Five O'Clock

The road is blue.
Collonaded trees, leaves
black flags, drooping off
upheld fists of galls.
A few houses lit amber,
cider light from bedrooms
makes shadow puppets
of cups and lampshades.
Wind comes now and specks
the panes with drizzle.
Inside the yellow cradle
we sit and pick at toes or
teeth, watching dark tint
the blind's gapped slats.
We curl like cats, voices
keen and low, like a cello
heard through a wall.
The sky purples, cars slosh
into the gutter's reservoir
blocked up with leaves.
Their headlights bob
over speed bumps,
flashing up the hill.
Its five o'clock
and the house
is full of light
and laughter.

Arc

On a dawn clothed
in fog and cotton
skeletons of paper birds
fall into children's hands,
their perfect faces fold
into the arc of light.
Cloud breaks, bandstand
softly fades, the trees
open their mouths
and teeth come out.
Somewhere in a drain
a blinding orange leaf
is giving birth.

The Fields (edit)

Out of clouds flur owls.
White tinder, tumbling
through the gulf, black
earth their touch paper.
Lambs sing and suckle.
Irises shrink, tossing
and turning in their beds.

Night is gnawed by stags.
The blue moon, circus girl
with silver studs
and cherry lips,
bares a breast.

The chandelier hemisphere
pricks with stars, litters glass
over the fields. One owl tears
out of its dive, silently arcs
in suicide skyward.

Unicorn (edit)

In the cellar I found a unicorn,
a jumbled pile in the dark.
Its skin was seared and it stank
of burnt hair. The eyes were gone.
Two red craters. The ears torn,
the tongue ripped out by the roots.
Mess of limbs folded under it,
blackened twigs. A pyre.

I smeared a drop of blood
into the hide with my fingertip
and whispered a prayer.
It thrashed, the horn struck
the radiator, throwing sparks
across the tiles. The rug burnt,
smoke rose thick in my nostrils.
I vomited, but it was milk.
A lightbulb hung from the joist,
a golden noose.

The unicorn levitated, screaming,
bit down on the naked bulb
and was thrown back to the floor.
Spit dripped from its slack jaw.
My heart beat. All I wanted
was to gather its broken limbs
up in my arms. It shuddered,
nostrils flaring, one last retch,
and its being poured
out of its mouth.

As I collapsed,
I felt something bear me up,
and everything was white.

The Fields

Out of clouds
flur owls.
White tinder,
tumbling
through the gulf,
black earth
their touch paper.

Lambs sing
and suckle.
Irises shrink,
toss and turn
in their beds.
Night is gnawed
by stags.

The blue moon,
circus girl
with silver studs
and cherry lips,
bares a breast.
The chandelier
hemisphere
pricks with stars,

litters glass
over the fields.
One owl tears
out of its dive,
silently arcs
in suicide
skyward.

Seminar

Plaid shirt Elvis twiddling
pedantic pubic sideburns

Prince Edward roman-nosed
in college shirt and collar

Side parting moomin, chin
rested on tiny chubby hand

Sheepish split end Sally eyes
like an Egyptian mural

Pedant redhead hook nosed
jabbing biro and whining

Bowlcut giraffe woolen
scarf wrapped round neck

Penchewing blonde orally
fixated on the middle distance

Mascara blinker fiddling
with her black buckled sleeves

Booted porridge brains knaws
on a straggling brown lock

Queen Victoria shakes jewels
wobbles and is not amused

Ski jacket in flats looks angry
at her page of scribbled notes

Thirtysomething SE mother
wears her seniority well

Tutor gestures like prom queen
making tiara gushing speech

I rankle in my corner
vent spleen, feel better

Blood Orange

Alone I gulp my orange juice
and stare at my desk where
a wasp that buzzed the light
for hours broke and fell.
Bled there, died, dried,
light as a ripped off fingernail,
a brittle little Icarus.

I root inside my cheek
for tats of citrus flesh
and shudder as some
slips out from my molars.
Snagged between white pages,
manifesto for a murder.
Not pulp, but a fuzzy wing.

It's bitter fruit,
and my back teeth won't hide
the glaring proof, livid as
a stained glass window;
the orange, smeared glass.
It is dead and drained,
and I have drunk its blood.

Throne

Growling incubus, I sit
at the top of the stairs
in a blood red armchair,
staring at the lilac door
of the boiler, runnelled
with whitewash like come.
It could tip over forwards
with the slightest breeze.
Like a jesters top, inside
a supernatural well, spin
the sounds of my house
around my ears, snatches
of song blooming, pipes
gush. In the toilet bowl
a braindead fish smacks.
The staircase bows
like a willow branch
underneath our feet.
Still among all this,
the stink of the mouse
that got crushed dead
between the white wall
and the blue bed.

Lewisham 436

At every stop the doors
of the bus swing back,
chill quickly gulps inside,
seeps around passengers
who pull their clothes to,
jackets tightened, collars
up, hands in armpits.
Little black boy stumbles
on the step, his mother
heaves his puff jacket
sleeve and he climbs up.
Their breath condenses
on the window as they
squeeze into a corner.
The rings on her hand
glow like cold butter.

At Peckham the bus
unloads by a half,
grizzled pensioners trudge
onto the pavement, thumbs
fixing at their buttons.
Beefy men with hats
snug around their crops,
monotone Santa's helpers,
grimly cup their chops
in black sausage fingers.
I'm the only white one,
until a red nosed girl
in a polyester coat
steps on with a stench
of hairspray, her snowy,
bloodless knuckles grip
bags of clothes, bottles
from the drug store,
two pink magazines
tucked under her arm.
She takes a seat with
a slight flounce as if
her chariot were late.

Outside, a soup sky.
Concrete thumbs point up:
residential tower blocks.
Busses the same as this
criss cross and stall
to halt by blue rows
of stamping passengers.
Among the leaves crows,
jet black, squabble
and flex their talons.

Parents watching tv.
Two cushions each,
plump behind spines
tired from work.
All that pointing.
Their arms crossed,
their feet crossed,
identically, winered
poufée props brown
brogues, and her
small grey slippers.
She's in badly coloured
jumper and jeans,
ponytail, earrings.
He, turquoise fleece
and dirtgrey Rohans,
round rimmed glasses,
grey half hair head.
At her left elbow
dregs of Chateau.
She takes the stem
thumb and finger,
sticks her schnozz
inside the glass
and sips the last.

Parable of modern poetry

Enter the Empress' sons
Chiron and Demetrius
with Lavinia
her hands cut off
her tongue cut out
and ravished

ho ho

Lavinia!

I feel hypothermic.
All the mothers I know
had wombs ripped out.
I'll learn I promise the
words again I promise
don't know who
I'm speaking to
but I'll bash my skull
on the asphalt for it,
go spread my face,
mush it in grit.
I open my arms
like Jesus Christ,
choke on my own spit.
Squinted eyes, see
a mourning ring
hoop of gold around
the electric light,
a skipping beaten band
thrumming our mass,
a whittle of physic,
a bleat.

Mum lunges around the table,
ballpoint like a rapier skewers
bits of paper, folders, post-its
pink and yellow she peels off
and covers neatly, tapping
out curled black characters.
Dad treads in, rubber soles
cautious on the cherry wood
softly clump. He slow-motion
places his white coffee mug.

Her sweatered arms skit
above the big brown table,
brusque efficient gestures,
files in stacks shoved away,
laptop type-touched, digits
on her veiny hands working.
Pale white computer glow
shows shadows on her brow,
her lips purse, she shuts
the screen with a snap.

Tut. Dad looks slowly up.
She starts her monologue,
biro pinning down problems,
wispy hair swaying slightly,
her voice becoming strained
over the bits that really rile,
rising sarcastically then
lowing in regretful troughs.

Among sheep and pedants
at a parochial little school,
it sometimes gets her goat
that she's made a martyr
for the good sense issuing
from her good witch throat.

Joshua, sat strumming his guitar
in an office chair, by the computer.
Strums, squints at the screen, sings,
his voice cracks, he fumbles, tries
to hit the high note, the karaoke
comes down with an adolescent whine.
I wish I had a harmonica, he wists,
fiddling with the capo and the strings.
He's got the street corner troubadour
look down: black skinnys, fringe wisps
peeping from his lime green hood,
over rectangle specs. He sticks out
his thick bottom lip as he croons,
brows meet in the middle, arch up high
in joy, his blocky features dance,
confessional singer or Mr Potato Head.
Leonard Cohen without the tunes.
He stops to rattle off some words
to his online friends, click clack,
pulls the hoodie back, out of it springs
a hairdo from the Lord of the Rings.
Happy little tuneless hobbit he.

Kitchen, a varnished arena.
The wooden counter, letters
from school in a little pile,
bowl with four ripe tomatoes,
plump William Carlos peaches.
By the sink, colander of rinds
dried out under halogen bulbs,
and a monster tesco pasta bake
thawing softer for our mouths.
The toaster, blender, scales
all in a row, a holy trinity
of domesticity, or three old men
sat out in the sun, before
the Greek fresco of the tiled wall.
Herbs grow in pots by the sill,
the blind is pulled, they sleep.
In a far corner, towels dry.
The cork pinboard with badges
of Gran Canaria and school fetes,
skirt of teatowels, crown made
or paper daffodils and yellow lists.
The old clock, slender numerals
and a wooden frame, high up
on the wall, ticks below hearing,
bringing in the autumn night.