Kandinsky’s Tuba
Current mood: blustery

9:49 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Boundaries
Current mood: listless

On our first date

after four years

of virtual conversation,

we argued.

In part at least because

you told me that my first love,

long distance

(4000 miles to be exact)

had been invalid.

Not love at all

Just some romantic

adolescent thrall.

You overstepped my boundaries that night.

Our second date went rather better.

The atmosphere electric.

as you granted me three wishes.

One: a bareback pub toilet fuck

Two: a midnight trip to the local piss club

Three: (and this the most surprising)

you accompanied me home

to sleep in bed beside me.

Something you said you'd not done in years.

Our third date

a lazy Sunday afternoon

watching movies after a pub lunch.

No toilet fuck

but instead

sober lovemaking

in your bed.

It was only on our fourth date,

the night before you left,

drinking midnight tea in Piccadilly,

watching tourists and the public theatre

playing out at the feet of Eros,

I asked if you were scared of intimacy.

It's not intimacy but commitment that

scares the bejeezus out of me

I tell you in virtual chat

a week later and 2220 miles apart.

You ask if you can piss into my open heart.

Surely intimacy is the gateway

to commitment you say.

Maybe - and maybe that's why I swing on the gate

Enjoying the ride and the view.

Splinters in my fingers.

The sound of creaking hinges.

Never quite stepping off

Boundaries the only thing respected.

10:00 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Locker Room Reflections
Current mood: anxious

3:02 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Not Me
Current mood: rejuvenated
Category: Writing and Poetry

In these tearing moments

I think of you and notme.

The train carriage rocks and rolls

like your tin tub when we make love

and, behind me,

in the hard white light

a young black girl

sobs softly into her mobile phone;

'Please, please, please.'

You said the problem was

not who I am, but who I am not.

And on reflection

in your unflinching mirror

I know this to be the truth.

For the things that I am not

are not the me I am with you.

But which is true for me my love

and which my love is true for you?

Which of us do you see,

is it me or notme?

I stare at the train window

and wonder who it is

staring back at me

in its double edged reflection.

Caught in the unflinching glare

of carriage lights,

as behind me

the young black girl rocks softly.

and outside

London glows and fumes my love.

And I must cross its

cold black dirty heart tonight

if I'm to be with you my love.

And is this safe or not safe,

this journey we've embarked upon?

The city streets are stripped of

their morning suited sheen…..

by the hard truth of a winters night.

The tyres of my bike will find

each crack and imperfection,

like your hands on my

bare flesh in the thin tin shelter

of our bow stowed beds.

And when you greet me love,

and I look into your eyes,

who will be reflected there my love?

In these breathless moments

I think of you and notme.

The train carriage

groans and rasps

like my cold steel hull

against wet stone walls.

And behind me,

in the hard white light

a young black girl

sobs softly into her mobile phone;

'Please, please, please

this is such a long journey'.

6:11 PM - 6 Comments - 9 Kudos - Add Comment

Meniscus - reworked
Current mood: accomplished

This is a repost - amended following constructive criticism from Alec.




Breaking through

the surface tension,

I am born again.

Baptismal rivulets

form on far from

perfect skin.


Cured of boils,

sores and all

inflammatory stigmata.

But not without the scars

of their removal

that I shall carry with me

to the grave.


This holy water

does not wash me clean.


Surfacing I brush away

the clinging web of

past encounters,

tears and laughter.


But from the skein

pick out the threads

that I shall keep

to weave the mesh

that will enfold these bones

in the hereafter

when once again, and finally,

betrayed by flesh.


A shroud of all that went before.


And when at last I lie

in all my past enfolded

free of flesh and cured of scars

my brittle bones bleached clean,

I shall unpick this

fabric I have woven,

in quiet eternal reverie.

5:58 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

That Feeling
Current mood: thoughtful

Do you ever get that feeling?

It's like strong fingers running gently
across your back
making all the soft hairs stand up on end.

It's goose bumps and butterflies
and catching your breath.

It's the moment just before sunrise.

It's the gusting wind that rises and rises then drops away.
It's the suck and hiss of the tide on a shingle shore.
The wave that rolls and rolls and never breaks.

It's thunder without lightening.
The relentless build up of static,
undischarged.

It's the quiet power of water
surging up through lock gates.

Do you ever get that feeling?

That feeling that you give to me.

2:58 PM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Note To Self
Current mood: excited
Category: Writing and Poetry

Just listen to yourself will you?


I need sweetness.


Feed me.

Hug me.

Fuck me.

Need me.

Hit me.


I want blindness.


Just
listen
to yourself.

Will you?


Just ask yourself 'Why?'.

1:34 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

A Year In Verse

Nothing here that hasn't been posted before - just a reflection on the year


January: Plural Possessive

New friends in a new city.
Bathed in the afterglow of a long red night.
Talking of Burroughs and acting.
The gentle probes and brushes
of conversational archeology
providing glimpses.

Fragments of knowledge..

"Can you cook?"

We eat slivers
of exqisite rareties.
Savouring the flavour
of the recently endangered
as the world turns
on its own spit.

Drips
in it's own spit.

And as it thaws
we become soft mechanics,
picking at the entrails
to establish
the connections.

Unravelling the complexities
of the new years couplings,

when we three fucked.

Delirious,

loved up,

drug fucked,

fucked up.

Loved.

As the world burned
on its own spit.

Eating his salt bread,
we talk of action
and responsibility.
Comparing our burgoning guilt
and inadequate remedies.

'Do you recycle?'

Sated on
his food
we retire
to the warm tension
of your (plural possessive) domesticity.

And thinking of what's gone,
and all that I've never even held in my hand,
I feel the pain of loss,
the warmth of friendship,
the heat of desire,
the weight of your hand on my thigh.

And as he watches
I suck on your thick tongue.
Tonguing your wet lips.

Drinking your warm spit.

Braised in the heat radiating;
from his warm kitchen,
from your (plural possesive) love,
from the
burning,
turning,
spit roasted
world.

It's only later,
in the sodium yellow cold
of the January night,
that the answer finally
occurs to me.

Sure I can cook.

I just can't feed myself.


February: Metropolitan Transgressions, No 1

Sitting in the winter sun
at an overground underground station,
as one after another
trains approach.
And with a series of hydraulic whines,
S  l   o    w.

And with a series of pneumatic sighs,

STOP.

The mechanical rumble of doors
sliding open.
A flurry of hurrying human forms.
The clatter of quickening feet.
Then closing
with a whining, rattling, rumble.
The rising hum of departure,
fading to a s i g h
in the glittering distance.

Leaving me,
sitting in the winter sun.

Skin warming.

Breath rising.

Breath falling.

H e a r t s l o w i n g.

Brushed by the slipstream
of the imperative of movement.

A moment transformed
by the small secret thrill,
of repeatedly,
deliberately,
missing my train.


March: Friends

You validate me.

In the time it takes
to send a text.

In the way that you remember
what I told you last...
... and check to see
what happened next.

The simple fact that you
with your wit.
your beauty.
your intelligence...

... or your combination of all three ...

give so freely of your time to me,

can dispel even my
darkest moods
of fear
despair
and shame.

My only hope,
my friends,
that now and then
for you,
I do the same.


April: Not You

Lily white.
Rose red.
Cornflower blue.

Your face
a conventional bouquet.

Artfully arranged.
Carefully dethorned.
Beautifully presented.

But soon
my appreciation wanes.
And in my imagination
petals fade,
drop,
decay.
Your scent,
brief intense intoxication,
turns to
flower water
rank stagnation.

Instead,
give me a hedgerow.
Dog rosed,
fruit laden and
tangle brambled.
The layered growth of seasons
and each season a new beginning.

Let me sit,
cat like for hours.
Watching for the small movements
that give away the secrets
that inhabit you.

Give me shelter,
as you dance in the capricious breeze.

Dapple my sunlight.

Come the night,
let me learn
your nocturnal pathways.

And if I should dive into you,
let me emerge
bloodied and juice stained.

Give me tendrils not ribbons.
Give me roots not stems.
Give me fields not vases.

Damn your bouquet.
Give me a hedgerow.


May: Bo-jangled

It's been a long night.
I'm bo-jangled,
drug-spangled,
tongue-mangled,
making no sense
to no one.
So I gather
what's left of my mind,
and push through
the sweatbox basement dancefloor,
heaving with spastic humanity,
out into spring warmed
London streets.

The early heat
of a Sunday morning
covers the city like warm honey.
Glazing me slow and sweet.
Penetrating even my
drug-sweated shudders,

Dodging the
mean eyed
mini cab hustlers
I decide to walk.

My fractured mind
counts the lines
between the paving slabs
and I become aware
of my altered state.
My unsteady gait.
Paranoia, unbidden escort,
slips between the cracks
to accompany me home.

Despite the viscous warmth
I'm walking hunched
and quick time.
So I try to slow down
try to unwind.
Try to order the stacatto
images filling my mind.
I think of..... poetry.

The early cherry blossom
confetti that swirls
at my feet turns
city street to
country churchyard.
And briefly I slow
in time with the imagery.
This is..... poetry.

But my racing mind
will not allow itself
to be seduced.
I must get home to
marshall the images
into lines,
verses,
stanzas.
I must write.... poetry.

So I'm torn.

Torn between the vistas
and the sounds
and the warmth
and the slow early morning.
and the lines that
keep on forming
and unforming
and deforming
and reforming
Into... poetry.

Look at me.
Head down and marching.
Confetti thoughts
swirl and stick,
like my sweat soaked shirt
to my sweet honey glazed frame.

Torn again between
the easy heat
of the summer street
and the cold, cold scratch
of the pen.

Quick,
slow,
quick,
quick, slow.
It's the words
it's the feeling
it's the knowing
it's the being
it's the poem
it's the... poetry.

Taking me home.


June: Frostbitten

When you first
came to talk to me
I was hypnotised
by your glittering
cool transparency.
Drawn to examine
the cracks and
fissures twisting around
your opaque heart.
I touched you
and hoped that we
would never part.

Now it's over
and sometimes
these days,
it feels as though
I never even
saw you.
Back then
my touch felt
like it couldn't
even start to thaw you.

That's how it was.

Frozen against you
for six long years.

Even at your warmest,
deep inside
the folds of you,
your arse clasped tight
around my wrist,
your guts enfolded
round my fist,
I just reached into emptiness.

A yearning never satified.

Afterwards
the only thing
you ever asked
was just how deep
I'd reached inside.

A life so small
it could be measured
in inches.

Lying beside you,
numb and shuddering
with night-sweat chills,
I wondered who else had
been inside you
during the dog day afternoons
as I worked...
worried...
earned...
to pay the bills.

Some nights
alcohol thawed the ice
sufficiently to free our fists
for other uses.
More conventional
household abuses.
'Fell off my bike'.
'Tripped on the stairs'.
We took our turns
to make excuses...
but only the midnight copper cared.

To those outside
our closeness
appeared touching.
But they
could neither see
nor feel
the tearing skin
each time I tried
to peel myself away.

Now it's over
and I lie thawing
in the sun.
Parts of me still
black and flayed.
Parts of me still
aching
numb.

A moment smitten.

A lifetime frostbitten.


July: The Fall

There will be no silent spring

This world will not end with
creeping soft-footed death.
Instead the crashing of the fall
will engulf us
in a jack booted
wall of sound.

Starting with the
slow distant
creaking of
the glacier melt
feeding the growing
surge of the relentless tide
rising like panic.
No ebb,
no more.
The magnetic pull of sister moon
overtaken by the thaw.

Moving in
like thunder over oceans
the relentless
thud of bombs
rolls ever closer.
Hard rain
dropped
in wars for
oil, food or water.

The familiar
cacophony of slaughter
building from sideshow
to crescendo.

Shaking us where we stand.
Solid ground turned to sand
whipped from beneath
burning feet
by the furnace wind.

Destruction's roar
sliced through by
the sharpened steel wail
of sirens rising then fading
to a memory as distant
as whale song itself.

The long slow
tail of of defeat
tell tale whimpers,
as one by one we succumb
to the drought and the floods
and the heat.

The crepuscular rustle of insects.
The moist hiss of decay.
The enduring electronic beep
of a solar powered
digital watch.

Endless junk noise.

There will be no silent spring.


August: Metropolitan Handstitched Blues

My transgendered
coffee shop princess
smiles rarely.
Her story etched
deep upon her face.
She looks like
a Warhol Super 8
flim slide,
or a lyric
from Lou Reed's
Walk On The Wild Side.

Outside
the Sunday morning
Brick Lane punters
take a walk
on capitalism's
mild side.
Organic,
fairtrade,
hand stitched
and fresh ground.
And I think that maybe
her sad
kohl eyed smile
brings me onside.

But perhaps I'm just another
Sunday morning sucker
looking for a bit
of local colour
with a cute Spanish lad
by my side.

Cos I don't know
what scars
the make up hides,
or the joy or the pain
she holds inside.
And as the rain falls
and the kids cry,
the coloured girls say.....
'whatever'
as they walk on by.

And the only thing
that cracks
is the make up
round her lips,
but that's not a smile.
So she hands me my coffee
and keeps the change
without being asked
and I say goodbye.

And I walk into the
swirling sodden colour
wondering if I'm any more
than the slogan on a t shirt,
or the lyrics of a song,
or the ethical shit that I buy<BR>And if my new found part time lover
is the real deal or
just a Sunday morning drive by,
taking a walk on the wild side
with a high risk barfly.

Cos she aint Holly from Miami
or Candy from the island,
and I aint no auteur
and he's just a Spaniard
in a cold wet foreign town.
And the coloured girls say 'whatever'
and the August :London rain
just keeps on coming down.


September: Amazing

I can do amazing things.
I can fly man
and I aint even got no wings.

I can live my life afloat.
No moorings needed,
- just a sturdy boat.

I can navigate the seas alone
and never lose the sight of home.

I can hold you close and tight
yet keep myself just out reach
when you turn to me to kiss goodnight.

I can dance you inside out.
I can make you scream and shout.
I can stroke you deep inside
- without a touch.
I can aim my words
to prick and slide beneath your skin.
My eyes can hook
and reel you in.

I can be the perfect son
a friend in deed,
I could even be 'the one'.

There are some things that I can't do.
I aint no angel
- see no wings....
but I can do amazing things.

I can turn your world around.
I can shock, amaze, astound.
I can sow
I can nurture
I can harvest
I can cook

I can change the way you see.
Dammit I can change the way you look.

And it don't matter
that I aint got no wings,
because I can fly man.

I can do amazing things.


October: Ding Ding Ivy


Huddled in a
soft muddle
of daffodil yellow,
Ivy trundles down
the canal path
into the apricot
setting sun.

Today is a Good Day.
Wrapped up in soft
wool warmth
and the company
of loved ones
she gurgles
in the comfortable
confusion of decrepitude.

Untroubled by
the dark delusions
that sometimes steal
whole days away
from her withered frame
she glides into the
dying autumnal light.

At her back
the strange
but familiar
voice of The Boy
as he pushes her
into the sunset.

'Bike coming…..
Ding Ding Ivy'

And a crunch of gravel
and whirring flash of colour
make her squirm
and giggle like a youngster
as the cyclist dashes by.

'Ding ding' she sings,

'Ding ding'

'Ding Ding Ivy'
shouts The Boy.
And the cyclist
looks back with a grin
and rings his bell once more.

Ding Ding.

The Boy smiles.
Today is a Good Day.
Today at least
she recognised him.
if not as Son
then as Love.
Uncomprehending,
but unconditional.
Familiar,
if not quite family.

Some days
they are not
so lucky.

Bending over her
bathed in
yellow and gold,
warm and soft
as motherhood,
he wheels the chair
down the gravel path
and wonders where she is today.

Another bike….

'Ding Ding Ivy'

Ding Ding.

And the crunch of gravel
announces the arrival
of the Baker's Lad
on the path outside
her childhood kitchen
one Spring morning.

Ding Ding

'Ivy' shouts Mother,
elbow deep
in suds or blood,
'Be a love.
Take some money from my purse
and buy a loaf'

Ding Ding

'Ivy!.....'

And at the door
the Lad and Ivy
exchange blushes
and small change
and 'a large loaf
for Mother please'.

And maybe it's the colour
in his cheeks
or the set of his cap,
but Ivy lingers at the door
as his bike disappears
down the daffodil lane
into the rising apricot sun.

And he looks back.
And grins.
And rings his bell once more.

Ding Ding.

'Ivy' shouts Mother.

'Ding Ding Ivy'
shouts The Boy.

And there's his voice
behind her – she knew
that face was familiar -
and him not aged a bit!

And in the soft muddle
of daffodil yellow,
and the spring morning
of that autumn evening,
she's sat on the
handlebars of the
Baker Lad's bike
for one last time,
as the gravel crunches
beneath the wheels
and Ivy slips into the
apricot sun
remembering Love,
and gurgling with delight.


November: Home Boys

There's a crescent moon
over the Rio,
Dalston.

Gilbert and George
have just left the building,
as we revel in the
blood,
fuck,
piss,
of Hackney.

Young turks,
dragging on cigarettes
in back lit doorways
and swapping stories
of latin amores.

Weighing the subtleties
of exchanged favours
and the heavy trust
of confidences.

Weaving a soft cloth
from the stray fibres
of insecurity
we burnish our
base arrogance
to an even
self confident
sheen.

Sealed in fragrant
mangal steam,
under the scimitar
East End moon.

Finding home
in the
blood,
fuck,
piss,
of Hackney.


December: A Spaniard In The Works

You, me and
Aretha Franklin,
ember warm and
cooking breakfast
in the Sunday kitchen
of mi casa flotante.
Rock steady
and full of soul,
we accommodate
the occasional
rock and roll,
the soft swell wake
of passing traffic.

The uncertainties
of last night's
unsteadiness
forgotten in the
morning stillness,
we cook up a storm.
Swaying and
bumping hips like
backing singers,
over eggs and mushrooms
tossing on the stove.

We tear at bread
warm and
fresh as the day.
The half expressed fears
and unmet needs
drunkenly kneaded
into 3am homecoming dough
evaporate like our
hangovers or the mist
rising from the water
outside the window.

And as you feed me
hot buttered toast
I explain
'what is a do-right
all-night man',
and I remember how
you sealed my mouth
with chocolate kisses
before pulling me,
flour coated,
to the soft cocoon
of my bow-stowed
bed.

And despite
our drunken stumbling
and the wake
of passing traffic
we accommodate the
occasional
rock and roll of the boat
as we sway our hips
from left to right,
cos we're rock steady,
in a Sunday morning
soul kitchen
for at least another night.

3:45 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Meniscus
Current mood: aggravated

Breaking through
the surface tension,
I am born again.
Baptismal rivulets
form on far from
perfect skin.

Cured of boils,

sores and all

inflammatory stigmata.

But not without the scars

of their removal

that I shall carry with me

to the grave,

and the hereafter.

The holy water

does not wash me clean.

Surfacing I brush away

the clinging web of

past encounters,

tears and laughter.

But from the skein

pick out the threads

that I shall keep

to weave the mesh

that will enfold these bones,

when once again, and finally,

betrayed by flesh.

A shroud of all that went before.

So at last

when you enfold me

cured of scars

and bones bleached clean,

I shall unpick this

fabric I have woven,

in quiet eternal reverie.

6:36 AM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

A Spaniard In The Works
Current mood: happy
Category: Writing and Poetry

You, me and

Aretha Franklin,

ember warm and

cooking breakfast

in the Sunday kitchen

of mi casa flotante.

Rock steady

and full of soul,

we accommodate

the occasional

rock and roll -

the soft swell wake

of passing traffic.

The uncertainties

of last night's

unsteadiness

forgotten in the

morning stillness,

we cook up a storm.

Swaying and

bumping hips like

backing singers,

over eggs and mushrooms

tossing on the stove.

We tear at bread

warm and

fresh as the day.

The half expressed fears

and unmet needs

drunkenly kneaded

into 3am homecoming dough

evaporate like our

hangovers or the mist

rising from the water

outside the window.

And as you feed me

hot buttered toast

I explain

'what is a do-right

all-night man',

and I remember how

you sealed my mouth

with chocolate kisses

before pulling me,

flour coated,

to the soft cocoon

of my bow-stowed

bed.

And despite

our drunken stumbling

and the wake

of passing traffic

we accommodate the

occasional

rock and roll of the boat

as we sway our hips

from left to right,

cos we're rock steady,

in a Sunday morning

soul kitchen

for at least another night.

1:39 AM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment