1 New Poem

From Primrose Hill

As you turn back in sepia,
Astair-Rodgers light on
Southwark station bends, on
illuminating post-war tenement
brick ways, there isn’t something
more to say,

something more to pause upon.

As you look out on many-wandered
fields, plundered creation
of peace crowns, or scepter
surrenders, as they link in
70s raincoat logic, and

spill full with unsent post,

you aren’t waiting again.

As you draw curtains from
clanging Friday’s air, humid
hanging with pressed lips
of tube driver’s strike talk,
there could still have been
some roiling wave of regret,

for passing taillights of noonhour.

1 New Poem

Untold Miles

Glory of ember fades,
imperial medals’ twinkling
takes on tea mug tones,
rusty bonnet cap kind
of rushing through cedar
sap places in daydream.

The baking blackness,
electric separation, finding
same holiday greeting card
lines no matter placing truth,
a blistered confession to be made,
of axel wobble sentiments.

Scale of self-help books,
making of wartime lives,
draws rough, approximate, map
of the last time we stood
in subway station tile,
or took to mispronounced names.

Nerves of not-so-young not-quite-lovers

sing still with nicotine twitch,
so signpost obvious in early evening.

1 New Poem

Unpacked Rooms

You come in all warming,
crop dust creeping of
Northern night skies, dipping gold
and lemonade stand due,
against chalkboard careen:
dusty old thoughts,
snowblind to legal tender,
foot in front of face.

You come in like that,
low grade bed fever,
trailing illusions as footprints
in cast iron.

You stay like sour tongue dance,
windscreen fluttering cool
promise of tinderbox evening
against bleach-wash finery of this
slacking skin, trapped between
scaled breathing (saxophone
chord) and half-hearted speech
scribbled on timely threshold.

You stay like this,
flicking brilliant ashes off
into bold blue navy air,
whispering burnout.

You leave like let boarding
beds, toothpaste cap and all
from nightstand, mud shoe
tracking places on linoleum,
view of paint finish from
cross-swinging door lock.

You leave like that,

wrapped-up as trite
anecdote, two sentence
denial of things.

1 New Poem

Gentleman’s Gesture

There isn’t a single thing,
vibration of thin-wearing walls,
that keeps arrival time of
feet sweeping, of tracked mud,
of lovely crowding from places before
you bloom a solitary springtime:

Brilliant in light, but bare white
room shading, arrangements
yet to be handled, the life
yet there in all things.

There isn’t a personal penny
you could make from being
a cellophane pacemaker
of clearly handled transactions
from being so feather feather-light you
unsettle causes just by
taking a shoe-leather wear
of them,

But fortunes in darker places

damp form of wax-end
expression are those copper
coins still to take.

1 New Poem

Shared Paragraphs

The read word flashes, keeping awake
through knotty wire, fish light
kind of lumineering:

It says, “these relics crumble
from storm batters, they reveal
an illusory shape,

A liar’s tongue dipped in
contradictory passageway murals,
signage pointers to all,

Of how things were once,
not so good, not so bad,
but wholly clipped

Of measure weight” to your
destruction, to your
melting into worldly demands.

Then, though, without pages
to pour, gin-slow, glassy,
would I still want

This kiss?

1 New Poem

All Things Scarlett

Coming down with something’s case,
fever flush of card suits taken
too literal, whiskey-faced haggling
with diner shop case radio dials,
with dusty countertop linoleum for
a place to rest comforted hands;

I am no longer in darkened
rooms with chalk sketches,
with star charts searching June
skies for dusk.

The road polishes, near-reflecting black
of graceful shadowing leaping grandly
from pulpit page to dreaming ink,
it carves a winding gold river band,
a miner’s lung of bespoke ring fingers
from the sketch chart physician’s
notes we made of each other

(flopping haircut, skin strawberry milk shade).

Whirring, fan clatter cuts speech,
to hung ribbon strings from ceiling,
to adolescent party paper chains,
shedding their old tones for

something stronger played:

electric, with feeling.

1 New Poem

Horizon Lines

Weaver’s tomes don’t make it these days,
the linen paper loom gets stretch-swayed
from toss ship breeze, tightened white crisp sail,
that type you cast to oceans just to know what
might happen from it, suggested words to fill column
inches.

It comes close; you recognize the shape of chemical
fires for faint hearts, how much of a hash you
make, a dog’s dinner of chewed-up trapper journals
that couldn’t be given back for the very best of friendship’s
considerations.

A hidden from hit parade thing, fooling eyes
dart a stage hand tableau, scene switching
but you can’t take chances with that sort of street
noise.

I never maze-built a spiraled case for why,
as patient-faded the dusty building glass
beneath

wandered wound of aged

sky.