There was this film, right?

There was this film, right?

 

And, I only just remember it.

Except, a thing stuck like boxes.

Dark ones, black hole deep

and sheer metal sides and steep

and polished so hard they gleam,

you can’t dig fingernails in those,

however sharply you’re filed.

I might’ve dreamt it, my age

right? If so, I claim those boxes

for me. He’s stuck inside, worse,

he cannot see if up is down

like when you’ve dived so deep

plunged, you pull strokes to drown:

when what’s forward is reverse

they’ll be calling for my hearse

because the water is thickening,

forms in a dense, inky sphere

of false surface while you hang,

panic, strike out and punch in

until all hope becomes sickening.

Well off topic, so, deep breaths

to catch my thoughts soon and

the hero trapped, battle scarred,

he’s pulling himself up or down,

fighting insurmountable odds,

every inch gained of ground

leaves him panting, all Gods

having long left him for dead.

But he’ll try his strength instead

on those vacuum frozen hinges,

he’s testing every sweaty ounce

of muscle, every fibre stretched,

every prayer he’s left is fetched

from deep within his sceptic soul,

you see it all in his grainy gaze,

he’ll plant trust in anything now.

And in the third act, it gives.

Or at least that’s how I recall it,

this hatch swings wide, wide open

onto space; from his face all trace

of triumph gone, put in his place,

framed by expert lensmanship

as all our faces sag with shock

at just box within box within box.

What We Have We Hold

What We Have We Hold

 

Look, it isn't always fine,

as seconds tick towards full time,

once a team’s been molded,

and sculpted into formation,

but she’s well on top of it.

Hooks a finger and her rallying cry

at his occasional shanked balls

fired into the air, ‘out’, she cries,

and won’t subscribe to do or die.

Fall quickly back in catenaccio,

to cool hot heads then softly blow

into whistle, rests to take on fluid.

A strategic withdrawal, to assess

positions, tests her waters,

dips toe, which ways work best?

Examine close the state of play

as she’s looking under the hood,

to change tactics with expert eyes.

Shoots victory streamers, they fly

over in a sticky ticker tape parade.

Blow up, come down the tunnel

for a final bow and drum roll:

because what we have we hold.

First Flakes

First Flakes

 

On that evening, those first flakes fell.

Fingers formed frost. Perhaps she bites,

chews it over or swallows it whole.

On that evening, those first drops on skin.

Fragile. Faint felt. Soft, he hardly notices,

washes all over or brushes it off.

On that evening, those first snows fleck.

Blood orange burnt. Smelts his thin coat,

zips it tighter or disrobes cast-offs.

On that evening, her lake first thickened.

Storm sands swirled. Maybe she settles

slim in her slumbers or broad in rage.

Come this morning, first frozen shave.

Buttered razor beneath chin and lip,

all slippery ice and drifting grip,

falling fluid drips. Possibly it congeals,

forms forward trails or backwards wake

to that evening where fell first flakes.

Chasing Sunsets

 Chasing Sunsets

 

After lifetime's voting for rich idle slobs,

mandating disgust for free thinking yobs,

applauding vacuum antics of a slack-jawed

air-head Queen of Tarts, until upon burial,

their vicars blocked arterial roads instead,

you’d think they’d rest and be thankful

for getting exactly what they got given.

Instead, perusing any number of car lots,

to buy stinking tinpot VW Camper Vans

which Dobson is more than happy to sell,

in order they might chase their sunsets.

Him thinking, it’s all a bit picturesque,

isn’t it? That, ever since time began,

they flocked to cities, leaving behind land

now carved up, hung, drawn, quartered

into industrial portions on pie charts.

Trim hedges round four-squared boxes

baptized ‘Dunroamin’ and ‘Ittledo’,

then slop flat flip-flopped feet abroad

with one less dead horse to flog,

happily shit in someone else’s bog.

Wiped with indelible ignorant streaks,

a piss-blistered, red-eyed sky churns

above filthy planet that rages; she burns.

Queues leave hot shoe shuffle footsteps,

imprints of idle thoughts, deeds, breath,

because they’ve always wanted to travel,

haven’t they? No hard bristled brushing

will scrape a million stains from porcelain,

it’s our lifetime’s ambition, our goal,

to flock before sunset’s sharks in shoals

of babbling blobfish. Keeping ticked lists;

diary writing sprains shuffling wrists

then pose upon that same flaccid shore,

where a million million posed before.

Here’s Dobson whistling, handing out keys

to turn some idling motors over.

They’re setting off in a sunset search

to overlook foregone four-leaf clovers,

listening in mono to other writer’s tunes

and overcooking other writer’s books,

to watch somebody else’s rivers flow.

Shoot him dead with supercilious ammo

that triggers deepest sorrow. He can’t know

where Princess Diana once parked her arse

on a bench by Taj Mahal and laughed.

Uncomplaining, for it scans good verse,

will set to with weeping guitar, rehearse;

she later comes to love in passion’s nest,

kills all wanderlust between her breasts,

travels deep within his thoughts to rest.

Is It Better to Arrive?

Is It Better to Arrive?

 

The traveller said, ‘is anyone there?’

laying her soul before me bare,

telling me I must visit New Zealand,

broadens my mind, travel, obviously.

I’ve nothing much against the idea,

the place looks a bit like Scotland.

Some lakes, some mountains, a geyser,

so I grunted yes, just to tease her.

 

She would scatter mosaic snaps

in fans, all those careless overlaps,

shaggy dog eared. A dealt hand of cards

in a game of chance, or Tarot, perhaps

suggests life. But they’re on computer:

printing kills the trees she flies above.

Look, there’s nothing ringing any bells

amongst blurred colours and pixels.

 

I’m sort of smiling as she’s talking

monuments, attractions, hill walking,

flicking and swiping at her screen,

sponsors an exhausting endless stream

of appeal to my nodding spinning-top,

but I am not. Drifted dark materials,

studied words I’ve strummed or feel

to me seem somehow just as real.

 

She journeys to some antique land,

and seeks for life in barren sand,

in traveller’s cheques wraps all her plans

and gaudy-coloured packages.

I could ask, is it better to arrive,

than travel well amid life’s wreckage?

But her face grins boundless and bare

as I’m cracking stone smiles of despair.

Ninny's Tomb

Ninny’s Tomb

 

 

Those groundlings are quite watchful,

see he has, inside thick rock cranium,

a thespian’s mind they’ll one day find

concealed backstage at Ninny’s Tomb.

A troupe of sobbing strollers on sods

gathered round shoulder by shoulder,

mourn sad passing of tin foiled soldier.

Reedy paper lips, busy licking off kisses

blown by all those buried in his playhouse;

thin stretched skin is molding skintight

against his wintery threadbare bald skull;

march hairs turned tables and took flight.

Lion heart, squatting in a director’s chair

of bandy canvas with his splashed name

across its back, in terror fears no attack

within his bunker on breeze block stage;

he’s scanning the script upon that page.

Why, man, he could play all and any part,

finds out moonshine, finds out moonshine,

for he talks a good piece, he assures us,

makes loud monstrous voice of little trust,

uses bloody rouge, costumes his truer face

in actor’s slap. ad-libbing comes easy

from behind tin megaphones. He’s barking

orders, blocking out the action, embarking

on a one act morality play that become five,

but a very good play, and a merry, he roars

most obscenely, then most courageously

will he sport the custard coloured beard:

but look; there are things in his comedy

that will never please and extempore,

where props provided him a looking glass

and he’s become enamoured of an ass.

Imagining all the world’s a critic in review,

gets out of hand, until there are no hands

left, and across the lands the trumpet blew:

acting that could make audiences swoon,

until he’ll bury you all at Ninny’s Tomb.

 

You Don’t Come Back

You Don’t Come Back

 

Tried looking back, it always recedes,

and when he was young, he received

upon closing off her gritty bakelite set,

some sepia pictures sucked inwards

to become one white dot that blinked

then sunk. Or did it? So easy to forget.

Some small liquids seep from burette,

dripping recursive judgement’s light,

spotlight there, in black and white

your windmilling traveller, lost in time.

With passage, as we so often do,

he opened those same doors for you,

suggested you walk through them;

together to stand a fighting chance,

that it could be. It could be anything,

unconditional and that wedding ring;

some years ahead could joy still bring

and perhaps he saw you quickly glance.

But any mortar they crushed long ago,

to grind his peppers in twisting mills

until only specks fell from this world,

into vortices and maelstroms hurled,

so dizzy there amongst time’s draughts

you’d die, clinging to that ruined raft

for dear life. What’s ahead lay lines,

black striations leading to other times,

but each other bisects and intersects,

converging towards infinity of regret.

Call him back. That highwire hitchhiker

on threads that stretch across time’s loom.

You knew him. Almost since a womb

disgorged its bloody package into light,

day’s drawing curtains foretold the night.

You could call again; where’s the point?

Nothing left there of what once was,

just an eternity of perhaps and because,

a likeness only, a facsimile on black:

when you leave, you don’t come back.

He Shuffles in His Wizard’s Hat

 He Shuffles in His Wizard’s Hat

 

I expect his slippers are just visible

beneath a maroon cloak, festooned

with stars and half-moons, those ones

drawn ever-so-quickly like he was taught

when small, how to scrawl five points

and he never even has to lift his pen.

Then again, he might use ‘Spirograph’,

‘Etcha Sketch’, something even further past.

Just visible, picture it; the purple cloak

and poking out in cones, like steam irons,

soft slipper shuffles. He’s a long beard

scribbled in HB grey or maybe 2B

or not; he could use a bit of white fleck

here or there; crayoned twigs off trees

become very magic wands to correct

mistakes: he’s good with Tippex.

Drawn pointing telescopes at night,

wobbly lines, rubbings out, paper scores,

smudges and thumb prints, it’s not right,

he’s gone over and over it, but flawed,

the first line didn’t quite meet its maker

and ink all over pockets of his purple robe.

On newsprint, no parchment, no papyrus;

he squints to see, twists lens, adjusts,

then spotted, it sits in badly drawn hands,

squarks and all wizards now commands;

he may have drawn a bloody Harry Potter

for all the sense it makes, have planned

this as a month of slippering Dumbledore.  

In the next frame? His telescope put away

back in its box, smiling enthroned he’s sat,

right in closing this and closing that,

because he shuffles in his Wizard’s hat.

Of Course She Misses, Miss

Of Course She Misses, Miss

 

 

Asteroids missing this planet by fractions

are not repellent: wouldn’t you say

there’s some sort of mutual attraction?

Because, when moons shine across bays,

searching with pale light so imperceptibly,

at God knows what monstrous velocity,

they cling to Mother Earth, skins to custard,

crave warm milk to make hard flesh soft.

I clocked how your fettered breasts heaved,

that time it was final, when you had to leave,

lips picket fenced against signs of grief

so tight that they felt like splintered pine.

Clutched them, double d's so bold in press,

as you pushed farewells against my chest.

Mothing, from viridescent moonlight flit,

three second swimmer, in forgetful orbit,

leaving behind all those surplus voices,

people who served up several courses,

to quench with lime a raging thirst,

or redundant did they leave there first?

A pool seldom used, once promiscuous,

where now pigeon down soft scatters

to carpet frail unbroken meniscus;

billing, cooing, parrying words thrust,

mutter distant places and wanderlust,

and never missing what was never lost.

But look, your soldiers just for sport,

tied a musket beneath your ample chest.

You feel metal tug each teasing breath,

would welcome any galloping highwayman.

to hard trigger there below them comes,

yet strive as you might, stretch all you can,

it remains beyond your sweaty thumbs,

missing by a fraction. What’s done, is done,

between green oceans we will never stare,

look back at what once was seldom there

in unborrowed cups of sugared neighbour.

It is more likely that this planet prays,

because, I’d say, it is she who is straying

into paths of asteroids and ignorant bliss:

knowing that of course she misses, miss.

And May Your Angels Version Two

 And May Your Angels Version Two

 

I will split open my heart

and use its blood for ink;

watch fast flooding thoughts it thinks,

writes both our names in crimson pink

as I’m guessing, well, we’re next to useless

in a tangled-up dictionary somewhere,

look here without is kissing clue,

and may your Angels version two.

 

Rip off flesh in paper pricked perforations,

cocktail sticks with pencil sharpened tips,

ones that once speared dish pitted olives

from Mount Olive brought by doves

above receding floods, well, because

we’re peeling, falling in flaps from love’s ceiling

as wallpaper paste forgets it’s glue,

and may your Angels version two.

 

Offer me your liver for a sponge,

I’ll take it, let it soak up years of waste,

days we made haste to suck up the taste

of beige meals, plentiful off-yellow wines;

swallow so much cut-price booze and grin.

never making spring, or much of anything.

We’ll find it absorbing if we do,

and may your Angels version two.

 

Listen: I’ll give you my smile;

passing by to pass me yours,

scan neatly now, because, of course

we’re subordinate and dependent clause.

All we have throated, all these lost days,

long winters follow just one summer haze,

I still can see a love that’s true,

so may your Angels rise with you.