Poems

Come, pop -ology of psych,Beam yourself into us likeHeadlights through lightheadedness.   Come, nanny of nanny states,Come, hour of our hourly rates,Come, heart of our heartiness.   Consolation of a prize, Soothing sight for see-sore eyes,Sooth, and say, some truthfulness.   In developments a rest,In first worlds a second guest,In mishaps a happiness.   And, most special of effects,See through your eyes’ haruspexOur gut feeling’s guttedness.   When you’re out, we’ve no insight,Nothing of what’s left is right,Nothing is in but excess.   Wash the broadsheets of our smears,Slake well-wells with welling tears,Bring to heal unhealthiness.

and I’m dead set on a fire:the year’s first.   Barely cold, but I wantto ball paper, lay kindling,   strike a match, smell autumn.The same as a boy:   the sleepovers, bike rides, fishing trips –always the next thing, always   tomorrow.I’ve got good at this – wielding an axe.   Wood splits:a hollow ring.   Soon now, I’ll sitand watch today go up in smoke.

won’t be deterred, though her coughclinks and rattles like a bottle delivery.   The porch covers her; rain and shine shesits cross-legged on the doorstep, not   watching while the street happens,coughing to punctuate life’s sentence.   Somebody should tell her the fifties areover, that no one’s going to photograph her for   Picture Post, that she should quitsmoking. This morning she sits behind a scaffold   as though it wasn’t there.Two men crab-walk the roof above.

When I get there, my friend is fast asleepwith nail clippings scattered on his kneein the dayroom’s baffled light. I wake him gently.‘I don’t know where I am.’ ‘You’ve been asleep.’   Homes Under the Hammer is on the BBC.We manage, once we find his stick, a turnaround the block. He mithers about his hat,all shifting sand, in peril on the sea.   I take his arm, point out cherry blossom(petals on a black taxi) as if springcould blow his mind. But how can he withstand   the rising sea: the broken home, his darlingpottery collection auctioned off to no onehe could know, lovers lost with all hands?

Her tree still sheds its leaves, their fallmakes grief and grieving tangible,and where a cast-iron drainpipe sleevesrainwater poured from rotted eavesan old grief, making water sing,dies in the broken guttering,and where her dormer window mistsshe ghostwrites with her fingertipsor doodles breath as scrims of rainbring gusts and squalls, stir up againleaves falling through unfallen leavesand this is how the greengage grieves.

From reception they followed stringboards upstairs to the photocopying room, through accounts, into the main offices. Miles of white cables   overpowering skirting boards, pinned around door frames. And where they came up short, taped to woodchipped walls or burrowed beneath fitted carpets – those ripples never went back   quite the same. Superhighways of glossy-coated wiring off the spools of the intercom, computer and telephone men I cursed for gunning on another; electricians bamboozled   by which were live. Few takers now for packets of cable pins, backing up on racks in hardware stores. I miss them. We talk to ourselvesstepping about, the skirting tops are ledges for dust.

The streets are closed with hazard tape,wrecked by big oil and snaky traffic jams.The road crew works by geosat to tracethe burnt-out cable where a blackout starts.Last week, the spigots flooded, storm drains blockedand now a drop in gigawatts clears the streetand turns the dragon-headed streetlights out.Crew men strap head LEDs on to help them thinkin the electric buzz of town where a forest stood.It might have been a landscape for a myth,a quest, romance, a creature killed or kissed.Now everywhere’s an access point,the grid and wire where cyberspace beginsand Burger King died when the lights blanked out.Kitted up in high-end tech and clumsy clothesthe crew consult a heat map from the skythen face the smoking serpent in the pit.

Dismounting lightly as a thoughtful child,The tiny king looked younger than his years,And older than eternity. He smiled,But Van Dyck noticed a faint sheen of tearsIn his unguarded gaze. Then, with a sigh,Charles asked: ‘How long until you’re done, d’you say?’‘It will depend, Your Highness, on the eye,’The painter answered, glancing at the grey.‘Your Highness’ mount is fine and full of grace.An eye more honest I have rarely seen.’Charles brought his head toward the horse’s face.‘Marry, I think we both know what you mean.’And how will you, my beauty, end your life?He turned. ‘I must unto the Queen my wife.

Red Swingball bats and the Disney eyeof an inflatable dolphin pressed against the hatch of the Renault 16 in front.   Lorries ahead, cabs to trailers to cabs; faces at coach windows, all lanes blocked. I slump in the back seat. We edge forwards.   I twiddle with the window winder. Nearer the bridge. And see it: black smoke,down the embankment a white car,   a man on the hard shoulder. Almost home, round my mate’s, tell him about the joke shop on the pier, the big dipper, that car on fire.

Let’s take a knifeand our differencesdown to the hazel wood.   Two strokes eachconverts to fourstakes in the ground.   Let’s run these roundwith rope to makea ring, then step   in. Let’s box. Or let’skneel before a sacredcourt. Either way   we’ll agree that justiceshould be outsourced,or the fight fenced   off, so our grievanceswon’t grow intofeuds, battles, wars.

Late winter elbows past in wind and rainwhile teenage waiters bearing lemonadeand shandy take away my mother’s pecked-atYorkshire pudding. Back behind the bar   Michael Jackson blames it on the boogiein the beer-and-whiskey half-dark as weescort her to the car, one at each elbow,each sparrow elbow, as if making an arrest.   My sister will drive her home to kitchen kettle,phone and new commode, her days behindthe wheel, she’s finally admitted, over.   I ask about the doctor. My usual plea.God has moved his armchair over Tewkesbury.