BROTHERS

Weedy yet stoical
Runts, hard men, clowns (one eyed
Patient twins, separated from birth)
As a child thy inspired great affection -
The Proletariat, the great unwashed
(Yes, I giggled and squirmed)

Ten brothers warped
Enslaved, neglected, desensitised
Trapped inside two domes of leather -
Vegetating - forgetting
The rough unpredictable air

On bank holidays I realise the tragedy
Of what I've been missing.
I untie them, let them out -

Once again, blindly, we hanker
For a sense of the roots of things...

The life
Hidden under tarmac,
The frosted keys on the path
The textuality of loam, gravel
The seductive mud-holes
And the big sloppy kiss of the sun.

BUILDING IN EGYPT

Death is big business here
Luxor spills into a carpark
(Karnak much bigger than Tescos)

I read the cartouche
Where I put the money in the slot -
The coke bottle
Has E numbers

At the local building site
The white punk picks
Up the foreman for work.
Experiments in concrete
Reguarly appear in town

Someone buys a lot of
Heritage.

Here air-conditioning
KIcks in to scrubs the air.
A scarab rolls its ball
Through the gap in my window -
Its almost three storeys tall
Like Godzilla or King Kong.

In bed in a dirty t-shirt
I read La Monde,
Walled in by heat while
Descendents of Tutankhamen
Pitch in concerning a bill

The food supply is drying up here
But Im sitting on gold

New tombs,
Despite the Boris Karlof posters
Have been dug up complete
With dead things to sell

MY GOD

Your world wide web and
Gilt books can't locate me
But trees come close touching
My hem. I'm like a ghost.
I'm shorter than Bobbie Shaftoe

I don't smoke.

SILHOUETTE

I thought of you last Sunday
Tilting on your chair
Face into the firelight
I wished I was with you there.

But its funny how it seems
The change of time
Comes pensively
Ecstatically.
A hint of glow on the nape of your hair,
This line of my lover's care.