Collected Poems Read online

  making bobbies get undressed

  barrowladies look their best

  wayside winos sit and dream

  hotdogmen to sell ice-cream

  but when you said goodbye

  i heard that the sun

  had been runover

  somewhere in castle street

  by a busload of lovers

  whom you have yet to meet

  If life’s a lousy picture, why not leave before the end

  Don’t worry

  one night we’ll find that deserted kinema

  the torches extinguished

  the cornish ripples locked away in the safe

  the tornoff tickets chucked

  in the tornoff shotbin

  the projectionist gone home to his nightmare

  Don’t worry

  that film will still be running

  (the one about the sunset)

  & we’ll find two horses

  tethered in the front stalls

  & we’ll mount

  & we’ll ride off

  into

  our

  happy

  ending

  You and Your Strange Ways

  increasingly oftennow

  you reach into your handbag

  (the one I bought some xmasses ago)

  and bringing forth

  a pair of dead cats

  skinned and glistening

  like the undersides of tongues

  or old elastoplasts

  sticky with earwigs

  you hurl them at my eyes

  and laugh cruellongly

  why?

  even though we have grown older together

  and my kisses are little more than functional

  i still love you

  you and your strange ways

  The Fish

  you always were a strange girl now weren’t you?

  like the midsummernights party we went to

  where towards witching

  being tired and hot of dancing

  we slipped thro’ the frenchwindows

  and arminarmed across the lawn

  pausing at the artificial pond

  lying liquidblack and limped

  in the stricttempo air we kissed

  when suddenly you began to tremble

  and removing one lavender satin glove knelt

  and slipped your hand into the slimy mirror

  your face was sad as you brought forth

  a switching twitching silver fish

  which you lay at my feet

  and as the quick tick of the grass

  gave way to the slow flop of death

  stillkneeling you said softly: ‘dont die little fish’

  then you tookoff your other glove

  and we lay sadly and we made love

  as the dancers danced slowly

  the fish stared coldly

  and the moon admired its reflection

  in the lilypetalled pond

  May Ball

  The evening lay before us

  like her silken dress

  arranged carefully over the bed.

  It would be a night to remember.

  We would speak of it often

  in years to come. There would

  be good food and wine,

  cabaret, and music to dance to.

  How we’d dance.

  How we’d laugh.

  We would kiss indiscreetly,

  and what are lawns for

  but to run barefoot across?

  But the evening didn’t do

  what it was told.

  It’s the morning after now

  and morningafter cold.

  I don’t know what went wrong

  but I blame her. After all

  I bought the tickets.

  Of course, I make no mention,

  that’s not my style,

  and I’ll continue to write

  at least for a while.

  I carry her suitcase down to the hall,

  our first (and her last) University Ball.

  The sun no longer loves me

  The sun no longer loves me.

  When i sit waiting for her

  in my little room

  she arrives

  not cheerfully

  but out of a sense of duty

  like a National Health prostitute.

  Sometimes

  she leans silky

  against the wall

  lolling and stretchy

  but mostdays she fidgets

  and scratches at clouds.

  Whenever i ask her to stay the night

  she takes umbrage

  and is gone.

  Vinegar

  sometimes

  i feel like a priest

  in a fish & chip queue

  quietly thinking

  as the vinegar runs through

  how nice it would be

  to buy supper for two

  On having no one to write a love poem about

  thismorning

  while strolling through my head

  rummaging in litterbins

  i found by the roadside

  an image

  that someone had thrown away

  A rose

  i picked it up

  hurried into a backstreet

  away from the busy thoroughfare of thoughts

  and waited to give it

  to the first girl who smiled at me

  it’s getting dark

  and i’m still waiting

  The rose attracts a fly

  getting dark

  two groupies and a dumb broad

  have been the only passersby

  dark

  I chance a prayer

  There is a smell of tinsel in the air.

  My cat and i

  Girls are simply the prettiest things

  My cat and i believe

  And we’re always saddened

  When it’s time for them to leave

  We watch them titivating

  (that often takes a while)

  And though they keep us waiting

  My cat & i just smile

  We like to see them to the door

  Say how sad it couldn’t last

  Then my cat and i go back inside

  And talk about the past.

  Dreampoem

  in a corner of my bedroom

  grew a tree

  a happytree

  my own tree

  its leaves were soft

  like flesh

  and its birds sang poems for me

  then

  without warning

  two men

  with understanding smiles

  and axes

  made out of forged excuses

  came and chopped it down

  either yesterday

  or the day before

  i think it was the day before

  Dreampoem 2

  I forsake dusty springfield

  to follow you out of the theatre.

  You are friendly but not affectionate.

  I haven’t seen you for ages.

  You now have a son.

  I overhear you telling a stranger

  that he is called Menelaus

  after the son of my mistress.

  I follow you through vast antique shops

  where I consider buying a throne.

  Instead I go out into the busy road

  and under a flyover.

  You are nowhere in sight.

  The searchlight in the citycentre

  is still fingering the sky

  though it is now well after midday.

  Realizing that I will never see you again

  and overwhelmed with whatmighthavebeenness

  I give myself up

  at the nearest marriage bureau.

  What You Are

  you are the cat’s paw

  among the silence of midnight goldfish

  you are the waves


  which cover my feet like cold eiderdowns

  you are the teddybear (as good as new)

  found beside a road accident

  you are the lost day

  in the life of a child murderer

  you are the underwatertree

  around which fish swirl like leaves

  you are the green

  whose depths I cannot fathom

  you are the clean sword

  that slaughtered the first innocent

  you are the blind mirror

  before the curtains are drawn back

  you are the drop of dew on a petal

  before the clouds weep blood

  you are the sweetfresh grass that goes sour

  and rots beneath children’s feet

  you are the rubber glove

  dreading the surgeon’s brutal hand

  you are the wind caught on barbed wire

  and crying out against war

  you are the moth

  entangled in a crown of thorns

  you are the apple for teacher

  left in a damp cloakroom

  you are the smallpox injection

  glowing on the torchsinger’s arm like a swastika

  you are the litmus leaves

  quivering on the suntan trees

  you are the ivy

  which muffles my walls

  you are the first footprints in the sand

  on bankholiday morning

  you are the suitcase full of limbs

  waiting in a leftluggage office

  to be collected like an orphan

  you are a derelict canal

  where the tincans whistle no tunes

  you are the bleakness of winter before the cuckoo

  catching its feathers on a thornbush

  heralded spring

  you are the stillness of Van Gogh

  before he painted the yellow vortex of his last sun

  you are the still grandeur of the Lusitania

  before she tripped over the torpedo

  and laid a world war of american dead

  at the foot of the blarneystone

  you are the distance

  between Hiroshima and Calvary

  measured in mother’s kisses

  you are the distance

  between the accident and the telephone box

  measured in heartbeats

  you are the distance

  between power and politicians

  measured in half-masts

  you are the distance

  between advertising and neuroses

  measured in phallic symbols

  you are the distance

  between you and me

  measured in tears

  you are the moment

  before the noose clenched its fist

  and the innocent man cried: treason

  you are the moment

  before the warbooks in the public library

  turned into frogs and croaked khaki obscenities

  you are the moment

  before the buildings turned into flesh

  and windows closed their eyes

  you are the moment

  before the railwaystations burst into tears

  and the bookstalls picked their noses

  you are the moment

  before the buspeople turned into teeth

  and chewed the inspector

  for no other reason than he was doing his duty

  you are the moment

  before the flowers turned into plastic and melted

  in the heat of the burning cities

  you are the moment

  before the blindman puts on his dark glasses

  you are the moment

  before the subconscious begged to be left in peace

  you are the moment

  before the world was made flesh

  you are the moment

  before the clouds became locomotives

  and hurtled headlong into the sun

  you are the moment

  before the spotlight moving across the darkened stage

  like a crab finds the singer

  you are the moment

  before the seed nestles in the womb

  you are the moment

  before the clocks had nervous breakdowns

  and refused to keep pace with man’s madness

  you are the moment

  before the cattle were herded together like men

  you are the moment

  before God forgot His lines

  you are the moment of pride

  before the fiftieth bead

  you are the moment

  before the poem passed peacefully away at dawn

  like a monarch

  A Square Dance

  In Flanders fields in Northern France

  They’re all doing a brand new dance

  It makes you happy and out of breath

  And it’s called the Dance of Death

  Everybody stands in line

  Everybody’s feeling fine

  We’re all going to a hop

  1 – 2 – 3 and over the top

  It’s the dance designed to thrill

  It’s the mustard gas quadrille

  A dance for men – girls have no say in it

  For your partner is a bayonet

  See how the dancers sway and run

  To the rhythm of the gun

  Swing your partner dos-y-doed

  All around the shells explode

  Honour your partner form a square

  Smell the burning in the air

  Over the barbed wire kicking high

  Men like shirts hung out to dry

  If you fall that’s no disgrace

  Someone else will take your place

  ‘Old soldiers never die…’

  … Only young ones

  In Flanders fields where mortars blaze

  They’re all doing the latest craze

  Khaki dancers out of breath

  Doing the glorious Dance of Death

  Doing the glorious Dance of Death

  On Picnics

  at the goingdown of the sun

  and in the morning

  i try to remember them

  but their names are ordinary names

  and their causes are thighbones

  tugged excitedly from the soil

  by frenchchildren

  on picnics

  Why Patriots are a Bit Nuts in the Head

  Patriots are a bit nuts in the head

  because they wear

  red, white and blue-

  tinted spectacles

  (red for blood

  white for glory

  and blue…

  for a boy)

  and are in effervescent danger

  of losing their lives

  lives are good for you

  when you are alive

  you can eat and drink a lot

  and go out with girls

  (sometimes if you are lucky

  you can even go to bed with them)

  but you can’t do this

  if you have your belly shot away

  and your seeds

  spread over some corner of a foreign field

  to facilitate

  in later years

  the growing of oats by some peasant yobbo

  when you are posthumous it is cold and dark

  and that is why patriots are a bit nuts in the head

  M62

  The politicians

  (who are buying huge cars with hobnailed

  wheels the size of merry-go-rounds)

  have a new plan.

  They are going to

  put cobbles

  in our eyesockets

  and pebbles

  in our navels

  and fill us up

  with asphalt

  and lay us

  side by side

  so that we can take a more active part

  in the road

&nbs
p; to destruction.

  Noah’s Arc

  In my fallout shelter I have enough food

  For at least three months. Some books,

  Scrabble, and games for the children.

  Calor gas and candles. Comfortable beds

  And a chemical toilet. Under lock and key

  The tools necessary for a life after death.

  I have carried out my instructions to the letter.

  Most evenings I’m down here. Checking the stores,

  Our suits, breathing apparatus. Cleaning

  And polishing. My wife, bless her,

  Thinks I’m obsessive – like other men

  About cars or football. But deep down

  She understands. I have no hobbies.

  My sole interest is survival.

  Every few weeks we have what I call D.D.,

  Or Disaster Drill. At the sound of the alarm

  We each go about our separate duties:

  Disconnecting services, switching off the mains,

  Filling the casks with fresh water, etc.

  Mine is to oversee everything before finally

  Shooting the dog. (This I mime in private.)

  At first, the young ones enjoyed the days

  And nights spent below. It was an adventure.

  But now they’re at a difficult age

  And regard extinction as the boring concern

  Of grown-ups. Like divorce and accountancy.

  But I am firm. Daddy knows best

  And one fine day they’ll grow to thank me.

  Beneath my bunk I keep an Armalite rifle

  Loaded and ready to use one fine day

  When panicking neighbours and so-called friends