1 New Poem

Found Houses

When sun-spires of youth darken
from overspun revelry,  I hope
we endure declines not as single points,
orbital fragments of metal flesh-bone,
but linked, devil-handed pairing
together map-making hazy pastures,
the figures being all so nervy,
stretched and made to pose,
but desire of nothing so much
as collapse.

Collapse to well-traveled arms,
enduring warm of lacquer-washed
skin.

Again, we would awaken not in
dizzy recall of dead drunken evenings,
still blank I searching passage time,
but in contented holding rooms
still, coffee cooling: home.

1 New Poem

The Afterlife of Ideas

If we have names,
given by stars, neighbours,
passports, plastic cards
there isn’t so much more
to give, to take, but
silence, but company of strangers.

If we have homes,
crests of rose-harp
and half-sarcastic maple,
cliff and burren shorn of all
but colonial signpost to mark,
what need we ferryboats?

If we have titles,
embossments made in tusk towers
to choose between a kindly construction
of worthless parchment transformation,
squeegee wash dish platters pushed,
are not we emboldened by them?

If we have capitals,
red brick lake places in hearty cheer,
celebration of frontiers unconquered,
empires deceased, imagined, decayed,
are ever-fleeting these joys as
passing stations, professorial notions?

If we have moments,
tenderness by Turkish candlelight,
the switching magnetics of traffic
din symphony, couch-bound war cries
for struggles ever-far afield,
what use is there in lifetimes?

And if we have long evenings,

spent in tradition revival of
intellects, lovers beyond ourselves

let them last,
echo.

2 New Poems

Building Starts

From peaks you take on EU crest
qualities, those pointillist patriot dances
when spoken as debt transactions
in back rows of designed Routemasters,
a sort of fevered plotting for the
young and crisp-thought set.

Meetings of trembled fingers,
nervous-pawing places we take between,
not physical as were the hanging vines,
not close as the slouching water runs,
but still sparking in that strange way
misfits do when burned-down dreaming.

Through bright flash sections, digits
we can’t wait for as once we did
with parchments and ink dabs for
signage timing, third string of
tin can phones for hollow speech,
it’s a scene of togethers beginning.

Cities on Fire

So I begin again, at Highgate’s steps
in placid form, stone storm shapely
as ever against the backdrop of
Marxian prose, summery nightsweat dew.

Draw out the plastic scrap change pieces,
the starring signposts of two-bit money
changer habit, grubby half-pence
sentiments clutched as wish-well piece.

Vanish the pleasantries of passion
past, supposition of royal garden
verandas, the cash-clang of Tesco
self-service booths: they make only echoes.

True, still, they burrow damp,
take a kind of parlor room’s
mystery as their fun,
forever smothering that reflected sunshine.

1 New Poem

Long-Sighted 

In the grandeur lost temporal acts,
the slow-swung balletic step of
star systems, blank canvass, nothing
of this will have matter,

it becomes the tatty fragments
of memory, sustaining spots of
sun when windows close on
four-poster beds of middle-age's
drifting, free-spent regret.

But it takes time to see
in such light and

Perhaps I needed someone to protect
protect me, covered clarity from rainwater
buckets couldn't conjure any kind
of mystic's ration to take

that sort of long view.

1 New Poem

A Finding

I dream of jet engine streams,

Mayflower propellers, anything

to cut across the azure separation

hewn of pushed-apart Pangaea ,

torn as pantheons once may

have done to us, I could imagine.

But it's not chisled tablet,

it lacks of permanence,

it spills out in thousand

directions of spattering code

in attempted conveyance, the kind

that come through in bored midnight.

And I'm sorry for even asking,

but could you find me in quilted wrap,

at the ditchside, and, indeed, infatuated?

1 New Poem

Wigilia Dinners

A muddy patch on Greyhound windows,
scraping clean in claret bath lacquer
mulling heat rash ruddy amongst
the stomach pain swirls inky acidic
markers as testament to what gets
left as unburned kindle, as untested steel,
as chalkboard theory, as textbook framework.

Embrace of asphalt arms, the model
sparkling monuments to welfare states past
which guide as gilded wire to weary dawns
forward in militia march of white faced
hours, leaking pavement shades in buckets
for trenchant timing up is the strongest
suit of cardstock to have handed.

Plastic cups, plates of precious silver,
like a mismatch of Wigilia and milk bar,
wash against each as sandshore rocks
the barring remove of aparting ocean;
as still as life mural painting, stand
up personable, but it’s not the
sort of supper you have until you’re

older, able to make sense.