EVER AFTER?

An angel from Heaven
Fell in love with me

I became (poor thing)
Its personal heresy

Its wings of amber
Turned to steel
And it fell

Far
Sliced everything
In its path
Breathing below

And it landed
At my boots
Bleeding with an
Iron lung

And I gave it
Mouth to mouth
To give it some
Life in our world

And the angel
Powered up, bright
And it looked at me

And it was Heaven

Not a permanet one
I explained, if it wanted o stay
For seventy ears
It knew it had to breathe
For itself
Pump blood
Stop fighting
And love

THE SOLUTION

There is much madness in the world.

What to do?

Just uncurl your lovely hair, make
Your feet naked - explore grass
That has never been touched

THE RIVAL

The old optician says
Theres nothing wrong with me
Yet I am continually sleeping

I walk out into the niht air and
Go to a priest of a rival religion
He calls a newly qualified
Psychiatrist
He puts me with a friend

No-one decides what to do

Later at night
When I dream of a nurse
Tickling me with a syringe
I slowly read that the optician,
Passed from the Doctor is now dead

Though I examine my cracked mirror
Read the small print, the exploded shards
Over my pince nez,
Clouding my qualifications...
I just can't see what I've done.

ROLES

The old optician says
Theres nothing wrong with me
Yet I am continually weeping
Into this crooked mirror

I walk out and
Go to a priest of a rival religion
He calls a newly qualified
Psychiatrist
He puts me in touch with a mouth

No-one really decides what to do

Later at night
When I dream of a nurse
Tickling me with a syringe
The optician calls again
Or rather now its an assistant...

"Your appointment on Saturday is cancelled -
That Dolce Gabani frame you rammed
Into.... his.....esteemed head (weeping)....
....such a promising career."

And I slowly glean that the optician,
Newly qualified, passed from expert
Doctor to doctor, always wearing that
Inane smile, is now lying in state

And though I examine my cracked mirror
Read sheets with diminishing capitols and
The haze of small print,
I just can't see what I've done.

AT DOLLAND AND AITCHINSON'S
WE ARE ALONE

No soul
At the opticians -
Everyone looks into
Your infinity with
Total clarity

All are polite and
Well trained

Contraptions
Let in light
The rainbow
Is organised

Yet theres no
Reading of the soul

THE ORIGINALS

I hear a helicoptor
And think it is secret track
On my Bjork album

I love
People who surprise and
astonish me so much
anything may originate from them

CRUCIFY ME

Handles pick me up roughly
With hooks
You fertilise me with tears
Men are not really useful
Until they're cracked

And broken - I am a pointed shard
Operated on by a woman
With imaginative head
And nails

She crucifies me
She does it gently -
My oesophagus opens up
To share the note of pain

We harmonise together, to bring closer
Everything worth being together

CITIZEN 2040

The botox injection
Makes me appear well -
My soul, purchased yesterday
Plugs in at the eyes
Registers a kind of beauty

I rotate -
See the prophets in the windows
Enjoy a moment of prosthetic sex -
The shells they deal with
Are perfect; Beside the highway
Flies are smeared on windshields
The cracked corneas of humans,
Wheels spin.

'Eat your ginseng cornflakes'
Flashed on hoardings
'New head', 'New heart';
The world rushes by
Faster than I can explain,
Anything ten minutes from the
Present moment is old.

THE INTEGRITY OF THE CLOTH

An ugly rumour
In the dog collar

A word in the mouth
Multiplied
To feed thousands

They walked mountains
For the biography
For the hagiography

I sit down
Split myself in two
Do exactly as I am told

ON WHY THESE POEMS
LACK OOPH...

Just so tired
Batteries
Low
Mouth dry
Tight as an adder
Curled up
In leaves
Images fading
From my bionic LED eye

THE SLIDE

So broken and stiff
I wont let the side
Down or slide away (Aaaah)

Straining on tip toes
Marching on a parade of
Tabulated bones
Giving them rainbow
marrows and
Silver linings and

Chip chop

Ten seconds to say prayers
Before the bloody booby trap
Goes off

NEWSPAPER MAN

The deadline
Is monolithic as stonehenge

Veins confuse the grain
Of my crabbed handwriting
A new gash in my head
Leaks into the headline,
My fingers delicate as
Pointed quills

I am candid
With sharp comments
Yet when I spill the beans
Its always tragedy

Tied to my space at night
The keyboard glows, self-destructs
As I write myself to a stand-still -

I switch the light off
Let it all go loose, and see
Crawling between office blocks
A long entrail of a sentence
Speaking so powerfully it
Sucks saliva from my mouth

RAIN TALE

Rain rain go away...
As the rain had just eased up (a bit) I've just been out to sample the delights of Greggs & seen the funniest thing! Within our bus station the rain has concentrated so much that a futuristic fibreglass roof, previously flat, is now a big boil stretched and about to burst...(I actually noticed a big sticking plaster on it). ....This widening leak is now pi**ing onto a row of indoor telephone kiosks.

To top the wonder, two blokes in Council boiler-suits were running about with wheely bins trying to catch the waterfall and another trying to buff (?) the floor! Wow.

I give that four out of three for sheer comedy. Has anyone else had a comedy moments involving large spillages?

WORD-PEOPLE

Some people leak their
Emotions - slop them
All over the floor

When they 'emote'
We wade through a lake
A runnel of words

Others
With obsidian heads
Have flint mouths
And send forth sparks

Which those dry
From years of abuse
Run with

TO BJORK

You started tiny
A wind whistle...

Your dark eye a tiny
Geyser of love but hushed
Oh so quiet

Then you morphed perpendicular and shy
Playing in the slipstream of
Drum and bass -
A steam-train lap-dancing scenario

Taking you to London where you experimented
For a while, then jumped those shores
To find the wildness in your unexpected
Blip - home...

A heart swimming -
The earpiece of an alien torch singer
Alive, finely tuned, metamorphisising into

Sprouting strands - hair tentacles
Extruded from nipples that surround
International listeners, all plugged
Into your fabulous Fimbulvinter on MTV

Your aural polish highlighted
Haunting rythms, carcasses of tin,
I spot animals in the human beat-box
Then a turn of the console knob and
That fearsome drop of sound, a sickening drop
From a Mountain of witch air

All sucked into
Magic stereos - notes
Warmed by electronics in ice-amber

TARZAN GOES TO SCHOOL

Aaaah Aaaah Aaaaah
eeeeeh Eeeh
Difficult to speak

Aoooo Aoooo
My mouth is really only
For breathing and
Eating

Ugugoogoo
I'm getting decidedly horny now!

AaaaaaaaaaahAeiuAaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Lets go swing up to
That big old chestnut tree

Make love in the upper branches
Stick the alphabet on
My chest - make chimps

THE POET

An obsessed writer
A pain-staking assayer of words
Weighing lines, syllables
Assessing their worth.

He admires metrical skill, the
Beauty of assonance and consonance -
Equally at ease with Terza Rima or free
Verse - but knows a slip of the tongue
Will save many hours of tedious work.

POEM FOR A GREETING CARD

Love is the pool I bathe in -
The desert I die in

A mile of pack-ice and my
Good self bobbing underneath
Freezing my bo**ocks off
Looking for the air hole

Love is a concert by Black Lace
(Miming to a reel-to-reel tape)
A brand new kitchen with its
Swing bin formica and appliances

Love is something sweet by Chopin

Love is being lowered by a crane
Into a volcano and
Coming up with no breath no head
And burnt crispy shoulders

***

Love is Newcastle
Attacking the other goal
Or conceding yet another
Stupid avoidable penalty

Love is tears of Mercury
Modern, hot, poisonous and
Reflective…

Love is an eager dance a joined
Penetration and interpenetration,
Like Spaghetti Junction viewed
From outer space?...

Love is really BIG -
Bigger than anything
That can be put into words;

I'll try:- its.....

Bigger than Mont Blanc or a Bach canticle
Cleverer than a Peter Mandelson speech
More finely tuned than a Slazenger racquet
More confused than a Jeffrey archer novel
More teleologically and theologically correct
Than a Pope's Easter speech

Or (I saved the best till last)
It is exactly perfectly expressed
By that rebellious wisp of hair
Catching the light on your forehead

ROADWORKS ARE FASCIST v.2

I use the yellow hammer
The jack hammer on citizens
Brows; I am also the author
Of the cold pneumatic drill

Im the apex of Civilisation,
Of all your compact theories;

I come with vibrating plant
Sent by a silver hand to
Stutter into rubble
Incite a nation of millions
To break up their treasures
Their homely private plots -
Acquire sanity?

Tarmac negates affection,
The drama of graves, wires, bulbs
Household waste - but then were gone
And a thousand roads and bodies
Return to the same state as before

ROADWORKS ARE FASCIST

I use the yellow hammer
The jack hammer on citizens
Brows; I am also the author
Of the cold pneumatic drill

Im the apex of Civilisation,
Of all your theories;

I come with vibrating plant
Sent by an unseen hand
Stutter into rubble
Incite a nation of millions
To break up their space
Their homely private plots
To acquire mod-cons

Tarmac covers affection,
The drama of graves, wires, bulbs
And then Im gone and a thousand roads
Return to the same sane state as before -

Wistful
Melancholic
With a slightly improved air

THE COURT POET
(KILLS FOR INSPIRATION)

Turning up his eppalette
Prodding the souflee
Admiring the newly minted
Silhouette of Emperor Yang
On his coin, he lets it roll
Off the desk, across
Glazed blue/green tiles

Blurred like his eyes -
"Maybe today I'll
Knock up an alexandrine
On Her Majesty's favourite
Poodle or a sprig of
Deadly nightshade

Or maybe I'll spend it
In bed with No.52 and
Write about her"

DIETRICH

Your face lit by a text
Message, your throat
Warmed by a choker.
The granite placement
Of your love turning
A spoon in a muddy
Cup, stirring the dregs.

You said, catch as catch
Can, your face like broken
Pack ice punching
Needle warm eyes

I thought of you
Darning socks seventy summers
Ago, as I tilt my head
Up to the light
As the traffic roars past

Im no warmer yet
Standing in a bus que
In my cotton vest –
My love on a fly poster

Shining with her Dietrich bones
Highlighted in some pre-war advert,
Glowing in expert lighting
As tears flowing East
Stain me

MY MUSIC

I had the best of lessons
Abba, Sibelius, Grieg all
Fulfiled my childhood needs

Then, two years later
When I didn't particularly care
Bruckner's monolithic 'Double Zero'
A symphony with blank eyes and
A panzer division for a mouth
Introduced Brass...

Ranks and ranks of brass, the climactic
Moment, a mile long train
Of minims, crotchets,
Leaping off their tracks

FIRE POEM (FOR ASH) v.2

You are the fire
Encircling my heart,
The frond of flame
That ignites the morning
To wear Savanagh colours

You are the quiet
Glowing of ashes at night
Which my imagination
Feeds upon – and studies

Until your flesh is again
My pink home - I look
On with longing
At this captured picture-frame
Gathering ripe shadows.

BACK TO BASICS

The bone is an arch,
Always grinning at me.
Structurally superb,
Polished.

Its eyehole
Is an unused tunnel
A disused railway line
Taking me on to darker
Thoughts and memories

The cold bone is a serious
Mother-fucker

(The bone has a way
Of wringing the juice
Out of my conversation)

The sheep bone in the farmyard
They say, fed a family
For a week - Yet they died
In separate rooms.

The bone pointed to the sliver
Of a hollow moon, long after
The great cause had gone.

The bone in the finger
Compressed the gun
Expended the bullet

Some tongues called it murder
But others, born with
The same logic as the bone,
Merely cleansing.

THE WORD

The first packaging was the Word
Made like a planet of granite
Bare and unadorned

Pushed by the cosmos
A green/blue marble rolling in space
Vibrating,
Wooooooobbling

Eventually losing its virginity to Man
And absorbed into his evolution of
Tacky pictures, cave man sound

A generalised grunt becoming
Pleasure on the tongue, flowering
Into 'patience', 'love'
And the dark buds of 'weapon'

***

Song evolved downwards
Knew the hum of insects
Alongsaide acid lakes,
Miring us further into the world
Of speech, flame, law messages;

The soup of words,
24 hours of signifiers, emotions,
All disgorging via speakers into Babel
By the march.

***

But the triumvirate palace
Of throat, tongue, teeth
Lay intact - its harmony
Giving an exquisite meaning

As the old flowers of speech preserved
Young speech. We listen to

The well-tuned words of Auden
Holding silent angels up,
Reminding the world there are men
Who pirouette unsteady
Sentences of love as if gold-painted plates
Spinning beneath the Sun,

Who dare to open their throats
And make the depths luminous

LICK IT AND SEE

I fell in love with
A Swedish food technologist;
Testing her temperature
It was always right

We dressed up in hats
Kaftans and rubber gloves
Devoured lemon meringue
Licked our bellies at night

When we peeled off
Our clingfilm wraps,
Finished with our baps

We always cleaned up and
Q-tipped our crevasses
And dips, holes,and bellies
To contain the deadly E.coli
Lust had deposited there

COMPENSATION - v.2

Despite every precaution taken
And some rubber soled shoes
I have recently fallen off
the edge of the World.

My Friend says there was no discernable sign
Or notice by the Council -
Nothing positioned to warn me

Perhaps it was an uneven
Paving-stone or plastic tag -
By my own count I have broken
At the very least, my sternum, neck
And little finger

The blood just wont stop -
I am partially disembowelled

Now, if I can just
Get out of this Lake of Sulphor ,
With a change of fresh clothes
I’ll try for compensation

COMPENSATION

Despite every precaution taken
And some rubber soled shoes
I have recently fallen off
the edge of the World.

My Friend says there was no discernable sign
Or notice by the Council
No Health and Safety notice

Nothing positioned to warn me

It was obviously some uneven
Bit of uneven paving
Or plastic -
By my own count I have broken
My sternum, my neck
And my little finger

The blood it just wont stop

Now, if I can just
Get out of this hell hole
This Lake of Sulphor,
I’ll try and find a solicitor
And fight for some compo

DANCE DANCE DANCE

The floor is empty -
Part acid house with disco.
My drugged hush puppies
Slide into a trance

Badoom Badoom Badoom
The music asaults my six-pack;
Im a hair breadth away
From interstellar ecstasy

There may be a trace of
Shrapnel somewhere in my toes
But I take the growing applause
Wobble with the 45 -

And Im drunk on it -
Its free of all interpretations

Ram rod straight, twinkle eyed,
Im a dissolute Patrick Swayze,
Who women wink, grab by the hair
And swing their arms at.

BAGHDAD SUN

Theres a last sunset
On the roof
Making me feel old
My friends in the ditch
Are covered in flowers and
Panel-beaten gold

I'll come down to earth
In the morning
To finish this song

Of destruction of friends
And make repeated sense
Of the bomb when a young
Boy explodes

CREEP

You give me a link
To another world, click -

A portal cool as Star Trek,
Or as frightening
As Mordor

I click
And its a live execution
In an alien regime

I click at night
And the women's
Clothes fall off

Or manipulate you
In your backyard
Of Google Earth!

I talk to you
From clouds in my
2-D bedroom next to my
Pamela Anderson poster

I needed respect
But you ignored me

- I couldn't reach out

***

Click
Now I know the code
Of your DNA
Your dog's name and
What your husband whispers
To you at night!
I have the memory to do this
To reach out...

Do you know
I was once your star pupil?

That I worshipped
Your blackboard
Carried your books
Analysed the smell
Of your leather

(this wire primes it
Click)
You will know me
Tonight - click

Everything will be
Right Miss when I go live
When the camera is wild and

The big light of showbiz
Is on. There. Click ....(click)
You'l be so proud of me Miss.

NO WALLPAPER

On my widescreen
The world's a mess.
In shanty towns I see
Dirty water, warlorlds
Ninetenth century disease

No programmes
No borders, no wallpaper...

I struggle to connect.

JOHNNY FARTPANTS

I don't fart
I detonate

The rigging
Of my underwear

Creaks, shivers
Under the great strain

ADS

To meet some unsavoury silver pip
Sucking General in an armoured car
And survive the scandal,
To rewrite history
Through the lens of a cornflake,
To choke on a pretzel
And deliver a speech that
Is much greater than Kylie Minogue's

To soar in the Italian press
Supported by an ecumenical wings of
Your Benetton jumper

And know despite the quotes
Concernng 'Our wonderful boys'
We didn't need the world wars

We could have experienced
Our need to kill and
Disembowel through Playstation Three