It’s Roman, you know…

{ September 2, 2008 @ 12:20 am } · { Poetry }
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Double X

She
once had beige sandals.
A country dress, fitting in green.
Once had the smell of a candle
of herbs, never burnt, rarely seen.

She
once was a doll in a ballet
hair too short for her face.
Once had a gap in her memory,
three years, three more
won’t replace.

She
once wore too much blusher,
the next year refused to at all.
Instead wore an afghan-style jacket
and red knickers, started the calls.

She
once was as slim as a dancer,
and danced ‘till the papers took hold.
Once had brown hair and a piercing,
then once,
forgot all she was told.

She
once feared to run for a while,
once found her heart in the back row.

She
was cruel, as her hair grew out longer.

She
cut it, to show she could grow.

If success is a game…

{ August 4, 2008 @ 6:02 pm } · { Poetry }
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Codes

Where has it gone
the folly?

Dull inconsistencies awake
and blue smears
ink worn hands.
And all around are codes

quick jock rock leg
iron heavy spoon

All desperate
All discerning
that their
cut out paper pageants
are a triumph.

All of us,
fools

and slaves to
the word
success
when dreams
are more the option

and the small things
go unnoticed
in the cold light
of content.

The ragged days…

{ July 29, 2008 @ 4:38 pm } · { Poetry }
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Arum Maculatum

The cuckoo pints outside
your door
have already turned red.
And though it’s hot
I know
the summer breeze
is in a frenzy.
What we are not -
what we were,
it preys.

But every day
I walk, past
tattered wild strawberries
is another
that has yielded,
fruitless to the worry.

And did I know -
and do you know,
that it’s the girl
from Lausanne
who frightens me the most?

An involuntary expression…

{ May 26, 2008 @ 6:59 pm } · { Poetry }
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The Shrug

When talk’s of you, that movement there remains.

It’s happened twice in just as many days,

so now I think it’s constancy sustains

a feeling, that my heart-strung mind betrays.

You never were, and always will not be

the empty something of a young girl’s hope, 

who fought in blindness what she could not see

yet would have placed the world in what you wrote. 

And now, unkept, no part of you I own,

and never did, except that which you gave.

I have my abstract memory alone

to fill the gaps in us, who could not save.

Yet when your name is mentioned, there I find

that movement, speaking for my silent mind. 

From the other side of the alarm clock…

{ April 9, 2008 @ 10:58 am } · { Poetry }
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In my dream
the woman laughed and
called us monkeys.
It must have been
the way I clung to you.
For all I knew
was touch
and you were leaving,
sub-mind distilled
and thickened
into touch and
you and touch
and you were leaving.

Of course
it was ridiculous.
An undeveloped rêve
drag-end of waking.
Perhaps, because so
short and so untimed
a bitter coarseness
filled what was refined.

It was flash-fired
all the same.
No soft, bewildered
simmer
of the wholesome
midnight sleeper,
where places
change and faces
crack and stretch
into another.
No. This was you,
a certain I,
a room familiar
us – as sat on
one white wooden
chair.

The woman stared
from half her
silver car.
Her face was rubber
sleek brown haired
and comic
in its gape.
My lips were seared
with kissing
stinging still
and clung
as I was, she spoke.
Frank – a breaker
worthy of a child
she laughed and
called us monkeys.

Soon I woke,
enveloped in the
absence of your presence.

And you were just downstairs.

 

Time For A Change…

{ March 9, 2008 @ 7:49 pm } · { Poetry }
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 Dein Schweigen

 

biston_white_moth_on_dark.gif

 

 

Dein Schweigen machte meine Haare rot

your silence,

festered through

the night.

Starving fevered

active brain - 

a change a change

I cried

for shame

 

Dieses Schweigen machte meine Haare rot

what matter whose - 

the latter’s done.

The strands the victims

of my brain,

a change a change

it cried

but none

can serve to veil

a fractured thought;

sadistic butterflies

to name,

a metaphor

a metafear

a change a change

they called

the game,

Emotion’s pawn

in check-mate race,

a play,

the painted Pierrot 

face,

‘Bravo, Act Two!’

the dark encore

scene change scene change

crowd jeered

inane.

My thoughts

which flit have

tattered wings

they do not live

and yet they

rage.

Das Schweigen machte meine Haare rot.

Dein Schweigen

cried

a change a change.

Time doesn’t exist in the dark…

{ March 3, 2008 @ 9:23 pm } · { Poetry }
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thorns.jpg

 

 A Night Fragment

 

I could not see for darkness - 

but dark alone it was that trapped me,

to a fragment mind,

I’d fain leave - 

and body slack from use,

whole body struck by absence,

the doubts crept in. 

Invaded my still frame

like silent species of a

lesser evil,

beguiling-barbed

and armed with past

they voiced in less than words

the fear that clings you,

now and then.

And unweaving their thorned coils

found the rawest part

and squeezed.

 

To be free of their malice 

is to turn back time. 

Why girls go to the ladies in pairs…

{ February 10, 2008 @ 11:17 pm } · { Poetry }
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Junction 12

 

In the dingy station bathroom,

I watched the girls

share lipstick.

‘This colour’ – blonde one said - 

‘is matte, don’t go

too tight,

or you’ll be scraping

bits of fuschia

off your chin

’til home-time’.

‘Fuck that,’

the other, somewhere ‘tween

a readhead with

a bottle-wash of bronze 

- she looked the younger - 

‘Junction 12,

that pink is murder

in the dark. Those

streetlights ain’t

repaired,

and I’m not walking

services and back.

I’ll stick with gloss’.

‘It’s as you like,’

blonde shrugged.

‘Still think a man

wants slut up

Junction 12.’

‘They do, but more

page 3

than porn.’

They laughed,

a sound of life against 

the cold grey tiles.

‘Where’s Jen?’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘She’s not…’

“Nah. Least not yet.’

‘Not yet? She miss one?’

‘Yeah. Shit happens, huh?’

They sigh,

dim-flickered bathroom

filled with make-up click and clatter.

Then a zip,

then blonde

‘Still going home

to see your mam?’

‘Next week, poor bint.’

‘Still think you’re 

doing economics

down at UWE?’

‘Yeah’

‘Poor bint. Next year

you’ll need a new

excuse.’

‘Post-grad’

‘Good choice’.

Car wheels and

headlights paint the walls

pock-mark

the ceilings yellow.

‘Jack’ says bronze

‘1 sec, I need to blot.’

Swing-door-shrill,

and open.

See me lying, slumped

and shifting

to hard

puppet-master

jerks.

Toilet-paper rattle

swing-door-shrill and

thump

then closed.

‘’s a twitcher in there.’

‘Hmm?’

‘Behind the door’

‘Not one of Rob’s?’

‘Nah.’

‘Leave it then. They never

learn, eh?’

‘Nah.’

Synthetic swish of coats on hips.

‘That’s Jack again,

let’s go.’

‘Think they’ll have fixed that streetlight?’

‘Not a chance.’

Clipped heels flash past

the swing-door-shrill,

then louder creak

and thump.

The deadened grey-white tiles

ring a silence

to the pock-mark roof

and I…

The English Countryside is a Brass and Leather Smack.

{ January 29, 2008 @ 11:51 pm } · { Poetry }
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sunsetgeorgeinness.jpg

 

Horse Brass

A sudden flash of water

on the day-drab

country scene,

causes me to lower 

my eyes and think.

The canal I have 

not noticed,

perfect square

and arched brick bridges

speak of picturesque 

conformity

to sullen, landscape themes.

And how at odds

I worship it with

scorn; lavish

sun-filmed ‘miring eyes

upon this wasteland

of tradition.

This farm tarpaulin

draped, grey and glorious

world.

Now the sun

makes magic lanterns 

of the trees,

each flicker painting

little ochre scenes.

(The kind that hang

depressive and folorn

in man-rimed 

‘Queen’s Anatomies’ 

just beside the 

brass-and-leather 

smack, that history

shoots you from behind

the counter.)

But oh! That

flash of water in the fields,

that golden sepia

winter haze

that turns a stolid,

hated afternoon

into a light-strewn show,

that no pastoral

ever justiced.

For you must hate

this worn tradition English

to look towards

a field in

the first place.

That square and

jutting spire on the hill,

speaks of villages,

the kind of which

can lay below

the farmer’s only time

no more.

A savage change, 

the one which can 

replace

the stone-front shops

and tidy, inked-up 

ledgers,

with a Co-Op

and a Woolworths 

for the kids.

That world,

is now but oil

brushed clouds,

and heavy, silent

cattle, with the 

dark of time upon them.

And the day-drab

country play

desponds its lazy 

evening curtain

on the land.

The soften and glow

of sun to hearth

grants one more

blaze of

flooded-marshland beauty

unperceived and lilac

to the world.

And then the rays 

descend,

beyond that

hill perspective,

there to lodge

on unseen walls

of ‘Queen’s Anatomies’

and seep,

one more day gone

into the brass-and-leather

ochre of the past. 

A Gentler Pause…

{ January 11, 2008 @ 12:51 pm } · { Poetry }
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images.jpeg 

  

Nothing Else

 

Now I sit – alone.

And that bright, cold burn, 

in chest and throat

returns, as I think…

As I think and will not stop 

the dam once more,

with bastions of 

Word-distracting lines;

With characters of second-hand 

life stories.

That glittering, duel-heavy 

flood is through.

And you are in my gaze once more,

filling my sight.

So have I never been

eye to eye

with such un-worded meaning.

That trembling pause in,

That all important moment;

Moving, but not moving.

Still, for an instant

in place of such 

Significant raw humanity. 

As if a strange, pale

fluttering emotion

just met with flesh and blood

and is struck-still,

amazed by its own strength

against the weight;

And stares, astonished, scared,

adoring of the press which

does not fall,

for once.

But is held in perfect unison

of slender threads and

solid sinews.

All I saw were 

your eyes;

They filled

and mine, in answer

held that shivering, speaking gaze.

And there was nothing else,

for me, then…

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