Letter to an errant muse

The power you have over men
That power that affects me too
Can give no power o'er your sen
Your beauty can't protect you.

The hold you have on other hearts
Can never hold the heart within
Though you might glower, spit and smart
It will not shield Eros' sweet pin.

You can deny
Say there's no rush
You'll try and find another one
But then why lie
I've seen you blush
You're not fooling anyone.

Jogging partners

I get these moments when
Folk want to measure and won't pretend
And when they find I won't contend
They scoff and call me bats
And I say friend
Let's not offend
We all must find our track
I'm on the mend
And in the end
You'll find I don't race rats
I jog round the bend
And up dead ends
And it's more fun it fact
To run against dead men.

I dreamt the house aflame

When I awoke my eyes were full of flame

The house around me was a phoenix

And I was dreaming, a dream that wakes you.

From Sparta with all warriors slain

In emptied halls I watched torches

Watched one torch with my heart

Jumping at each gust

In each obscurity.

Screaming to the runner

Set it down

Set it down

Set it down on the dry heather, the parched gorse and sedge

Set it down

So it may teach and I may learn

Set it down

Fool, it runs swifter than you.

I gathered marbles in the Menalaion

Flaming marbles

And watched them burn through my hand

Felt like the other guy who stayed in

Looking through the window

With Armstrong and Aldrin.

Looking through high regency windows

The sound of cowbells, cars and marraccas

Surrounded by Tuxedos and bolts of cloth

Loki enters with a silver platter, burnt

“Is that Old Bond St.?” I ask

“Refreshments?”

Blackened leather apron, thick Hellenic beard

The tailor drags his gammy leg and hunch

Flip-top pocket watch and tape

Measuring my chains

“So light” I say “I've never worn any so light”

And float.

Ear to an oyster shell

High in the Atcama

I set a circle of campfires

Each in a mound

And from the centre speak

In Italian, today

"Cosa ti piacerebbe fare per oggi"
Fresh roast black coffee

Curved shoulders falling forward

I can't save myself from hanging

On these words.

She smiles like she knows what you're doing next summer.

Roaring like an orchestra, like the circus is in town

We gather staring till our orange faces stretch like drums

Broad-shouldered, leaping engorged, hair free
Pan's troupe pipe a raucous feast in glade of light

All bow and shy, even with our backs turned

We feel the forceful presence of the blaze.

Sun blind into the blazing furnace

The silhouettes of men pounding iron poles

At it's heart

And sparks fly
Like Sheffield in days gone by

Poles, then hands, redden and sag

Then the rump melts, then the rest.

Steelmen softening to pools of dribbling slag.

Settled on a glowing bed
Calm as candles in an empty church

I heard a whisper

Late in the day in the outdoor air, from a sofa

In need of tender and close enough to breathe on

The embers had fallen like tea leaves

A map of silk faced charcoal roads

And piebald scars, I heard confess in whispered guess

The spot to crowd hot ash to light with breath

That which remains, to gauge log or branch

To aid surviving heat, that yet might thrive

And dance, wick and char, smoke gets in your eyes.

Smoke gets in your eyes and then you see,

If it will make green twigs spit

Where to leave and let the flame run free

When fire calms

And calls you close enough to breathe.

It is light and warmth, food

And all of art and science

The house was a phoenix

And I awoke, it felt

In Sparta, without fear

Of fire.

The sunny days

The sunny days
They slip away.
They slip away
To winter grey
And rain that brings
A grave dismay.

You're almost perfect

I know nothing but your beauty, your grace

Like a pink Pescara marble pillar

In visions was Galathea released

And you could be a cold blooded killer.

You're almost perfect.

For sure they'll be no tears over this

No complications when the football's on

No vengeful face turn scorn on sorry kiss

No callous laughing when the moment's wrong.

No “we did not dance to my favourite song”

No grounding bumps, back to reality

No fear of secrets hidden all along

No blue confusion of intimacy.

I know nothing but your beauty, your grace

Nested so remote, I doubt we'll ever meet

Any abstract trope or shade will freely trace

Pure hope, like fresh primed canvas, incomplete

You're almost perfect.

Oh I'd ruin it if we met for real

You never disappoint, almost perfect

You're ideal.

You must know love well

My love was not enough for you
Or in truth
You were so like magic
I never thought you could be true
In theatre it's called tragic
My love did not arrive on cue.

I hid elements of my affection
From my conscience, safe
In a forest of judgements and young bravado
Useless
To try and hide a heart from you
Pocketed it as you left
When I thought it was still by that bush
Pocketed it as you left
College
The way you lose school friends
And when we met again
It was not adventure, not the same.

II.

Since you've had my heart
You never served it on a plate
Or used it as a hook
Play with it, like a cat or stoat
Never treated it a joke.
You never stoked its flame
Or teased it to uncertain hell
You let it breathe.
And that taught me
Love
That you must know love well.

All I know

All I know
Is as I grow
What I know
I know too slow.

And even when the going's fine
Just one percent is knowing
The rest's remembering in time.

Autumn poem

Autumn upon us it's time
To set a match to kinderling
Rest by the hot press of silk light
Watch sparks race up the flue
With youthful dreams they too
Might be stars.

It washes the city flat and sick
November's clouded light
Paints every shade with muddied brush
I wish I'd sown all the feathers to my wings
Wish I had stitched in August
In earnest.

Radiators are not the hearth
Fan heaters not the fire
Guide my taper to the driest tinder
And watch it catch in flickers
A curved lick from a knot that starts to jet
I will let it smoke
Let it weave wisps to plumes
And then blow
Call forth a genie,
Wild feet snapping twigs in dance
Grant me warmth, comfort and light to see by
Cocooned from autumn in it's grey
In all it's forms of colourful decay.

Getting burned never put me off
Holidays with blackened fingers
Sores from embers to remind me of my folly
I loved playing with fire when young

A hazy memory of me
In my sister's ill-fitting dungarees
Laying a fire as a sphere of straw with wood in
Like an oven
I loved playing with fire when young.

This impulse to gather wood and pile it
An odd source of happiness, primordial reward
Clockwork foresight, dyed into my Id
I love to gather wood
And can think of but one purpose
To set fires in autumn and wish.

Gulls

There's always a storm down the Thames these days
Constant as traffic, a carousel of gull calls
Over the tiles, the roofs, rusted swinging hinges
Even in spring blue sky, days since rainfall
There must always be a storm in the Thames.

They eat the pigeons, the gulls do
With their ired eye and their wronged screech
I've seen them, like you may have too
Pigeons left the field for Parrakeets.

My mother, looking at the clouds would mutter
When thigh high young her hand I reached for
There's storm at Chatham, over Thanet
They fly down to London to find harbor
And Pigeons are softer than Ganets.

There must be a storm out to sea
Pigeons have moved on from grass seed
And the Gulls have moved on from fish
Pecking boxes of K.F.C
Avians scavenging trash
It is, as Darwinian does
These days we breed Vultures from Doves.

I heard of civil war where Starlings breed
Now they travel with but a clutch of friends
Sparrows survive, some return to the trees
Someone won five thousand pounds in the end.

There's a storm in the Thames, gulls are in flight
The wooden lense of tradition has said
Of people who look on red sky at night
Only shepherds of the Atlantic
Go soundly to bed, and Grandma will tell
That is was all fields, before Haber-Bosch
These days there's always a storm in the Wash.

There's always a storm down the Thames
And other legends
The widow in Richmond, who in loving grief
Released a pair of green Parrakeets
And park by park they fought for twenty years
Till they shocked us one scarfed schooled winter
Green against grey and the naked trees of the heath
A flock of sqwaking green Parrakeets.

Doves become Vultures, Parrots replace Doves
Darwin says it what it takes to find love
Grandma says the Lord works in mysterious ways
And there's always a storm in the Thames these days.