2 New Poems

Clean Corduroy

White shirt pressed,

steaming, wish to

disguise, fracturing:

there is slight literalism

to your skin shade,

slight hanging hesitance

to your one of work,

dressing scissor slices,

but you don't hang in

ribbons and bows,

not nearly, not nearly.

But I fail one to judge,

taking drubbings from

temperance,

taking illusion from

coloured glass,

taking freedom from

sallow smiles,

but, at least,

pressed, cleaned.

Toi, Tu Pars

Like Americanized Chinese,

Japanese-to-English back translation,

stage management, shuffled decks,

hiding in velvet curtain calls,

slight of hand,

when we're gone as air,

in light reflection,

half-making of darkness,

but I'd make it up,

do something with

teacup ivory, with broken Cadbury

bars to mend,

and still it's heady,

cloud-covered, seeming

undefined, yet not shadowed,

speaking,

unheard echo, wooden.

1 New Poem

Jazzy

You were jazzy,

tempered drummer's pitter-patter

on Transatlantic window screen,

knocking to-and-fro on wingspan

bathing in blue cabin light, taking on

a carcinogenic haloing.

You were off-trilling,

when I something flourish

in primes of stolen letting,

leaving pound pints to their task,

the dancehalls in North of England.

You were balladeering,

when could have passed,

nothing more than train announcements'

placeless drawl atop bleached clatter.

When could not have been but

falling's immortal melody in lullaby:

you were.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.