Further down the carriage, a man
talks about agoraphobia and rubs
his choux pastry eyes red.
A handbagged sad sack mother
arranges her chins into a sulk.
The train makes touchdown on
a blunt breast of land, its roll
around the earth like a torrent
falling whitely into a space.
Frost still pools in the ditches,
the face of the handbag lady
numbly jumps up, the grey hair
of a hundred brokers lapsing
into coma falls down through
the air in battered clumps.
Morning rain on the damp paper
makes a sad grey cauliflower
with an inky, stood-on face.
The fens look rusted blue,
and I think of Granchie
in a ward in South Wales,
his head red and heavy
staring brick wall into white.

The bus judders slowly past
the butchers, the green, lights
of the ice rink, ranked cabs.
From the handbagged girls
at the back, the magazine tweak
of perfumed nostril, and two
lily-palmed Cambridge wides
with topman hoods and hi-tec,
whiff of lynx and marijuana.
In town, all change, bloke
in a flat cap, man-scarfed
with a daddy's girl in rainbows.
Jesus College type rednosed
and hilariously rasta-hatted,
fingers simpering hold a rolled
copy of the New Statesman.
Bobby pins in her auburn topper,
an Arbury mother coddles
her suit and booted child
whose tiny arms scatter
a hoard of chocolate money.
Through the window you see
evening walkers flutter inside
shops, like startled moths.

Satyr

Each morning I stand like a god
and straighten the sheets.
My antlers, crashing, interlock
with a choir of beasts,
the white roof coats my belly
and the walls curl
going inside me, their patterns
laughing from my eyes.
My thumb, like a black axe,
niggles at the cataract
where the gasping love
falls into the cup of red,
and the dam comes down,
the gaptoothed king of morning.
I find a fingertip grip
on the original seam
and with a screaming rip
fling my dazzling pelt
away from bones, to the sea's end.

Peacock Day

Open your eyes
and day's baubles are flying
from room to room, webs
bullied out of the rafters
to fall like ghosts of nets.
The house spins, farmyard
animals cut out of paper
cross and recross the center
where my head is crowned
with holly, my pupils berries,
mistletoe in my teeth.

Open your mouth,
run a wet finger around
your lip's rim and hear
a wineglass singing outside,
where the peacock cries.
You pluck a princely feather
out of my behind, turn it
in the light and buff
it to an emerald shine.
This mobile of a house,
turning like a dervish,
hung in the nursery
of the fullblooded world,
can be yours, as it is mine.

O Come Emmanuel

Winter Solstice tomorrow,
when the snow will look
like Slush Puppy dregs.
Tonight, St. Martin's Church,
a friendly cabaret
of dew-nosed worshipers
all scarf and duffel coated.

Mr Basso Profundo, sat
a foot behind my head,
booms the Lord's Prayer
like the voice of death
via Brian Sewell, then
with blinding versatilty
sings like Mr Bean.
The plums in his mouth
probably ripened on
the tree of knowledge
six thousand years ago.
An old dear steps up
to read The Lamb by Blake
in a shakey paper
geriatric whisper,
then a small child
saying something about love
with a frightened face.

The crisis comes midway
through O Come Emmanuel,
that old fave, likely written
by some frustrated nun,
when the organist lifts
his cack-hands proudly
after the big finale,
but three verses early.
"Oh!" from the first row,
chat from the back,
some look to the rafters —
is the spell broken?
is this our freedom?
was that the holy spirit
stealing into the vestry
with mulled wine
and the collection plate?

I'm just thinking
when will I be released?

Transit

My parents' third Volvo this decade
is rolling on to Birmingham, quiffs
of snow tumbling from the hood,
windows bleary like they just woke.
A white sunset quilting the fields,
the roadside drifts go amber
as headlights spill their beams.
Giant iron lamps are haloed
through my half closed eyes.
Brakelights bunch into a nebula
of strawberries, then stretch silent
down the A14's black factory chute.
The earth falls back behind the wheels,
it spins into a night of snow,
service stations, fallen power lines.
As I lean my head into the chassis
the metal thrum remembers me
and takes me in its arms.

Oh Silvio

I trust Silvio Berlusconi.
He's got that skeezy grin,
the puffy eyes those guys
with scarred up faces use
to feel like Joe Pesci
as they squint and suck in
the flab above their dicks.
Whenever he tweaks the hem
of some snub nosed trick's
skirt in parliament I laugh
at all the fuss thrown up,
wondering when it'll hit them
Silly's willy don't perform.
He's served boneless pork
for decades, and with half
a brain its plain to see
no-one with half a horn
would leer so unconvincingly
at every woman in the room,
crack those jokes, split a grin
sweating such desparation.

Here's a neat equation.
Take a flailing ego, subtract libido
and there you have: a wacko.
He's just an egomaniacal dork
skewered on the power fork,
and all the "outrage" he creates
only further separates
the loud mouthed global player
from the middle-aged bedwetter.
I'm for Silvio Berlusconi
because he's a loser, like me.

Comeer

Oh baby I miss you
like this recycled cup
misses its polystyrene days
when all was soft.
Now its just a flimsy hole
on a table in a coffee shop
with stupid white lips
marked "Careful it's hot."
I don't even like coffee!
I miss you like Simon
Cowell misses the point:
a whole fucking lot.
I miss you more
than an old oak door
left ajar and forgot
longs to be clunked
into a darling frame,
permanently shut.

Our world's
a bubble gum

and the spirals
of multigalaxies
expanding into dark

are the throbbing red
of the big bang's
hammered thumb.

The Orange Room

As I sit at night
in the worn dint
of my favourite seat,
with the lamp tipped
into my black lap,
the window there
is made a trick mirror
by the inside light.

All I see
in the black pane
is a patch scissored out
of the opaque;
the orange room
on the first floor
of an opposite house
where they leave
the drapes pulled back
late into the night.

A standing lamp
and its silhouette,
the painted wall,
then outwards only
the dark hill
of an unknown home
like far-off Grendel.

With strained eyes
you can touch beyond,
to the starless glow
of London's fire —
a million circuits,
filaments and wires
irritating the sky
to dullblonde twilight.

Christmas Tree

O christmas tree O christmas tree
your solid pot with plastic gyros
is sprouting furs of nettle green,
your bottom belly's a shock of quills,
the feathered ends of clay pidgeons
that left their tails to alley cats.
Your spindle arms' synthetic nibs
are clothed in factory rushes,
the skeleton beneath your coat
is the dull cell of a tinsel soul.
Your lights like droopy bluebells
lie laughing around your neck,
a wreath of blue, a twisted wire
creeping to your cardboard skull,
shining from the punctured eyes.
A sombrero skewiff on your head
in rainbow colours of adobe walls
casts you as the christmas witch.
The angel of empty ashtrays,
leaning, a gin-drunk crone,
dribbling curses in the corner.
But you slump your head
in the direction of Bethlehem.

Noon

Noon, crash down white
over spouting trees.
Rope them in glow
as they sputter
with beards of twig.
As their scab knuckles
rake the sky
with a beggar's sleight
of hand — you burn them!
Let's see them go
as golden biers,
surging downstream
past the marble houses
to crash into town
and overturn a car,
impale the bank
and drink the money
up in the fire.
Swallow the bag lady
in an instant of black,
crush cindering up
to the rivers brink
and topple in.
Noon still falls
in silver shafts.
One hits Canary Wharf,
and its metal organs
shine like babies
in the gasping air,
then dropping, smelt.

Cold Stone

Facades of houses chipped
in 1910, their white frames
pasted and haloed with ice,
igloo windows, sorbet porch,
steaming to the touch.
Sky folds down, listerine blue,
till the whitewash fronts ache
like a child's cream teeth.
Tree trunks bulge like melons,
faceless, wheezing chalkily
about frozen sap and finches
popping their spots. Chimneys,
painted vanilla, stand up straight
like flasks blowing smoke rings,
cotton pourings pale as slosh
you scoop out of the bottom
of the freezer at four am.
The sky drinks them, folding
again, the final crunch and gasp
of heaven's hydraulic mouth.

Baptism

Planes roar in the distance
with a whorling noise
like a pan being scoured,
steam rising off the metal
to dew the cold tap,
clouds pushing cool
at the window latch.
Street grey with rain,
spotted moss, drizzle from
the childhood playground
caught in bunches
on the bare twigs,
jewels of sky spit.
The sweet reek
of grapes and chocolate
crushed into a sandwich
in a plastic lunchbox.
Soggy bread and syrup
circle the storm drain.
The last leaf flags,
tearing off, lands
in a puddle. At six,
falling in the nature pond,
wrapping in weeds,
toads stuck to the stones,
gasping dead fishlike,
clambering out felt
like a baptism. Tacky
juice residue clings
to fingers, prangs
in the nostrils.
Open the window
making a blank hole,
take a breath
and skip the ledge.