stones,
the low gutters towards and past the E1
and past Angel Alley streets lined with
bright fruit stalls of the street market on cold street,
and the cold faces past Ilford and the Island
and the girls in black jackets
smoking Silk Cuts at bus stops
London still exists
and the lorries passing through Wapping and
the Angel Alley sadness of descending days
or expiring work visas, loves we lost,
in Jamaican-sounding summers on trips to the Westway,
to Portabello pubs across mini-cab nights
and Nigerian navigation back through football streets
reverberating from Stamford Bridge and across to night
to the home of the Hammers,
the men in their colours with oversized cans of Tennants
London still exists
on the underground arteries and
the black soot tunnels that
Make you believe that Victoria is still on the throne
And Dickens is hiding in a filthy enclave
ready to grab your arm with filthy-fingered glove.
the slanting terraces
extending across threading streets and
all the sadness that descends upon me;
the low-pressure bathtaps,
the lime-fuzz around the top of the kettle,
the rim of the pots.
London still exists
and the jet-black girl who stood close to me on a bus
who didn't move despite the opportunity
and the complicit illicit smile she gave me on leaving
after 20 minutes of our knees touching,
and how she is now more lost to me
than anything can possibly be
London exists
London exists right now
in Angel Alley
and beyond.
_________________________________
Discrepancy
"Why would you be a nude model
if your dick was as small as his?"
all the male students asked loudly at drinks at the pub
after the life drawing class.
All the girls stayed behind meanwhile to see what
The model
Was doing
Later that night.
_________________________________
Lampwires
all the friends you could have had
who took the time to stay with you
in collisions of meaning in full-scale rooms
and conversations missed by barbeque fizz.
This is the end of something that never started.
We live strung out like lamplights,
around a Christmas tree,
the wires of black threads pulsing
with three-beeped distance call memories.
And there's no-one there anyway.
And there's no-one there anyway.
While we wait for the world to get bigger,
while we wait for our scope to increase.
All vision of ourselves is lost in
fragments of broken mirrors on the road.
And I'm tired, more tired than I've ever been.
I remember a dancer I once kissed,
I remember her clearly, as if it was yesterday.
As if it were last month, last year, longer even.
When I'm older still I will remember her,
And I'll remember me, now, at this point in time.
I will remember me remembering her and
once more I will ask: was there anything more
I could have done?
And did I want to?
and the lampwires will fizz again and I
hope, now, that I won't be alone then
as I am now, too.
_________________________________
I am weak
She looked at me
I looked at her
She looked away
I looked away.
I looked at her
She looked at me
I looked away
She looked away.
She looked at me
I looked at her
She looked at me
I looked at her
She held my look
I looked away.
_________________________________
scorched earth
up through madrid and beyond
and i'd guess there hasn't been
a drop of rain for twenty years
but i could be wrong
yet you'd concur if you saw these fields
of arid rocks and everything
scrubby and khaki and
for four hours i haven't seen a soul
for hundreds of bone dry kilometres.
they invented the term "rolling fields"
for this country but they omitted the lushness
inherent in the construction of the meaning
in this case,
stunted trees,
each grain of dirt desecrated
by all the footsteps of the invaders
from the moors to the romans
to the celts, to the australians and the eceteras,
and so my history goes astray,
from hill to peak,
from church to fort,
toeprints crumbling rock into ridges and
gullies damned into throat-parched valleys
hinting at me through tinted glass that
all history has had it,
all the past is finished,
show's over as the hillside to the right
lies quietly scorched by a fire burning now
but that which will never ever be recorded
in history
_________________________________
And a poem from the book Seasonally Affected
Sand Up Over the Road
a pair of blue torn jeans,
a time before cds,
the stars shone down on
the tape in the walkman.
birthday cards and cups of tea,
cases of beer,
unused condoms,
socks and hands on your hips.
windburn on both eyes,
sunglasses in the corner of your mouth,
football jumpers and moths hitting the windows,
shaved clean lips and surf shirts.
orange lights, small towns,
telemovies and panic attacks,
cricket loud on next door's telly.
sand up over the road,
disappointments and long darkness,
rejection.
pimples and kisses missed.
the small things you say at the end of sentences,
the bits you leave out,
love via backseat cars,
the first messy crisis.
sand up over the road,
fists into the wall,
long hair,
dogs, grass knees,
a picture of the beatles,
socks and sewage smell.
sand up over the road,
she loves me,
she loves me not at all and never has.
she was gone and a hopeless cause,
sex was a chore,
the night shakes like a moreton bay.
breaking into a car,
keys smiling inside.
a dryer with burnt out element,
oven moving with cockroaches.
the beep of reversing buses,
i miss you
i miss you i
miss you.
now that you have no urge to call,
perhaps we are finally equal.
i miss you and
the lack of sadness.
//////////