Luncheon

Yellow, pink, blue, green
ties behind navy suits
everyone small-talking
convinced they want to be there
convinced they are important -
I can't wait to get out.
Instead I sit on a leather sofa
in the corner and write this poem.

It begins --
I hate this
life without you.

Space Girl

Tired of gravity she floats elsewhere
in a big translucent bubble blown
by a 5 year old at a birthday party
she just somehow made it inside
let it take her away, high up and over
all the fields being harvested this time
of year, everything golden and flatter
than flat should ever be. She drifts
west, nobody stops her, under the radar
she hovers and when no breeze arrives
she rides on tailwinds from big jet planes
all that technology when all anyone needs
is a bubble like hers.

Her in those silver space boots.
Her smile catching the last of the horizon's rays.

Come As We Are

Nothing left to give you but this
meagerness of poem, this pink heart
beat trapped below layers of skin
ribcage still as a cased violin
- so thin this rattle of bones.

To measure tick of winter's metronome
upon summer shoulders bare
to kiss the tremble from your hands
that once held spring toward me
- sprays of colour so many-petalled.

How to Not

write about it. Rewind backwards -
pen on the table, eyes fixed as if to
lift, as if to pick it up and write
finger twitch towards instead
just back away, leave it alone
don't say the way you feel don't
reveal just hide inside the chest
of gold you thought you'd finally
found, just hide there pretending
that every thing is OK
every thing alright

Yeah
Sure
- it's all good.

Lonley as the Sea

There is nothing more to write
than this lament of weeping gulls
nothing more to hear than wing-
fluttered air as it moves ever upward
away from everything we've ever known.
It cannot be matched, this etheral
blue that passes through all surface
permeates sea's glassy eye until awash
I become wave cresting reckless
ever further from home;

mouth full of broken shells
iron salt of lost coins.

Last Day of Summer

Long, dying light of September
sun-stretched fingers across my back
I'm in the lawn chair, exhausted -
tree shadows surround me as if to
embrace, and all I can do
is wonder where you are.

Poem on the London Underground

Western wind when wilt thou blow
the small rain down can rain
Christ if my love were in my arms
and I in my bed again

Anon (early 16th century)

Smaller Things

Geese at night cry forth to light
diminished, signal to winter's brief
distill that once again will widen
into something infinitely new.

Do we move towards smaller things
to see how large their utterance?
Worth of a dust-winged moth
depth of blackness at work in DNA?

Image isolated becomes poem
explodes into some other universe
brings us to our knees to think -
what births a star, what kills it?

Gravity pulls upon itself
lets nothing in, nothing out
until at the core, something small
begins to tunnel towards the taper

becomes embrace that in itself
holds all realization of departure.

Autumn

thoughts of your fingers
tangled in my hair -
mud and rain they come they go

Give Me

-- your tongue
thrust it down my throat
come bitter - fear;
salt lick all sadness
revel over sweet spots
until everything sour
be
comes

taste unexplainable
umami -
run your tongue all over mine.

Matisse - Joy of Life

Work in Progress

Were she to say
she loved you
what would happen then?
Why such word?
why now
such exposure of breast
such lickable sentence
there is nowhere to go
but here
that's what she said
just
here
he heard her say
that's all she wanted to say -
that's all he heard her say.

Man Behind the Curtain

Pay no attention
to the man behind the curtain

he's only there to fool
with his little box of doom -
it glitters in his hand to make you
look, to wonder what's inside
and all he has to ever do
is hold it there in the palm
of his hand, lid turned down
until you can't resist
the mind begins to twist
turn its nothing into some
thing green and slimy, or black
and deathly, until all you ever
see is the box, the glitter beginning
to form a name until you think
that box is yours and you should
climb inside, let it take you
down - once inside can't get out
there is no shine, there is no light
just all you ever thought it was
black and empty, full of doom
until the box becomes your brain
your brain becomes the box
and nothing can open
nobody can help
until the day you push against
the lid with the flat of your hand
and light fills the cavity
eyes adjust, you see her face
as she lifts up from the other side
at the precise time as the push -
she was about to climb in
the box had fooled her too
just as you were climbing out
together leave it all behind
become each others breath
discover glimmer in the truth of it
turn and laugh at curious shadows-
once you paid attention
to the man behind the curtain
--he was only there to fool.

Perhaps When I am Old

I will not cling but gather
with tired, withered arms
his fears collapsed in blooms of red
memories petals swept from stone

In single file, ghosts will pass
absorb into the softest moss
through eyes grown dimmer
I might see he -

who held then broke, such fracture
found in low sweet laugh, in tangled
thoughts, an ivy English scrambling
broken fences, my sad garden.

I may inherit -
heap of gravestones, burst
of poppies, my fingers crush
absorb the must, spill kept seeds

succumb such tulip
to stroke such length of tender stalk!
perhaps when we are old my love, perhaps.

Oasis