Nonsense.

I went into my garden on
the last blue Moon
and found gnomes eating
waffles in the petunias;
they held clenched between
their toes several spoons
and shuvelled like gravellers
their tuck all peculiar.

Wiffleball bats
danced like flowers
and cursed at me
for lacking mental vigour;
my imagination, they held,
should be red devourer
with a dripping violence
and a hallucinating snigger.

These gnomes were perverse
as they ground all vile
against the wiffle-bat flowers
like imps drunk on lust:
their teeth were all spangley,
like piano teeth of crocodile,
and they guffawed aloud
like drunken gnomes must.

And in this confusion
I heard the kettle steam:
after the click,
the release of a cry.
If only this madness
were the kernel of a dream,
but I fear, dear reader,
this nonsense is mine.

Things fall apart.

for Chinua Achebe.

I sit in my obi
grinding my teeth,
handling my chin
sternly, firmly
as my wives people their huts.

They finally arrived:
the white devils,
the mad men.
They chant about a god
and his son -
he must have a wife, too.

They tell us our gods are false -
the Oracle, our chis,
Agbala, the earth goddess,
Amadiora, Ugwugwu, Evil Forest.

Slowly, they have destroyed us,
undermined us,
stolen from us
the minds of our children.

Our ancestors weep nightly
and the elders pray for them
to seek vengeance.

Inadvertently, things have fallen apart:
they have guns and iron horses.
They have disproved every tenet of our religion
and have replaced it
with their own,
which we cannot fathom.

The nine villages are fragments now.
The world, our world,
once so knowable
is alien to us.

They have cut through it,
through us,
through our lives.
Things fall apart.

There's always something new to say.

With each day,
write a poem:
there's always something new to say.

The old man in his
rubbery skin
and the child
blooming,

the aye-aye
with his fingers thin
and the proboscis monkey's
nose;

the black man
with his story thin
because his richness
he does not know.

The white man
with his heart of gold,
the Oriental
with his smile;
the gentleman
with his walking stick
and flâneur sins beguiled.

The sunflower with its
droopy head:
the yellow of its mouth;
it catches sunbeams,
communes with light;
faces the south.

The kittens in their basket.
The laundry in the corner.
The old folks sitting, twitching.
The order of disorder:

repeats itself like an old joke
that always somehow rings true.
There's always something new to say, see?
Paint it red, yellow, blue.

The all-knowing mind.

One of the tragedies of
the all-knowing mind
is that it knows all,
but soon forgets to know
what's most important
is that brief flicker:

it knows what to do
in young age,
it knows what to expect;
but it hasn't the foresight
of age's hindsight.

All that our future selves
scream back to us
is lost in our living;
the prisons of seconds
are completely segregated.

The all-knowing mind
says, 'yes, old man:
I know what to expect;
I know what to do;
I know in what manner to live'.

And then it blanks out
the voice of that experience
for the experience of immediacy.
That is, until, something causes us
to gasp, to inhale
until we almost
choke on breath:

in that moment of discovery,
we learn the precious hue of life,
and that slowly adds to
the all-knowing mind;
designs the all-seeing eye
that always references the horizon
and where it tips over.

Christmas tree.

Torn from the womb
of the pine stacks
that grow in poisonous rows,
you're enmeshed in
tortuous gauze.
Your stump is clamped
in the vice
of the stand
and you are spangled
with glittery shit
like a bedraggled whore.

If not for the children's eyes,
it would be almost
human rights abuse.

Get it whilst it's hot.

Get it whilst it's hot:
it tends to grow cold with age.
The blood ceases to flow;
the mind leaves blank the page.

The vessel is despised
because of its bearer's age:
the phallus wrinkled, lines
show weary is its gauge.

Get it whilst it's hot:
get her whilst she's keen.
Plough the field in spring
whilst Sun towards temperate leans.

The honey fills the pot
but eager is the tongue.
Get it whilst it's hot;
get it whilst you're young.

Racism.

Hatred of pigment,
of a person's country of origin,
is irrational:
we are all spilled from the same font;
coloured by the Sun and earth,
kissed by the stars.

All that's left is a fear of culture.
And a fear of culture is not diabolical:
to be diabolical, something must
twist the human.

A hatred of cuture is a mindlessness,
a lack of the human.
And so all that's left is a self-hate:
the hatred of the self.

Hate the misunderstandings in your soul,
and project them onto others.
Black faces glow with a knowing
because that is the colour of
your pitted soul of Pluto.

Old man.

Old man, you once pushed me;
now I push you.
Gazing into my pram face,
the fear of life;
staring at the back of your
wool-enveloped head,
the fear of death.

The dementia in your mind makes you infant-like;
smiling at whatever wonder it is you see.
The blanket across your knees
is like the snug clothing of baby.

I have fear, father.
I have fear.
I sometimes talk to you
and it seems you sometimes answer back

but only through the prison window of your eyes,
behind which an innocent man
pores through endless albums of memories.

Me, myself, and John Agard.

Part-caste, quarter-caste,
old bones cast a crumbled shadow.
We are African-caste, that mother-caste
never cast us away.
I am everywhere-caste,
everything-caste,
Earth-caste,
wriggling creatures from the Devonian-caste.

There is no half-caste,
no half-eyes nor half-shadows.
We are all human-caste, mind-caste
mettle-caste;
the black is the shadow of the face
in the portrait; the white
the light.
We build the same picture

that points to an African Garden of Eden
where sin was only the dream
of a pitiful serpent
and the nightmare
of a Christian foot
trampling pagan elysium.

Two girls.

I saw the most beautiful girl today:
that moment seemed trapped within a silence.
She sat across from me.
She had a comely face,
slightly masculine;
her lips, full
seemed pluck'd for the planting
of a kiss.
I didn't ask of her name.
And now she seems blown to the wind.

I saw another;
she pushed a bicycle and smiled at me.
She wore glasses, and seemed
the pinnacle of perfection:
shy and searching,
bold and shell-bound.

Marriage would be too good a cage
for so perfect a girl.
O! to either I would be so true!
To the latter I would crackle as logs,
warm her feet, ember-kiss her eyes.

They will make men happy.
They will make men mad.
They will remind them that beauty is fleeting;
and that paranoia will always haunt
the full-hearted flaunt
of their love.

The rapper.

Yo! This is an angry song!
I'm quite frustrated by the world
(or what I understand of it);
though, deep down, I'm a very warm person.

I love my mother,
though I'm quite ambivalent towards my father.
I suppose that's because he often worked away
when I was a child.
He did always put food on the table, though;
so I guess I respect him.

We interrupt this song briefly to bring you
the following information:
this is
an average rapper song.

I do declare: I am a rapper
(although the way these sharks maraud
us like Penguins,
you'd think we were wrappers).

Where I'm from, or the baby, or an ode to Jack Kerouac (and plants in general).

I was loosed from the womb in Brighton,
and that is where I sat, squat;
it seems that life longs to frighten
the sitter with perpetual rot.
One grows like a sunflower
but never has the time
to clip his roots in that hour
in which the dirt of other chimes.

To be raised in one place is like dying
in the midst of a thousand faces;
but to live in the rime of a pining
is to be killed by a thousand faces.
But, alas, we are grown in the soil
of the fortuity of our homes;
we grow then have fold our petals
in the lessening richness of that throne.

Somewhere, there lives a walking flower -
he lives not by the sea.
He walks 'pon each roving hour
in his longing melancholy.
But if he only knew the richness
of his wearied circumstance,
he would long to walk for ever -
that walking, talking plant.

Serious.

The moments in which we are serious
are perhaps the moments when we
are at our wisest,
when we see clearest;
but our best moments, perhaps,
are those in which we are
folly's children;
a mind unburdened by insight or claim
is free to dance -
the horse can paint its stable
and go a-running.
When I am serious,
I get my best ideas -
but only a man of playful,
unchained mind
can set them free into the world.

A case of aphorism.

Everything in life is arbitrary;
the only thing that is not arbitrary
is that there is life, and that we live.
Life is down to chance,
and chance plays by its own rules;
chance is never arbitrary.

He said to her:
'I would like to partake in the
human experience with you',
and she glimmered
like the tongue of a serpent
smelling words.

'My dear,' she said, 'everything is always
a case of aphorism with you,
isn't it?'
And with that, she slipped on the ring,
turned around,
and looked into his eyes.

'Yes, I will dance with you in this game;
I will stroke the world through your eyes,
whilst keeping mine as best as I can.'
She turned around and looked into the mirror.
He slipped 'round her neck the pearl necklace,
and kissed deeply of her neck.

She smiled ruefully, with coquetry,
like a feminist maid
in a high castle, playing with a book of contradictions.
The world is dancing like a ballroom,
and we are free to slip on our shoes and move
whenever the sound of music takes our fancy.

The stranger.

I am a stranger:
there is no home;
I roam, roam, roam -
no seat in Rome,
no earthly throne.
My home is where I was born,
forlorn, from where I want to be -
beside the sea, by the trees;
but that is not my home.
My home soon becomes lost to me.
The jungles of the Congo,
the forests of Nigeria,
the hills of Yorkshire or Devon,
or Hampstead Heath,
offer me no heaven, nor peace; no home:
I go wandering through the antiquity
of my forefathers' feet -
the women whom I meet
make me long for home.
I am a wind
passing over the landscape, over the hills,
kicking up the dust;
that aged crust
sinks, soon swallows all trace of me,
apart from the journey of my bones.

Enrich yuself.

Enrich yuself:
you take a tincture
of red earth
and 'ply it 'pon
yuself.
Get me?

You dig deeply
of your Mother Earth
and let her essence
get inside your nostrils;
the dirt is just another sibling:
disrespect can cause argument.

Enrich yuself:
you got to get that clay
on your fingertips.
It's like skin;
a second skin
that reminds you of your own.

Enrich yuself:
you got to strive.
Get me?
You got to survive:
be strong.
Pity is for the weak.

Enrich yuself:
you must raise up
or crush
your father.
To become a man,
you must consume

the bones of fresh fish,
break dem kola nut,
drink dem palm-wine.
Enrich yuself:
the heart of Nigeria,
the Gold Coast

and the Carribean
are different faces
of the same mother:
you spend your whole life
looking for her,
but she is everywhere.

These clouds tonight.

I've a feeling tonight,
and I don't know why,
that the clouds will open up
and cry;
it's been far too long
and far too dry:
I've a feeling tonight -
I'm not sure why -
that the clouds will open up
and cry.

I've a feeling tonight
that the sky is weak:
to break tonight is what it seeks;
its nature is to weary long
when tears are muted from its song.
I've a feeling tonight
that the sky will break;
I've a feeling it sleeps
when I'm wide awake.

Hands.

Hands are replicas of life –

are life:

they start out wrinkled and soft,

end wrinkled and soft;

show treachery, savagery, gentleness

of spirit and of flesh.

The fear of life is in them:

raise them,

and you will see blood pumping, but wrinkles

forming, and time rending,

and vigour upending;

that most malleable of body parts

can caress, strike fear in, bludgeon –

they really are unpredictable,

aren’t they?

The trumpeter.

All the shades of blue in creation
bled from his trumpet,
his fingers nursing them
into their fullest expression:
the tenor of those tones,
like little anchored feathers,
escaped with a weight
at once crushing
and at once full of a
beautiful serenity,
like an azure sky
gently stroking the land.

Martin played in the Kettledrum,
a small jazz bar in 1950s Brooklyn.
The Mississippi was on him
and in him, its dirty waters
bursting with the topaz potential
of the Delta,
where the river bled out into
a warm, and open sea
welcoming the oppressed like soft death.

He blew into the tube in that dark space
like a hoarse lion on a Prozac-lithium trip;
he reached into that brass organ
like the Oracle peering into a netherworld
of whining, flaring truth.
His playing painted the mood a deep navy
and an arm reached from the end of the trumpet,
splashing him in a patchwork of black and blue
violently, in an exchange of meat and bone.

All the luxury of jade and its resplendence,
all the depravity of easy aqua,
lives in the breath of his trumpet;
whores in the cobalt reflection of flurried notes
could be seen holding onto breathy poles;
young men crushed under a regime of unending
tiredness, death, inescape, cynicism, and helplessness
breathed out the blue crystals of life reworking itself.
Flashing from face to face, and back to Martin,
one could see the eager concentration of transition
being puffed up with warm and deliberate life.

Morocco.

The heat was sweltering:
the young boy had gone to Gibralta
with his father, and his friend.
It was enough to make one falter -
the Rock of Gibralta -
and the monkeys were thieving brigands.

There were caverns inside
deep as the Earth,
deep, as the Earth;
stalagmites and stalactites
descended like calcium limbs
in the making, without forms.

You can buy cheap cigarettes there -
in fact, anything that sweetens your fancy.
Perfumes, rum, sweets, electronics
(all at a reasonable price).
Apparently, the Spanish want it back.
Wouldn't that be nice?

The young boy was taken high -
high as the Rock would yield -
and he looked out through a viewfinder.
Like a hazy, lost world,
across the Mediterranean
he could see Morocco,

with its bazaars,
and boy prostitutes,
and trick-performing capuchins,
and high-standard hashish,
and its shanty shacks....
He bet it was a red dream in that heat.

Of course, the boy didn't really think that -
couldn't:
he thought merely:
'My! Isn't that beautiful!'
That'd make a neat screensaver
or a heavenly life-saver -
those mountains, and that sweeping shore.

Happiness.

Happiness.

The rain pitter-patters outside

onto the plastic-roofed conservatory.

It is warm in here.

Wounds gracefully close

like flower buds.

Knock, knock, knock:

in varying tones;

the music of the clouds

is by me.

It tells me that everything will be fine

and that each voice

is there to encourage.

I met a girl today

who talked to me about W. H. Auden

and wouldn't look me in the eyes

when she talked to me:

she seemed beautiful

and slightly tragic

but her beauty swallowed that.

I'm sitting here with nothing to do.

How glorious is such a thing?

I could do anything right now -

stand on a mountain or read some poetry.

If I've learnt anything,

it's that death isn't necessarily always dignified;

if anything,

it never is.

Like I once heard:

sometimes the Sun shines into our yards,

and sometimes we notice it 

and feel it warm on our backs

like a welcome hand

or the spirit of a sexless god;

but only the brave and beautiful

grab the sunshine by its lapels

and swing it into their lives.

Go to bed

and smile,

and read.

Make tomorrow glorious.

Promise never to look the horse in the mouth

unless you have to inspect its teeth.

And always complement it

on the pinkness of its tongue.

Colin.

He was a member of the National Front.
He marched in Nottingham in 1982.
He hated pakis, niggers, polacks,
Jamaicans, jews - he even hated
Scotsmen, Welshmen, and Irishmen.

He had a large and ugly skull,
dented like the bonnet of a poorly made
British car;
his jaw was simian and his head was bald
as a brass monkey's eye.

He wore Doc Martens, boot-cut dungarees,
a white tee-shirt, and a denim jacket
with a flaming eagle on its left side
to disguise the vacancy below his breast.

His name was Colin - not a typical
racist's name, I hear you muse.
He loved his father, he told himself.
He secretly wanted him dead;
he secretly wanted to sexually mutilate him.

He went home one day to have eggs and ham
when he saw he'd burnt his toast.
He didn't mind burnt toast, mind.
He sat down in his living room
and purred like a dead cat filtering through leaves.

He got on the blower to his mates.
All of them were busy doing ought,
so he just sat there and looked out
to grey streets and a grey sky,
and trees kind of pining for better air.

All of a sudden, his sister called him.
'I'm coming 'round,' she said.
'I want you to meet me new feller.'
At 2.33 pm, there was a rapping on the door.
He answered it, to be met by a
big, black fellow wearing a smile
and his sister beside him grinning.

'Hiya, Colin! Well, don't just stand there:
give your big sister a hug!'
They entered, and Colin went all black
as if he'd seen a ghost
or he'd been eating soot out of a sock.

They sat down. The man rested his hand on her leg.
'Guess what, babe: I'm pregnant.'
'That's brilliant, sis...' Colin said with bilious trepidation.
'We been goin' out fah a time, now, ya see.
I hear ya quite the little trouble maker, ay?'
Colin twisted out a smile that seemed to screech
from his maggot pit.
'Yeah. I am.'
'Well,' the man said, 'we'll see what we can do about dat!'

With that, the man rested his arm on Colin
and gave him a brotherly shake.
There were gonna be black babies running around!
There were gonna be white babies somewhere else!
There were gonna be coffee-coloured babies!
They would swim like the injustice
'plied by plantation owners upon the council estate.
They would share his blood,
and share the blood of the world.

A heavy boot settled on Colin's head.
His temple was left like a mole hill;
the recess had risen like a bubble of spit
and he slowly realised that his little black demons
had finally got him.
His little white angels laughed.
The pakis in chorus laughed.
The polacks laughed through their poverty.

And Colin suddenly started with a tiny laugh
as his small eyes rested singularly, unchangingly
on the small, pale dream of bigotry
that seemed embedded dead
in the invisible niche of the wall.

Venetian.

I met a girl all waxen wan
and I wanted to be her champion
so I asked her if I might subjoin
her person or her heart purloin
for a romp through delicate Venice streets,
to draw her near as venetian blind.

She drew her look with some askance
then broke at softness of my trance;
my eyes to wield the sickly heat
of a heart dark like coffee sweet.
I took fair lady by the arm,
and imagined the serene and lovely streets of Venice.

In whimsy of a wandering wish,
in kindling of an unmade kiss,
her fingertips began to glow;
dark pigmentation began to show.
And in moment's art of remedial will
my wonderlust received its pill.

There I stood in Italian realm
where East and West have sat at helm;
the architecture like intertwined desire,
the midday Sun like rippling spire.
I took the softness of her palm,
and walk'd her like Romance of Venice.

Through waterways, 'cross bridges, did we hop;
this darkling beauty and English fop.
The Ocularis, deep in Rome, and pantheon of Roman lore
look'd lustrously at courting's paw.
Merrily, we both did laugh in creamery of the heart.
Her lips so thin and forehead broad
kiss'd the streets of Venice.

8 am (rough version).

8 am awakens
in a blaze of cold
and realises
that no-one ever
wakes up
on it.

Morning frost covers its lips
and it lies on its back,
eyes glazed over soft.
It waits

for to rise
steamy
to meet hazy sky
and breathe deeply
chilled, clear air.

I want to go back to bed
and sleep on your shoulder.

8 am is a mute child
in soundlessness.
It wears a retarded smile
and has pure eyes.
It wants the birds,
but the birds are nowhere.

It watches the children
being dropped off at school
and its fingers are chilled
as it fumbles a wave.
It lies still,
in waiting to turn over
for its friend.

A man cycles in the cold
and has a frozen head
like the hour.
8 am inherits the chill
from earlier hours -
it's still cold enough
for shed locks to cease up.

All is seemingly dead
and transition comes slow;
thunderous in silence,
racing through the moments
with a frozen shield
and pained bones.

There are people walking through the town
at 8 am
and they are barely conscious:
the chill has got them all funny,
bleeds into them
a quiet sigh.
8 am tries to reach out

to all its children -
stripped-bare trees,
and lonely walkers;
it sees these, victims
of season. Treason would be
to console from pity.

Thinly worn smiles
and children with bright, young eyes
and tight noses
parade around -
some on foot,
some peering from car windows,
some floating on clouds of ecstasy. 

Adorned in snug coats,
with their cold feet
and frigid toes,
these little lives go about life
whilst 8 am gives an ear
to shuffling animals
in their autumn beds:
they murmur about winter solemnity,
how they wish their dwellings
were deeper
and warmer
and about how they can't wait
to dance with their grandmothers and aunts
by hearth fire.

Household object.

He's a robot from Short Circuit
(I don't know why
I'm attributing sex).

My housemate brought him down
from Bristol -
he was squatted
in an old attic.

This Tomy product
used to play tapes;
now he's relegated
to the corner,
his thick eyes glazed as honey;
his claws now
underworked and
unfunny.

He's a cute little thing:
an Omnibot 2000
(what a grandiose name
for a creature
of 80s slapdash innocence
and stupidity).

Sometimes, one of my housemates
thinks he scans the room,
changing position;
I just think
he wants a piece of the action.

Those claws seek softness -
or maybe they just want to reek
mechanical rage
on a world
that's abandoned them
and left them
as rock fingers.

A poem about a picture - Thanksgiving (John Currin).

Three girls:
the one
to the left
is skinny
as chicken bone
and is feeding
something
to her acquaintance.

They could be sisters.
The one to the right
is mulling
over broken flowers
and looks numb -
not even
disspirited.

The table is dressed
with a turkey,
an onion,
red grapes,
and a herb (maybe rosemary).

What seems
an empty Christmas
could be full
of
sisterly weirdness.

The one in the middle
being fed
is beautiful:
maybe the other two
are servant girls
(but what an odd
repose!)

The room is basic
an yet grand;
the colours brown,
like earthly mound,
and in this spirited
spiritless picture
of decay
life is seen
in palette grey.

Dear diary.

Dear diary,
I've never felt this alone,
this inconsolable,
this much in touch
with the wind.

I've never felt so blue,
like cobalt steel;
I've never felt so lost
in so much noise
or so close to closeness.

I've never been so mad,
so incapable
of doing anything,
so blank -
and for so long.

I used to have a diary,
diary, but I stopped all that;
filling in the blanks.
Now I wait for years
and fill in blank.
There are no ghosts here -
just the stillness of deadness.

Diary,
I want for so much
and want for so little -
just human touch
or lip spittle
or naked arms
and something more
than nothing's arms
or moment's paw.

I want something lasting
to live in these cracks
and inhabit everything
about me
and between me.
I'm so lonely, diary.
This is no joke.
Your pages can laugh.

Diary,
all I can do is walk now.
I can't think. Appetite is useless.
Water is a chore. Speaking is an end.
I wish I were more sensible.
I wish I weren't built
to self-destruct
like this.

Diary,
I wish I could burn you
and hear you cry.
Diary, I don't want to die.
I don't even want to live.
I want for nothing.
I just want to cry for something.
Diary, I wish you would burn all this
for me;
I wish you would re-write all this.

Train, morning, hangover, blue.

Look humanity in its
cold, dead eyes
and you will
see
the truth:

offer it paradise,
and it will continue
to trudge to work
carrying its briefcases,
and laptops, and satchels;
it needs this.

It is a creature of habit -
the human -
and it desires
the machine;
it doesn't question
that there is one
or whether it needs them;
they just suckle iron milk.

Even the more beautiful
of them
would rather sip
crowded coffee
than be faced with
endless periods of creativity.

But this mass flow of flesh
is comprised entirely
of individuals
who've made their choice;
have chosen not to choose
but just accept.

I always wanted to be
an astronomer
as a child,
and I wanted to live
for a long time -
perhaps not forever.

Trains make up the veins,
and rails make up the flues,
and we are pushed
in our comfortable shoes,
comfortable blues,
into our alabaster cells,
in which
we try to claw at the sky.

Sky over Brighton.

On a clear day,
I can see the influence
of the south-westerlies
on the trees;
all bent in respectful observance
or dance.
It seems they bow away
from me.

The sky is well-painted
soft,
soft bristles,
gentle palette
with November 11th 4 pm colours -
Brighton's flag.

Crystal lines and splotches
up high divided,
white manna, pink hues,
God.

In the lines,
in the colour,
infinity, madness.
Easy blue, endless.
Arc of arm,
now swollen thin,
pulls day down
to night recesses.

Changes, walks.
Subjectless, everywhere.
Fill in your sky.
Your Moon appears,
crested with details.
You're finally here.

Girl in the purple jacket.

I was sitting down
in Chichester Station
when this ratty figure
skulked past:
she approached a huddle
of teenage infancy
(her story not so clear).

She enquired of them
their moods.
She told them she'd tried
to check into a hotel.
She walked off.
They laughed.

The train was delayed -
something about
British Murphy's Law,
imperial decay,
or the breaking down
of a previous train
somewhere along the line.

When it came,
I walked in to the
first carriage
and this figure
came in with me
and settled opposite me
with her blue blanket.

She started mumbling
about a cousin.
I asked her whether
she was all right.
Once, twice.

Then we started talking.
She's from west London.
She complains it's not very countrified
any more.
Her father died three years ago -
'recently,' she said.
She came upon this figure
in a roundabout way.

And that's why she's in Chichester.
She's looking for a place to live.
That could be a lie.
She got off at Barnham;
she'd got the wrong train -
only went one stop.

Now she's out there
in the night
alone, ratty, crazy, insensible
but completely human
and ears.

The last thing she told me -
aside from that she won't live near Indian people -
is that her grandfather was a Roman.
As I mulled this over,
I looked at the standing girl
with the purple jacket and gloves
and perfect auburn hair.
I'm not so worried about her, though.

24 hours!

24 hours!
Hamsters like to feed
and walk through tubes -
where else can they go?

Throw them onto
the motorway and they'll
just wander
with their grocery carts.

Neon arrows
dictate the sky
and coals
show the myriad
faint hearts
in the night.

They walk:
the walking dead;
the spiritless.
They are hungry.

Their eyes are painted violent,
belying underlying
softness:
just stroke them;
let fingers
filter through hair.

Encouraging words.
And up comes a smile.

Dead town.

Suburb of London.
Shopping centres have spires
like churches.
Streets are lined with
ashcan buildings -
deposited by some unseen,
ashen hand.

Clouds of grey
descend upon London,
and wills of white
walk on black streets -
bleak with stodgy
unchange.

We live in porridge -
time is sticky,
and change's texture
is like a mire.
Dead town,
lift me up.

Dead town,
motorway-bound,
lift up your dregs
from the streets
and throw them
into London.

Rain #2.

Summer was boring;
I worked all the way through it.
I saw little of my friends,
little of my father;
I played football but twice -
not like the previous two summers.

It seems like all that misspent opportunity
is now raining through my head;
today, faces in the raindrops
bother me, and jostle me;
they ask questions and have
such big voices
for such little people.

In vein of judgement,
like a petty, ineffectual god,
they pour on me,
but do so in a drawn out,
grating manner -
more destructive
than any atom bomb.

I get inside
and write about those little people
to exorcise myself of them.
I eat a pound of salt,
put myself in the oven,
and wait for the water to go
(and soon the water is gone).

Their faces, however,
stay on the window
and I laugh
a hollow laugh.

Rain.

Rain:
she is a bitch
that permeates my skin;
sheath of water muck
sworn
not to let it in.

Rain:
she is ugly
in her beauty;
mute,
doesn't see
her feminine guile.

Male, earth
libido
is waiting to be quenched:
waiting, and waiting
for rain
to while

(playing with Freudian themes;
rain is male,
female the earth:
he needs the rain
like fire needs hearth,
like surplus needs dearth).

She comes slowly
and unannounced
and takes half an hour to get ready
and when that lipstick
falls upon your head
it always falls heavy.

Rain:
she scares the rainbow
into hiding
'til, with Sun's sorrow,
she starts confiding.

Rain,
I walked here
with you
on my umbrella;
I'm sorry I've been
an insincere feller.

However,
I think you know me well:
in all my wavering
about the inkwell
the truth hangs steady
in my mind;
rain,  I love your judgement
every time.