early poems

cold, cold.

rose-bud.

andy and kate.

grizzle.

kiss of sea.

the weather in london.

london skyline.

hashish.

film clip.

hole.

cats.

you you you you you.

photograph of the wind.

london w 10, w9, w3, w7.

iford 1-3.

waves.

cold cold

              My wet feet mark "cold, cold" within white snow.

               On white snow slowly melting light snow falls,

                the parachutes of wet snow re-thatch thatch

                        and ice the Japanese trees,

                              white on black,

                while I must walk to work to buy new shoes.

rose-bud

                The winter and the thought of you approach,

                    a cold nip to my bud in either case

                     a rose-bud in November air again,

                 a thin weed sprouting in a bulldozed place

                        This is more to me than you

                       as everything of us was anyway

                 but I am he, who once looked in your eyes

                              and said I loved

                though you did not believe me, I would say.

andy and kate

much stranged

i walk upstairs

following the love.

even the mug,

later,

hid where the love was.

for a moment, while i am away,

they do something beautiful and furtive on the stairs.

   it is my darkness

that attracts your light

      I drown it.

she decorates her eiderdown with nightfall.

it is my light that holds

you

flutter round me

         burning.

grizzle

                          Andy plays with the dog.

                 '"Yes, I know" goes the dog' thinks Andy.

                        'Yes, I know' goes the dog.

kiss of sea

               slow day sinks to seasons that still carry me

                                  and you

                               (a soft dream)

                             lie away in dreams

              i weave my wishes round you like a kiss of sea.

shoes

              My shoes are old and lax, like cardboard boats,

                 each step wrings a croak from weary toads

                a ragged snake has caught each at the throat

                 they wander, but cannot escape the roads.

                     We get along together pretty well

                   all three of us in need of some repair

                 but all souls suffer on the roads to Hell,

                 and suffer on the roads back out of there.

tenderness

Unknown we were who flew the wave,

unsure we felt it load and bless

unthankful us with what it gave

unasked, a fearful tenderness.

And I can feel within my mind

a need to break the dream, unless

I cannot pass the wave I find

a fearful unguessed tenderness.

unexpected

And I alone,

I smile to think of you,

I'm happy for a while.

I wonder if I'm waiting,

maybe so,

and wait alone as everything you do

seems set to celebrate love,

or let go.

Well I'm bewildered, dazzled,

led and landed

long before I even tried the bait,

I wait here then, for nothing or an answer,

(dancing at the edges of your dream)

while you perform the miracles you do :

exploding bright inside the ache of fate :

The new,

         the real,

                   the unexpected you. 

precipice

Warm together, two of them enough,

and perilously close again to love,

looking at the truth within a kiss,

love belittled people dangling legs

above that fearful precipice.

prisons

Deep in prisons,

there you see the truth;

gripped in the iron clanging of the state

the furtive underground builds up its laws

and seals its echelons

and rots in hate.

Men imprisoned organise a world

where power's naked,

guilty,

brutal,

coarse,

while in the world they came from

criminals

disguise and use and tame the same force.

The fault's in men,

men force it on themselves,

we've had enough of men, oh god, amen.

Give the world to women,

or perhaps,

eradicate all and renew again.

A mirror to drop into.

                              Warm whiteness,

                         witness to my troubled sleep,

                   deep solitude I sense in us together,

                          you a refuge and a refugee.

                  You are redemption, and I send you word

               of gathering storms of starlight in your sky,

                for you are one (or all) and who can tell ?

                                I love you.

                Well I heard we drop forever into deepness.

faraway things

The lamp-post and the wind and waiting here

for this or that, the life that darkness brings

the slow supremacy of softness

and the vague sound of faraway things.

gone

she gone.

long tracks laid out reach her away;

the white dot at the window,

then no-one.

a vast red disk of sun blears down on me.

I say

'It isn't right,

she shouldn't leave at all

and not like this.......'

Love stretches with the miles,

pulls tight,

is pain.

We are both halved,

our life and laughter

cut

the train is gone.

I miss

long tracks reach her away,

the white dot at the window,

then no-one.

BOATS

                                   he souls

                                   she souls

                                         sail

                              on the sea shoal.

nightpoem

stars too small to see I saw before I switched the light to write it.

Hello moth.

              Do you wonder what you're doing ?

justis

Justice is a necessary lie

since nothing's fair in life,

or fair in love,

and some of us live, and soon all of us die,

and that is all,

and that is fair enough.

So only what you are is what you own,

and when you die,

you die,

and die alone.

Don't despair,

accept it,

even try

to dance a little,

live for life instead,

nothing's ever fair, my love, so there,

but nothing that's alive is ever dead.

three sonnets to a dead god.

(one.)

no future

This will not live, since everybody dies :

the world will end,

and 'Man',

and this dry ink

expresses nothing useful, though it tries,

and everything decays.

It's true, I think.

I've time to write these words, and time to stop;

there's little more to tell 'posterity',

(why should it listen anyway ?)

We drop

        our few small pebbles in the endless sea.

                            But she is beauty !

                             Mortal and unwise

                     we sit and talk, not for eternity,

                            but here, and real;

   I see her through these lies :

                     it matters since it matters now,

                                                        to me.

                       She lives quite outside this,

                         through each shor