He was asleep all day
Then he came to and said
You’ve got a brilliant personality.
Then he fell asleep again
Thank you
He was asleep all day
Then he came to and said
You’ve got a brilliant personality.
Then he fell asleep again
Thank you
He said,I could go to the City
It’s just you won’t let me
I said,that’s true,I won’t let you.
Sweetheart.
He said,I could get dressed and meet my friends
But you won’t let me.
I said
No,I won’t let you.
I won’t
let you.
He said,I’ll be alright tomorrow,won’t I?Will you let me?
I said,Yes,I’ll let you.
Then he smiled at me and closed his eyes
And I let him
Go
And he went.
and I am starting the next line
even though my mind is blank
walking into a bog or a meadow
trusting myself to find
the rest of the sentence
and the next one
and so I am never blocked
or always blocked,if you like
it seems odd but it works
like solving a problem unprepared
in a lecture room in front of
100 students, my reason being
it’s boring to reproduce
and to do it right the first time
what do you think?
He was the most Klimt witted man I ever saw
His portraits were pointillistic
His fingers were long and pliant
His face a wire drawing of picasso in old age
His ears like two old beer mugs hung with multiple invisible rings
His shoulders narrow,
his coat hung off wrong;
dead cabbage leaves in moonlight, the effect
His body shapeless,hidden
An old wooden peg, blunt.
Legs hidden like Victorian tables
Feet bare but well shaped.
Too many dots and no eyes.
He was all there
Then he wasn’t.
Read the review section tonight;
books I’ll never read fully
probably;
contradictions like Denmark –
Denmark has the happiest population,
and they’re all on prozac, too.Don’t you see?
There was a new poem by Fiona Sampson;
Mein Kampf is being republished.
Then the complete works of a poet I’ve never heard of,
a school teacher
The TV shows a silenced film of murder in a castle.
I look at email
delete most
And eat my supper from the laptop.
protected by a perfumed spicy mat
my nephew sent from the USA;
it’s patchwork.
My mind is on Furtwangler and the Pastoral
Should we judge artists for their political sympathies?
I ask my distant brother in my head
I won’t mention it when I phone him.
He looked like my twin but I don’t know him
He was always running away so fast, I lost him;
now he’s run down, his clockwork broke.
We mention Krystalle Nacht 1938
He seems surprised I know the date.
He doesn’t know I can’t spell it when I say it
[It was my mother in law’s birthday too]
Now I have lived precisely half my life motherless;
I can’t imagine how being mothered might have been.
I’m lonely.
My libido is dead too.
Maybe I should become another gender,
Or species.
I don’t….
What?
I miss it all.
Conkers and warm cobbles
Playing rounders in the road
Uncle Vince’s car
Cousin Frank could have been a butcher
Threw it up for acting
Played Hitler and a Jewish man in Warsaw
And an incestuous father,barbed wire.
Now he’s dead
He still had thick hair;
But it didn’t matter.
The priest turns,hands raised,
holding the burning God
above our heads;
such a golden,golden casket.
This time, He is the sacrifice.
A reversal not totally unexpected
In this temple
of the once named lost.
Where does one go after such fire,
after such loss,
after such redemption?

No summer blossom,but decorated with this snow
It fell to earth one week
Changing the townscape into a white and black image
The tree flaunts her elegant shape,
so decorated.
And how daintily the black and white cat
with the long soft fur
stepped out like a lady in high heels
going to a party
with jewels in her hair.
“I’m not surfing
on the tide of realistic. frustration
exactly,so much as idealising
what one has.
To be able to bear satisfaction,
in order for grieving to help , is unmistakable,
how the culture we can’t see,
consumer capitalism ,depends
on the idea that toleration
every time we feel a bit hesitant
or scoured or inimitable, is an omen
we beat, say, or we bop.
It’s only in the punctuated
unconditional space of privation
that we can begin to follow thoughts
.to really imagine or conjure with these.
It’s very difficult to allow
what we’re frustrated by to remain alive
In making the case for preventative thinking
I want to make it fascinating
so that people converse
or think in different places
and extend their boundaries
so our thoughts can flock and even migrate.
The shadowy [grey like John Major]
and foreign [see how they overrun us]
secretary,[his he male or female]
Hilary Benn,
has said
he will not resign [or even sign]
over[ a barrel]
his backing of air [was it wind?}
strikes on Isis in Syria [ package holidays free for gun holders]
despite his party [birthday,perhaps]
leader ,[Ledenhosen]
Jeremy Cor, blimey,yn,
writing to all [ and sundry?}
Labour MPs
setting out his oppo [slang again]
sition to military
action. [equal and opposite reaction to follow?]
Benn’s insistence that
he would disagree [ and be so disagreeable as to spoil his birthday party?}
with his leader { Heil Mary!}
came [ as fast as a slug,giggle]
David Cameron called [but I was on the toilet]
[on Labour MPs to back military [ in fashion again]
intervention in Syria and
“vote on the basis [ or is it basics?}
of the arguments”. [What is their basis?]
The prime minister said there [ or elsewhere]
was a compelling [entrancing and inviting]
case for Britain [ to pay back all it stole from the Empire]
’s involvement and insisted [like a tantrum of toddlers]
MPs would allow the country [to endure]
to do “the right [ethical?}
thing” [ that cat’s mother]
if they sup [with the devil]
and exported the government. [ to Samoa]
Benn’s stance effectively [in effect or strongly?]
challenges Corbyn [ to a duel or dual fuel?]
to allow members of the shadow [ night demons]
cabinet to vote [and also my sideboard will vote too]
Iwith their conscience or sack [ Send my sack now,thanks]
him and other rebels. [Albert Camus?]
At a difficult meeting [ of the waters]
on Thursday,
around half the shadow
cabinet, [milk jug and tea pot]
including Benn,[ Nevis and Snowdon and more]
the deputy leader, Tom Watson, [Whats app son?]
the shadow education [well it is a mere shadow of what we learned]
secretary,
Lucy Powell, [sexism again]
the shadow lord [Don’t say it]
chancellor, Lord Falconer,
and
others
made it
clear
they were minded [by the army night and day]
to back the govern [ or even commit effrontery]
ment’s case for extending[ drinking hours]
airstrikes when [can air strike?}
put to a vote in
the Commons next week.[ the future was once fiction]
When you struck me,I vibrated like a kettle drum,
then as smaller percussions and repercussions
echoing from all the glassy surfaces
creating a balletic geometry of sound tracks
in space and time.
When you knocked me down,
I fell against her and her and her;
we were like a row of skittles
and we all went down with the lifeboat;
The infinite chain of being is.
When you hit me,the Fall spread across the world
Now there is no Vertical
All is undivine and graceless.
By the Rod it’s ruled
When you left me,I left myself,the world,the rocks,dry land
I weighed down sank to the ocean bed
with coral eyes
gazing.
When you struck my mind
I became an instrument of a foreign power
Singing a song I didn’t know.
When the glass was smashed
the splinters flew into all our hearts.
You didn’t know what we couldn’t see.
I lay on barren ground and gave birth
To my own Creator in the desert.