Monopoly
Monopoly
If she played Life
like she plays Monopoly
my wife would have the power to buy and sell me
many times over.
The inner London of my soul
would be owed to her Company Store
from Park Lane to the Old Kent Road.
My sole possession would be
the highly dubious camaraderie
of the equally poor –
only the citations of King’s Cross
to mark our road to God.
But thank God
she does not.
‘Bad Friends’ published 1975
Underlying Themes
Underlying Themes
A bit of sun is giving me
some assistance vis-à-vis
a line of darks I’ve just hung out.
The cable layers have to shout
to hear themselves above the din
of cables being fitted in.
At the Apple Mac my wife
Thinks they have a dreadful life
– commercial greed to her’s abhorrent.
Myself, I fear they’ll cut the current
accidentally thereby wiping
hours of work. Not that griping
is our style. But, already,
autumn chills invade the study.
Showing now an anxious frown
for her jumper she comes down,
puts her hand to mine to feel
that her loss of heat is real.
Cars and buses by us glancing,
driven past diversion-fencing
round the workmen opposite,
do tend to distract a bit.
Soon, though, from the street will come
all the digging’s happy thrum,
pushing out the traffic noises.
Among life’s many, many joys is –
literally, it sometimes seems –
a sense of underlying themes.
The Artist as Threat to Society
The Artist as Threat to Society
I feel as time goes by, my socks get smellier
my vision tellier
my boots wellier
my flops bellier
my catessens dellier
my will-power jellier
my romanticism Shellier
my West Wind umbrellier
my Sachas Distellier
my Zeros Mostellier
my Fawlties hotelier
my Boleros Ravellier
my toffees caramellier
(my Mounts Carmellier)
my lines parallelllier
my follow-ups sequellier
my Fitzgeralds(and Grecos) Ellier
my Henries Purcellier (and Kellier)
my Georges (and Pells) Mellier
my Kims (and Hairies) Nellier
my sixth sense foretellier
my islands Seychellier
my Cocos Chanellier
my calandars (and tyres) Pirellier
my Isambard Kingdoms Brunellier
my Fermors Arabellier
my keyboards Corellier
my Merlins (and dictionaries) spellier
my monopolies cartellier
my german breakfasts pretzellier
my Marx Engellier
my own house dwellier
my old Beatles Michellier
my Andrews Marvellier
my Jersey saints (and –fire Clubs) hellier
my coming-on-with-heaviness sellier
my excitements eventually quellier
my last forests and fences somehow fellier.
More Moon-Power
More Moon-Power
Unseen on sodium-yellow streets,
bright blue moonlight busks, performs feats
dazzling anyone going down the lane,
and anyone would feel intensely vain
with that power to entertain
all comers – troops, non-combatants, Genghis Khans –
gift of a million Dylans, inspired by endless Laugharnes.
Most things toast
Most things toast
Don’t want to boast
but I’m not quite as low as
the most-things-toast
brigade of cooks. This one does
more: you-can-have-curry-
if-you’re-not-in-too-much-hurry,
or pasta-
if-you-must-have-something-faster;
and the reason for this relative
expertise is what I’d call creative
tendencies: adding ‘How does it look?’ yet
to, ‘Hat es gut geschmeckt?’
Palate and palette fascinate
And colours, sometimes,
More than taste, dictate
Whatever you get on your plate.
Check-out Girl
Check-out Girl
Is it of arab princes that she dreams
while punching up the grocery bills,
or Lawrentian lovers, miner’s sons,
beating in time to he electronic drums?
Something must help her overcome
The dull madness of her hungry till.
Something must help her do her sums.
We saw each other through a film of prices –
her cheap perfume, my secret vices –
but a screen love, harassed and fantastic,
came between us and the yards of plastic.
The tear-off check-list rolled and interthreaded
A mutual madness much to our quick credit
– only for censors, or for me, to edit.
A Couple of Fibbers
A Couple of Fibbers
Down from my Daily Mirror foot-hills
to a plain of Guardian-reading mums,
I drag my phantom dark satanic mills –
penance for using the wrong medium.
Up to my eyes in trendiness I bring
my younger son home from school, double quick,
listening to how he couldn’t eat a thing
at lunch because of a bad stomach-ache.
A fib of course. He had nibbled a bit
from his plastic lunch-box – not the plastic,
just the junk. Crisps today. His favourite.
I feel the shame of letting him eat rough.
But worse than that, I too, am a fibber.
I munch the Guardian AND the Mirror.
The Singer
The Singer(La Bassey)
Bold as a new penny
she holds us
touches us
all we can do
is not resist
trust
watch what she’s doing
breaking up distance
catching our dreams
in hands
like a goalkeepers
turning back over
a swan in each wrist
a snake in the
hips
unrest and tension
clutch boney arms
and are flung back
out to a sudden
place
where they came from
the breath is held
in the pleasure which she
holds for us
sure of her time
Don't Drop Me
Don't Drop Me(Lancashire Literature Festival 1981)
Mystics, mistresses, madams and mattresses
You are the monsters now,
in the fields and towns, on the map.
Look, see, far greenier blues,
pearly skies, hypothesize, wow!
Maybe I, maybe no,
hedgerow and Heathrow,
Hey, mister, is this it?
Beads of sweat and play-
acting,
all these years of fair-
dealing,
No, I’m not squealing,
only a wing and a prayer-wheel,
and a terrible feeling
nothing is there (is there?)
Reflexes, twitches, and
go sleep
with you monsters under
the continents
slumberland towns.
Catch me, don’t drop me
I’m coming down
I have got to come down.
Canvas
CanvasJune 1965
The brush can only try
to light a canvass with a candle flicker
the hammer and the chisel
are dumb dividers of a hot-faced whisper
the wind of flame
can never even gasp a dying semblance
of an ember in the stolen wood
of sapless lead.
When growling men
try tongueless to exude a crucial
river of expression
when howling mummers
try their roles on neurotic
first nights of the soul
the theologian will descend
to bless their efforts but only in his cloud
confess emotion.
For he and they
have dignity enough to leave
the hammering of blushes into blue
to mad exiles who wander
with unlit candles for torches
in search of tools
which trade with colours
in a lover’s pool of whirling oils.