Kidderminster

On days bright with snow
Gravestones mark lives that knew no other sun
Than that, which broke over the canals
Stealing the gloom from factory days
And gardens, snow furred, evoke their jumbled hopes
Of wood and earth
In new textures, white uniformed.

A different kind of blur

Days without alcohol pass by in a haze
Of dismal and mundane verisimilitude
The same people wait in queues
The same nauseating crowds
Infect the bus station and the street
And the same vapour trails impose
Their monotonous trajectories of escape
Upon the luminous winter sky.

Being drunk is a blessing really
For at least one is spared
The patient rituals of everyday
And the boring sunsets.
It's an odd dialectic
Of ineptitude and inflamed desire
Proprieties lost and visions of beauty:
A different kind of blur.

Post card to Karina

You in the morning half light
Your cherub face softened by sleep
A Dutch painting – maybe Vermeer.

There is no anger or reproach
In your lamp-lit face
Only repose
As I tiptoe quietly down the hall
Into the bright sun, my life.

I close the door, with a click
Like the soft kiss
Of a butterfly's wing on your cheek.

Herne Hill (1992)

The perfect summer weather now
Vies with the blossom and the dust
To break my tear ducts and my heart –
The houses, like bay-windowed hulks
The hard pavements, as warm as sand
And the pollen, like scented rust.

My heart is bursting with love for you
Flesh of my flesh, my dear one
And with suburban nostalgia
As I walk through the exploding flowers.
Water and blood is all we are
Tugged by the moon, warmed by the sun.

Elephant and Castle

Through slabs of rain, the shopping mall
A great pink-tiered confecionary
Floats, like a failed experiment.
Temples of rain,the grey clouds frame
Greek pediments and tower blocks
That form the built environment.

The Walworth shoppers masticate
New variants of sugar and grease
In the rain-spotted underpass
And the Victorian pubs
Like glazed palaces of loneliness
Anaesthetise the underclass.

This is my world, looking around
I realise that my whole life
Has brought me to this place.
A Mecca for cheap stereos
Displays of cardboard furniture
Plastic trainers, and bits of lace.

This haven, this England, this
Architectural jumble sale.
This graveyard of horrible bars.
South London's oil-stained sump.
This pole star for the really strange.
This great place to crash your car.

This subterranean world where
Rain, joss sticks and ganja
Perfume the atmosphere.
Where crusties play love songs
To their damp dogs on bits of string.
Neil Kinnock's heart is buried here.

It is like a dream, the Elephant
John Major's visual epitaph –
A tarnished world of pink and grey.
Look on ye tyrants, and weep
At Alexander Fleming House
And its slow, rain-soaked decay.

The Muesli Archipeligo

Between the skeletons of cars
A battle rages in these streets.
The shell bursts are as bright as stars
And flames erupt in orange sheets.

Strange noises crackle from the trees
A clatter of Kalashnikovs
The sirens shriek like angry bees
Rose bushes blaze like Molatovs.

Suburban Marxists in bandanas
Deciding they can take no more
Patrol the privet-lined savannahs –
The middle classes are at war.

United Nations cant merely
Evokes the symbols of their fight
Those things that make them strong and free –
The Volvo and the Armalite.

It is a scene of devastation
A kind of Desolation Row
A place of ritual lamentation
The muesli archipeligo.

Kate Adie was down here most nights
To chart the rebels' latest coup.
Until a sniper's cross-haired sight
Despatched her off to Timbuktu.

At dawn, militiamen in basements
Assess their goal of liberation
In fresh communiques and statements
Upon the global situation.

Kropotkin's heirs, they stand to gain
A case of vintage wine or two
A longer holiday in Spain
A credit card from B and Q.

A crack at private education
To compensate the fallow years
A shorter walk down to the station
A few more Vauxhall Cavaliers.

Share deals that never make a loss.
Cheap charcoal for the barbecue.
Alfresco dinners, with the boss.
Freedom, for Holmdene Avenue.

Waldemar Avenue

As the tongues of ferns uncurled
Beneath the incense-bearing trees
The hussy flowers said hello
Like smiling starlets, high on Es.

Along the tree-lined avenue
Lobelias said "Choose me please!"
It was a floral red light zone –
A massage parlour for the bees.

The hungry shrubs were rioting
Time slowed down to a crawl, then stopped.
The air was thick with fragrant smoke –
An explosion in a perfume shop.

Someone had turned the summer on
Cranked up the sound to number nine
Put sex in all the flower beds
And planted strange drugs in my mind.

The traffic stalled, the sky turned red
The oven door was open wide.
The pavement turned to chocolate.
My heart melted, I fell inside.

Crouch End

The yellow fingers of the sun
The blue sky to dream on
The red buses and the
Black crowds, standing in line.

The white curtains drawn back
The sun brushing your hair
The bakery's buttery kiss
And the yellow leaves, like flowers.

The buses nudge like glaciers
Down the brick hill, as I take my leave
Of the white face in the window
Under the optimistic clouds.

Lowden Road

This is the washing machine we bought.
This is the painting that didn't win.
This is the orange blossom, almost in bloom.
These are my tears, to have a bath in.

These are my records – both of them.
This is my black and white TV.
This is the chipped mug you left.
This is our wretched settee.

This is the rose bush you never liked.
This is a fox glove, boxing the bees.
This is today's bottle of red wine.
This is today's footballing catastrophe.

This is the Blur tape you left.
These are all of your picture hooks.
These are the new curtains we bought.
This is a shelf, with no books.

These are the holiday brochures.
This was our bedroom, yellow and blue.
This is my heart – what's left of it.
This is the rest of my life, without you.

One Tree Hill

Love is the petrol of the world
It is the sap of the green shoots
It is the engine of the hills
And the secret heart
Of the churches and flowers.
It is even in the graves
Which jumble down the hillside
With their wind-wheels and messages
In uncultivated rhymes.

We dissolve into the earth
As we make these shapes
These banners of beans
As we turn the heavy clods
Which solidify the past
And scythe the weeds.
The shoots explode, exfoliate
As the blood turns in our veins
Toiling silently for hours.

Dead Flowers 8 August 06

Scorched by fire the arum lily
And the husky stems of the sweet williams
I should "dead head" them I know
But, somehow, I do not want to.
The air is sticky
The garden seems becalmed
The night brings no solace
I am pensive and wide awake.

A voice at the window
"What are you doing dad?"
I have been smoking cigarettes
And working all day.
She loves me and I her
This is our safe world:
The little garden and the house
My conscience troubles me
"Nothing," I say.

Except for the humming sky
The garden is quiet and still
The flowers' beauty is seared by heat
They are frozen in death
Thoughts of war trouble me
With each jet that flies overhead
The night has suspended time
The summer does not end.