The end of it

 A dense, turgid, close evening. Thick with metaphor and pent up long expected electricity punching the air.
As the downpour washes away memory, leaving nothing but doubt that this summer ever existed.
And one bruised, over ripe, peach in the bowl.

Supermodel

 

I've met many super models in my time. Each and every one was super I am sure.
Save one.
Who didn't want to do the coke thing in the Cow
but sat outside
wooly hatted
talking about trying to write
one autumn evening.

It was a long time ago but
I can remember every stitch in her green hat
and her friendliness

The only time I had something in common
with a supermodel
a supermodel who was happy
to talk about
not being a supermodel

happy to talk about doubt.

Yellow lines

Waiting

in stolen cars engine running

on yellow lines

gas syphoned from ambulances

attending the car crash of her life

sleepless

on cocaine and amphetamines

white lines

stolen from dealers and pharmacies

while she trawled medical websites

for conditions

to embelish her needs

and lies

and litter her love songs

sung

from the beds of the brutal men she craved

to me waiting

in stolen cars engine running

on yellow lines

Roller Coaster.

And sometimes once voiced
apology becomes futile and pointless
understanding is all
what will be will be

nothing will break our hearts
something might mend them

the steep learning curves
of your roller coaster are
thrilling, quite frightening
and very, very new.

I went up to the roof in the rain
picked a passion fruit flower from the vine
laid it before you, an apology.
It sits unwanted on the table now.

I'll put it in water
just in case.

Demons

I can give you some of my strength each day
knowing that, like blood, I will make more at night
watching you sleep free, deep and motionless
wrapped in the courage to keep your demons at bay.

Do not take all of my strength in one day
you might as well slash my throat.
Add one more
to your list of demons.

Borth. The end of it.

Be quick my aching feet
and rid this place of me
flat matt black smear of sullen land
wedged between rugged beauty
and liquid gun metal sea

the only road a stair rod of leaden hopelessness
finialled with village namesigns
umbilical from way in
giving life to a way out
that veers off, set square true
between graph paper fields of
itchy footed mobile homes
rooted in their own unhaphazard nightmares.
Towards a horizon beckoning relief

Borth beach slate grey
skid mark on the unwashed underpants of Wales
caught between a hard place
and unforgiving sea
grey upon grey upon grey upon grey
populated by innocent children, whom, having seen no better
assume that this is what life is and
gaggles of Whistler's Mothers;
arrangements of grey on black.

the tides are bullied in

hang around like a bored teenage
goth dreaming of Whitby
on his last family holiday ordeal...

then race away with glee

Of all the beauty of this Principality
what brings me here to this
to triage at the waiting room of romantic health tests
sitting, beach benched, uncandyflossed
as you walk out into the limp bara lafwr mor.

Watching and willing you to keep going
Knowing the prognosis to be terminal.

Knowing that I no longer want you in my life
nor me in this unhappy place.

In the time of Coronavirus.

She passes the window each dayPre-Raphaelite hair new penny bright catching the sun
catching my eye.
In this strange time of isolation
she is my only constant
when once it might have been

the morning ferry on the Dart,
the night-bus on Chepstow or church-bells.
she ticks away the days day in day out
heels, like halyards on idle masts, clicking on cobbles
I do not watch for her
I simply sit writing at the window that she passes
and as she passes
tick off another day happy in her constancy.

I do not know her and for that reason can imagine,
invent a life and circumstances
watching her walking in the rain
talking on a hidden telephone,
(she has an American accent),
Laughing and happy

oblivious to the drenching of her hair
perhaps to a lover caught elsewhere, planning a reunion,
a parent in New York, Agent in L.A.
or a comedienne in St Louis
practising new material for want of a live audience
Maybe there is no phone at all
she is an actress learning lines for a show that may never go on
or a schizophrenic happy in her own company

I do not know her name
I shall not give her a name of my making.
In naming something a sense of ownership sets in;
I could no more name her than name
a wild palomino or the salmon that did not rise
or the raindrops on the window.

She does not notice me
I am too old to be of any interest or threat
like a piece of street furniture, or a bicycle
chained to a railing, slowly losing it's component parts.
I am invisible and free
free to count her daily passing
marvelling at her loyalty
happy to have this constant reminder of time and place.

I will leave this house soon
and return to my home not far away
but not close enough to be on her daily route.
Perhaps I will catch sight of new penny bright hair
on Portobello Road, clumsily smile,  remember fondly,
lock-down in the time of Coronavirus.

Graveside phantosmia

 

Imagined scents, 
spring magnolia walks
missed birthdays
vanilla
wet dog after rainy walks
pine needles and orange of lost christmasses
bicycle oil
antiseptic cream
playdo, paint and glue
summer gardens
caged tigers
autumn woods

that a child, dancing, scattering confetti on her mothers grave
makes real.

Stay.

Based on childhood experience
if I love you you will leave
if I hate you you will stay

by making you believe I hate you
whilst loving you
I hope you will stay

to protect me from the man
who would follow you
should you leave

Laundry.

She asked: 'Do you have anything dark to wash?'
I could not admit to my longings
but brought down some history
that might benefit from 60 degrees.

She is asleep now as I empty the machine
drape history on radiators
dark things are still dark

clean but dark

She is asleep now

lit.

Portobello fog.

Its foggy in Portobello
the dealers are getting quite lost
they can't find their way to E&O
they are selling their wares at cost
I bought a gram for a plastic fiver
then sold it on to a young skip diver
who sold it on to a mate
who sold it on to a mate
then a mate of a mate of a mate of a mate
who eventually snorted the lot.
Without consideration for rhyme.

Now the mate of a mate of a mate of a mate
of a mate of a mate of a mate
is fucking pissed off at having bought a gram of petrol infused talc
and nothing rhymes with that.

Beauty demands nothing.

The beauty of the interweb
is that
ordinary men like me
in dying
may watch videos of
brilliance taken early
by the genius
it harbours
demanding everything destructive

to prove a point.

The beauty of the interweb
is that
ordinary men like me
in dying
may pass comment on
brilliance taken early
by the genius
it harbours
demanding everything destructive

to prove a point

The beauty of mankind
is that
to prove a point
brilliance is quantified by
brightness
not by longevity
nor by hits on youtube
beauty demands nothing.

Alphabet rain.

Today I burned my poems
on a bonfire of my own vanities
words sent skywards
on vortices of their own hot air's making

Some caught in nearby trees
others falling upon the Westway
the majority fly skyward
taunting a million empyrean chimps

shakespearing
at their monkeyboards.

imagine abstract condensing
within cumulus
then falling Burroughs-like
as alphabet rain
puddling nonsensically in foreign fields

Or circling vultureishly
over a poem's carcass

A barristers sock.

Sitting in the kitchen
underneath the clock
polishing silver with
a barristers sock.




It is not made of silk
nor is it made of satin
I've no idea what it is
the labels writ in Latin.

Citing habeas corpus
weeping into legal hose
Shouting: "This is cruelty,
as everybody knows.
 .
Her lordship muttered sternly
"Sedebat in lecto cat.
Just polish the bloody fishknives
Sic biscuittus disintegrat".

CHRISTMAS GREASINGS.

Pig fat on the turkey
goose fat on the spuds
suet in the mince pies
brandy butter on the puds
lard on the sausages
bacon on the lard
butter in the stuffing
butter on the chard
cream on the yule log
cream on the lot
and grandma's full of baileys
octogenarian drunken sot

Brandy in pater
port and lemon in my mum
and kinky cousin Tarquin
injecting vodka up his bum
Dinner now partaken
napkins mashed and soiled
things going very smoothly thanks
now that every-ones well oiled.

On Death.

Death is a punctuation mark. A full stop.
Death states the obvious. A full stop.
The full stop defines nothing, it is merely a printers device.
Let us not dwell on punctuation, on the full stop
but let us celebrate that which precedes it.
Celebrate the life.

Memory has no punctuation.
No full stop.

Dreaming of tigers. Daddy what's it like to die?

Daddy what's it like to grow old and die?

It is like going to see the tigers.

Imagine it is a lovely sunny day and you say Daddy I want to see the tigers.

We get into the car and drive to the zoo and you say Daddy I want to see the tigers.

We get our tickets, you are half price and you say Daddy I want to see the tigers.

Daddy I want to see the tigers.

I tell you that the tigers are at the other side of the zoo but we will get to them eventually.

But on the way we see giraffes and eland
springboks and hippos
chimpanzees and wallabys
sad bears.

And you forget about the tigers.

We see seals and penguins
aardvarks and zebras
macaws and owls.

And you forget about the tigers.

In the insect house a butterfly lands on your arm momentarily and you forget about the tigers.

We see wolves and rabbits
dogfish and catfish
gorillas
ants.

And then we see the tigers and the tigers see us, they have been waiting.
You smile and yawn.

It is a lovely day so we go to sit in the park nearby
lie on our backs looking up at the sky
searching for animal shapes in the clouds.

We close our eyes and drift off to sleep

dreaming of tigers.

Regarding the Killer clown craze, I first posted this in 2009

THE SECRETS OF MAGIC

Things started getting out of hand when the dog got run down in the street out side our window. She had watched it happen and when I got in from work she was standing there in tears. I held her for a while then took her to bed.

I’d first seen her in Stanley Park one afternoon when a bunch of us were sitting around with guitars, playing whatever came into our heads and generally fooling about. A number of kids had congregated to catch the mood and catch the sun, she sat away from the others under the shade of a tree; long thick hair the color of new pennies burning against almost white skin. She wore a green summer dress and red Converse.

I knew she was there but not really there until Gus came along in a daze, stood among us and announced Kurt Cobain was dead. For real! Shot himself in the head and was dead! I looked at her then, alone under that tree; tears running black from her eyeliner. I told myself she needed comfort only really it was me who needed her. So I went to her and held her. She sobbed into my white t-shirt.

We practically stayed like that for the rest of the day, talking about Kurt and singing his songs. Then somebody played ‘In Memory of a Free Festival’ on his boom box and after that the only thing to do was go home or someplace else.

She came back to my place.

We ate pizza and listened to Nirvana CD’s while she cried some more. She laughed when I told her she looked like a clown with her make-up running. We kissed before she left me knowing I would see her again.

Soon we were living together and making plans. Sex wasn’t that great but I put that down to anything I could think of except the truth. I wasn’t going anywhere near the truth back then.

After the dog I started to find more ways to make her cry so I could comfort her. During the day I would make up sad stories to tell her at night. And I would buy her eyeliner and mascara, the cheap stuff that ran, and encourage her to use it.
But I should never have told her about the clown.
.
They found her on the sidewalk, crumpled and broken, except for her face, which, undamaged by the 30 foot fall from the window, she’d made up like a clown’s. Bright red mouth – I’d never known her to wear lipstick - and thick black weep lines running from her eyes. She had cropped her hair. Gelled it so it stood up like a fright wig.

Just like Bepo the clown who at my 8th birthday party led me into the cellar to show me the secrets of magic.

Memory

Memory

Memory will go; this is what life is about, the future relies on the past and the past relies on memory and as memory diminishes so the future becomes less…less what, I’ve forgotten.

How I got to Judy’s house I cannot remember. I was 18 and fucked on amphetamines dope and alcohol and looking for a bed. I turned up with a bottle of scotch and a hold- all.
She had a terraced house, a husband in prison, a young daughter and a drawer full of drugs. Oh! Yeah she had rats in an aquarium. We drank the whiskey, tried many sorts of her dope and some of her liquid LSD and laughed a lot and laughed a lot more and then she showed me the stairs to my room before showing me her bed: she said you can go up there or stay down here…I was 18, fucked on amphetamines, dope, alcohol, LSD, the pheromones of a middle aged woman and the scent of fear from caged rats. I chose her bed. Less steps to climb. We eventually sublet my room.

We sublet my room to a fat single mother whose baby I often mistook for a pig whilst melting into the soft furnishings on paranoid trips.

For a lot of that time I did not know whether I was toothpaste or cornice moldings or both.

Judy had admirers who would come round and cook her crap meals without knowing that we were shagging in the downstairs loo and laughing and then laughing about that. 35 years later I can I don’t blame her.

She had a Mini clubman, green, British racing green. Fuck... I had to go. The husband was coming out of prison. I could not (would not) fight. We went for a picnic on cleeve hill as some sort of goodbye thing. The child Rosie was with us as we lay under the elephant trees and talked of what might be or might have been. The beech trees were monstrous with bark like grannies elbows and she told me she loved me through a gap in her teeth. I was closer to her daughter’s age than hers.

I went into the woods for a piss, as I stood micturating against a tree I sensed something and ducked; a sock full of nuts bolts nails and screws clouted into the tree just where my head should have been. I managed to wrestle the weapon from Judy’s grasp and force her to the ground. Needless to say she was loud.

Subdued she seemed pleased to miss. I asked her what she had intended and she told me that she wanted to kill me and then write obscenities over my body… She opened her bag, it was full of lipsticks… I cannot remember how this ended. It is true but I cannot remember… I’m alive so she didn’t kill me.

She said she didn’t want me to leave her.

Her husband had been imprisoned for stealing among other things underwear from washing lines. When he was arrested he was wearing it. He had curly blonde hair and a heroin habit. It was 1973 and David Bowie said everything was possible. But I didn’t think a ménage a trios with a middle aged mum and a cross dressing junkie was anything like probable let alone possible.

Judy is 70 now…

Gruntle.

It is morning almost one
I reach out for it
fingers fumbling 
first in a satsuma of haiku
then in my glass of false tooth
my gruntle is gone.

It was there last night
I remember distinctly
smiling fondly at a childhood memory
before removing it
and dousing my thoughts
with the light.

I search the world but 
everything I find
convinces me that
I'm disgruntled.



 
 
 

gruntle. v. 1938, in gruntled "pleased, satisfied," a back-formation from disgruntled. The original verb (early 15c.) meant "to utter a little or low grunt."