A city grows

 

UNDERPANTMAN

Forgive me now as I may very well offend those amongst us who have Virginia Woolfe posters on their walls and Germaine Greer texts on their coffee table. Now, I’m aware that at any poetry evening the chances of this being a disproportionate percentage of the audience is very high but there is a very serious matter that I need to bring to your attention.

Whilst I am a man, who will never understand the pain of childbirth
Nor the discomfort of your monthly cycle
The imbalances of power in the workplace, unfair wages etc
There is something in our world,
The world of men, that far outweighs the disadvantages of Femininity
Namely, The problems with delicate and ineffective Jizm

That’s right!

There is no excusing,
No refusing,
No declining,
No denying,
Mine (and yours, by the looks of it) terrible plight.
Some of our underpants too tight!

Or, if our boxer shorts are too loose,
We risk doing harm to our kiddie-mousse
Oh, Do not spurn
The damage to my sperm.
As we speak
My semen are becoming weak.
Every future child
Is growing wild.
I can hear the scream
Of each of my baby cream,
So, If you see a man in a funk
Understand he has insufficient spunk
Woman, spare a thought
For his dying white-aquanauts

Have some faith, Men,
Listen well to me,
Throw your undies out
And set your semen free.

OO-ER POEM

Love is the war.
And the casualties are mounting

BELGRANO BOY

Excluded from your erogenous zone
For the final time
I turn to walk away in defeat.
With my white underpants
Waving around my arse
Like a flag with no wind
You take aim and fire.

THERE'S A LITTLE YELLOW JERSEY (to the North of London Town)

I understand it now
As I never have

It's about befriending the wind
It's freewheelin' the downward slope
After the struggle of the climb
It's the still-frames of scenery -
The granite mountains
The yellow-purple skies
The English hedgerows
The cities, towns and villages
The people
The being alone and the people -
That you keep in your mind
Long after the ride is through.
And it's been an Honour.

It's something you buy into
An involvement of the soul
It's the cuts and bruises
Sometimes you ride in their slipstream
And sometimes
They ride in yours
It's the sharing of the glory
A podium of infinite pain and joy
And it's been an Honour.

And I know I can say this now
Before the next race starts
Here's to the man
Who stands on the side-line
But here's love to the man
Who loves to take part.

And
Its been
An Honour.

SHIT ON YOUR SHOES (a love poem)

Written on the back of old bus tickets
Is the poetry of our lovemaking.
Scribbled on the front of my school textbooks
Is the script of my emotions.
I have painted murals on palaces,
Drawn in chalk the epitome of my knowledge
On Sunset Boulevard and Tibetan Mountains.
I have hidden prose for you
On the underneath of snails,
In the bellies of Great white sharks.
Painstakingly unravelled the mummified Kings
And written you a three mile poem,
Minuscule messages on the thread
From a silkworms arse.
My love for you gets everywhere
Just like shit on your shoes.

BACK-SEAT BRENDA

I was in love with back seat Brenda
We all were.
But I was at that age
Where I still called my friends lesbians
Because I did not know what it meant.
I was in love with back seat Brenda
And how could you not be.
She had a peardrop smile
And eyes that twinkled like gobstoppers
After
Twenty
Minutes
Of
Sucking.

8:15 at her bus stop
And fifty homemade hair-do's
Turn to watch her hipsway
Inhaling the medicated shampoo
And her mothers stolen perfume
Which batted away the heavy smell of boyhood Brut.

I fidget and fumble
(still)
Shifting position of my satchel
From hipside to crotch
Concealing my growing admiration
For that High-school crest
Displayed magnanimously on her heaving chest.

There was an eternity
between
The hem of her bottle blue skirt
And the summit of her knee-highs
That I would gladly suffer.
Her bra strap always showing,
I thank God for the French.

4 o'clock and
We were all in love with Brenda
The world could have been hers,
And silk cuts are the greatest cigarettes
Because her lips are fellating one.
I shift uncomfortably,
Readjust my satchel once more
And allow Alison to sit beside me.

COMIC POEM 4

Mr Fantastic must have been a patient man
to love the Invisible Girl
but when she finally disappeared for good
something inside him snapped

love will find a way

Annihilate the world
With the smallest of atoms
And life will find a way.
Scorpions survive
The greatest of temperatures
Woodlice and ants
The toughest of creatures
Will go on living
The earth
A flattened
Scurrying
Void

My love can be your insect
It will endure
The most inhuman devastation

SHORT POEM UPON SEPARATION FROM A BOTANIST

You leave

Then blossom

THE TOAD THE HEART AND THE VALENTINE GIFT

It is Valentines day

and you are sad.

Because you have no cards

you say nobody loves you.

MORNING

15 FEB

shops are selling half price valentine paraphernalia,

you go down

                stairs

to find my heart, its dancing partner

a wartbacked spawneyed toad

stepping out for you a fantastic waltz

You do not understand my valentines gift

and quite frankly, neither did the toad

Pretty little Innuendos

“Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos”

(I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.)

Pablo Neruda – Love Poem XIV

I want to do with you

What the moon does to the ripples on the lakes

I want to do with you

What dreams can do to those that wake up screaming and

Those that wake up glistening

I want to do with you

What airports can do to those departing and those arriving

I want to do with you

What the wind does to the desert sands

What the Sidewinder does to the dunes

I want to do with you

What the orbit does with the moon

I want to do with you

As the running of the last one hundred yards

Of a marathon

I want to do with you

As the first taste of cinnamon

I want to do with you

What Dudek did in Instanbul, 2005

What Gerrard did against West Ham, Milan, Olympiakos

I want to do with you

What the bee does with the Sunflowers and the Dahlias

I want to do with you

What the oil does with the water

What the butter does to the popcorn kernel

I want to do with you

What the light bulb does to the moth

I want to do with you

What Tom Waits singing Ruby’s Arms does to my heart

What James Brown does to my feet

I want to do with your clothes

What the autumn does to the leaves on the trees

I want to do to you

The same thing that you do to me

Online Love (for Jen Lewis)

You are surreal and ethereal

Phantom, immaterial

Totally unbelievable

(And that’s because you’re a 56-year-old widow from Belgium, really)

You are my online love

You tick all my boxes (literally)

Friends with Megan Fox

Favourite sport is kickboxing

(Though you’re never off the sofa)

You're my online love

You‘re a nurse and a mother

Bendy like no other

Ultimate_anal_lover

(Well, that is your login name)

My online love

My inbox is in a mess

With sticky promises of flesh

And filthy group sex confess

-ions (And you’re never 18, you stole that photo from a copy of Razzle, I know, I read that edition, I found it in a hedge)

Online love

You scored 97% sex appeal

I only wish you were real

We could finally strike that deal

(I’d be yours and you’d be mine)

And we’d take our loving

Offline

Venn Diagram

And what if we had never fallen in love?

Our lives would have been like

The middle part of a Venn diagram

Shaded in grey, incomplete.

There would have been parties and opportunities

But the moment would have passed.

You would be in the kitchen,

Me on the stairs.

Our trains would have passed on the track

We would have stopped and looked and smiled

Across the station

As others boarded.

But I am glad we took our moment and ran.

Now my life it is yours to fill.

Let your circle overlap mine

Colour me in until the days stop.

Prometheus and Andromeda

Reaching into the sky and pretending to touch the sun

Is not the same as evaporating.

Your solitude is just a bone wrapped in glistening fat,

A false promise of a freedom,

When really you are chained and bound

To an idea that you are free.

But what if I was the rock you were tethered to

And my love were midnight ravens

Pecking at your heart?

And in the morning you would wake, your heart anew.

And the chain that binds us together could stretch the world twice over.

And at night you would sleep safely in my granite arms.

And I know now that wading in the shallows

Is not the same as diving the depths.

My apathy is the monster that swims around my feet each day.

I suffer from a virginity of the soul,

My bondage is the knowledge

That I have never truly loved.

And what if you were the rock I was tethered to

And your love was like Perseus, Gorgon-slayer,

Sent by the Gods?

And in the morning I would wake, my heart anew.

And the chain that binds us together could stretch the world twice over.

And together we could return to our own tiny Ethiopia.

Poem for a cam girl on an instant messenger service

1
Love got broke
Took a hiatus
Met you and fell
Changed my Facebook status

2
You got an alert
It scared you a bit
You told the whole world
Via a tweet, I'm a twit

THE UNMAKING

I close my eyes, and for one brief moment                                 

Wish you away.                                     

Just to see what life without you would be like.                        

                                               

And within that uncreating,                            

That most unholy of events                                    

A universe implodes within my heart,

BOOM !                                 

There is an absence unprecedented,                    

An emotion not yet defined.                                 

                                               

I open my eyes, and you lie beside me

Half drowned in sleep                                 

Unaware of my sado-masochistic adventure,                             

Unknowing that for a moment you did not exist.

THE BATH THAT KEEPS OUR PAST ALIVE

 

As disgusting as it may seem

my bath still holds the water

in which we bathed all those years ago.                                       

I will admit that it has left a thick film on it                                             

and the dead skin left on the rim of the bath                                       

could almost be alive again,                                    

small animals have even found a home there                                      

but it is a part of the house now                                        

I just cannot pull the plug.                          

And somehow, after all these wave-less nights,                                    

the roses are still living and bobbing                                 

like lifebuoys on the grimy surface                                  

as if markers of our sex.                             

Every nowandthen                          

in those mindless moments we all have                                  

when we slink off into our pasts                                     

and allow ourselves to go frivolously free,                                       

I bathe in the scum of our lives                                       

and when the cold soaks through my clothes                                   

I play with the chain that could suck it all away                                 

but I just cannot pull the plug.

The Space Between All Things

Evil can only be measured against the good deeds of men

As we measure our successes

Against the times we are less than successful

And so we compare our loves to those we despise

We judge our pains by our pleasures

Our days are contrasted by our night-times

This planet which we ride

Is the gap that divides

One particle of nothingness from the next.

That void that occupies the space between one atom

And another

Is as busy as all eternity

We are separated by a distance

Even when we touch

Immeasurable by the human eye

And each and every moment between being loved

And not being loved

Is simply a question of how far away

You are from me

Panchajanya

I walked the shore alone

To watch the waves coming in,

The breakers crashing down,

The ocean going berserk, foaming at the mouth.

The sky was the colour of lead,

Gulls split the clouds,

Shrieking as they scrapped for food.

Sitting on a rock, pulling at the barnacles, I felt nothing

The storm subsided

And the shore was littered with carcasses;

Sponges, jellyfish and sanddollars;

The remnants of an aquatic massacre.

Then you appeared.

Smiling, you picked up one empty shell after another;

Razor clams and moon snails, periwinkles and wentletraps,

Chestnut cowries and a flamingos tongue.

Watching you approach,

You seemed so out of place there.

The ocean would never have discarded you;

It buries its treasures in its fathomless depths instead.

Reaching into your bag full of shells

You pulled out a Queen Conch

“This is Panchajanya¹,” you said,

And held it to my ear

And suddenly

The world was full of sounds

And the clouds

Rolled away

1 The God of Preservation, Vishnu, is said to hold a special conch, Panchajanya, that represents life as it has come out of life-giving waters.

Consulting the Auricle

In the garden

Awash with summer

Pregnant with Purple Sunshine and Windflowers

A fly buzzes by

You flick your hair aside

Revealing

Your surveillance equipment

Perfectly formed

And petite

You catch my star

ing and lean across

To whisper to me

 “They are for listening to tiny things”

You say

“Dust colliding,

The beating of the Blue Damsel-fly’s gossamer wings

Skimming the pond,

A raindrop sliding down a window.”

You look me in the eye,

“The skipping of your heartbeat.”

Oh, to know such things

And not be driven to madness.

How wonderful, how sublime

To exist

For once

Christmas Tree Poem II

 II

Christmas Fayre

A sea of bobble hats,

Wobble along beside us.

We stand beneath the evergreen

Reluctantly enjoying the carol singing,

Clinging to the cynicism we once craved,

That kept us from loneliness and kept us safe.

A swirl of wind

And the sky above

Begins to fill with an infinity

Of geometrically symmetrical shapes

And you wonder, as do I, is there perhaps

A grander design than we had previously imagined.

And we watch as our world turns white and illuminates.

Time to leave.

The stalls are closing.

Only a rainbow of lanterns

Now cast their magic spell across

The path we walk, as we return to the station

Like a silent wintry disco meant only for we two.

And the chronicle of our dance will remain until the morning,

I hope,

At the

Very least.

HEAVEN MUST BE A COLD AND LONELY PLACE

Heaven must be a cold and lonely place
white and friendless
bald and endless
a bit like Milton Keynes

Stargiver

The curtains seem closed on the heavens
It is coalmine black
Before diamonds had formed.
The whispering of trees to the wind the only audible sound.

We are wrapped up in blankets
And I can barely make out your silhouette,
A tangle of hair like canary grass on the Mara River,
A flash of teeth and eyes, fireworks reflecting in the waters.

I wish that I could see your face for a moment
And feel that carnival of joy
As I fall in love with you again
Just as I do every single time I see your face.

Reading my mind you slip into the night like a vampire
A tartan cloak follows
There are animal sounds;
The snuffling of a wolf, the whip of delicate wings.

Returning, you carry with you a cardboard box
And set to work in the gloom
A flurry of frustrated “fuckfuckfucks”
Are muttered in the distance somewhere

Then suddenly; Light

I am dazzled by a throng of fizzing fireflies,
A phalanx of shimmering faeries

A hundred balloons each carrying a sparkler on fishing wire
Rise like swords clashing mid-battle and illuminate you
There stands my Titania sometime of the night,
My Asrais, my infinite stargiver

ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FANTASY AND REALITY

Elephantiasis of the testicles
Can't be much fun.
Sitting on your bollocks
Instead of your bum.

BLUE HAIKU

You took my winter
away. Like snowmen walking
in spring I'm melting

Puedo Escribir (tonight I can write)

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'I have never felt the convincing waves
Crashing over the rocks of my heart'

Or, 'this night I have watched a thousand suns dying,
Extinguished from existence in the obsidian sky'

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Only in loving her does the puzzle seem complete.

For only after being in the midst of chaos
Is it possible to comprehend the nature of peace.

Our souls have danced together underneath a waxing moon
Though she slept in a distant place sharing the same sky

And I have understood her with just one look
And she has loved me a centuries worth in a heartbeat.

This love and understanding; it is all of existence now.
The sky is nothing but a cord that connects us, a song she sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. So simply.
Without fear of losing my soul to the underworld.

Her song. It is her song that will keep me,
Keep me willingly caught in her cage,

Keep me from writing the saddest lines
Yet ever having to feel their pain again.

Though these be some of the first words
I write for her…
Nothing is more certain within my soul

Ghost Town

We danced between the raindrops
As though time itself was uncertain.

Couples kissed and felt each other up,
They gossiped and whispered secrets to us
As we stood in doorways
Close enough to pick their pockets.

The walls bled their silent histories;
The murders and marriages seen from windows.
We heard the clip-clop of carriages
The clang of Christmases past,
Melding with the clattering chatter
Of mobile phone conversations.

If we had vanished or burst into flame
All eyes would have turned to the
Sale signs in shop displays
Promising bargain basement trinkets,
They would have stared at nothing
And shuffled along the conveyor-belt unawares.

We were riding on the wind,
Dancing between the raindrops.

We were as real as a mountain.
We could have crept up on God.

And people passed right through us
Tossing coins towards the buskers.
And the sonic soup of the trumpets and guitars,
Carol singers and church bells,
The bored, tired children and weary parents,
The Wham! songs, the Slade songs, the Pogues,
All became a thunderous hush
Like voices from the moon.

And we rode on the wind,
Danced between the raindrops,
Moved like a mountain;
We crept up on God.

Armistice Day

After the rifles and tanks pull out

And the final dust settles on the broken eggshell

That was once the theatre or municipal swimming pool

The landmines sit in waiting for the unsuspecting,

Ready to scatter confetti like flesh at a wedding.

And there is silence as if for the first time;

It echoes through the alleyways

Then in the distance, a hammersound

Pounds its intent into a brand new beginning.

A door without a house swings in the wind.

Photographs and belongings are scattered;

A wedding ring, one shoe and a letter.

Trinkets now, of no use to anyone wishing to rebuild

Just memories of those that no one remembers

Just things lucky enough to escape the fires.

But this was not war

And my body still carries the scars

My mind endures the trauma

And my best friend was blown to bits

And I never got to hold her as she died

And nobody won

And I’m still trying the impossible task of accounting for the losses

Yet the looters and guerrillas have moved in already

The resistance has disbanded

This was not war

And there is emptiness, as if for the first time.

It ricochets off the walls,

In the distance, a sound,

Pounding its intent.

A door without a house swings

But nobody wins

Nobody wins