The Heather Poems

At Last - a Job For Life!

2011-09-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Heather

I think I've got a Job For Life.
Mrs Sheringham's beetroot are under threat
and her neighbour (twice removed) left an application form
together with NINE Bags For Life.

Apparently, I get paid for each cat I bag.

How about that?

THE MUCKY BUSINESS OF LETTERS TO HEATHER

2011-07-09T11:02:00.000-07:00

As you know, I've been writing letters to Heather for 34 years. Though increasingly estranged, I still send her notes.

Since my escape from the institution, my relationship with my landlady Mrs Sheringham has grown tense indeed. She is ever more peculiar. All I have asked is for a little felt and tar to mend the hole in my shed's roof.

Increasingly, my letters have been secretly archived in tiny boxes. Yo will be able to glimpse these here over coming weeks and years...

Mrs Sheringham's Bike

2009-01-13T06:26:00.000-08:00

Enclosed: Mrs Sheringham's bike - but Mrs Sheringham's bike is no longer with Mrs Sheringham. The old witch locks away the seat but I've keys to The Rehabilitation Workshop and am sure I can make a seat from the remnants of old sofas the interns are given to make presents from.

A bicycle, a pin in the map... Almost ready Heather

Goaded Earth

2009-01-13T06:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

Such trust I'm almost in disgust:

Alone in the kitchen in my net (hair

in ringlets now, and beard)

with glass jars, plastic bowls and knives.

I'm looking at others' lives on the net:

the famous and the named like old Mrs. Sheringham.

I spend days out but stay in

looking into your living room.

Such a goaded earth

I've stuck a virtual thumb tack

in your back.

I'll be in touch, very soon.

On postcards

2008-03-19T15:56:00.000-07:00

Heather!

You crushed me: your looks,
Your words, your muscles

***

You had so many other lovers.
I do understand because I was
Another’s milkman

***

Of course I ponder how you
Cut me to the quick?

***

You can tuck five pence pieces in your frowns -
A fat old penny in my arse

Fire Works

2008-03-19T15:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Heather

There could have been such fireworks.

You said “Light the green touch paper!”
Silly you, it’s blue - blue touch paper.

Although I’m blue
I’ll fill a few more tubes
And twist a round of tapers.

Lucky Key, Lucky Me

2008-03-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Heather

I have been given licence
These years hence
And am travelling light
To be with you.

I’ve packed my travel
Cutlery and vacuum bag,
My lucky charm, my disguise,
your pink hair slide (I
Still remember where
You dropped it) and, of course,
The Key.

Light the Bunsen, My Darling

Embers

2008-03-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Heather

These rolling, cajoling waves of despair - despair.

I remember the dancing, prancing wave
Of your body and your hair over the splot-art
Of our lives - a chariot not a bone cart.

Thou art Art! Can this beehive brain be solid again?
You and me seeking butterfly embers
In our favourite photographs
Curling in the fire.

I left myself in you and you stole me away
On a dancing, prancing wave...

Our Holiday

2008-03-19T15:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Heather

Do you remember that holiday?

You always threw a six,
I always threw a one.

My back against the wall,
I’ve kept our treasured memories
Under lock and key.

Have done well on the programme, Dear,
And may have thrown a three.

Not long now.
I think I know where you live.
I’ll bring those treasures back My Darling
To remind you of You and Me.

Sack Prison

2008-03-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

Heather

I could have been a bull in bully-heaven
Under the Shady Tree at seven.

Thought something was going to happen,
Even a stampede inside.

Just my luck to end up in Sack Prison.

Cold Calling

2007-05-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

Heather

Thought it was you
But just a relative wondering if I were dead

I do understand your silence
Near thirty years of it

But litmus test tells me your tail is still up for it

They didn't call me Bunsen for nothing ("you old burner")

Tops of my thighs are chapped from the chase

I'll be rubbing wood for an ember this Winter

I won't answer the phone
in fear relatives call wondering my death

You know where I am (turn right at the Snowman)

Maltster's Thumbs

2006-08-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, me

"connunundraamumumum," kikakagoooo," "bl-bla-bl-bla-bl-bla-bl" and "eeee-ee-e-e."

Remember?

The first two mouthed with stroking fingers, the second two mouthed with spider-fingers.

And after, how I remember your Maltster's thumbs on the airlock and
The twist of your sole on eggshells (oh what finings).

Yes, I've another 400 days "indoors."
They've moved in another one of those fellows.
It's worse than the cloisters.
He wants his own drawer - and his own drawers!

That one sight of you, walking up Elm Hill...
I'm sorry I slashed so many soft toys.

Heather, save a tongue-dip of Rosehip for me.
I'll never forget that first time in bed together:

"bl-bla-bl-bla-bl-bla-bl..."

I felt so alive!

"eeeee-eee-ee-e-EH!"

"OH - JESUS CHRIST!"

HEATHER, CONTACT ME

2006-04-01T09:12:00.000-08:00

Heather, please, please contact me. Phone me on my mobile or send a text - or, if you still have the key, drop off a message in our locker (from bottom left, 3 up, then 2 to the right) - or leave a letter in a plastic bag under Mrs. Sheringham's small angel garden statue (the one without wings)...

Failing all, please phone the Missing Persons Hotline (it worked for me - and is where I found myself - and staff know me well but don't mention me by name).

Darling, call 'home.'

The Carp Baiters' Shed

2006-03-22T09:41:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

I believe this hammer and saw, these nails and hooks, are yours,
Left behind in the Carp Baiters’ Shed,
Which I attend occasionally,
Courtesy of Mrs. Sheringham’s Z-bed
And know where the carpers leave the key.

What shall we make together?

I have staples, masking tape and gaffer.
We could make celebrity (now that
Janet Street Porter is entirely Janet), if not fame
Or a little pin money.

Shall we build a castle?
Shall we build a shit resistant canoe?
Shall we build an effigy of your mother and set her free
On a raft of old fish bait cartons?

Or could you please help me make
Efficient nose-pegs for my nights spent
In the stench of this shed (patent yours, of course)?

Mrs. Sheringham's Open Window

2006-03-22T09:39:00.000-08:00

My Dear Sausage

I hope you are well and less circumnavigated than normal.

Heather, I understand I must use this term of address
As an endearment to highlight your social position
And the true nature of our relationship
As evidenced on a Radio Four sitcom
I heard through Mrs. Sheringham’s open window
As I crawled beneath it.

I could have used

My Dear Hock
My Dear Boiled Bacon
My Dear Little Cygnet
My Dear Goose Mouth

What do you think?

Oh Heather, My Sausage, I have the Blairs coming on
And am dizzy. Even the jugs of Doom Chaser
I down don’t lift me. Only you can

My Little Turtle Dove
My Parakeet
My Mum Magnet
My Tease Tom Boy
My Bury St Edmunds of Love

What Was That?

2006-03-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

Heather

Could eat you, Sausage…

Vegetarianism now holds me back in this blood
Soup of love and warfare. I want to wear a veil
And live secretly in a tent in Mrs. Sheringham’s vast
Shrubbery, where I’ll fake furniture and the
Trappings of the Good Life as I trap rabbits
Just to get by.

Why won’t you reply?

All right, so the barbecue charcoal
Is cold tar and in my accommodation
With history I’m man enough
To leave you there, My Sausage.

I knew it would end like this: nothing
Shopping nothing
Sex nothing
Talking nothing
Your last text:

It is midnight and it is gently snowing nothing
But there is a hole in the clouds revealing nothing
And there’s a hole in the sky revealing nothing.

I dream of seeing the sparkling plough again.
I will be your ox and you can drive me hither
And thither, thither and hither into nothing.

Your ox or even your boar for the mincing.

My Little Sausage.

What was that?

Nothing.

Whatever Happened?

2006-02-25T05:52:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

Whatever happened to Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?
Whatever happened to the water?
Whatever happened to Walter?
Whatever happened to greengrocer's grass?
Did football steal it?
Whatever happened to those old jumpers?
Did Chelsea burn them?
Whatever happened to crazy golf?
Is it straightened out?
Whatever happened to skipping ropes?
Whatever happened to girdles?
Is it straightened out?
Whatever happened to what happened?

A strange thing happened to me on my way to the Post Office a few years ago: out of nowhere, Walter thrust a specimen of water into my hand.

Whatever's happened to the water? quizzed Walter.

It tastes of lemons. Delicious, I said.

But that is to disguise what has actually happened to the water, said Walter.

And I must say, there is a really strange after-taste to this poem.

Whatever happened to poems?
Is it straightened out?

Hooked In by a Finger

2006-02-19T15:28:00.000-08:00

Heather

I am hanging on by a strand. Hooked in by a finger.
I feel the walls like chalk on glass.
My intestines rush out of me like a pole.
There are packages moving within.
Sometimes, the weight of my sacs grows too much
And I’m eternally sorry to you
I ‘dropped my guts’ in the telephone booth.
Whatever happened to the money back button?

I go down to the nuclear power station
To sniff in radiation.
I get so depressed.
Birds gather there too,
But they soon fly away unharmed
Into the headlights of oncoming cars.

Oh look! A clump of my hair is in shadow.
Looks like a lever. Going to pull it:
My bloody mind-in-a-box has gone riot!

The Lies Stories Breed

2006-02-19T15:24:00.000-08:00

Heather

As the evil slurry rushes in
There are some who wish to assemble
Stories here.

They tell of giant pipes beneath the ground,
Of foul things, elephant sized, going down.

They tell of outfalls from this life above
Where our lives and loves
Merely build mountains beneath the sea.

They tell of delta flows
Taking what was precious
Underground towards the grimaces
Of dinosaurs.

We need to be deaf
And evacuate these lies...

Retain! Retain!
The waste must remain!

Left for Dog

2006-02-19T15:18:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

This ain't no Barbie Doll drool
for extra-relationship sex. Ain't no Monroe.
More a Bacall in the dark.
I want a Ribena lipped babe
to hoist in here out of the waste
and lick the corks of my filter tips,
then leave them for dog
in my low lead ashtray
before she makes her way. That's all.

You knew I was a Hotchkiss kid
so don't come down on me
like a hod of Masonic. Anytime
you can check me out - the sheets, my neck.

Heck, I am alone and so lonely
with my Monkey Gland, Juniper Gin
and a dash of wrist-blood over ice. Gonna
make you feel so bad: the Gloom Chaser is decanted,
the Xmas Grenadine open and the Grenade Fizz
Ready to pop like an apocalyptic syringe.

So I'll screw another fag
into my ultra-violent cold war lips
in want of just a hint of yours.

To Wit - To Woo

2006-02-19T15:14:00.000-08:00

Heather, forgive me...

I’m suffering a grumbling tum
And Hector says my sex pursues my mum -
In the rhythm of a pump grown old and numb,
For our cliché clinches are "acts of the dumb."

We do missionary, doggie, spoons,
Scissors, horsey, even the last two taboos;
And butterfly, pinwheel and "twixt-the-cup;"
Sixty-eight, legs-elevens and make 'K' (standing up).

My tongue is in yours or yours is in mine
And we feed the snake with fruits from the vine
And all our caressing turns water to wine,
Until woodpecker pecks last stroke of time

When the funny old fish croaks "goodbye"
And melts away with the lie:
Mother steps from the vine in my eye
And prods my tum for a child-heavy pie.

And prods my tum for the pie.

A Conscript Among Volunteers

2006-02-19T15:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

I feel like a wet rag in bad weather
Or pebbles thrown overboard with a body.

The lumberjacks are busy. I left the studio early
And walked home along the sewer bank. Leaving
Is sublime: the siren offloads its awful sidewinder
Through my frown. It’s all that wood and metal
They’re heaving. And the smell of it.

I saw you from the bridge.
You were wearing a hat
Or a flag dripping tears.

One does not walk around a tree
As one walks around a man.

There are memories too powerful and sad
To commit to photography. It’s the depression I get
From trees and young women who profess naivety
When one can smell the salt on their palms.

I saw you with a man who looked like Lucian Freud
But he had very long hair. A woman has died in the West
And a man lies dead in Aldgate East. I heard an ambulance.
It was for a girl with wax-stiff hair who one could
Wrestle level with breath. But you can’t be certain.

I also heard a bloke with a dead leg crying out for the wagon.
He could have been the victim of a joke. You can’t be certain.
I saw Lucian Freud digging a hole, or it could have been
A pensioner with long hair digging his way out.

Perhaps I’ll wring myself through with a sheet
And place my moist eyes on your neck when next we meet.
I keep my hands in my blouse because Art is so lonely.

I followed you to the kiosk. You were in conversation
With Freud. His hair was a black cat knotted back
To the skin. My frown rigged a frigate
And turned the grey water between us to gravy.
And the body beneath it. But you can’t be certain.

The Dogs Were Fighting

2006-02-19T12:32:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

I ripped them apart. Fur flew.
Sounded like a thousand Elastoplasts
Being pulled off skin.

The noise has waxed up my ears again.
I’m not putting chemicals in there.
And I’m not going back to the syringe.

I’ll lie down, let in the works
And feel it build in my tubes.
I fear for my ears. And my eyes.
I’m not letting carrots out of my sight.

Gummed up, I’ll burn my fingers
On a midnight fry - skin sticky
On the grill. Ham and bacon

Done to a turn. A tasty glaze.
I can’t see much, but I can see
With my buds.

I must be in love.

Parks Dark Enough to Walk Around In

2006-02-19T12:22:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

Last night I pulled
Twenty wet tissues from my mouth like a stammer
As I gazed into the mulberry coloured sash cord
You had left on the galvanised hook behind the door.

What "vertical mobility" first brought you to me
On a strata of blooms and hats in hallways?

I think of your mother forever wiping leaves
Free of dust.

Incongruous, this scale, these handles we carry.

Can I take off your gold ring and roll it
Across your belly before we make love
For the first time?

I still believe that your mind, like your body,
Will open out as a painting

Or a park dark enough to walk in.

The Freedom of Choice

2006-02-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

I think I can allude to "going about my business."

Perhaps I should buy myself
A less than conspicuous briefcase
Or a document wallet or a very large envelope?

Perhaps I should acquire a discrete moustache
Or a tamed, neat beard
Or a hat with an enormous brim?

Perhaps I should order milk
Or should I continue to press my luck?

Handy Andies fit into an envelope
But a very long sleeve can conceal
All the words one is ever going to need
In life.

Y’ know, I envy wallpaper.
No, I envy the wall beneath wallpaper
For people call me
"Little shit on the wrong side of nothing."

Huh!

I’ve seen engines.
I’ve seen a goose.
I’ve seen another man’s spit.
I’ve seen shrapnel
And tyres gobbing themselves apart.

And all the things I have seen
Confirm my freedom of choice

Between bad veg and the heap.

Abolish The Married Man

2006-02-19T12:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

They should abolish the married man
For my hands are tied.

What do you mean, the kitchen sink?
I’m handling the politics of the carrier bag.

Skins? I’m not buying them.
They remind me of coke burning stoves
And Woolworths.
They remind me of second hand clothes.
They remind me of old button backed settees
And The Freedom of Choice.

I once bought skins. Yes,
Together with a sachet of herbal shampoo (I was that confused)
And the wig bag of a man who feared balding.
He sold them to pay for a holiday (skins and all).
One can understand the pressures (pale ale at lunchtimes).

My hair is an eighth of an inch all over (trimmed to the nude).
Feels like the sleeve of a wealthy woman
But reminds me of shopping
For guns.

My Personal Boundaries

2006-02-19T09:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

My boundaries are perfectly clear:-

A solicitor should never be solicited in a public toilet
Unless ones case is intestate

Nor should one beg from a banker
Unless one is armed
With a safe exit

Artists should decline use of gentlemen’s loos
For ones adjacent urinalist may demand
A painting in pee

Poets should avoid Fridays because the joke is pathetic

Poets should not engage policemen because they will mention Friday
And give Artists a vicarious opportunity
To take the pessimism
Out of poets’ poems

Do not build firewalls around firewomen

While an undertaker’s understudy is one thing,
A nice little earner via the old back burner
Does not a mourner’s moll make
Necessarily

And necessarily it is so that I cast each boundary daily
For myself, for you, my community and any children
hanging about -

Would that I could ring fence your purse
And how

How?

'Nymph Weasel'

2006-02-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

Just when one has arteries taped
Some sad fish comes swimming the other way:
"They’re not arteries, they’re veins!"

And just when ones about to fall to sleep
Some aristocratic jack-the-lad says:
"Not fall to sleep but fall asleep!"

And these fleshies just spin on and on:
"Not Nymph Weasel, as you have written
But Lymph Vessel!’

"Not Lap meals! Lacteals!"

"Not SX! but Essex!"

Failure?

It’s enough 2 make 1 want 2 slit 1’s

rists

****

My teacher certainly was a Nymph Weasel, I can tell you

You and Only You

2006-02-19T08:56:00.000-08:00

Heather

You rag doll, china lamb,
Have you danced free of your bones at last?

Limp like Liberty, you’re so beautiful
You drive disgust into me.

You and only you from that mould,
Now growing cold, a host for mould,
Wish that it could have been a ribbon,
Not rope: you, smiling at me
From an old zinc coffin
.
You temptress.
You jellyfish.
You thin priestess.

You rusting trash can full of newspaper ash,
Drawing me to the last caress
Of your carcass.

***

I have not heard from Heather since sending this. What a mistake!

A Dedication of Fingers

2006-02-19T08:53:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

I pledge, nay, dedicate my fingers to you.

The Engagement Finger
The Marriage Finger
The Finger of the Earth
The Middle Finger
The Trigger Finger
The Gesticulating Finger
The Two Fingers of Non-compliance
The Old Maid’s Spindle Finger
The Thumb of Mobility and Measure
The Thumb of Desiccation
The Finger of the Rubber Cot

And I would pledge, nay, dedicate my virus to you
But cannot - the self same virus that has baffled radiologists
And is the one last secret of microscopy. It lies
Upon my heart and was once magnificently photographed
Weeping and failing like a fat footed ballerina
Or a pathetic street entertainer, singing

Walk On By.

I Should Have Been

2006-02-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

I should have been a plait of bread
Or a long loaf that subdivides into dust.

I should have been an amateur painting
Or a packet of neutered wasp stings.

I should have been a poor excuse
Or the crisp pi-jams of a jogger.

I should have been a reliant plug
Or the tailboard of a jogger’s bed.

I should have been a manual on compliance
Or a knee hammer, covered to dull the sound.

I should have been a waiting room magazine
Or the shoulder strap of someone’s friend.

I should have been wired for gas
Or a jogging trainer back from the mender’s.

I should have been elastic in athletic socks
Or two tufts of masculine hair beneath them.

I should have been a pigtail of lead
Or a starter’s pistol just resting in the dust.

A Towel From The Bail

2006-02-19T08:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

Mushroom soup, soft white wedges, followed by tartlets.
That's me.

And coffee, tea
And a little rub down with a towel from the bail.

How I live,
Not caffeine free, nor oxtail,

But solitary.
And I fear my front door will let in that type
Who looks at ones whites

Meanly.
That's TV
For you. I hang my whites from a waxed line

And raise them high in anticipation of
Ding-dong
And a pearl white smile behind a microphone.

But all I get is a Witness
With a small lame kid, or the Clean Easy magazine
Or an envelope

Requesting money to end the barbarity
We see
Meanly sandwiched between white undies, white ovies

And brown loavies
Conveyed along a knackering cobble road.

So, home alone:
mushroom soup, soft white wedges, followed by tartlets.
That's me.

I Will Not Lie Down

2006-02-19T08:33:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

I stand before you, a detriment to myself
I stand before you, my thumb bigger than the moon
I stand before you, a bloke without a mallet but with enough malice
to fuel a fistful of little fingers
I stand before you in the wasted waistcoat of a wasted man
I stand before you with another man’s post mortem around my neck
I stand before you to raise my vulgar umbrella
I stand before you in unmapped but contoured concertina boxer briefs
I stand before you as a cinema short (showing in the other room)
I stand before you, up to my neck in the accordian chests
of the dying (and my breath wheezes like the bellows)
I stand before you with four pockets and a wallet full of evergreen leaves
I stand before you, envious of leaves
I stand before you, a weasel, with a mouth full of apple (was after leaves)
I stand before you with the prepuce of Human Functions (and other functions)
and before I take my leave

I’d like us to pray
As I distribute my little envies, my "little leavies"

Murder, Foul and Couscous

2006-02-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

It is true that my rosehip home brew brews gossip
But gossip now lips a truth - I know whodunnit!

Tonight I shall serve couscous to a murderer
For Hector is about to spill the beans of murder most foul.
By my beloved mead and citrus pith, pip and peel vintage,
Over cubed foul on a couscous bed, his bile of a deed
Most vile will be drawn from his sinful soul
And tape recorded.

As the bantam’s breast salivates his buds
And the pepper pulls at his breath;
As the parmesan shavings mingle in the dressing
And the Jersey cream sauce melts his lips,
The story of his love’s murder will ensue,
Rising to its fatal conclusion - a stabbing in the hostel’s cloakroom.
He will have forked the last of couscous, Dear.

And this will surely restore my relations with the local wine club
If not the police.

Waiting

2006-02-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

I have lit the paraffin stove in the Plasticine Room
And trimmed the lamps to the cellar;
I have eased the bolts with vegetable fat
And cut my rosewood stick into tapers;
I have stirred dust from the covers
And starched a dirty collar;
And I have baited the trap
And placed sharpened scissors by my slippers.

The gulls are calling. The waves are high.
The Plasticine is bubbling.
My eyes are on the red light (the trip wire’s well hidden).

My darling, don’t keep me waiting.

*****

Published in Spector Magazine

Thou Shalt Not Kill

2006-02-16T03:59:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

It’s been twenty-seven years of changes, my darling:
Peace, democracy, prosperity, freedom, liberty
And Lies and "thou shalt not kill" has killed millions
Since you went your way, to work at Liberty’s.
How is your bank balance and Building
Society? How is Baby? And society? A baby
Born and blown away in the hills of Kurdistan.
I’d give my pockets were they not kites.
How I’ve changed. Twenty-seven million
Starving in Africa. How is our son? A man?
Twenty-seven years since you were wolf
Among my pit bulls. Wrapped in plastic
On the hillside, they all thought of you
Scattering furniture.

Say ‘Baby’ for me, my darling.

The Insatiable and the Mad

2006-02-16T03:57:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

Come, lay your white cheeks
On my white, wide belly
As the night like a stranger
Enters the conservatory
Of our endangered thoughts, undercover,
Below a fake pre-war umbrella.

Come, spell your misery in wide open spaces
And a table fan of country magazines
As the night like large barred buildings
Withers our senses with the puzzle
Of neutron and atom, the building blocks,
Which can cull familiar creatures
Through the unseen twitching finger
Of our noble leaders.

This is the worst black and white movie ever made
Of narrow ditches used to bury young men in.
Little has changed. And the terror I bring you
Is no more homely, for pricks have it,
Loving or no, for what have been these affairs
Of mind-counter-mind but the pulse
Of men licking men?

Come, let us pay homage
To the cashier of our nerves
As guardian to the grey matter of our mistrust,
For you and I have a greater theatre to attend
Than a slit in the belly of the public good,
For ours must be the recreation
Of the insatiable and the mad:
Our tactile fingers
Over midnight pans and plans.

*****

Chaff and Finger

2006-02-16T03:50:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

Smell me. Do I smell of flags?

Last night, I got down on my knees, undid my suit,
And sniffed in what could have been
Linoleum and milk.

I pushed my nose further into my thighs
And smelt chaff and finger perhaps,
Or oil and orange boxes,
Or old ink in older pen nibs.

Naked under bedding, I puffed up my ribs
And took in a good whiff.

Mourning or the morning?

I awoke, sweating from a dream,
Waving the Union Jack,
Spitting biscuits.

Do I still smell of flags - FLAGS My Darling?

In the Year of 'The Bush'

2006-02-16T03:44:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

I’m afraid I have a fear of my arse. And of yours.
I fear The Year of The Bush.

I fear the lights which invade my pine-lined room;
Lights which shout other people’s whoopee;

Lights which cast strange shadows over Baby Belling,
The nicotine ceiling and old friend, pot burnt Formica;

Lights which stencil window frames on opposing walls;
Lights which impregnate my retina with crossbars;

Lights which make a sculpture of my body
Under body wet sheets, with shadows as deep as drains;
And lights which cog my backbones.

We reach out to each other (I have noticed)
By way of an intricate series of pulleys.
Often, I abandon my arm beneath my body.
I place my leg around your neck
As a machine purrs electricity
Over the incongruous scrap that is my mind:
Here is the discarded wing of a Ford Fiesta
And, over there, by the scales,
Is a chart for measuring and fixing cocktails.

Later, I shall pour soothing water over my aluminium
Handcuffs in the basin. Shh, listen... Scraps of feather sing.
This is The Year of The Bush.

My arse, neck, shoulders, guts and tusks
Rise into the Seurat of the day
As Frish drips green in this year’s lower lavatory.

*****

Published in joe soap's canoe

Upon a Disembodied Tree

2006-02-16T03:37:00.000-08:00

Heather

I felt your breath alight through the portcullis
Of desire sixteen years after Hey Joe. And to think,
I used to measure your flesh in marks and erasures,
Dispersing mystery through my "detached eye."

The "detached eye" hangs from me
Like an instrument of navigation, while
Large, low student ashtrays clamber over our chat.

You are neither specimen nor realisation,
But the dramatisation of aesthetic sensibility:
A near motionless ladder of flesh
On the duelling bank of the River Stour.

***

The students have built a scaffold.
I have offered myself for crucifixion.

They know art as "sensibility,"
But you know it is "soul."

They’ll hang me from a disembodied tree
As evidence of my "cultural incompatibility"
And to show the resilience of artists
Who can argue their way out of
The streets.

*****

Published in Ambit magazine

Upon a Ledge of Sand

2006-02-16T03:33:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

I am moving from leg to leg upon a ledge of sand:
The sorry stasis of my soul.

The fluids of The Diagram
Are moving within, all to a pattern.
This is my Grey Anatomy.

Symptoms?

My lips pop ulcers, spit like grills.
My pockets bulge with a stranger’s blood.
My eyes are now raw pigment
Washed in the nibs of tired information.

The fat has soaked in.
I try to ease myself through a wall of skin.
I pass through but am passed by.
I surpass diagnosis.

My hand wriggles like a fish, seeking compassion.
I am my own Parkhurst, my own black pudding.
My hand reaches out from the out fall,
Knows I’m heading for a fall.

I "yomp in mud and glory."

This is the vacuum. What else had Thermos imagined,
Keeping the hot hot and the cold cold?

Is this a snow storm in a jug
Or a jug under thunder?

Boots - my lips crack.
Boots - my tongue runs the maze of their tread.
Boots - my boot spit sparkles as all boot spit sparkles.
Boots - grease eases my toes to go deeper.
Boots - head crushers beneath small, forlorn Y-fronts.

And the shoes - flashing smiles through the carcass.

*****

Published in Ambit magazine

The Fur of Fluffy

2006-02-15T06:46:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

You thought me dead?

I am out.

They gave me a see-through polythene sports bag
for my belongings: threadbare clothes
and your gift - the ever treasured antique travel
ling clock, in pieces, broken but for its smile.

And my collection:-

A thirty year old lock of your hair

Fur from Fluffy, our loved cat which they wired for sound

A postcard of the yard

A map to your house

And the matches?
I keep them dry
Beloved.

Whatever

2006-02-15T06:38:00.000-08:00

Heather
my flower-lip crush
is kow-towed
and however much love
I throw at this town
it's slapped back in my face
like cold slush -
whitening eyes -
clotting blood -

here's Schnitzler's round:
a softer but colder
unmerry-go-round -
pork pie crust
on a brittle bed of sand
and what should be honey
and lush
is sea view dipped
in deep blue dust
where not even money
changes hands
and the lay of lie-wired lines
is our love

for why?
thighs sky high
in a small life
grown smaller
scraping
ceilings
for nothing but the known meaning
of ornamental shelves
and the loved-self
upon them
and the amen
of men
in being
without them
though within

shades of Dunwich Sands
these hands
on a tomb-heavy rope
noosed
to a bell-headed bone
upended -
deaf -
beneath this squeeze easy
Vaseline vessel
of the been field
been world
of this bean thick North Sea
in your dreams -
in a boat alone -
so strengthened
and back boned
but it's just a cold coat
on a hook with shadows deflated
like an uneasy easel
when the canvas lungs
you hung
in a crematorium
were calling
for your high sky
not the crumbling
nor the crumbs
already crusting
your eyes

Heftier and Holier than Thou

2006-02-15T06:34:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

So, you have invited
Heftier and Holier Than Thou
Candid Talking
Mistress Eye Bath
Mr and Mrs Accommodation
Pauline Leaves
Old Leaden Lungs
Mr and Mrs Talking Newspaper
Ms Marmite
And Lord and Lady Meek

But I do not wish to converse with any of the following:-
Tony Tip, Obion Bod, your neighbours,
Zorba the Zebra, your lodger,
Talbot, Chris Chittling, your mother,
Nat, Shane and Wayne and any other members
of the Birdbrook Signpost Archive Society.

Tony Tip calls me, "enterprising in all but deed."
Obion says I’m "pocket tender."
Talbot suggests I am "the shallow stream other men wade through."
I am not these, nor am I "a sloth in search of a cage,"
As Nat, Shane and Wayne of the Birdbrook SAS assert.

It is likely, should you want me,
That Ms Marmite and I will be over the bucket
with Old Leaden Lungs.

What Say You Now?

2006-02-15T06:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

What say you now of Nervism and the skirts of Culloden?
Of trembling knives and unsteady children?
Of Bread Wars, leg irons and sweating margarine?
Of The Decline, under the weight and over weight?
Of Old Imperials, Imperialism, Woodbines and Five Weights?
Of the sperm counts of governments in degeneration?
Of serial deaths and beasts for the culling?

Soon Heather, colour alone will love us
And mine would be green, but will be burnt umber,
According to Petulia
For she knows subways
And is no one’s zimmer frame (ask my bent mother).
For love over a pint is love of a pint.

So what say you now of Lotto and Legs Eleven?
Of Lottery’s lechery and my electric-pegged groin
Spread towards heaven?

*****

Published in Ambit Magazine

The Dead Thing We Love to Feel

2006-02-15T06:22:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

Is it one’s heavy heart or a heavy meal - the heaving cake-hole,
Strange wound, a clawing crag beneath red reindeer nose?
Are we in ruins full of sharks and pointy darts in the darkness?
Are we more tender than tripe in our tender-most touches?

Is it one’s heaving, heavy metal hurt or dinosaur eyeballs -
Their sunken pits, poisonous sockets above pale cheek walls?
Are these my runes or your dice? Fool’s gold or pebbles,
Gluey in their slits, searching for the blind and terrible?

Is it one’s huey hut, that hefty mop, one’s top-not, one’s haircut?
It’s perched, parked and oft’ parted over cranium’s dry biscuit.
Shall we dress right, left or otherwise? It’s one’s own imbecile,
One’s face frame. Ornate or plain, it’s this dead thing we feel.

*****

Published on the 'Outer Edge,' the raggedEDGE website

Via the Shoe Horn, From the Sock

2006-02-13T08:25:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather,

My head feels like a naked bear
Shaved back to the Corpus Christi
or The Speculum of my Dreams (which should always
Be warmed in the spittle of the "dishonourably discharged").

Oh the rectal convulsions of my life
Spat about this place like a sore tooth!

I am marked down to lose
For how can I make sensitivity a strength
When failure is exhumed by success?

Oh nightmares forced into gravel
Via the shoe horn, from the sock!

What National Executive of Life
Called me to order
And let out my slurry from its pit?

I am in the studio and lie in another’s work,
Bath of Lead, over flowing
And smelling of sour plants and slow acid.

Darling, how can a man force his fingers between
An interior more private than guts?

I unwind my hand from its pocketful of blood
And scrawl a message in crimson,
Which begins

"Yomping in love and gloves"

And am sick. That sick.

*****

This is a Post Falklands War poem because that's where my "yomping" comes from - a tabloid headline. Margaret Thatcher was in her prime, Heather was buying her council house and I was on day release, studying art, to return to Heather famous and rich.

Glazing the Days

2006-02-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

Heather,

Days turned on me today,
Crept into my room, beat me up,
Slivers of sunlight staining the rug.

I’ve had it with Days,
Always hanging around, brokering time
In knuckle-dusters on street corners.
Glazing my gaze are Days these days.

But Days are weak, give into the weak
And the weeks,
Oh so determined to be themselves only,
Always alarmed and often armed
With coffee and tea
And meat and two veg in my bed;

Always alarmed and often armed
With ridiculous thoughts in my head.

I tell you, me and Days
Are going our separate ways.
Days may coo-n-coo
But me and Days are finally through.

*****
Published in Ambit Magazine

A "Do or Die" in the Middle Distance

2006-02-13T08:12:00.000-08:00

Dearest Heather

Under the iced skies of morning,
In a jet black hammock
Like a sling,
In a room the colour of bad beer,
Dealt to me in a "do or die,"
I spoon my hand into your father’s beard.

My Darling, I wouldn’t ask a woman for her ‘signing card’
Before considering love or borrowing money.
My Darling, come up and see me in Stratford East
And we’ll walk along the sewer bank to East Ham
And pass the giant chemical plant and Cohen’s scrap yard
Where the cars rush around on magnets.

My Darling, we’ll take whole the jellied eels
As they twitch in the sunset canals of our nightmares
And drink barley wine at lunchtime in The Two Puddings,
For we are never, ever returning to work.
We are never returning to the coal yards of ethic and quo,
For the streets are filling with sirens
As explosive as celebration!

WE ARE FREE MEN AND WOMEN!

Who am I kidding?

A rib-funny johnny has dribbled into the street
And I am being rattled in the cream closet
Of the old school showers.

Go, take your panties from the tallboy, if you must...
For when the two huge plates of sky and earth
Are rolled back into place like bank vault doors
And all the eyes on canvas
Are peeled away to embrace the blackness,
The garments of the street will declare their betrayal:

FUTURISMO!

****
Version published in joe soap's canoe

Soil

2006-02-13T08:05:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather

The green woman’s lips stare out from my wall
As my leather coat, with zipper and shadows,
Calls out to the weather from behind my door.
And I think of the soil.

What a waste and pain is the soil
(look at our hands).

What an impasse and protest is the soil
(look at the graves).

What a sadness and toil is the soil
(look at Frank Carter’s back).

What a bloody humus is the soil
(look at our palms).

There, I have thought of the soil.

I think of the distance between us (the soil).
I used to bow and bend (scratching around in the soil).

My back was a perpetual question mark
Addressing the ground
As I zipped myself into the cold (and its shadows).

But now I’ve unclipped my withered bones
And re-postured my blades into exclamation!

And I think of the distance between us (and the soil).

****

Published in Ambit Magazine; winner of the Hounslow Open Poetry Competition

Dear Heather

2006-02-12T12:59:00.000-08:00

Where are you? Where have you gone?

Why did you leave me? What toubles you?

TROUBLES ME
TROUBLES ME
TROUBLES ME

____________________________________

I've written some 300 letters to Heather. Many have appeared as poems in magazines and e-zines (they allowed me to mail out, given continued good behaviour) and occasionally she responds. On a recent weekend pass I visited her tiny two up-two down but she's gone! Neighbours say she's emigrated. Now, it is even more important that I correspond with her, especially as I'm soon to be licensed for "independent living."

I've been writing to Heather since 1979. Unfortunately, I now have to place all my correspondence here prior to any direct contact I can garner with Heather. I've waited so long for Heather's responses to my lettters. Perhaps she might respond to me here......