My Face

My face is a pale shade of grey
(If any shade of grey need not be pale)
And it lies upon its pillow in the afternoon
Dreaming of love that passes in the clouds

My heart is a bloody wound in life
Marking the end death made
(If any living be not death)
Convulsed in sobbing motion in its cage

My hand lies open, a white paper page
The fingers thin and tremble at the ends
As though a child had cut this paper to the shape
And held it gently where it sways.

1984

A Letter

I, who scarcely know you
Wrote a letter to you
In which I said that I love you
And that I'm missing you

And later that day I rang you
And spoke with a woman not you
And she spoke with assurance about you
And I felt that  I scarcely knew you

Me

My body is long and thin
And full of veins that blood runs in
And my heart is a drum-box that is always beating
My stomach a monster that must be eating

My brain’s a tyrant that must be obeyed
Now, in an ambush of indecision, feels betrayed.
My self is a pool that the sun shines in
And my thoughts are ripples blown by the wind.

First Car

My father wiped the sweat from his brow.

We were in town for shopping,
It was his first car,
The year: 1964.

In the mirror, sweating in shirt and shorts
His seven-year-old boy,
Two women talking in the road,
And a dog that barked.

It was summer. Hot.
My father yawned.
He stretched his arm
Along the warm back of the seat

And I leaned forward: “Dad…”
Sweat gathered on his brow.
The women were getting in a car.
The dog still barked.

It was 1964.
My father's first car.
We were in town for shopping
And I leaned forward: "Dad".

Memory

Opening the doors of memory

And wandering with an exhumed desire
I carry like a wound the lovely memory
Of you along the dark street in the dawn.

Across fences and between telephone wires
A damp mist moving shows the blank sun
And walking as the streetlights are extinguished
A blackbird's is my own inaudible song.

A Water Rhyme

A fishing disaster, two men in a boat -

One look at the hole and they said: It won't float. 
And as they drifted from the shore 
Both were knocking on death's door. 
Swimming made no sense to either, 
Nor jumping, had they been much lither.
You wouldn't say courage was 'up their street' -
They took to drinking whisky neat.
And having leapt into the sea
They sank as far as to the knee…
And subsequently to the neck.
Called one: The blooming heck!
They soon were drowned
And sank where none had ever clowned.
Jokes have an end, so deep the sea floor
Nor from above could be heard the sea's roar.
One turned on his face, 
Of his eyes not a trace,
A sharp-swimming fish 
Ate them with relish.
The other had lost 
His nose, which was tossed
On the tentacle of an octopus,
Down its mouth without a fuss.
On shore were lamented two fishermen drowned.
Later a shoe and umbrella were found.
Two women were widowed, six kids lost their dad,
Four weeks they all wept and no one was glad.
Below, beneath waves, two skeletons moved
With the currents running west, and soon were removed
From the deep of the bay to the midst of the ocean
And there did disintegrate, an effect of the motion
Of the deep sea salt water and the creatures therein
Who added the bones to the tone of their skin.
The moral of the tale, if anything is,
Though not all you hear's lies, at least half is.

Writing

The writer writes like a knife,

Slipped into flesh or upholstery,
And smoothly with a sideways motion,
Slipping skin from bone, cloth from wood.

It was always like this. The 'bloody man' who bursts
Into Macbeth is probably a scribe, his pen
Streaming gouts of blood - description of a battle - 

Hot from the act of writing.

Shadow

Unencumbered now of dreams

I sit, a grey shadow on the wall.

The day passes till it seems

Earth has no light at all.

I Walk Outside

I walk outside and lizards run

Along the wall out of the sun;
The cactus fence that stands around
Sets broken swords to guard this ground;
I sit and read a book of verse
Knowing I have written worse;
Ants trace patterns in the sand
While clouds drift, drift or stand;
The sun sets red on nearby trees
As mosquitoes' hum now follows bees'.

The Tree

The tree danced in the wind:

Such subtle interweaving of distended things,
Such hidden motive as the wind breathes.
What orchestration had ordained the way
In which no twig or leaf but was assigned a part?
And how was this score learnt or read
When merely nature seemed forgetful of herself
In the branches of a tree where the wind played?

Little Sammy Snowflake

Little Sammy Snowflake

Wept in the hay

Till the sun had stolen 

The stars away.

Sammy, stop your crying

At dawn the doves all sang

But Sammy, Sammy Snowflake
Had long gone.

Enfield Town Station

It could have been the summer if the sun had shone

The waiting travellers straggled all along
The platform where the train would come
Birds whistled momently their song; 

A dog barked in the distance at a run 

As our eyes searched among
The ending railway track and bushes for the long
Black shadow of a moving train, 

And when it came

We waited silently as though we were 

No more observers but observed.

Killing a Mouse

Have I told you the story

Of the Mouse I drowned
Trapped between buckets
And its drowning sound?

I filled the lower one up
And pushed the upper one down
Because it kept me awake at night
With its running sound.

I forgot it myself
Until, in a dream
I too was caught and trapped
Drowned by strange hands.

A Mouse that Hesitates

When the blackbird calls three notes
From the railway bridge and the evening air trembles
As though a hand has plucked it like a string
The lights of houses coming on cast shadows
Across walls and bushes, fences, sheds and trees
And in one garden a tomcat silently creeps
Over the lawn towards a Mouse that hesitates.

The Child is father of the Mouse