belly to sky, paws bent like waving
you know nothing of goodbyes
just cold darkness once warm,
the affection factory’s gates chained.
this number is no longer in use
the Yellow Pages lines your tray
and your whiskers down the phone
are distant, disinterested.
you’ll get fed but fed up, bring
lifeless bodies to the door
that isn’t our door, anymore
paw garden paths on your own
thinking
but things were just getting good.
vandaag ben ik de dorpsgek
wat is een stad
zonder haar inwoners?
de geur van de langslopende vrouw
de zingende postbode
de spijbelaars, McDonalds etend op de brug.
vanaf de burcht beschouw ik
achter stadsgevels lege wolken
gesloten ogen in de daken van weeshuizen
vandaag ben ik de dorpsgek,
met niemand die me raar aankijkt.
New York City ended after many phone calls
in my memory is a hazy string of nightclub dates
New York City ended after many phone calls
I was a spare chandelier, surrounded by luggage,
adopted within their material lives.
untitled
anyway, it’s Tuesday, again
the weeks cartwheeling away.
In the kitchen; slackjawed bread, sour milk,
trolleyed oranges, snow round-shouldered at the table
shovelling cereal, pebble eyes cocky.
I hold a hairdryer to the back of its head,
pull up hair in the shower,
sculpt it into another you
Writing a Winter Sunset - published on Burning House Press
15:20 backlit wisps and railroad tracks in the sky. flashes of starlings’ wingtips. I look at the river too long, and now see it every time I blink.
15:24 the twittering of daybreak returns in earnest. the birds make sunday’s last stand.
15:30 a flock of black stars before the sun, they settle on the ghosts of trees.
15:32 visibly darker by the second. chattering birds swoop to aerial perches. I spot the crescent moon.
15:33 the horizon goes a dirty orange, over my head remains purest blue.
15:35 the sun loses intensity. I can now look at it through the branches, trees stark against golden glow.
(continues)
birdsong
We pan for gold in souls,
stripping away the streets
to find songbirds sheltered beneath.
I met a man
with so little to his name
who gave more than he took,
I met a man
without a passport
who helped to heal the world,
I met a man
who slept in a tent
and wrote poetry.
Their words formed songs
and their songs formed smiles
and up stood Humanity
and shook its head in defiance,
as if to say:
I shall not be subdued.
And as clothes made way for feathers
and arms made way for wings
they took flight into cold city night
and the air was filled
with the sound of spring.
We pan for gold in souls,
stripping away the streets
to find songbirds sheltered beneath.
untitled
it’s cold up there, in that room,
that’s what I remember. images of
flasks of tea, wishing it were rum,
fingers snipped off gloves.
for once I was a writer,
freezing and flowing,
high-up in a garret
in my room full of thought.
for once I lived a writer’s life,
penniless and alone
in my box by the sea.
I saw but did not see,
the arc of the gulls,
their cries like lost lambs in the sky,
or a whole beach breathing
like the man with paper bag lungs.
untitled (Tobago)
there’s one last party in the sky tonight,
I’m late – the pinks are already leaving,
but the tiny scratty bats swoop in
and now the night has only just begun.
untitled (spring)
it troubles me
in this town
that all is built-up
and owned
with no place to shut one’s eyes
and think of impossibilities.
but soon it shall be summer,
and all that is green
shall become sheets
and leaves shall tuck me in.
I plan to spend a good deal
of this warmth
in bed
outdoors.
the man who lost his name
the man who wrote jazz
lost his name
hung up in some smoky den
and taken by someone else
while the saxophonist played.
he kept an eye out in town
for who had taken his name
but resigned to not having one
at least for a while.
the man who wrote jazz
sometimes wondered
who now had his name
and what they now did with it.
he should have put his name in it,
he realised,
so he would know it was his.
that’s what other people did.
he would not be so careless,
he decided,
with his second.
phong nha
that afternoon
it snowed butterflies
whose forefathers had danced
amongst these caves,
just a week before
and could not imagine
the drip-drip slow
of a hundred thousand years.
gem
the homeless man outside the Co-op
twiddles a bit
of green broken glass,
in his eyes an emerald
catching the day’s dying rays
lighting up his world
ever so
fog
on downtown days like these
the high-rise becomes one with the sky,
as if all that glass were only water,
and all that concrete only clouds.
the end?
it seems the whispers have got around
that this could be the last time;
bridges are conveyor belts
of sunglassed mourners
and every note the buskers play is
hallelujah.
static
pictures crackle through static,
snatches of light so fleeting
i can only grasp the feeling –
like the bassline
of a song on the airwaves, that
I just can't name.
to pimp a goldfish
I watch revelry happening
far off in a nearby garden;
fairy lights and dimlit people,
like I’m in some fishbowl
just swimming round
and round
thunder
it rumbles like the world is crumbling,
and all the skyscrapers are falling to earth
backlit sporadically
by flashes of their decaying silhouette teeth.
a subsound
that shakes soaked pavements,
sets off car alarms
and sends the neighbourhood dogs away to cower,
sounding like distant bombs
that fall on our conscience.
when the rain comes
it rinses the dust from the sky
and no sign is left of life
bar drip-drip trees
and the echoes of coughs
and then all is quiet.
venice
i am not from around here
my skin is too pale and
they suss my accent out
immediately.
but the beer is cold
and endless
and the sun will be back
from behind the clouds
quite soon.
untitled (mouse)
the overnight to Dong Hoi
scuttled and squeaked
out of Hanoi
and a little Vietnamese mouse
mistook the sound
for a potential mate
and stuck his head
above my bed
and then, seeing he was mistaken
excused himself,
and was gone.
the scent of adventure
i spilled my beer
so the room smelled of wet yeast,
and the cigarettes old men stubbed out in the corridor,
and the broth the guy in the top bunk had bought off the food trolley,
and the single rose in a vase on the table,
that wobbled in time with the train.