Selected poems
Crows (slightly gothic) in Croydon
They're a jagged black hole
light disappears into, re-emerging only
as their dismal call:
narc ... nah ... naa-aarc ... !
The sort of noise the world might make
if you could crowbar
open any of its aching surfaces
and let out its primal cry
this mouthing of such bleak utterances
at passer-by pedestrians.
Bad black jokes
flapping down pole to pavement
yet no one really notices the crows
encroaching on the nerves
of Croydon, scraping
pain from the loosened edges of the mind.
Behind the locked loo block
out the back a homeless man needles
embroidered veins
and staggers off through the gate
into those van Gogh
cornfields the crows continue to inhabit ...
Though with dusk
even they fall silent, disappearing
in the cracks of darkness
spreading all along the elm's branches.
The gate forecloses
on any further possibilities.
The zen of mud
Consider mud. Buddha
did, in fact extolled
its virtues to the monk
who asked the BIG
questions. The Buddha
replied: what do you
see beneath your feet?
Thus, consider mud
a good place to begin.
The faithfulness of mud
is one thing. There is
nothing quite like it
for cooling the blood,
for instance. The monk
must've realised that,
his ardour for another
kind of enlightenment
quite quickly quenched,
for the big questions
still remain unanswered.
Is he still bogged down
in them? Is the monk
muddled? Consider it ...
Mud doesn't put on airs
but just gets on with it,
sticks to the job at hand.
It knows its limitations
and that's why Buddha
thought it so apposite.
Here's mud in your eye
(he might have said)
so cleanse the windows
of perception. Blake
thought London's mud
too much, but Buddha
would've told him just
to keep his eye on it.
At the departure gate
Partir, c'est mourir un peu
(Edmond Haraucourt)
We have made a pact, never to look back
when we say goodbye. Practice
makes perfect, you've said, so we continue
practising, assiduously. However
practice only makes more practice, I'd say.
We are far from being perfect.
Still, we count down 3-2-1 then turn away
unravelled into a peopled hall
bereft though certain it's the only way to go.
Later, I confess I did look back
once to find you gone, and your image in me
turned precipitately into salt
and you reply you'd also looked back, once.
I'd been folded into distance ...
Thus we will remain here, forever taking leave
Rilke told us, but forgot to add
that in departure we will be our own remains
strewn like burnt-out ashes
through some abandoned tourist destination.
Parting means to die a little.
And shadowed by that larger story, we forget
to look each other in the eyes
when again we back away from one another.
Afterwards, your eyes are all I see.
Theatre piece
One's real life is often the life one does not lead
(Oscar Wilde)
There's a kitchen table, two