POETRY 1989-PRESENT
POETS ARE BASTARDS
Poets are bastards
I know what
Let's line them up
And have them shot
Unless they're dead already
Like Shakespeare's lot
And if they're not dead already
Why the hell not?
I LOVE YOU LIKE THE CLIFFS LOVE THE SEA
I love you like the cliffs love the sea
I don't understand you
I can only watch you
If at times you hit me during a storm
If at times you brush against me
And I crumble inside
It is soon passed
And I return to watching you rise and fall
And occasionally skim against me
Oblivious of the fact that
Slowly slowly
You are the changing the contours of my world
"I'M GONNA WASH THAT MAN..."
Have you washed your hair
much since 1991?
You must have done,
but didn't dare
cut without due restraint
you say, it underwent
a little trim to prevent
disorder, your complaint
is with your face, far too
beautifully arranged
to remain geometrically unchanged
by the ravages of time that do
what they must to the best of us.
Say twice a week, then, in the sink,
312 times past the brink
of memory, of odour stirring fondness,
all that's gone.
I imagine your locks lopped
on a chopping block,
follicles fairly inhaled
by a trained police dog
in a bizarre top-level
exercise in
melancholy
-no trace of me
since Spring 93.
"AH, DEAR JULIET, WHY ART THOU YET SO FAIR?"
Romeo saw crimson lips and cheeks,
knew the honey breath was gone
but though he'd never loved another
saw in others it would live on.
(He saw blossom on the breeze,
a strange girl climbing trees.)
Jealous of Death, he did not
want to hand over his bride-
but vigils cannot keep out worms,
what good to rot at her side?
(He saw the death of his admirer come there,
the world plunged into a chain of despair.)
The tragedy of one life cut short, and two,
of climbing trees below a certain height:
seeing crimson, eating honey, and never knowing,
never knowing if what you've done is right.
(A whiff of poison on the air,
dear strange girl, thou art yet so fair.)
THE DAYS I GRASP OF ITALY
The days I grasp of Italy
desperately, from trains
are days of beautiful, different streets
of certain names in cycles
and an insufficiency
of moments
that cannot be grasped, held any quicker.
Pigeons in Milan, a tram,
an unhappy girl who gets older by the day.
Now the only surprises are in the past
she says, and her beauty too
folds inward now,
she has closed her pores to love.
We speak of the banality of love by a Dome
and I rush out of the postcard
and onto a train.
In movement, I tremble, bite my thumb,
I am a child grown old and bald who wants the grown-ups
to explain this terrible greyness away.
Now in the postcard there are green eyes
smiling under a slightly camp, 1970s sun
that embraces a hippie typeset.
I sink my teeth even further into my thumb
and she disappears
under a dry, black cake of a stain
that covers the whole compartment with darkness and awe
as we pass under the Apennines.
Now even that is in the past.
MY ROUTINE
(FROM PLAY WISTY FOR ME)
My routine begins with a couple of fags,
putting LPs in their plastic bags,
The empty day is not quite what I planned,
so I open wine, but not post, with trembling hand
It brings bad news, or none, or what's worse:
it fills the void until lunch, the taxi or hearse
Daytime TV like a scab on the hand,
spreads if you play with it, flames that are fanned
Until for a second I'm no longer alone,
I recede into afternoon, hector the phone
Then it's simple, trembling fingers on the corkscrew again;
switch on LBC; drink till you're Sven.
Lift the radio closer, and your sip of night nurse,
But both bring bad news, or none, or worse.
And, finally, a poem by Ian Tollett:
THE FIRST LINE IS THE SAME AS THE TITLE
The first line is the same as the title (in your
poems)
she said to me
"And your kisses are all as sweet
as your very first kiss!" I replied
"Yes, but at least my kisses don't end unexpec-