Thursday 21 February 2013

In defence of self-pity


Sun on the cloud like a cut blood orange,
The pupils pinch, and the retina cringed.

That's the life of a boondocked soul.
Wine two for a tenner, you're on a roll.
Bloody minded, playing the fool,
Caffeine enraged, too cruel to be cool.

Unwashed sheets, a jealous stench.
Knee bones, neck jealous clenched.
Light stale, flea-ridden lunch,
Mind on its back and sucker punched.

City traffic, city hypnosis.
Sweat, bad breath, and histrionics.
Pink wet sky above a Picadilly poet
Fingers a cliché in his fraudulent pocket. 

Saturday 16 February 2013

For a pay-day treat

No touch, no kiss, hands off the hair
It's 200, or two-fifty the hour.
Girl brunette, pubescent eyes,
Her doggystyle moans are pitch-perfect lies.
Two bottles of wine, it's got a mind of its own,
Need something back just to go on.
White walls, white sheets, a humourless room
The opposite problem of ending too soon.
No lips, no breath, a shadowless sex,
For a pay-day treat what d'you expect?

Friday 15 February 2013

The truth is I understand you.


The truth is I understand you.
Your bite and your sneer
And your perfectionist rage.
I understand why you deploy beauty
Like a fleet of bombers.
I get it, how you have to keep
The world at a whip's length
And how in the absence of strength
Your fingernails and teeth will
Have to do.

Somewhere along the lines
You learned to grip tight,
To perform with bitter lips
The way some alcoholics
Become achievement addicts.
It's not hatred of men.
You make out like a chauvinist
Just for convenience,
It keeps the seas parted.

The way you say, 'fuck you'
Is sexy, not because I'm a masochist,
Not because tearing the world an arse hole
Day after day is good practice,
Or becoming of a bitch.
No. It's because
If it's a choice between you and the abyss
You always choose you.
And that's more than I could ever do.

Maybe I never loved you.
Maybe it wasn't compassion.
Maybe it had fuck all to do
With damsels, distresses
And white knight complexes.
Maybe I just understood you.


Tuesday 12 February 2013

Great King Street Blues - For Pat


With tongues cigarette minted we lipped
The blueprints of our disappointments
That left our songs in mouthfuls trapped,
Our ingrown teeth red with persistence.
In the afternoons the soul turns timid.
Ideals childish coded against the flow,
The heart’s timpani stride becomes a tired thud
Wise words lose their attack - crescendo.
We are nothing but brave peninsulas
Met only by the pinkish heat of light
That seasons the muted currents between us
And dresses the glittered trimmings of the night.
None of us islands, none free from each other.
Love is our revolution, not our master.  

Monday 11 February 2013

Been a while


Square against the thumb the cold
Steel fresh with a winter physics.
The sunlight livid on pallid walls
Dry-defeated in achromatics.

Lips alone are mightier than the pen.
Like sleet drops on mountain brooks
Leave imprints on the the water's skin,
They outclass poems in swallowed lyrics.


Thursday 7 February 2013

Sonnet on reaching thirty-two


At thirty-two I feel no shame, I am
No less inspired; enraged, and vital still,
Though money'd power and hustling time
Attack for sport virginity of will.
Sometimes I've felt defeated by a smirk
Left deaf by sneers in London's diesel squall;
Saw Satan light a candle in the kirk
And say 'salvation first must see you fall'.
But no devil, Christ, no market's tick-tock facts
Can mark the scroll on which I scratch my truth.
The rebel's art keeps fantasy intact
A manifesto not enslaved to proof.
My hasting days in flight are still not done.
So listen up, you fuckers, and be dumb. 

Wednesday 6 February 2013

Your photographs

Everything discarded
Your books, your records.
It's all at last released 
Charitably unburdened.

Except, though, your photographs.

All memories embittered
The afternoons of laughter.
Coffee, rain and records
Loyalties hungover.

All, just not your photographs.

We said we loved as artists.
Not lip-synched by a  kiss
Not cemented by bodies.
It was all bullshit.

But not your photographs.

Pirate heartbeats still
Pledge beauty's booty shared.
But titillation's thrill
Strips genius bare.

However, not your photographs.

When I come across your footprints
I reclaim it all with dust.
Smear away the graphite
Dirtied with a curse.

Except
Of course
Your photographs.