LOYALTY TO THE EMPEROR

Through the wooden slats
I watch a flower fallen
Out of a concrete vase

She dances topless in Tokyo
Jiving to another culture

Naked, below the neck
Were all the same -
I film her Geisha movement

The grave markers flicker
I translate fast food for Roshi
See the treat of war in a tabloid
Blowing past a Sushi place

Space race, Nuclear
Human Race...we reach for a state
Where flesh is permanent as
A silk painting done by the people

XMAS MUSIC

Silver tinsel on your brow
Gold Tinsel on your shroud
Oh Lord resurrect the choir
From your magisterial chair

And yet I find
The saddest music
Is the duodenum of
The french Horn -
Its spittle like a silver thread

VIETNAM

To John Lennon

"In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs"

Father flushes
His fleshy cheeks like a camel
Big rebel, he’s burning my sacred
Beatles canon!
BOOM (SONIC BOOM)
There goes a jet

I fight through presidential
Ticker-tape to an armoured
Golf caddy – Wow, Mrs Nixon
Great body - Can I have this dance
I sense mad ants in your negligee
Sifting through rivulets of sweat

"Ooh she loves you yeah yeah"

And the stodgy electorate
Side-stepped the debate
With the tailored stiffs of New York
All singing "Obldee-obldaa"

While army body bags fill up
On the runway
All Winter and all Fall

THE TAROT OF FORMULA ONE

Beyond good and evil
The majesty of motor oil
A spiritual carbaretor

Humming and running
Running and humming;

I know When I see
The shimmering track
God is a fine-tuned V8

Revving to infinity
Powered by the breaths
Of a thousand believers

WRONG NUMBER

It was the 60's
And I was depressed
On the booze so
I dialed up some sunshine

Quite randomly
Australia
No, New Zealand, North
Island

'Hello my names
George Meredith and Im
A caller from England.'
Few put the phone down
Back then when International
Meant something
A reaching out of hands.

I was an ambassador
With exotic vowels
A Gulliver with
News from another
Made up island of royal
Aintree hats

'We rear Turkeys the size
Of Shetland ponies here
And I am a Town Crier of Baker Street
My Mum sings baritone
In an Essex quartet...'

Yet even when I
Said I was a BBC reporter
Related to Robin Hood
They never admitted they
Were all MI5 and originally the
Backing group for The Beatles.

SKIRMISHES OF AFFECTION
(BETWEEN CONSENTING ADULTS)

Our relationship
Like a Van Gogh
Painting smeared
With breakfast
And broken crockery

I fit into you
Like a bayonet
You envelop me like a web

I squeese oranges from your mouth
We will swallow the pips

HOW TO SHAKE A HAND

Peel the hand peel the petal see
A Universe in reflective glasses

Democracy in the palm of your hand
Strippers air-brushed on planes

And children running from huts
Of palm-leaves. (An assertive thanks)

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Beauty in
The inner line of your kiss
Ugliness in a shut eye
Inspiration in your white beads
Of sweat

Beauty in your ruined tight feet
Wonder in the worried bullet hole
And the phantasamagoria
Of your spilled guts

THE WARRIOR

I am the warrior
Of the future,
I use effective
Face products

I garrison an old
Nescafe coffee machine

At the appropriate moment
I drop the latest names
Into conversation

When the boss arrives
My eyebrows lock into
Questioning mode,
My words are sparse
My hair gelled

***

Heros drive fast
Cut corners -
I reject plastic cups
For metal, replace peaceful
Negotiations with full force

I eject, reload,
Bring to bear
A platoon of fat fingers
To blur intelligently
Over my Apple-Mac

I retype the name,
Then delete the file
Permanently
Of a minor country
I've never heard of

THOMAS COOK MEETS
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE

Circling in the desert
Kicking up dust, my
Constituents watch mirages
Of Playstation and lust

I offer a commentary
To a slave that isn't there
Five more in shackles to
Scarborough Fair, a thousand
More to Barbary Fair

VIEWS

The trees trespass
Over the manicured hillside
Spread themselves
Too sporadic to recolonise

I eat olive pate

I who came from the soil
And bought an acre for song
Search the hills
With range-finder eyes

I see the blue flash of the car

Behind me a house with an
Extention I built, leans to.
The gravel drive is undisturbed.

A young Merlin calling betrays
Itself. A lapwing distracts it -
The deeds to the house flutter
On the table

I finish the olive pate
Wipe away the crumbs;

I think of her body
Curled into the moor
Half curled into the past,
Her blue eyes turning brown

SEE

Flowers open in majesty
Some in the cracks
Of pavements are crushed
Before the Sun

Th Sun is out of its depth
In its tiny solar system
It rises
And declines

Everyday the same

Yet I caught glimmers
Of its open eyed optimism
The way it ripened fruit
One beam at a time and
Made people relax;

I think I see
What it really means

GOT TO BE SUPPORTIVE
OF THIS SKIN

I'd vote for the party
With the most flawless
Ivory complexion

I see a smile on a glass

I put steroids on
Push a menagerie
Of actors
Back into their cage
I go to work

On a bad day Im a
Mannkin dressed in ointment
A biker without his
Machine leathers

Yet I love my form -
I caress it each day
Trying to forget the smile
Borrowed from the Sun

24/7 OF KALI

Were slap bang
In the age of Kali
I have machine assistance

I put strange things
In my mouth which
I can't pronounce.

My personal name
Is exactly the same as yours
Yet TV spins who I am.

I nearly forgot I have a
Strange notion of Soul -

Almost caught sight of it once
Naked, alone, standing
Before my mirror

HEALED WITH INK

I take my medicine
From a buttressed shelf
Of Classics -
Historical risk takers -
Herrick, Auden, Hazlitt.

I relax
Until my pen moves.
I once again feel brave

If I communicate honestly
I can access that tower of resources -
Plus my invisible reactor
Of raw un-processed thoughts

IN STORAGE

My Lifes in cardboard
Storage - I never let it out
I water the dry roots,
School and tax reports -
Crumpled paper everywhere

Like tumbleweed
I pass through
Turn the tiny key
On dresses and
Ill-fitting shoes

Flatpacked emotions
Collectons of hollow heads,
Their interesting eyes
Follow me around

I've beome a wraith.
My body comes and goes

Once I broke a photo
And a treasured vase - I hollered
Then stam...stammered
Beating the metal panels

I box and compress memories
Rehearse the dark grammar
Of storing things up

...Before locking them away
In the dark.

CHILDHOOD & WAR

The red branches of the tree hide
Priests, collaborators, cops and robbers.
Through the lattice of leaves we see
A crop of painted landmines

The squire-general decorated
Three times receives a tank
(Idolising its iron snout)
In France later it sneezed
And blew away half a village

In a pock-marked school
The young bloods memorise
Algebra, Beowulf, Latin classics
But dream of fixing bayonets.

The vicar gets interrupted
Mid-blessing, by more deaths;
He polishes up our shells

I bravely refuse to collude
With the war effort but
Outside of my class, drop the lore
Of shrapnel and live ammunition

Instead I single-handedly re-enact
Classic battles with the Red Devils,
Thumping a football into their net.

DESIRES

I have a stained glass mouth
The eyes of a commander
Whose hand shakes
On the glass

My desires disrobe
Each night and fight
For one of your looks.

Your sighing
Turns me over

Your sighing
Turns me over
I am a needle and puncture my desires
Like a leaf turning over
I fall, for an eternity
Threaded to a strand of your hair

THE DROWNING

Silver tongued waterfall
Loosens a hair shirt -

Liquidised fun of
Fallen Autumn leaves -

To shake on a shelf
Of sand and dirt

The tree’s colours
Drizzle down
On a cup of rocks

I love you
Carved in the whirlpool
(Summer’s vocabulary)
Where you went down
To the bottom

But never came up

CANUT

Monsters;
Familiars
Licking your face

Dignitaries
Representatives
Men made of straw

They type immaculately
At 60wpm
About how high
The waves are allowed
To rise
Before the king

And how many times they fall

VIOLINS

In the dream-time
Of her body
Surrounded by her long yellow
Hair he drew on her
A violin and a lion

He cut it deep -
The notes were little
Drops of blood

Her warm smile ran into
The secret place

Men traced music to describe it

A BRIEF TOUCH

After seven weeks
Out of touch with reality
He only wanted a brief
Flirt with coffee,
A chat on the stair

His unfinished book
Weighed him down
(It so happens about
Florentine sexual politics)

He knocked on the door
Offered caramel glances.
He soon received deep
Kisses of flesh in an apartment
Of glass steel shutters

***

The sunset lights a cigarette
- Inserted into the big
Jaw of the moon

***

The cigarette falls.

***

Here on page three he
Has a gondola rising falling
As a lace curtain moves
Stately, in a cinematic reel.

The book is dog-eared
The pages leap out of order
Eyeliner ruined as his
Hands rub onion skins
Into her skin

As she uses her nails
He comes messily.

***

After a fourth cigarette
He picks up the pages
From her bed as dawn
Breaks over a pool of blood

He later wrote
"So we played it light
Shared a passage or two
It was grist for the coffee mill
And every book benefits
From a violent ending"