Wednesday 13 November 2013

2 New Poems

Saying Things

I said yes;
I'd meet you in the space between clouds
and canal craft-work of skyscraper towers,
and birthday clothes to icicles turning,
and just a little of the Northern Lights' green.

Hearing it was so much warmer in California,
in Palermo and at midnight sun in Ibiza
meetings were made scarce by time, flights
finished past an hour of sensible waking.
You were never so cold as skating rivers
here, never so cold as Christmas in a
desert wind dry.

The greatest slow dancer in the universe,
the moon and back to hold in graceless
charm, the stars to shine in charmless grace,
you'd offer as long as it wasn't here;
I said no.




Dog-Eared Back Pages

Everything was in flames;
that tattered, battered old timey bird clock
and living quarters they pushed, pushed, pushed
upon us in grey-haired finery, something
charming to say, we'd thought about
this timing beforehand with the cake carvery
the ruddy rush by Thames boat sails and
broomstick curtains we has to pull shut as
quick as flashing knives in duelist style.

But never like this, no, never the molten
cause reflecting in porch beams you'd nailed
together one summer dusk with a wet chewing
air to it, reflecting in glass reconstructions of
the English Civil War and rose-coloured stamps
in collectors' books to look back upon.

It was licking, lapping houndstooth manner on
door frames in handprint impressions, matches
to gunpowder and rivers of blood on the
furnace hamper drawings and cuckoo-cloud
dreamers we all were in our youth,
stains we'd look back on in abjection, in
wide-eyed bemusement.

With the locking, the skeleton key catacombs,
I'd take a last look at embers' broken
nose wheeze and four-stone weight upon
crooked shoulder, with those things

I took a deep breath.

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