Sunday 23 August 2015

1 New Poem

Ode to DLR

You and I should meet on air,
in these whirling hyperloop palaces
of all burnished steel, treated glass,
Polish plumbers' expressions of effort
possessed of a breaking cold becoming
strangely humble,

as if you could meet anyone,
from anywhere,
when next break light chimes.

You and I should make an affair,
bathe in serendipitous twinkle of
Alexandra Palace hill light,
click heels and wish to tune
of Turkish butchers' instrumental clatter,
seeming soundtrack of Haringey

as if there could be anything,
all desires,
in off-beat pulse of gig space walls,

in the grandeur spiral of 8 million
we sometimes find ourselves

as two points alighting the same.

Wednesday 12 August 2015

1 New Poem

Steel Sometimes Bends

Errant heat sparks the clashing
clatter of tea cart trays, straining
rail spikes, ties to
cement casing, careful poured:

how still, how silent, all,
but for those first unfelt tremors:

wheel turning once too fast, too often
a day, running ice cooled to
crevice shape, inching degrees imperceptible

until a swift stroke comes to bear.

But this was a metaphor, and now you
are “art”,

and I'd ask how it feels to be heat,
to inhabit steel,

but if you are so sincere,

I thought you'd hung the stars,
angled lunar shimmer so well, too.

Sunday 9 August 2015

1 New Poem

Kinder Words

I am wearied by all this just talking politely,
these Victorian vagaries of restraint, temperance
leavened with pint glasses, with half-steps
to mannered worldliness, to suit jacket sophistication
to cold cover made in confidence.

Wishing to crash against as South Pacific storms,
confront in steel shaping the drawing room distinctions
between our tics of movement made in absentia,
cabinet decisions we make collective, and
the deeply uncooled passion of placard placement slogans
beyond Downing door frame.

They'll be soon starting in
with the kebab shop clatter,
an eager retrenchment sandbagging
various laments stolen in hour
unspent on treetop dawns,
champagne spills fizzing

and made to so much mulch by
untalented tongue.

Tuesday 4 August 2015

1 New Poem

Take That Waltz
It is the rosewater left untaken
off-wave tone of blinking midnight clocks
in musty hotel rooms, beaten in blinkered
cross-eye stance

for unspooling rooms, could be
drank in darkly as Tudor beam
ceilings a party conference decision tables,

ever-weighting between blinded scales
and lost in years as all.

Still, you stain,
port dark, wine deep:

the wish to have taken up some sport
of gentlemen's hours, drivers at dusk
across coattail creases, distraction in
letterhead pitches, in grinding peacetime.

In hours entranced by garden trestle vines,
shuttering possible pasts behind doorsteps' flutter,

it is ever the better a dance to take.

Sunday 2 August 2015

1 New Poem

Three Pence

Copper coin shimmer lines speckle-spatter
along well-wishers banks beneath
Islington's club gig smoke for the
name of some 90s indie band,
none could exactly remember,
none could quite forget.

I glow, untrammeled, haloing
Primark dress shirts in black light,
but for shock of uncertain divisions
and

the lack I am of figures assured,
neither Chancellor nor another great
figure a state one day sets in bronze.

For promises of rock & roll America,
places wild of youth, ease, never did
a single stroke for cold running hands
and

answered what I'd give for touch:
oceanic deliverance, partial to your
frame, shaking, waiting maiden memorial fantasy,
as you tame-keeper wilderness of telescopic time.

Remind

what once there was to gain,
now lost for want of a three penny nail.