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.

Something I said to bloke on stage

Don't step to me with that
Gotta be black to rap crap
That abject chat is a trap
That forefathers fought to free from
But you jumping straight back.

Erecting same walls of Melanin
Like the spirit of slave masters
Still leaves deep within

You divide and categorise
By the colour of man's skin
Brother that ain't brain cells
That's brain prison.

Untame Ode to Ali Cole

Moonbeam loom your weft and woof

Does leave me a breathless beetroot youth

The softest quilt, your sticky silk

Is all cocooning of my heart that melts.

In truth I haven't felt this way

Since I dived velvet chocolate caramel

And swam intoxicated days

Till my teeth sank into nougat quays

And mermaids, raised me on Patchouli breeze

With magic made me divine wind.

Oh moonbeam loom, let me begin again.

At Ariadne's knee she learned

To weave the equinox's light

Into silver sheets and pearls

That hold souls warm and tight.

Oh moonbeam loom

Let me dye just one thread

Or know

I'd rather die instead.

I gaze though gauzes in my bed

No light to see by in your stead

But stumble blind in garden sheds

By scent alone to roses led

With searching fingers grasp their heads

And push a dozen to my nose

But their touch is not of your ilk

As brick to Sapphire is

As water is to milk.

A rose cannot bind me like your silk.

Ode to Ali Cole

There is a story to be told
About the glory of Ali Cole
But not a story I can tell
So wide the sea, so deep the well.

For I can gaze into the heavens
But cannot count the stars
They name me but a heathen
In the hunt of Diana.

Though my eye is full of moon
But one side I see
All its markings and its runes
Remain a mystery.

I can but stand as priests have done
Marvel at the moon and sun
As they set my night and day
In ways that I can't fathom.

I can but stand as priests and pray
In humble wonder of all she be
A glory far beyond assay
Pray, enlightenment she'll bestow on me.

Note to a bird on a train

Thank you
You gave me a pen
To write
A rare gem
From a ship in the night.

Shoulders of giants

Where cords of civilisation are moored

The brittle guy ropes of our tree house world

I see men of law and plump senators

Laying blocks and digging foundation holes

New barriers rising high while I watch

Above where the arm stops, at the seam stitch.

There the claims of Captains of industry

Lead lines of blind leaders like Pavlov's bell

“All the silver I land belongs to me”

They cry so proud from high on the lapel.

Laying barbed wire which they freshly forge

Electrifying the tromba, notch and gorge

Dragging paper up the back by the cart

Reams in blocks yards thick on seams daily grow

Miles upon miles of statutes and torts

To form walls, tall and strong like Jerrico

At the entrances they make gates like Gates

Would charge fees to all who climb the breastplate.

It's about time we weren't all so compliant

They'll privatise the shoulders of giants.

Do Mssrs Musk, Zuckerberg, Venter, Brin

Feel that they could have achieved anything

Had they not in diligence caught coat tales

The thick braid between gold buttons scaled.

Licence royalties owed to Edison

Newton, Bacon, Faraday and whoever

Was the Babylonian that pressed on

Wet clay with stones way back in Nineveh.

Illiterate, I don't think they'd have one percent of the clients

They're all reliant

On the shoulders of giants.

This deft suspension above the deep shit

This tree house society of all us

Exists high in the sky, every bit

Borne on shoulders of countless Colossus.

Without the lookout post of libraries

We'll fall from the Eden of these high trees.

Make mine a Molotov, get defiant

They want privatise shoulders of giants.

Excercise

I spent some time in thought about it all
If
I was a climber, unvertiginous
Oh if
I loved to wander waterfalls and cliffs
If only
I tended to flowers idigneous
If only I
Couldn't live in the City's artifice
If only ideas
Freed I from these strictures and earthly bonds
If only ideas purr
Like a calm cat, watchful, ready, at peace
If only ideas purchase
Houses full bread, pillows, songs and friends
If ony ideas purchase say
Dreams of peace, light, empires and monuments
If only ideas' purchase save us
From the vagaries of love and our end
Only if ideas' purchase saves us now
Will I keep the habour afore of the prow.

Some piece of confusion

Wish she'd had enough to love
In her heart
That she weren't so hurt
You know.
Didn't start from gentle touch
So far apart, yet
I glimpse light from pillboxes
From just a brush
I think we'd fit like stencils
And alter charts,
My fire never quieted
For us.

So late in summer - sonnet

Speak less of desire so late in summer

When heat swaddles tarmac, rising from roots

Flowers in finery seduce bees dumb

And sun kisses sugar into green fruits.

The hay's to be brought in, the grass is long

The seas are warm, tall corn has ripened ear

December born charm, think my heart unwrong

So late, speak less of desire my dear.

All life's adventure, so late in summer

So late waking, bees already in love

Strawberries from spring beds have set runners

Still dusk takes an age to draw close above

This season of slow days when geese look South
She was born, a Passion flower in her mouth.

Closed vowel

Why did love not open

We made move and prove

And even lose and open vowel

But love stayed closed

And now to find a rhyme

I am so oft defeated

Love, love, love

It must have stayed repeated.

So late in summer

Speak less of desire so late in summer

When heat swaddles tarmac, rising from roots

Flowers in their finery seduce bees dumb

And sun kisses sugar into green fruits.

The hay's to be brought in, the grass is long

The seas are warm, the corn has ripened ear

The collared doves coo soft in song

May born charm, think my heart unwrong

Talk less of desire my dear.

All life is adventure

So late in summer

So late waking, with bees already in love

When dusk takes an age to draw covers close

Geese look south

She was born of this season

Passionflower in her mouth.

Sick note for Tommy Bee's birthday

Oh marbled fleshed Adonis
Unadmonishable
So unearthly is your promise
It is immodest that I pretend
To frame such mind-bending glory
With a pen.

So stout of jaw and firm of hip
That artists track your every step
A truth I see that at your birth
The very fabric of aesthetics ripped
And all was lit across the earth
As glorious God let us see in you
Heroic new dimensions
Of beauty timeless true.

I have heard the name Tommy Bee
Sung in arias overseas
And whispered in hushed reverent tones
Gates, Obama seek to phone
Diaz, Delevigne writhe and sweat
Westwood (V) casts weekly thrones.

And scientists they wish to test
That muscled member world renowned as blessed
That thick undulating silken dick
That zestful lovers besotted lick
With heaving chest and heart so quick
They quest to taste the irreplacable
Lollipop of Hackney Wick.