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.

Lust in the garage (a story poem).

She was beautiful.
He stripped her of her tarpaulin,
settled upon her.
The leather of her seat
grabbed him
by the seat of his pants.
He felt the friction of her handlebars,
the coarseness of her rust:
she sent him into overdrive.

She was a Harley -
'72 model,
bright red
like child lust
or the spanked arse
of a blonde call girl.

He started the ignition
and felt the engine rumble,
rattling his guts and
sending his doobies
are peculiar.

Then Giuseppe, the mechanic,
knocked and entered:
'Hey, Ralph.
How you doin'?
You lookin' quite-a-absorbed
a-there!'

'Hey, 'Seppe,' the man said.
'I'm just giving
Old Mabel a turn.'
'She lookin' good, man!
Hey, you mind if I-a-ride
her for a little bit?'

'Sure, bud: no problem,'
said Ralph.
As he watched him mount her,
warbling in his little
Italian voice,
he felt a tightness in his diaphragm;
his fists clenched:
the pistons inside him
gone mad,
the engine burning on high-octane fuel.

'Seppe reached for the ignition,
started,
stroked her handlebars,
caressed the metalwork,
tracing out slowly the rough rust.

Ralph rippled with tension,
broke out with sweat dancing
upon his forehead like little
pole-dancing vixens of the mind;
he saw breasts touched -
recoiled;
he saw fingers going in mouths,
tongues, flash of crotch,
motor oil leaking....

In an instant, he had struck 'Seppe
with a 9-pound wrench,
the blood leaking from his
cracked skull
like vino:
Mabel just sat there with her legs crossed
smoking a cigarette
and smiling.

Australia.

Over the red earth,
you can hear the low moan
of didgeridoo,
of Australia -
now the madness sound
of aboriginal life.

Official policy has been
segregation -
even up to this century;
in the sixties
it was sterlisation
and breeding out.

They are sand niggers;
'they are stupid,'
says a garbled voice.

The naivete of expecting
endless alcohol,
hot weather,
bikini-clad girls,
surfing on the Gold Coast,
idiotic, redskinned,
friendly bush-fucks
doesn't surprise me:

it's a white man's land;
a white man's paradise.
It's a white man's foot.
A white man's fist.
A white man's voice.
A white man's unremorse.

'They had a
'Say Sorry' day,'
he told me.
'And I cared; I knew.'

'Oh.'

'Wow!' she said.
'I'd really like to go.'
She'd been to Nepal
and didn't blink twice at
the tyranny of Tibetan Buddhism -
she merely saw
poor, orphaned children -

much like the
aboriginal children of Australia
whom continue to famish
slowly
and go blind
slowly, painfully,
to this day
of trachoma.

If only John Pilger
could shout from Uluru
to the world....

Movements

Shake, shake;

loose, loose,

cry, cry,

gurgle, gurgle,

laugh, laugh.

Cry, cry.

Smash, smash.

Num! Num!

(Make numb; make numb.)

Slurp, slurp;

crunch, crunch;

teeth, teeth;

fat limbs.

Up! Up!

Time runs, time runs.

Along, along

and back, back.

Grow, grow (and grow).

In, out; in, out;

snap, snap;

crash, crash;

shout, shout.

Noise, noise,

silence, silence.

Alone, lonely thoughts.

In, out; in, out.

Shame, shame.

Blame, blame.

Smack, smack;

kiss, kiss.

Ouch! Ouch!

Long, long;

short stab.

Thud, thud.

Decay, decay.

Baby to grave;

sperm to spade.

This is your life.

Psychoanalysis

Alcohol

allows the id

to come out to play:

we joke, we lust,

we become as children;

we become 

violent,

vulgar,

unrepressed.

Men anticipate sex;

women anticipate

internalising,

narrativising,

the act,

and then talking about it

afterwards.

The dictator

is the id and ego

(and never the superego);

a stiff phallus

that must assert itself

in its sons

and inspire lust

in its daughters.

And what of Freud's ego?

What of that pipe -

the id?

The superego came through

through him,

meeting walls of ego,

supressing their

underlying ids.

My id tells me to

rape, rummage, wreck,

kill, command;

my ego tells me that

desires are non-existent,

impure,

and that the superego

will eventually

come through.

I play videogames;

I don't question why.

Maybe I'm just shy

or feeble,

and it's a way

of serving that excluded part

of my personality

and giving vent to that

unspoken life
reality.

But maybe I play them

because I feel,

like videogame characters,

I should be out there killing,

murdering, raping, stealing,

letting primal energy flow;

and this culture,

this superego,

is stopping me:

perhaps that's why

I'm off to Afghanistan next month....

High street

Walking down the high street,
it's like I'm in
a dream:
there is
the stink
of last night's fireworks;
the fustiness of a charity shop
follows this.
Then I see petals in the gutter
from a recent ceremony.

Could this be real?
I walk in the middle of the street:
the smells go.
Then I see a punk
in the Heart Foundation shop
browsing the books,
erect,
hands in lap,
twisted legs,
knees bent.

Then the pasty shop fills my nostrils -
I'm not in Cornwall!
(Though I could be.)

The red
cobbled street
leads to the centre,
where four meet,
and stands a monument
of bronze, and rock,
and gold -
a cultured brother;
same source of minerals.

Saturday,
November 6th, 2010:
the shops are closing down;
it's half-past four.

I go to get
my bread,
eggs, milk -
stare at those grocery faces;
and then I go
to the library,
and then I get warm
and go blank:

the poem ends.