1 New Poem

Memoirs for Portugal

In the drying drift of Aeroflot
tail lights, I let the skycap
hum drown out a clock’s chime,
overwhelm the intrusive wavering
of even-handed consideration,
of clustered-up pricing structures,

That kind to scarcely touch asphalt,
runway pylon before scattershot shatter.

But you’re not an observation,
a phenomenon of glitter & gunsmoke,
radiance of sunshowers, or
any other soft- spun metaphor
for 20-something passion’s naively
interlocked dreamtime escape. Then,

What was I pausing upon? Rapture’s dawn?
Not, but same sort, just thinking.

1 New Poem

If You Find Yourself Lonely

When people build battlements of themselves,
brick-by-brick greying stiffness,
flying up as meadow larking,
they dress it up in splendid shades
to distract.

I wasn’t so locked-away as all that,
though reserved of harpsicord tune,
hesitant of Scotian spirits,
but I hadn’t the heart to lie,
nor protest.

Still, if the strains of NYC Philharmonic
ever sound of scraping scrap tin,
and the hanging soot of Dylan’s memory
in Greenwich becomes a coughing fit trap:
do say.

And if shop front lights in London
ever turn a shade too sour,
the cuckoo clock ding-dongs of alighting
bend a clanged note of North Star’s guidance:
it’s alright.

You were stronger than to feel it,
always.

1 New Poem

Kinetics

It’s one smooth motion of skin upon itself,
one glancing slip of colours complimentary,
Ceylonese oil portraits of grassland greenery,
of tea in Edwardian china we could have
a drink upon in sunray restraint;
all that and becalmed spirits still.

It’s fumbled in half-words, trapped braveries
that are forever tongue-tied lightness,
forever careful Catholic’s starched lip,
forever kindled warmth of hearth,
but I could picture Mitchell songs with you,
I could dream of Merchant-Ivory productions.

It’s all but key-turns, tumbling

silver hairpins, click-click stick
of laptop combinations; we don’t connect,
we spin coin dance of Moroccan tabletops
glinting in moonshine strength, lapping
repeat of water on graceless sand.

2 New Poems

Mercury Liquid

It’s a shimmer, heated daze of
consciousness brought with black dress delusions,
heavy clang of emptied party tables,
bare whiskey cupboards, ever-rising AM alarms,
set like you couldn’t believe they were,
too early for what begins at dusk and lasts.

You waltz through balcony rooms,
as if amber wheat in ricepaper dawns,
as if scything swish-swirls in balletic heel,
as if you were straight off the Thames in silver,
not with some drab-dressed closeness,
in the Rideau apartment walk-ups,

where the thermostat setting broke twice.

Dousing

You’ll make some sort of splash,
a hallowed kind as baptism in
Ballymore pitch, but all the best
in ondine eruption, mythical rite
not taken, Gaelic runes unworn,
as you weren’t that, not ever.

Still somehow in spectral projections,
blinkered film canisters, you remain,
pitch-corrected as a pop song,
but in greater wonder held;
it’s a certain shame, the turn-about
of spaces light, I imagine
taking you to, crystal Sofia palaces;

not a post-communist princess,

but, still, you impress like one.

1 New Poem

Dowry Letters

You and I: we could do

some sort of damage, set fire to

brackish drifting cedar,

light up ice-night starring roles

with wording parchment,

with rushing creak of rivers' aged bend.

Something might have caught like

copper cable signals, struck up

the glassy-growing shadow theatre,

from crept light in corner's rooming,

could have blotched out from spilling

drywall finish, tin-metal shading.

We, you and I, could be

a sorted construction, bare bones

and winding bedsheet twine, but,

then, it's already tomorrow in Hong Kong

and the days pass in lotus flower

tinting, maple-sap slow in retrospect.

1 New Poem

 Painting in Bright Colours

The slow-hand draw of punch-card
collective, soft batch radicalism
pitched to the dress-nines, fabric
distress breaking against paper weights:

being too literal with time,

too symbolic with wording.

It lights up as petrol-soaked

tinder rag in parents’ house
burns down as dreams of cross-streamer,
illusory illustrations of calendar headings:

being too eager with company,
too restrained with love notes.

1 New Poem

Returned Sender

If I found you in Berlin,
where they kiss main roads
and make love in post-Soviet swirl
of mid-dusk firework shows,
you fall close as ever,
green-growing as arks at dusk
and, I’d hope, in my tired arms.

If I found you in Paris,
where they smolder-smoke with café pastry
and philosophize on napkin clothes,
on rickety tables with pretensions’ past ghosts,
you’d outshine the swimming starlets,
your memoirs of King’s college,
my holding on for a footnote.

If I found you in Madrid,
where you spoke of sunshine
in Gaelic accent, watery resonance,
you wouldn’t be a synthetic muse,
a hang-lamp for teenage passions,
but some brighter star to chase,
in Albion poets’ style grand.

If I found you in London, though,
that was all: just the meeting.