townx

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You come like steam
When the sun weaves
The sky into girders.

Unpacking like china,
We touch into waiting silence:
A warm black sound
That cheats the sun.

Note: Probably my favourite out of everything I've ever written. I performed this on a poetry tape my writing group did (called "Hacksaw Poetry"), though I didn't perform it with a loud hailer - I just shouted it through a cardboard tube.

Because they're hairy
And they shit on it.

Since your jump,
Zoos went bust.
Itchy tigers cough,
Never pausing. Quiet flowers
Now fear horticulturists.
Of variety,
Have no terror.

Note: I include this one as it's an example of me doing some experiments. I used to generate a string of letters using the computer, then try to write something using the letters in that order.

They sat in tractors at night
Waiting for a whistle all night
Then came around
Took his door like a paper crane

Although he was sometimes very squinty
Although he was sometimes very squinty
His eyes dragged the light
His eyes dragged the light

He used the night like
An anaesthetic
He started sleeping at night
While they were waiting
They started hoping
They were falling for his joking all right

Although he was sometimes very squinty
Although he was sometimes very squinty
His eyes dragged the light
His eyes dragged the light

Note: This one was first written by me, then edited by my very good friend Richard Hope. Richard died very young (20th May 1998 - he was only 27), not long after we left University: he just collapsed while out running. I spent a lot of time with him at University, and even played in a band with him ("Quinn and Jane" aka "Giant Child"). This poem formed the lyrics for one of our tracks. I still think about and miss him a lot.

Once you've lit it, don't go back
To the town of age.
Women strangle storks,
One with an eyepatch,
One in a musical landscape.
Tribes of gendarmes,
Gripping, cheap and funky,
Stroll the streets of polecats.

(In a sensible second:
A winged man at the window;
A giant child tapping
Insistently on my bedded shoulder;
A motorcycle resting
On the bridge of a nose.)

Imagine a biped walking
With hands in pockets,
Not
Thinking
For six months,
Waiting for his vocation,
Coming to his dreams.
Thinking of a woman
Indifferently. A kind smile
For everyone, he spends time,
He spends money.
He has a surplus of affection
Which he spends on his words.
He lives in the town of age
And loves the town.
He thinks he's sleek,
Listens to fur, watches policemen
Round up the women,
One with a patch,
One with a stork.
He cheers before he leaves,
Sensible as breakfast.

Note: I performed this one at a poetry reading.

Playing colours on the beautiful lawn,
and every lawn that is beautiful
is perpetually contemplating
the inside of the bull's fake head.

Fury of spent vocals;
Talk around morsels;
a dearth of speech.
The last holy American snouts the ground for silence.

Sad etiquette bitches still there are shrinking.
No Spanish King (or goo) in the red places.
You wait for it with your face,
angled have to lips and tongue;
your ears cluster with weapons.

Downstairs a group of pensioners perform a live radio play
as Juliet shins past, up the black pipe,
to meet her beard.

Note: I really like the phrase "fury of spent vocals", even though it doesn't really mean much. I often say that verse to myself, in my head, when I'm getting fed up with conversation (in general).

A bank in summer
A ripped underwear page
A magazine of lists
Things making noise

Bridge like tread of shoe
Hangs over them
Tatty rope, him on the end
Swinging

Note: I like the simplicity of this. It reminds me of the river bank near the house where I grew up in Spalding, Lincolnshire. That's what I was thinking about when I wrote it. The bareness of it evokes the boredom I sometimes felt living in a small town where there was nothing to do.

A chipmunk hid in the bud of a flower
Looked like a rose or desk lamp
With a broken bulb hand crawling out

In all power cuts it is often usual
But more often not to use candles
It's quite romantic among refuse
In a ruin with a hand ringed
And a scrap of hair
In the pleats of a dress

The patch of her charred face
Is erect over the mantle
You're under it in candles
With teeth pointed and sweet
Blood gathering in your palms
And the bottom of her box