The Imagined Landscape

The Imagined Landscape

They’re about to fuck with our countryside once again,
the Frankenstein’s monster of post-1945 agriculture,
its deformed wildlife,
its experimental livestock,
the silenced birdsong,
the high fences,
the bludgeoned hedges,
the haunted wonder of how it used to be.

Your imagined landscape’s a shithole
full of shit and holes,
guns and traps,
barbed wire and gates,
ruin and disease,
truth and fiction,
husbandry and industry,
darkness and light,
love and hope,
you and me.

Christmas Lights

Christmas Lights

The comfort in the southern
the tonic in the gin
the black in the rum
the Jim on the beam
the double Dutch courage
the glint in the eye
the brilliance of bottles
on the supermarket stained-glass window shelf
then you arrive at my elbow
in fancy dress your name a poem
you make a choice I do not

Tails

Tails

He was born in a queue,
raised, schooled and loved in one,
fought a war in another
and was buried in one too.

Published in The Rialto number 54

How To Look Good Mad

How To Look Good Mad

You’ve gone
a tall glass takes your place
whoever you were
a long weekend
of decorative Victorian truncheons
sail on the giving and receiving
of invitations
steak knife stake
former lovers and their lovers
some of she
some battle of the Somme
I write instructions on my left forearm
and wish my sperm was coconut flavour
for the hell of it and marketing purposes
as I travel by envelope from hole to hole
my blood up
reality dawning or not
shredded by teddies
had for breakfast

Slippage

Slippage

A watch slows,
the minutes, the ticks piling up
adding to the hours lost
in abstinence of electricity
as on the prow of your imaginary longboat
you drift along your bloodstream
and the tributaries of others,
scouring the banks for enchantment,
slipping in, slipping out
of a sleep that eludes you.

New Boots

New Boots

They carry in their soles seeds and small stones,
shards of fractured glass,
the sediment of streams,
of the gnawed-down coast,
the wetness from trampled grass,
from spit,
the dust of drought,
of the crossroads and meeting places
of the great migrations,
the memory of gradients,
maps and moving and not moving,
the droppings of covert creatures,
the dregs of Saturday night,
the vomit and blood street paintings,
ashes of condemned pages of obsolete love letters
or goodbye notes,
chewed gum,
abandoned jelly babies,
used-up insects,
a wren’s feather,
the curt tail of a vole,
the dead eye of an eel.

Published in Poetry Wales volume 41, number 2

Martello Tower

Martello Tower

Meet me on the casemate,
at the carfax of all my edges,
the killing ground,
the redoubt,
or on a level playing field, please.

There, in borrowed armour,
I will surrender all those hours
I have squandered in thrall
to your silence,
your distance,
resistance.

When the ink is dry on this declaration,
I will be free from the futility
of my obsession,
sailing away from the treachery
of your skin’s coast
in a boat made of fists.

Tonight, young men must be dancing
all along Brick Street,
fighting duels over you
which I am prevented from joining
by the terms of my capitulation.

Forty miles south of your mouth
I’m reduced to being a road sign,
mutely directing my admiration
in your direction.

Published in Poetry Wales volume 39 number 2

The Curvaceous

The Curvaceous

 

I only like things which can

be defined by a curve:

alcohol containers,

steering wheels,

dancing girls,

baby heads,

the moon,

pebbles,

apples,

seeds,

eyes.

 

Published in The Slab of Fun

Prayer Flag

Prayer Flag

 

Suffer accordion the unpicking of the fabric of song,

the dismantling of the ribs,

the way musicians look at one

another so knowingly whilst on stage,

accompanying the flapping of silk

as prayer is offered on the ridge

in the freezing light of the swallowed sun.

The Darkness of Horses

The Darkness of Horses

 

Black is this year’s colour of my countryside

the long-tailed winding sheet shredded plastic banners

unfurling maniacally over banshee barricades

of piled-up pigs

prices

bald tractor tyres

and limping bedraggled beasts

in mud in manure

in watered-down milk

beneath skulking clouds

so say all of us