November
The gutters glutted:rusty, fallen, ferrous stars. An avenue of beeches,gaunt, grey, naked, majestic on their red carpet,in a dream of dethronement.
Poems
Wednesday
Wednesday
Jonah’s Letter
I’m sailing to Tarshish as usual. The air is thick, Its walls are greyish white, This desk light flickers intermittently. Let me be plain: Being good in your sort of way Does not appeal to me. Why would I go to Nineveh? The parking’s diabolical And the people there Are not my type. Some send
Landscape
(after Baudelaire) In order to write such undefiled poemsI must lodge in the suburbs of the sky,companion to the steeples, steeled by dreams,the bells’ mystic clamour flooding my mind. Awake in this eyrie, chin on arms, I see how the citizens toil and sleep,the towers, the chimneys – the city’s masts –vast cloudscapes evoking eternity. I can
Wednesday
Some Endings
Some endings have such richness in their flow,the night taking its temper from the day.You sport a smile when love gets up to go. Mirrors of time hold all you need to know,haloes of stars sustaining casual clay.Some endings have such richness in their flow. Far-off appointments, comet-like, will growinto your week-to-view, pointing your way.You
Ode to My Heart Valve
Busy little hammer on your block of wood,dark wine setting the house on fire,how diligently you work, how tirelessly, what scant attention I have given youtill now, unveiled – ba-boom –inside your tiny shed on a screen before surgery that will slow you almost to standstill.In an antenatal room, twice,I saw my daughters’ hearts tucked
Selfie with Blue-Ringed Octopus
Bad dreams ignoredlit raindrops on windows of the midnight busthen a footstep behind you like the girl on a Sydney beachwho picked up a tiny blue-ringed octopusmost dangerous creature in the seafor a selfie. It rested in the cup of her hand one small jelly spidertwo legs folded underas if it were on its knees
Wednesday
Leaving
We left in a hurryand I had to leavemy solid-wood mahogany and spruce guitar. They said to bring only what we could carryand it would have taken both my armsto protect it from knocks and scrapes as I would a baby –for it too was made with love and in the belief it would last
The Shiver of Water on Moss
We have stockpiled umbrellasand old-fashioned radiatorsa heap of mad grinsreminding me of so many school mornings fog pearling my regulation scarfas I walked from the stationpast grainy ice-sheaths of dead reedsaround the swan’s nest yearning for a glimpseof last year’s mystic swan bride.The wild ballerina. The last chancehaunting the mist. From Watershed (Hazel Press, 2023)
Gun (with Englishman)
Have you ever held a gun before?I once fired a revolver, point-blank at Mark Stoneley,loaded with a roll of paper caps. He cried,and told his mum, who told my mum. So, No, not really.We drove towards Mexico, through sand duneslittered with shoes, a rag doll snagged on a barbed wire fence.He said, It’s not a
The Mainland
Folk on the mainlandare tightytighty.Folk on the mainlandwalk a rope. No listening on the mainland,only talking.To walk while you talkand to talk while you type. What use for the mainland?Polystyrene and mattresses.Bad juju on the mainland.Bad eating. Bad faith. What use for the ocean?For swallowing questions.Who when why what NO:shh shh on the shingle. Conundrum:
Wednesday
Hymnal
It’s gruelling to be wanted – the desirer’s eyesall over you, his lips mouthing your namelike a benediction. His love is a prison, or a roomwith flocked wallpaper where a mad aunt sleeps,her dreams fettered by demons. The desirer carves your name in trees and walls,letters trapped in love hearts piercedby feathered arrows. You no
Summerstorm
The past is unzipped, like the backseat loverloosening your tie. You were crazy about himin June, sleeping past noon in the grass,singing all night out of tune. By Septemberhe’d split, without so much as a goodbye kiss. It’s tough to be the one who’s ditched, the scrub who gets bumped from the nest. Now you’re adrift in
A new role in a new town
What Martine had learned in acting school over the summer,about tone, emphasis, inference,is all useful in the con —herself as charming, consoling Ms. Real Estate Agent.Martine’s clientele — flush widowerswanting to sell the family home,move to a manageable apartment. Walking through the properties,noting brand name dresses hanging in wardrobes,pearl necklaces lying on bedroom dressers,a diamond
Wednesday
Saul at sixty
In hibernation and a huff. No work for six months. Will I have to invent an illness as explanation? My desires are simple — a pot of English breakfast tea, a piece of nougat. I can’t affect ‘a lifestyle’. I am sick, though, of this view. Brick wall. Drainpipe. Grey tracksuit pants on clothes line.
Dreamatics
Bukowski’s ghostis horsing in the garden – careening crazily –a grounded Red Baron flying a Fokker Eindeckerdrunken-legged – arms thrown out as wings,then elbows hunched, hands close together,forefingers squeezing triggers, letting them have ittwin machine-gun style – teeth and lips spittingbursts of rapid fire – his face splits laughing,shirt and eyes wine-stained.
Wednesday
But the Greatest of These
Her home, but not (she knows) her house. It is his house, his wall, his garden. She takes it hard, and means to harden So far as courtesy allows. Am I alone in feeling he Could ease things with a breezy word Or passing smile when they conferred About the rent?
To Speak of Joy That Is in Marriage
Crabapples strewn. I knew that lure would draw our blackbirds round the trunk. What do they care the fruit is sour? I like their pluck. Let’s us devour each acrid chunk of windfall, too, before our hour lapses. I mean the fruit that’s grown to globes of rude maturity on no such
Wednesday
The Pando
Seizing her axe she brought it down with blows One altered morning when the same sun rose Differently on her than him, which meant She knew the backyard aspen’s lease was spent. It fell to him to prise the stump’s grudge out. And yet how intergrown he was with doubt About it all, as whether
Jacob Strengall, backstage at the Three Elves
Glad I decided against the tie, the polka dots. That freelancer Houghton is covering the Festival.I’ll buy him a pint during the break.Doubtless he’ll bang on about his latest cricket book,how well it’s selling in India. I’ll start with an icebreaker. A dog poem.Follow say with three poems about Wanda —what went right then wrong.I
Papillon
We were to meet outside the stationat the top of the High Street, one AugustSaturday afternoon, and I became aware,walking there, of new sensations:the way my hair brushed my shouldersin the heat; that inner unease I’d heardwas called butterflies and hadn’t knownwhy, until now; the painful drag, of whichI was in denial, of stiff clogs