Peckham

There is no hope here,
only the fluttering of a moth
battering its wings inside
a fluorescent light, stalls
of stolen watches in
warehouses, bought by tramps.

Only burn victims clutching
strangers' arms and blinking
melted eyes half shut at
the glare from bible shops,
flinching at the thud of
a butcher's knife into flesh.

Only bins full of fish heads,
holes in the road full
of halal meat and bones,
sirens coming closer and
the sound of someone's child
crying in the closing dark.

Swimming

I have been
swimming
down a freezing
street

Seen
busses careen
like baleen
whales into space

Stuffed my face
found my feet
tasted the night
alone

Caught between
the doors
and dragged
along

By the light
the tide
and the siren
song

Daydream IV

Sweating and red, I stumbled out
of the oven of an afternoon,
a dry sponge on a dry spine
wrapped with spleen and aching
ribs, dead legs and arms
baking, hair lank and wet,
fatigued hands shaking, eyes
fried in sockets, seeing dots
moving in my empty house.
I felt my hot skin keeping
my organs in as I climbed
the shady stairs, saw the clouds
gathering in the south as I
opened every bedroom window
to feel the ghostly prickling
of static from a summer sky.

I lay my bones in the bath
and felt the creeping water lap
life to cooked meat, ice to burnt feet;
embalmed by cold fluidity
on tap, I closed my eyes with
a shuddering breath and gave up
feet shins thighs arse cheeks and back,
then cock and balls and inner ear,
I drowned myself, dunked my skull
and shivered, shrivelled, cold and clean,
feeling like a child again —
a plastic bag draped with seaweed
washed up on a distant shore.
Tired and white, I watched the light
playing on the bathroom wall,
dappling the mirrors with sun through
restless leaves, and breathed in
the first cool air of evening.

A Tough Apple

Cabbage drinking a drop from
a careless knife, green and russet
red, burnished bulk and bruised
lip, popped pip, cushioned
in a shoot, stalked in the head,
too avocado leafy tough un-
ripe for jaw, tart and raw
and scrunched in the ass,
more wood than pulp than flesh,
too fresh, a brace for teeth
of skin, stalk, dew, and cotton
tongue, hung bough-wise and
dropped on molars wincing,
mouth rinsing, and juice
running down yellow chin.

Basement

This dark room, where we lie awake
And let the music lull and throw
A shadow of our dreams upon
The distant walls, where we can turn
Our aching necks to drink our fill
Of faces that we love, lit up
By this bass line beating a strobe
Beyond their lips and twitching lids.
A gallery of pale statues,
All still, immortal, in the smoke
That hides their feet and climbs the stairs.
Their eyes are warm, alive inside
Unconscious heads that tire and loll
On friendly shoulders in the dawn.

Garden

Doves above open my eyes. Apples rot
And crush in a damp garden, slurring feet,
Stinking fence, and staining outstretched fingers.
Voices of chattering birds, confusing
Light and spilling emulsion, spit across
The dull floor of a cathedral sinking
Into the ground, a crow's subsiding corpse,
Ribs bearing red meat. A swallow dying
With a dying fall swallows every one
Of its blue eggs, yolk broken on the stones
As an offering to some deity
Of thirst, left for a dripping beak. I gag
At the thought of blood running in my veins
As fog envelopes the valley's dim lights.

Malham

This sleeping mountain is a whale
floating out of grey water,
mottled black and plastered white.
It is old and will not wake,
for us it is forgotten
in darkness and obscurity,
and to our nightblind eyes nothing
more than a silent blurred shadow.
But if we leave our lamp-lit rooms,
and walk up pitch black lanes to scare
ourselves, hands trailing dry stone walls,
and blink and breathe into a dark
so tarry thick our lungs are tight,
what answer will our questions meet?
What words of love and comfort will
our whispers incantate? And when
we cannot find the wall again,
are lost and blind and orphaned, cold
to our bones, frostbitten and blue,
what else to do but simply leave
our shoes by the roadside and strip
off frosted clothes and walk once more
as children out into the snow?
To be absolved, naked and white,
new again, clean and frozen, still,
and found in hollows on the hill
curled up together or alone,
thoughtless, wordless, far from home,
but peaceful, undisturbed by dreams.

Daydream III

A wind is coming,
bringing heat out of a pale evening
to thaw this crusted, damp ground.
Breathing life back into drowned
stems of curled plants and tough grass,
the small green bodies revived
and touching each other in the light
that shimmers through a mesh of leaves.
This ground that has stained us
with rich earth's-blood in seams,
smudged across cuffs and hems
and trodden into darkened halls,
now prepares for our return
and respirates parched air
passing through its dusty flutes.
The dew is boiling off the lawns
and by nightfall they will be dry,
ready for the grasping of our hands
through their clustered blades.
Ready to lay a carpet under the night
where we can lie and feel our skin
prickled by the twitching tips,
where we can watch a string of lights
calling from a distant fairground.

The Horn

A burnt brass twisted tube of sound
shivered in the forges of the night,
spun as gold into ear moulds, a slick
sweat oil on furrowed brow, pearl
eyes scrawled out of passion, screwed
religiously shut. A membrane migraine:
fire on the front line, blues in the back.
A caw, a buzz, a spark — furious
molten spasms poured into a rattling
hum of keys, holes and screws; ligaments
struck by convoluted light, bell bent
in incandescent descant rhapsody.
Ancient, broken, battered alive but still
screaming that old love down midnight streets,
tanked up, smoked dry, the unmerciful horn
that kills us all and brings us back — reborn
as disciples of the liquid lightning touch,
of reed on silver plating, of heart attack
solos and epiphany songs, of redemption
in wordless words of intertwining breath,
of living death and inflamed majesty
that leaves you gasping, hunger in your soul.

Hollow

What is this? Crack-pate sax sly
stare from stand, broken shelf and
Beckett, eagle in my mind, can
crushed and empty on dirty floor,
draught under the door, itchy head,
bad haircut and unmade bed,
books unread, an out of tune guitar,
a blunt pencil brushing scrunched
paper on the floor, the walls, desk
unused, stupid plates and ashy mouth,
and what is this?! My kingdom?
My tower? A hollow where I rest
my head? A hollow fetid nest
for sleep and waking sleep and dumb
staring at a screen and feeling numb,
never feeling warm but in my mind.
What? A purgatory of a kind,
coop-flown, alone, I sleep til noon
and ache, and pin my thoughts on June.

A Mask

A clown face smeared in sickly yellow
Leans and grins in a windy corner
Lit by the search-light beam of a lamp
That crackles at each bluebottle's death.
The painted mask is crusted, daubed in
Lines that crease when it laughs —
A cackle no human mouth could make —
And scored with age and malevolence,
The scars of its starved spirit contort
In fits of sick clownish ecstasy.

Thawing Out

I stand in smoky clothes, on aching feet,
With prickling cotton skin wrapping my bones,
And feel snakes fighting in my jugular.
I pick the dirty plates up off the floor
And pause, quite still, and put them down again.
I walk out into the night, feeling the
Salty crush, cracking packed slush on the path
Of day-old snow that floated ghostly out
Of dark electric skies a night ago.
Cars are couched in crumbling slews of white
Refuse from damp clouds, as I cross the road
And dodge the shaking headlights coming on.
I stand between the lanes with open eyes
And lick wolf-lips that hide my yellow teeth.
I make the other side, with muddy shoes
And stop to watch the gritty, melting street.

Daydream II

Had they perhaps been strung
Like seeds across a cobweb, slung
As stars into the quiet night, sung
By the wind in dried grass, hung
As sunlight through fine hair?

Lost motes of dust dissolving
In the fabric of hot rooms,
Shining like the silent thoughts
Of a flower as it blooms,
Drops of dew on shady ground
That cool my sleeping head.
These summer dreams take my hand
And lead me through damp droves
Lined with beaded morning trees;
I will follow where I'm led.