I love your shyness, your highness
reluctant lioness (but fierce at first hint
of untruth or injustice)
Two green stars your eyes are, piercing the black
jungle of my head, finding my roots with deadly aim
and cauterizing rot.
I fantasize about my own magnificence.
You cuff away the real dust from my scruffy mane
not too much the lady to make sense.
Sometimes I wonder, why you help save
our endangered species. Do you simply cheat
the big game hunters for the hell of it?
Or must I admit that without you
I could not survive?
Without you I would not be alive…

Three bears in blue all in a row
in fairyland like objects d’art
quite personal but on display
to tell a cautionary tale in brief
of honey that we need, of porridge that we eat.
Three warm and cosy looking cops
so protectively snug that we could hug them
and tug their sleeves if we were children or if
they were not men as they are.

You ride upon my hat
to the ringside seat
because you’re feeling flat
yet you still crave meat.
You are simply a dream
like a ticket unsold
but like scum or cream
your manner is bold.
So when I cast you off
or knock you out cold
you stare back like a toff
and you’ll not be told.
You catalogue claims like a hieroglyph.
You clog up my drains like the side of a cliff.
You hide in my mirrors and you steal
the joke of what it is I feel.
One day I hope you will crash in the fog
You miserable overweaning hat hog.

Coming to bed late she having retired
gracelessly long since he checks the electric blanket
and snuggles down next her but
in the opposite direction to go to sleep.
He checks the blanket once again
the warmth is sick enough to make him cold
in his own sweat but he sticks it out.
She turns it down, he didn’t know she was awake
and dramatically removes herself to go you know where.
She puts her night gown on turning the collar up
elizabethan style, all but hiding the glowering behind
and therefore showing all.
She must think I’m blind he thinks
as she suffers slowly to the door.
However a silent film
can prove embarrassing to leave
and this is where he came in.

We lay on the grass in Horse Guards Avenue
Sunning ourselves in deliberate splendour
(I felt the Underground under the ground
like a pulse under skin)
She did not feel it
(Spoiling the image).
We sat on a bench overlooking the Thames
where ( launches and pleasure-boats
were making mustachios
(slow ones were failing and spoiling the image).
Planes made definite paths in the sky
after the first I saw
(small as the mark on the ceiling really
a creature) jets came too fast for me.
(Spoiling the image)
“Look at the waterways, skyways and traffic ways
People were flowing like rivers” (I argued)
She said they’re acting” or “I’m afraid they don’t know it”
(Spoiling the image).