Late afternoon, and darkness already
elbowing its way through the crowded streets.
The pavements glister and are cold.
A lady, brittle with age, teeters along,
keeping balance with a shopping bag in one hand
and a giant box of cornflakes in the other.
Lovers arminarm home for hot soup and a bath-for-two.
Everyone a passer-by or a passer-through.
Up at the university, lectures are over for the day,
and students, ruddy with learning, race back to the digs
to plan revolutions to end revolutions.
When asked why he had elected to pursue mathematics
in academic seclusion, the old prof had answered:
‘Because there’s safety in numbers.’
Happy show.
Good to see the front row getting stoned
on a joint full of herbal tobacco
Mike hands out during his song.
And afterwards its beer out of plastic mugs
then off to the Pennyfarthing for pie and peas and dances
wi’ lovely lass wi’ biggest tits east of Pennines.
(ii)
Knocked up after three hours sleep
‘Your seven o’clock call sir’
With Pavlovian urgency I respond and
start dressing, guilty of staying in bed,
terrified of being late, then the truth
hits me like a snowball. No call.
I hadn’t ordered an early morning call.
Its a mistake, a joke, I collapse
back into bed and dream of hot pies
thundering down motorways flanked
by huge tits. Its eleven o’clock
and waking to find myself still alive
I get up and go downstairs to celebrate.
The girl at reception calls me over
‘The morning papers you ordered sir’
and hands me the Times, Guardian,
Telegraph, Express, Mail, Sun, Mirror,
three copies of the Yorkshire Post and the Beano.
‘I didn’t order these’ I quibble.
‘Its written down’ says she. And so it is,
in handwriting not my own. A joke.
I accept the Beano. On such a day
as this threatens to be who needs news.
Huddersfield
Monster cooling towers stand guard
lest the town takes to the hills,
4 p.m. and the sky the colour of frozen lard.
Secondhand soap in my little B and B.
My only comfort, the Kozeeglow hotwaterbottle,
provided free of charge after November 15.
‘Could I please have a front door key?’
I ask the man on my way out.
‘You won’t need one’ he replies,
‘We don’t lock up till midnight.’
I explain that being a traveller
in ladies’ nighties, my work keeps me
out until the early hours. He winks
and lends me his own, personal,
oneandonly, worthitsweight in gold,
magic, back door key.
Later, having not taken Huddersfield Polytechnic
by storm, we retire to the Punjab
to lick our wounds and dangle our disappointment
in the curry. Chicken with 2 chapatis.
Home cooking. The real McCoy sahib.
Outside, no one on the tundrastreets
save we eternal action seekers.
To full to drink, too cold to laugh.
At one a.m. we give up the ghost
town and steam back to the gaff.
in bed I wear socks and my grey woolly hat,
shiver, and regret not having filled the Kozeeglow
with vindaloo.
Newcastle
All night
ghosts of ducks
longsince plucked
waddled menacingly
across the eiderdown.
in the morning
mealyeyed I stood
on the foot of the bed.
The bed yowled
and kicked me across the room.
I picked myself up
and took myself out for a walk
(unfortunately we became separated
so I had to come home alone).
Leeds
1 a.m.
7 a.m.
alone
alarmclock
and the ale
sends fireengines
wearing off
clanging into
so quiet
my dreams
i can hear
bedroom is cold
the eggs
shufffling
i reach out
and put on
my hangover
2 a.m.
8 a.m.
i don’t miss
rain crackles
my teddybear
the flags
only you
i pour
two hands
whiskey
where its hot
over my
in a bed
cornflakes
made for two
moonshine breakfast
Sheffield (i)
After knocking ’em dead at the College of Ed.
we head into town for soft lights and hard liquor.
At the Cavendish there are ladies galore
on the glass-eyed floor, where Mike, John and I
stand together, the more easily to be recognised.
And we are, but by Ginger and his mates.
Steelworkers, hard as nails and big as foothills.
‘Yer supposed to be comedy, make us laugh then.’
They fire their six-shooters at our feet.
We dance, they laugh. They buy the drinks,
we laugh, and so on, and so bloody on.
At chucking-out time, the roadies, as ever,
have copped off and taken the van,
leaving Comedy to trudge home in a rain that stings.
(ii)
Sometimes I dont smell so good.
Its not that I dont care about
personal hygiene. I do. Its just that
sometimes the body catches up on me.
Like when Im out all day and
refuse to pay for a wash and
brush up at the local municipal
on lack of principle. And hiding
away in some unfamiliar un
kempt saloon I console myself
theres no such thing as bad breath.
All breath is good. And sweat
means the body functions as it
should. I drink my bitter.
Put a pork pie to the knife.
Far sweeter than the stink of
death, is the stink of life.
Canterbury
in the no mans land
between opening hours
2 winos
compose a pietà
one
asleep on a bench
halfbottle of richruby
warm and safe
in his richruby
winepocket
the other
keeping an eye
on the cathedral.
Cardiff 6 p.m.
No. 12 a long room built under the eaves. Tri-
angular. Like living in a giant Toblerone packet.
One-bar electric fire and the meter only takes
threepenny bits. Sore throat and a cold a comin
sure as eggs is eggs is eggs.
Somewhere between here and London
the van has broken down. No band.
No props. It’s going to be a fun show
at the Barry Memorial Hall.
‘Drink Brains’ says the advert on a beermat.
They’d drink anything down here.
Must be the coaldust and all that
choirpractice. Ou
tside its raining oldwomen
and walkingsticks. The pillow feels damp.
Tears of the previous paying guest.
The eskimos in the room next door
speak fluent welsh at the tops
of their voices. Not a drink to be had
T.B. or not T.B. that is the question.
Pneumonia at least. Sure as eggs
is eggs is eggs is eggs is eggs
is eggs is eggs is eggs is eggs
is eggs croeso is eggs is eggs
is eggs is eggs is eggs is eggs
is eggs is eggs is eggs is eggs
Cardiff 11 a.m.
Down first for breakfast
in the neat and nic-nac tidy
diningroom I am left to my devices.
I pick up cold steel talons
and tear into the heart of Egg
which bleeds over strips of dead
pig marinated in brine.
Grey shabby Mushrooms squeal
as they are hacked to death
slithering in their own sweat.
Like policemen to a motorway accident,
Toast arrives. The debris is mopped up.
Nothing remains of the slaughter.
John comes in with Judy.
‘Mornin’
‘Mornin’
‘Up early then?’
‘Aye’
Life goes on.
Cardiff
and Cardiffs a tart with a heart of gold.
Has been for me since the Poetry Conference
back in sixty-something. All the stars
of the silver page were there. Heroes.
To kiss the mistress of the man
you actually wrote an essay about.
To see huddled in flesh and blood
the bard you thought died in the ’30s.
The lecturing, the hectoring, the theorizing,
the self-opinionizing, the factions and the jealousies.
And I took my poems to a party
and nobody asked me to read.
Except Sue, afterwards. Sue, a velveteenager.
Archangelhaired and greeneyed
freeschooled and freeloving who taught me
more about poetry than any conference.
aNd tripPING tHe luMP fanTASTic with bRIan.
Spending two hours in Woolworths
just looking. Then going to the park
and listening to flowers gossiping.
Then
the comedown.
(Stoned out of his head, the captain
has left the bridge. Out of control
the vessel drifts toward uncertain disaster.
Shipwrecked on an iceberg of frozen sugar.)
Watching a drunk staggering
and i am the drunk. Out of sync.
Afraid of what the trafficlights might think.
Lying in bed and becoming my own heartbeat.
The monster fingers on my thighs are my own
tapping out an urgent message only they understand.
When you fall out of love with it
the body can be a foul piece of meat.
Quartered at the Park Hotel,
well-hung and drawn from all over.
3 star accommo and all expenses paid.
Hospitality is a red rag to a writer.
Brings out the beast. The muse
is bound, gagged and locked in the closet.
Then the pillaging begins. Poetic Licentiousness.
Shoes down the lift-shaft and chambertin for breakfast.
Naked ladies in corridors and dirty songs in the lounge.
‘Give me football hooligans everytime’
beefs the Night porter to the Day. ‘Poets? scruffs more like,
except for that nice Mr Macbeth. Coloured too, some of them.
Whoever heard of coloured poets?’
Poem for National LSD Week
Mind, how you go!
Nottingham
Stoned and lonely in the union bar
Looking for a warm student
to fall upon. Someone gentle
and undemanding. History perhaps?
Not Maths or English.
Not English. I’m in
no mood to be laid
alongside our literary heritage
allocated my place in her
golden treasury of flesh.
Geography might do the job.
To snuggle up to
shifting continents and
ocean currents. Swap tonnage
and compare monsoons.
Even Chemistry. Someone
tangible. Flasks, bubblings
and a low flame underneath.
With someone warm like this
I’d take my chances.
Maths would find in me no questions
English Lit. no answers.
9 to 5 (or cosy biscuit)
What I wouldn’t give for a nine to five.
Biscuits in the right hand drawer,
teabreaks, and typists to mentally undress.
The same faces. Somewhere to hang
your hat and shake your umbrella.
Cosy. Everything in its place.
Upgraded every few years. Hobbies.
Glass of beer at lunchtime
Pension to look forward to.
Two kids. Homeloving wife.
Bit on the side when the occasion arises
H.P. Nothing fancy. Neat semi.
***
What I wouldn’t give for a nine to five.
Glass of beer in the right hand drawer
H.P. on everything at lunchtime.
The same 2 kids. Somewhere to hang
your wife and shake your bit on the side.
Teabreaks and a pension to mentally undress.
The same semifaces upgraded.
Hobbies every few years, neat typists
in wet macs when the umbrella arises.
What I wouldn’t give for a cosy biscuit.
Conversation on a Train
I’m Shirley, she’s Mary.
We’re from Swansea
(if there was a horse there
it’d be a one-horse town
but there isn’t even that).
We’re going to Blackpool
Just the week. A bit late I know
But then there’s the Illuminations
Isn’t there? No, never been before.
Paris last year. Didn’t like it.
Too expensive and nothing there really.
Toy factory, and Mary works in a shop.
Grocers. Oh it’s not bad
Mind you the money’s terrible.
Where are you from now?
Oh aye, diya know the Beatles then?
Liar!
And what do you do for a living?
You don’t say.
Diya hear that Mary?
Well I hope you don’t go home
And write a bloody poem about us.
SPORTING RELATIONS
Grandma
Grandma
(All-England Cartwheeling
Champion 1944–49)
thought romance was dead
Until she met Grandpa
(a somersaulter of note)
at a Rotary Club dance
and fell heels over head.
Once wed
they backflipped
down the aisle
in breathtaking style
Then cartwheeled like clockwork
throughout the day
to spend their honeymoon
unwinding, in Morecambe Bay.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Uncle Malcolm
Uncle Malcolm
put the shot
for Scotland.
When he retired
he collected shots
as a hobby.
At the time
of his death
he had nearly 200.
And in accordance
; with his last wishes
they were buried with him
at St Giles Cemetery in Perth.
Uncle Mal is now at rest
somewhere near the centre of the earth.
Cousin Wystan
Train-spotting
is that a sport?
It is for Cousin Wystan
until he gets caught
Armed with a paint-box
and a quiver of brushes
Around the railsheds
after midnight he rushes
He’s the Seurat of the Circle Line
the Northern’s Jackson Pollock
His trainscapes are spectacular
surreal, yet melancholic
His dabs and daubs deservedly
stir the imagination
Critics applaud each masterpiece
as it rattles through the station
The National and the Tate
compete for his first retro
And Paris implores him
to immortalize the Métro
But Wystan is unmoved
by popular acclaim
And dreams, not of money,
galleries or fame
But of airports,
Heathrow, Schiphol, JFK.
Security Alert!
Wystan (plane-spotter) is on his way.
Uncle Mork
Uncle Mork
was a fell-walker.
He’d take off from York
and walk and walk
over the dales
across the moors
through the vales
blisters, sores
Collected Poems Page 10