Poet's drunken bitterness with a vain of truth, wondering at possible judgement - resolves to make poem more modest.

I want to be
so good a poet
that people don't
clap for me
out of respect.

To be heckled
by ignorant fools
with liquor on their lips
would be glorious;

I'd rather that
than unsure,
unfeeling,
indifferent
English respect.

The good,
along with the bad,
along with the unborn,
go hand-in-hand
in their warm palms.

And it's trying.

I think of you.

Night-time's eyes
are blinking slow;
these cords are tight
and they pull down low.

And as you float
into your bed
I think of you.

The Moon is full
with sleep to-night
and the tides
within your eyes

lap the shores
of my mind
'neath starry blue.

Borne aloft
on cosmic discs
the serenade
of love's duress

is creeping fine
like silken spine
and weaving me
as smooth as wine.

On your lips
there hangs a moth
with intentions fine
and wings so soft;

in an Indian garden
it takes to night
to evade my touch,
leaving trails
and lines.

As winks rise
and heat is left
I'm taken in
through dream's cleft:

blue hues
and stars of white;
you are the Sun:
you give me life.

And as he lay
in folds of soft
she sighed a sigh
and in darkness coughed;

on her mind:
his curious way.
Two bodies still
to not mete love's decay.

And as conscious moments
through dreams sift
she hears a word
and cups a kiss;

in safe embrace
of uncertain arms
she finds new life
and endless charms.

A moment with a leaf.

I saw a leaf fall
and, in trying
to describe it,
I tore it apart.

Through trying,
and wavering,
and quailing,
and not trying.

In that
green-gold cascade
I saw
a hidden heart,

but it was mine
to know,
mine to have grow;
the details
mine not to impart.

Autumn is gentle
as child's hair
and waves solemnly
at winter's despair;

her eyes are blue
and her skin is brown
and her teeth are white
and her hair is gold;

like a twilight diva
to behold,
whom in the throes
of career's wane
takes on a rich
and sensuous mane.

I saw a leaf fall
from a tree
without a will,
without a way,
and it descended and sank
eventually:
it had no name.

And, no, not melancholy
was its way:
in gentle expression of the day
and of reality
it lives inside the clay
or informality.

It is a lung
of a lung
and gives me lungs
to have come along
the words to say
not what the will wants the way,
but of a formless,
clear and flowing page
of the untapped mind's
undelay.

Telesales.

I sat in the large room,
everyone plugged into their headsets
like lazy bees.
I was there for two months -
a temporary
Christmas job.

I sold Sky warranties,
but I didn't try too hard -
I'd preserve my sales
and have long,
drawn-out conversations
about BBC4
and Bulgarian orphanages.

'How are you today, sir?'
they'd all ask.
'Yes? Good-good.'
Their repeated disingenuousness
made broader compliments
rise from my bile -
such indifference to
simple humanity.

I worked with a cocky guy
with cocksure feathers
named Taz
who would sit back, smug;
prance around giving it the sales mouth;
I would sit there
and smile a deep, internal smile.

When I left for college
and my journalism course,
I told him:
'I hope you reach the top,
my friend; but don't
fall off'.

Haikus.

A plastic bottle
is like a Mafia snitch:
melts under pressure.

A swallow settles
on the edge of katana:
I kill all but one.

A robin chirrups
atop a thicket of hedge:
winter draws closer.

Ugly parking lot:
snow covers its grey eyes white;
all is become one.

Circling the green,
a pavement of paving stones
swallows the ants whole.

Effervescent Coke
inspires gas at twin ends -
smells describe smiles.

He stands alone, tree
above him; he is pensive
as a cat in grass.

A darkling chapel
hiding its secrets in words
of light, window open.

A brown carpet of
fallen leaves: grace still contained:
mulch will make anew.

A shimmering lake;
its surface crystalline like
a light eye of depth.

Robin.

There was a robin outside
our house
this morning.
I called down my housemate:

'Quick! Come! Come!
Come see this!'

She came down.
'Wow! You can tell
winter is coming,'
she said.

After some minutes
I had time to muse on this:
'what a bunch
of romantic crap!'
I thought.

Winter doesn't come
because of robins.

If all those
lovely red chests
faced the sky
winter would still be
as cold and
as silent
as always.

State.

The state
puts hammers
to our temples;

its boys
in bungle
reign with fists
and ignorance:

you cannot protest:
they will break it up
and paint you in red.

They will incite
and disturb
like an advancing wave
of horror.

They will close you down
and shut you down
and stomp on your mind.

They will fill you up
on helium
like a fucking balloon
and you'll go
flying off.

They put knives in our hands,
drunks on the streets,
hunger in our bellies,
homeless people in our sights,
fear in our minds,
anger in our midst,
ignorance in our hearts....

They want your money;
they want your time;
but they don't want you.
They will give the order:
you will walk

(though you'll
never
walk again -
without minds,
legs are useless).

Drunken screed #1.

Drunk love:
cigarettes down the drain
(filters, at least);
confused eyes -
hateful to the inebriated brain.

I wish for a smile.
I await their return
like a pensive victim
of Dracula
(appropriate literary reference,
plus life-time element).

Thom Yorke cries:
so do I.
Wavelengths pass each other;
eyes mould into the distance.

Your name burns in my throat:
the taste of you so sweet.
You are a new bird
and the rest is blurred
until I see you again.
Night, night.

Tree.

The leaves fall gently 
from her hair,
cascading to the
cold ground.

In dappled sunshine
she shimmers
like a lost sea
and sighs
like gentle waves
never heard.

The wind mocks her gentility
with a cool breeze,
but she merely shrugs away,
dancing to a point on the horizon
like a hula-hula girl
on her way to the ocean.

As light
filters through her fingers,
showing her green pulse,
I sit behind glass,
separate from my reverie.

I bet her bark is coarse
but it'd be as satin to me:
every ripple something to herald.

If I could slip into her
in emerald explosion,
you know I would;
and one day yet I might.

Hole in the wall.

She looked like
an aged Athenian
in forced female
clothing.

In the bank,
she asked of her friend:
'I could use the hole in the wall,
couldn't I?'

'Yes,' I thought.
'Although the bank
wouldn't take kindly to it:
most people use the toilet.'

Streets.

I see hopeless men on the streets,
bottles in their eyes,
words on their tongues
twisted in bitterness.

What will I become
when I've left university's arms
and the teet
of academia?

Will that warmth and prospect
dissipate
like a disturbed smoke haze?

Will I be trundling 'round
in trainers, brown
leather,
unkempt hair,
with a denim heart?

These hopeless men
are poets of few words
and their hands
seek rough surfaces
in search of soft patches.

All the while,
I daren't look into my own hopelessness:
there might be a small man in there
clapping in the cold
ready to meet my eyes.

Feet.

She could've been a dancer:
the way she skips
around the house
like a dainty mouse.

Feet begin as formless,
pudgey playthings;
turn into soft, white things
with peach pads;
become like deformed ape coils.

If she's still dancing when she's eighty,
on those withered things,
with songs pure and a voice sweet,
then maybe death hasn't wings
and life anchors happiness.

People, through the glass of a travelling idiot.

People are weird creatures:
legs look like they want to twist out
in agony;
clothes arranged like a wind
has ruffled through wardrobe.

The inamorata, now,
are making pancakes and coffee,
wishing they could be candled
in the night
like tongues of flame.

The poets are all askew
as arthritic fingers,
and the writers
are exhausted of strength.

The great buck
breathes chestily
on a cold morn,
like a sputtering engine
with horns,
and the does
are doe-eyed
with sleep.

A flaming redhead
pens her eyes to paper
and flushes her brain
to parchment.

Before the day is out,
the sky will collapse
and unburden itself
and will then rise up again
on stilts.

A journey.

The road was long and dark,
headlights beamed.
In Devonshire twilight,
a haze settled upon the trees.

Purple-hued,
like an explosion of veins,
or the scene of  bewitching,
I looked upon this shroud
as tyres crunched softly on tarmac.

The stars were out to play,
and the early Sun
bedevilled a lake
with morning steam;

dew hung heavy like willow boughs,
rippling with ephemeral tension;
a scene so lonely, and yet so beautiful,
struck my young self with fear and awe:

somewhere out there
lurked something very beautiful,
very dark, very dangerous,
and very innocent.

As the world was breaking into blossom,
and folding back in decay,
and making collective winks and yawns,
cords of sleep pulled at my eyes.

Death.

It is not the bullet
that doth
steal away life,
but our own bodies:

their inability
to keep us alive
takes life from us.

If I were to take my
own life,
I would take it twice:
once with a will;
second, with a wound
unable to be heal'd.

Ultimately,
I shall kill myself -
my body will,
at least;

my heart will say:
'that's it,' and
my mind will say:
'okay!'

My body will give the order
to kill my soul,
and my soul will remain deaf,
for it is not separate:

one day,
a part of me I deem separate
from 'my self'
will take the whole
with it
on its journey
to further confusion.

It is not the bullet that causes death:
it merely inspires it.