Two
of us
in segments.
Pips
Bite acidly those secret
garden
figs
&
change that stranger’s
glare.
Moat bank saplings
tilt
for the sun
Their roots
push down.
Drought
&
Flood.
It’s in the
human blood
Now cry.
3
The struggle
is love.
Parboiled,
we sink in the dread
ful
moat.
It is a mote
in our
Eyes
no surprise.
Skull-
crushing crystals.
Bone-
bending words
promise zero.
You walked
up, good
bye.
Wear your
seatbelt and
fix
that rearlight
soon.
Blossom Ode:Eltham Palace
Chaucer came here
as
Clerk of Works
for
King John.
We
photograph the
stark
remains.
Marriage
is
dusty
excuse.
Kiss
tapestries.
Love
is
a terrible child.
You
walk backwards
up worn steps
from the cloven
palace
door.
False queen
adieu.
History is a lie.
Dream Graffiti
(for John James)
Selected from the gutter realm
of citizens
who work
and find no
peace
in pain.
I am chains.
Barricades emptied the
square
of bossy sparrows.
Liberty’s love is an arrow.
Flags
of plexiglass
consume my pores
&
the fighters
who
carry them,
torn from their skin.
Let them in!
Wolf Tongue
a Chatterton ode
(for Simon Thom)
Go to: Goe to, you doe ne understonde:
Theie yeave mee Lyffe, and dyd mie Bowkie kepe:
Theie dyd mee feeste, and did emboure me gronde,
To trete hem ylle wulde lette mie Kyndnesse slepe –
CHATTERTON: Goddwyn
1
bee-like
we cluster
& suck
Mie blodde steyned Veste
I lacke noe Wite
Farquars ghasted Holborn flange
in draped cartoon
lions suckt my death
quills in my bonnet
from mie Londe be fed
which is poetry
under the sea. A gorie anlace
by her honge, Walpole
selling his shares in the future
of english poetry, quilted
drawing room beaneries
foisted on a magnum
of almond tasting wine
Ynne hys streyninge
fuste, eyes
like sand, bonemeal carpets
down among his mushroom
windows, skywards
in a flush of finger blood, his
single intellect blazed
Gronfyres, scillye wympled
gies ytte to
hys Crowne. Terrain of fires
in a land of black geese
& rain.
strev to ryd
mie Londe of Payne
moths
inside his moonstone jacket:
blood pressure 90/40, clonic
twitching pride
of lions suckt a death.
wrath jockeyed hunger, botte
falleynge nombers sable. Swan
fever defoliated
brightly feathered
Aella. Dorsiflexion
writhed his feet
into the living history
of language, wythe Lockes
of blodde red die. Saracens
drained the Severn
from his head blood, counter-
feiting
jealousy
in a rising star. Snail, forfeit
your parsley grange. Panther, your
jet body is a star – amenge
the drybblett ons
to sheene full bryghte
the Nine will be mine.
quenched gronfers rodde
& anlace sheene,
fanned
upwards
northern
feet
vexynge our coast. Acrostics
early fumed his mouth blood
vixenated raven strokes
on the slain. coffee shop Campbell
Bannerman your frosted
boot studs flaked away
each diamond in the chalky
neonised headwear
of his journey north.
hard-featured men
levyn-bronde yr brow
music pealed along
cowarde Londonne burn
poised on twelve columns
ate the shadow of a language
cooked with albionic herbs
as he floated down. Crystal
children suckt
life their ankles
snapped into a wilderness
of speech. storven ynne theyre
smethynge gore, no prisoners. Their charisma
shattered into space
when he died.
2
I ate brondeous Hotspur’s rural rrr
my lips inside an acorne-coppe
I learned in Florence how to poison flowers
& sheath this quill in absolute commitment
to a language going north
without maps.
Cartoons abounding
in their brain blood
bent my face
towards an Omega
of horns
whose presence was like French
in the dark.
An ake inside these marrow pipes
muffed beakless
ossianic
fakery
in boundless collar blood.
Churned to swivelled
spindrift
in a restless family
of hunger, I
gathered consonants
& stars
from the six windows.
Wythe a swotye Cleme
and sheene fulle bryghte
this pageant suffered
dissolution before
its chemistry was known.
Glabrous vegetative hordes
extend their fin
into my other eye.
They cool to blood
the tungsten carpet
of my tongue.
I have shewn the romantics
all my drierie Pryde.
Inside this poem
is
a Beme of daie.
3
whanne from his lyfe-bloode
rodde lemes
were fed,
berten
Neders
flashed across a fen
of sky blood, no man so potent
breathes to vitalise
the language in his day.
My takelle
poured a shag of fire
into a heart
which thinks
& swims.
Or let me taste my horse across vast Northumberland
like a thunderbolt of blood: cyanide from
his mouth no
water flows.
yn the Bowke
nete Alleyn
to run is
limed fire, eat
motion
with rust.
I eat no Latin bread.
LONGER POEMS
[1977–1986]
Black Torch Sunrise
(for Tom Pickard)
Who can live with this Consciousness
and not wake frightened at sunrise?
ALLEN GINSBERG
BBC monochrome newsreel flickers
jerking on small family TV screen –
Sorbonne students hoy parking meters
paving stones ripped, military phalanx
lowers grinning plexiglass
bodies’ confrontation on sensual Paris boulevards
tolerated hash in Amsterdam cuts down riot-quota
‘our correspondent says there will be no
repetition of the 1968 near-revolution
because students have not gained support
of the French working-class’
Leftists mount insurrection
neat covert agents ensure safety
When does ‘made payments’
become ‘offered bribes’?
Will the Labour Party uphold the jailing of pickets?
Of course.
– TUC inner cadres make closed door pacts with the Govt
This allows the £
some relief on the European market
Bank of England dwarfs
up the lending rate
affording confidence
to other dwarfs/
Circles broken circumferences ripped
perimeters buckled
facts revealed
must be published
because they are seditious
Dragged by the hair students
on Daily Telegraph page one
suitable captions
of a certain persuasion
‘Days lost in strikes are the lowest
in seven years
The people of Britain are determined
to beat inflation’
Whipped legs
of left-bank women students
blur on the shimmered screen
625 line consciousness –
systems of response have woven into them
a right to decide on issues
pertinent to individual consciousness, local energy
& mass development
– plugs are juice-taps
inside skirting boards
overalled workers come on shift
in Scottish grid complexes –
‘At three minutes past eight you must dream’
Sir John Gielgud/
Lee J Cobb dead, Sal
Mineo dead in Hollywood suburbs
alleys exploded liver burst
muggers’ dark blade
elegiacs & glittering heroes
sour with mediocre filmwork
‘There is work and there is art. So far all
I have done is work – you could say
I feel bitter about that’
Lee J Cobb in manly cowboy snarl
20 years after On the Waterfront
& Sinatra paid his debts
no revolution repetition on the hour
les flics keep low profiles
hooligan is an easy word to use in Paris
for the gauchistes
as is sincerity
when referring to the obedient athletic policemen
Bird, bat or strangling reynard
wheeps in the graveyard
domestic cats snarl at window-sill
through leaves & long-grass
How many fantasy robot women
of university poets
have ‘coral-branch’ limbs
breasts ‘full of secrets’?
Breasts are for kissing
& for bairns’ milk
a lovely touchable part
of both sexes
these poets take to bed
wind and water – monochrome opposites
of reality’s many shades
– pine matches burn
in coal
flare because
parts of the wood
remain worthy of fire, like a poet
growing older.
Winds of southern dawn
blow vermilion gases
in my skull.
Barbiturate environment!
Marshmallow urbanity!
Newcastle poets
aim pearl-inlaid shotguns
on Allendale & Nenthead fells
heads down behind
desolate lead workings
where John Martin
looked in terror on the pitman’s lamp
Bunting translates Catullus
in Wylam
old as the century.
Pickard lams battered arts council grant landrover
into cathedral snowdrifts
on bitter dale hillspine –
rural economics are a laugh
if you don’t compensate
for snow.
On the hour every hour
Paris correspondent reiterates
his dirge – snow dances
by itself in Northumberland
& doesn’t recognise farmers.
Newcastle helicopters fetch emergency cowcake and hay.
Pondwater wine stinks
raw meniscus on wrists
Less hair on head of husband
ageing quicker than clocks tick
You chuckle in sleep
blissfully away
from aweful consciousness
for a few hours – I stare at you
in this dark
which is like a hurt, afraid
for your safety
alone.
I deal in secret financial reports
confidential manpower utilisation documents
council Deep-Throats with secrets to tell
I must protect my sources
to weld Press trivia
in low-key suburban rags.
Obvious conflict for a poet
in this predicament –
to be worked out
as it goes
& as it falls
to be cleaned.
Foot stretched out sleepy cramp alone
Cooling coals crack and shift
in London hearth – Real miners
ripped that coal – to chuckle
in your sleep, wife, is better than shaking
at sunrise / solitary
chic rocking chair
slowly hisses
to a stop,
Baroque mandolins
plucked music
before the next normal news from Paris.
1977–78
Far Cliff Babylon
1
Far cliff Babylon, your natty dread future is a dole card
stamped with asteroids exploding
across the city of my
birth.
Putty children,
crassly aware.
I am 16.
I am a Tory. My
vision of the future represents
no people.
Celeriac priesthood offers up my rifle to the sky.
2
Tear the carbon paper of your soul. Virtue
lacking wit cries on the edge
of minefields.
Agents want me to yield. When
I see the Sex Pistols in my dreams I
roll into the garden of a small
nightmare,
looking for holidays in the
sun.
No fun.
My simple body is
a complicated asteroid,
torn
from her
skin.
My life is the size of a
pin.
I h
ave no people.
They represent me.
When we go my separate ways
the colours are dark.
No more apartheid.
3
Hearts like aubergines
cancelled from the garden.
Bint glove,
suck the rivets from
my cymbal,
smoke
vermilion gas. Feel
the city like a river, its
future not written in
words.
Language is a steady stick.
But people are
colour conscious. Their
heroes are red and their traitors
yellow,
Dan Smith fruit skin.
I have cancelled everything and now I am free to choose.
4
I have died every day since I gave up poetry.
Dangerous condescending humans lapped it up.
They stuck their tongues into the gravy and
licked the plate.
Heroism learns to be a stranger
with odd shoes,
too late to use.
Combine your heart with fantasies
of power.
Copulate with the dynamoes inside this
red shirt.
Armband sex.
Helmets erect their tower.
Men train boys.
Fascist tarts obey.
5
Wolf Tongue Page 5