I mention you in a question
posed by a journalistic poet,
a man with his own band
and space in a city filled
with endeavour and I believe
that you made me the person
I am today,
a little wary
a bit private
but open one hopes
to the grill and pleasant e-mail
that connects you and I
to where I am now.
Without you I know, it meant nothing.
without time in your bosom
nurturing me, even when
I raged against everything
It is cold out here in the April night…
for the Spring brings round
once again the thoughts
of bitter, distant feeling
and the detachment
from those I once held so dear.
In winter I can hold off the tales
of chilly formality by stoking
the fires of resentment,
my own poke in the gas filled grate
of which I would never
speak out loud.
In summer, the lazy days
in which the sun burns
down and turns the river bed
I gave up the drink
because I found
I was too good at it,
in the end no amount of Scotch
could take me down
but a small sniff of Brandy,
could truly screw my head apart
as I found one afternoon
in Oxford.
I could dive bomb with Dublin
water and sink the black
on the pool table all night long
but a sniff of Brandy would lead
to all sorts of problems.
Richard and I could drink Gin
whilst playing snooker, one night we barely
A dash of cinnamon
injures the air and the coal black
taste of Parsley, a green
and pleasant memory
of white sauce dancing,
now lays sterile, dead
upon the plate where mouldy
residue starts to grow, reach maturity,
the sweet lament of honey
and the poison tip of angry ochre
sweats in the glass jar, awaiting Time
and thyme again
to carry out the nefarious deed
of putrefying the steak, of leaving dissatisfaction
with the entrée and the mode of entry
for the serrated knife;
A maverick with moustache,
whiskers like crinkle cut oven chip
all oiled marvellously into shape
and the eccentricity
to see Time melt away, is still
a conformist if they don’t believe
in anarchy, that the rebel without
a cause and who only talks
of days when revolution can be painted,
is only in truth
neither individual or machine,
the Salvador Dalek
of the artistic world.
There is no insanity to this work,
it is no one of a kind
to find
Deposit fifty cents in English
and you will see the Queen
of New York strip, pull back the latch,
take in the scene and I promise
that the eyes will widen
and the legs will turn to jelly
for behind the peep show here
in the greatest city on Earth,
for about a minute,
you will feel royalty,
you my English friend will understand
the true meaning of being
the King of Times Square.
The Peep show, vaguely understood,
randomly implicit, silently mistaken,
I reach out for driftwood
splintered and damp but at least buoyant
a life preserver
in place of the straight
talking jacket,
splintered, fractured driftwood
as torn as me, as breakable
in this tempest sea,
I’m breaking apart as the water pulls me under
and I can feel the suffocating nausea rise
as the sea lurches, tossing
me hope,
breaking my spirit in a matter of waves,
the waves that wash down my throat,
that I spit out bone by bone,
that I cannot, like an old ancient King,
I have no idea who lives
underneath the beard,
I haven’t seen their face
for a generation,
a third of their life,
I haven’t had the pleasure
of getting to see the craggy lines appear
on fermenting grey skin
except underneath the eyes
which have become sterile,
magnified and indifferent
to everything besides love;
but what need is there of love
when you are hiding
the kiss beneath a mop of underside hair
that keeps your chin warm
in winter.
In amongst the cackles,
the small wheezes that sound
like someone learning how to play
the saxophone,
buoyed by codeine
agitated by symbolism
and wracked with the fury
of an inward tempest,
I found an excitement
that could not be displaced
that would not lay still
and somehow I knew
upon this April morning,
cold and damp, fitful and feverish,
that my head, fit to explode
like an unwanted atom bomb
lost in transportation,
I knew I had an idea…
I gave in
Hunched over a Maths textbook,
not filling in Algebra equations,
refusing to bow down to going beyond
angles as they at least
were useful when playing pool
against Andy Bell in many
a Bicester public house,
the cover of the book
instead a hive of activity
in reprinting lyrics from memory
and my own tentative steps,
laborious, protracted and the topic
of conversation between headmaster
and pupil, between careers advisor and
stubborn boy who didn’t want
to anything but write, act and produce