Fishtown

They’ve switched Santa off for the night,

leaving a muffled shape

among the harbour lights.

The pubs are mute:

press gangs no longer roam

through alleys bent

down to the water’s edge,

to hunt their own reflections.

King William’s statue reigns

where history was built

among the gulls and chip-papers;

A sailing trawler waits

for time’s return

beside its hi-tech cousins.

And sleeping townsfolk trust

morning will come

with long bright fingers

to undo the dark,

revealing a different ending.

Dream On

They’re coming for you,

The lives you ignored:

Those little people

Passing below,

Morning and evening.

Asleep at noon,

You feel yourself adored,

A Klee or Kandinsky,

Inventing some brave new world.

Achieving glory

As an artist should,

While clutching the duvet tight.

Dream on,

Ignoring the creak

On the stairs:

The scuffle of shoes

And murmured threats,

Spurred on by

The landlady’s whispers.

Now Look

It used to be goals and girls:

Who scored in extra time.

You were always in for a laugh.

Brawls didn’t start

Till you turned up.

Together, we kicked ass,

Breaking laws even

The judge hadn’t heard of;

Not giving a fig leaf for taste,

Tradition, temperance,

What passes for truth;

Spitting in society’s face

And not missing

Once.

Now, look at us,

Chatting away in Sainsbury’s,

Like a couple of eejits.

Discussing world events

Like what’s cooking for lunch

Or which cat food is best;

Our trolleys bright

With ideas.

Not trading recipes, not yet

Just idle chat

About things we used to mock,

Aloof from the herd,

The dullness we feared,

Never dreaming the suburbs

Would one day come to us.

What a waste!

But then,

Have you seen the price

of tea bags lately?

Vigil

I count the funerals

One by one,

Waiting for time to end.

The guest list

Shrinks,

While longevity brings

The advantage of repentence.

If you beat me to

The Promised Land,

Save some manna for me.

I loved you,

But you couldn’t stay.

Morituri te salutant

Party for One

You like to drink alone,

You say,

With just a mirror or two

For company.

No one complains,

Which makes sense

If there’s no one around.

A party for one

sounds fun.

It’s select:

The only bouncer is you;

You double as barman, drunk,

Barfly and guest,

Downing your own cocktails

In infinite space.

All that room

And no need to share it:

A solipsist by choice,

Millionaire of emptiness.

Like champagne in the rain,

It might catch on,

If all your friends leave town

At once;

Or you never had any

In the first place.

And then I came along

And ruined it all

By ringing the door bell.

Spoof CV

Graduated from the school of misery;

Flunked hard knocks;

Took a stab at whingeing;

Ended up on the rocks.

Beneath

In memoriam 11/11/11

These flowering legions

Cannot know

What glory hides:

Fields of the fallen, glimpsed

Along the route to Rheims:

Graveyards of Picardy

Where real poppies grow,

Transforming each minute spent

In recompense

For those

Whose silence is endless.

Prophetic

I hear your voice:

Cassandra in reverse,

Stating the obvious;

While I sit,

Staring at the landscape,

Consulting the gold,

Bowed heads of wheat:

A congregation

Bright with questions

For which the wind,

Shaking the scattered poppies,

Has no answers.

Joker

You haven’t left,

I know for sure.

I saw you in Sainsbury’s

Only the other day,

Your cart piled high

With goodies.

The dead don’t change;

They carry on,

Playing the same old game.

Shuffling the pack,

I see you again,

Ignoring the rules.

Well past your sell-by date:

Your smile as bright

As a new-minted coin,

Deceiving no one.

Memoriam

The doomed man  

Hears fireworks he cannot see,

Smells Autumn’s corrosive breath,

As metal salts

Ignite the air.

In his mind’s eye,

A boy,

Lighting a match,

Holding it up for a dare.

A crowd appears

Chanting in fatal glee.

And here in the dark,

The past explodes,

A story unrehearsed:

An effigy on a bonfire.

Fire Circle

These faces joined by fire,

Resemble each other in a way

That mocks proximity.

A brief chiaroscuro

Igniting our fates,

Caught in this ritual

Of flame and wonder.

.

Redeeming this patch

Of common ground,

Where truth holds out a burning hand

Against tomorrow.

Out of Order

In the Freud Museum

At Berggasse 19,

The loo (where perhaps the great man had sat)

Was out of order.

What had he thought, I wondered,

As he pondered

On life.

In the consulting room,

A woman was talking loudly;

I studied photographs

Which I no longer remember,

Even under the influence

Of ink.

I thought of das Sofa,

That famous couch,

Far away in Hampstead;

How I'd kept watch

While you took a photo

On the quiet.

It’d felt eerie

Like watching the dead,

Or them watching us,

Which is much the same thing,

I imagine.

Leaving, I felt none the wiser,

Stepping out

Onto a damp Vienna street,

To find life waiting

Almost where I'd left it.

Angel Heights

for Peter

Remember the day you almost died
in that disco in LA;
or how, the next week, we climbed
those sharp hillsides,
dodging snakes and God knows what,
hauling ourselves up through the smog
into the double Os
of Hollywood?

Not owning a camera then
makes sense,
as I think back
to hidden days:
cruising to siren choirs
on distant freeways;
trailing Mulholland at night
in love with the downtown lights;
brunching at dawn at Schwab’s,
acting lost scenes from “Sunset Boulevard”
and  “Day of the Locust”;
half-drowning at Paradise Cove,
as we took on the Pacific;
then, half-way home
on 101,
our last spare burst;

Or when,
burnt-out round the pool
in Burbank or Van Nuys,
dining on Coors,
our pot-luck finally turned:
sneaking gourmet-garbage from bins
by Valley stores;
panning Venice streets for crumbs.

Everyone needs to eat, they say;
so, just the other day,
when I called your house on stilts,
high over Cahuenga Pass,
and you answered - for once,
I knew from your voice,
despite its claim
to sanity and fame,
no matter how far we ride,
hunger for moments lost.
the best and worst of times,
is all we really had
and have
to guide us.

Odyssey

I long for an A-Z of darkness

Reason can’t sense;

Tales not found in brochures;

A land without memory,

Where real shadows meet.

Why wait

In this half-world,

Sifting caution for answers,

Flinging daydreams into a skip?

Let’s jet off to nowhere:

Tour nonsense; try on the hats;

Live as we mean to die, unknowing;

In some resort, where madmen pose as waiters.

Dream the impossible,

And wake up to breakfast,

Knowing love is absurd.

News from Nowhere

Turning the page, one is

At ease, in a practical sense,

Preserving one’s distance on trains:

Reliving events as told,

If not as they really are,

In places we rarely go.

Words that don’t speak for us

But strangers everywhere;

Absorbed in our sanctuary

As the bus rumbles home:

Disaster and war,

The plight of stars,

Politicians whose power

Attracts,

While raising the tide of fear;

Each headline a litany

Of lives unshared,

Making awareness safe

For readers whose fate,

Despite all that's known,

Remains a mystery.

Life Lines

Great Ormond Street, 1987

You don’t recall, being so young,

The spectre of each cot:

Wires straggling up to screens

That told some secret story;

The hurried smiles,

Eyes grim with care,

In your first moments;

Willing science to mend

What nature had left unfinished.

Technology can’t heal

The hours

That fear for breath.

Pacing that ward,

We listened for the note

Of lives so small,

Now amplified

To fill a room:

The message of each heart

Defining a universe. 

Final Vision

A prophet on his off-day

Has few friends:

Visions tumble,

Believers run,

Even the wind deserts him.

That Ark you built

Rots in the backyard

Unnoticed,

As the earth burns.

Your miracles have come adrift;

Your prayers returned

Unopened.

Now, on the highest mountain,

You try to make amends:

Opening your arms to the

Clouds

In search of rain. 

Exceptions

For imperfectionists,

If things go right (for once),

You change the locks.

Catastrophe is endless:

There are always new mountains

From which to fall.

Conceived in error,

Life implodes:

A marriage made in hell

And ending in oblivion.

Fate, like a time-bomb, self-destructs;

An own goal,

Waiting to happen, as the cliché goes:

A trophy room full of disasters.

Meeting you now makes no sense.

Dreams of incoherence

Turn Shakespearean,

Disproving life’s equation;

You are the exception to the rule.

Meltdown

Global warming,  

Can you feel it?

That fire we lit

Is not yet cold.

In cities, passion burns

And temperature is all the rage.

Our nights ablaze,

We dream of yet more suns,

Basking in fire

As oceans rise

And glaciers cry their last.

Vast icebergs melt

As we approach;

And our Titanic sails gently on.