In the time of Coronavirus.

She passes the window each day
Pre-Raphaelite hair new penny bright catching the sun
catching my eye.
In this strange time of isolation
she is my only constant
when once it might have been

the morning ferry on the Dart,
the night-bus on Chepstow or church-bells.
she clicks away the days day in day out
heels, halyards tapping idle masts, on cobbles
I do not watch for her
I simply sit writing at the window that she passes
and as she passes
mark another day happy in her constancy.

I do not know her and for that reason can imagine,
invent a life and circumstances
watching her walking in the rain
talking on a hidden telephone,
(she has an American accent),
Laughing and happy

oblivious to the drenching of her hair
perhaps to a lover caught elsewhere, planning a reunion,
a parent in New York, Agent in L.A.
or a comedienne in St Louis
practising new material for want of a live audience
Maybe there is no phone at all
she is an actress learning lines for a show that may never go on
or a schizophrenic happy in her own company

I do not know her name
I shall not give her a name of my making.
In naming something a sense of ownership sets in;
I could no more name her than name
a wild palomino or the salmon that did not rise
or the raindrops on the glass

She does not notice me
I am too old to be of any interest or threat
like a piece of street furniture, or a bicycle
chained to railings slowly losing component parts.
I am invisible and benign
free to count her daily passing
marvelling at her loyalty
happy to have this constant reminder of time and place.

I will leave this place soon
and return to my home not far away
but not close enough to be on her daily route.
Perhaps I will catch sight of new penny bright hair
on Portobello Road, clumsily smile,  remember fondly,
lock-down in the time of Coronavirus.

On living in a bubble. Lies and bliss.

Her life was a disco ball constructed from shards of shattered bliss

Lies

the blunt but self sharpening things

you brought into the bubble of bliss.

The knife you hold to your wrist

should I threaten to leave.

The new man you prefer to the last man

all forgetting to leave a forwarding address when they 
meeting cheerfully in pubs discuss

the blunt but self sharpening things

you leave lying around

Amid shards of bliss.

Cummins Durham Coronavirus saga.

I wrote a silly ditty on the subject of the Cummings idiocy:

Kids, stay home, stay mum about Dad.

Play candy crush saga on your mum's iphone

while she's drunk amid pots and pans

not Covid cruise saga on Dad's spy phone

as he drives up to Durham to Gran's.

I sent it to the conservative party fb page. Their reply is priceless.

All the ships that pass have black sails..

Isolated in exile I am my own Napoleon
but longing for no Josephine
and confusing my Arras with my Elba as
waiting and watching The Empire Strikes Back ad nauseam
talking loudly to myself, reducing this island's population of donkeys
to sad creatures dragging themselves along
by their front legs.

All the ships that pass have black sails.

I turn my eyes inward
scan that horizon
whilst indulging in fantastic orgies with hope, faith and patience.

Carnivorous Pandas

Nom Nom the carnivorous panda
was the least kid friendly petting zoo beast
for while he considered bamboo a duty
a three year old child was a feast

Nom Nom, born in far away China
at first was the star of the zoo
but quickly out-stayed his welcome
when he ate a female gnu

The gnu was a present from Kenya
so to Nairobi Nom Nom was sent
but quickly moved on to Paris
when he ate three kids in a tent

In Paris he munched through two orphans
before moving on to New York
where once weaned off his taste for kids
he was fed on a diet of pork

Nom Nom the carnivorous Panda
is living the American dream
eating hot dogs for lunch and for dinner
beside a bamboo shaded stream.

We are too busy.

We are too busy
fighting other peoples wars
solving others problems
carrying their weight
curing their ills
salving their bruises
taking their pain
filling their voids

We are too busy to notice

each other

anymore.

Why Rimbaud gave up poetry.

From our Arts correspondent Jan Nieupjur.

A lot of people ask me why Arthur Rimbaud gave up poetry.

Actually thats a lie. No one has asked me, it is just a lazy, cheap bit of journalism.

But now I know. I recently came across a bundle of documents handed down over the years from a Kipper seller in Camden. Among the papers was a poem written by Rimbaud apparently in payment for some kippers he purchased. At the time he was living in Kentish Town with Verlaine and on the run from his mum and Verlaine liked a kipper.

Anyway, the document I have reads as follows:

At the price of just one florin je
suis désolée
down the market place to
see the value of an orange
The sun of fruits
at its apogee
yet cheaper than a door hinge.

(I feel I can do no more).   A.R.

The Notting Hill Gnomes.

The bankers are down in their bunkers
the rest of the countries gone broke
the bankers are lining their pockets
and
lining their noses with coke.

Their staff are all paid
minimum wage
trophy wives are all of the rage
the kids are all spoiled
the wheels are well oiled
the hands are not soiled

And they are fucking the aupair to boot.

And daddy, nothing rhymes with fucking the aupair except alimony!



OR:

The bankers are down in their bunkers
hunkered over money and coke
the poor are UP in their attics
laughing while being quite broke
celebrating the freedom of poverty
and the opportunity to think
of things other than money
and how the working class stink.

After the poets convention.

Hey Susie remember me?
May I have my jacket back
you borrowed it last night
while sharing a cigarette outside
with the Tall hungarian poet.

I didn't see you again.

Had he been a better poet
he would have wrapped warm words about you.
removing the need for you to borrow my jacket.

Or for me to write these words.

An ormolu stool for the new Royal baby.

A nation rejoices
a nation is happy
for Morgana of Wales
has filled up her nappy

no signs of austerity
in her posterior dexterity
yet for her no diamond
or other rare jewel

no silver
no pearls
but the perfectly formed whirls
of a
golden hued,
curlicued
ormolu stool.

We wrapped it in tissue
sent it off to the issue
of the issue
of our dear Queen's eldest son
With a brief covering word
to authenticate the turd
as a born and bred, dressed in red,
Welsh number one.

Suggesting that
when they unwrap it
they have Gilbert and George snap it
for in turd matters they
are certainly no fool
And will quickly identify
reasons aplenty why
(in the words of the hip)
it is undeniably cool...

To be blissfully happy
with the contents of a nappy:

A golden hued, curlicued, ormolu stool.

Murray Lachlan Young's obit to Maggie poem.

Murray wrote the following for his BBC Radio 6 slot but the powers that beeb chose to spike it:

Maggie: Obit poem.   Murray Lachlan Young   12/04/013

Farewell to you Maggie Oh Maggie farewell

Some eulogise you, some give you hell

Repeating the phrases that caused notoriety

Stating there is no such thing as society

Friend to the bank, brutally frank

Reagan’s big pal, rode in a tank

You mobilized classes with social volte-faces

You mangled the unions, kicked euro arses

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie!

You parleyed with Pinochet, gifted the satirist.

Nelson Mandela, you branded a terrorist

Flogged council houses, sold the utilities

Founded new Labour in all probability

One usually lost if one stood up and fought yer

You hammered your colleagues like lambs to the slaughter

Stated the falklands were ‘ours’ in totality

Turned the big bang to a fiscal reality

Littered the city with monstrous earning

The lady you stated was never for turning

Your standing its seems in the final prognosis

Reviled and admired in similar doses

Some will remember the chill in your air

Some will remember your teeth and your hair

But most that you gave and you asked for no quarter

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie

Over and out

But not bad for a greengrocers daughter

Boiling Water.

I walked away from it and headed north.

Towards evening on the second day the snow came, 
two hours later I was seeking shelter. 
Without snowshoes my progress was laboured and awkward.  
I came across a cave in a narrow ravine; 
a drift of smoke and footprints in the snow 
from someone coming from the north; 
small footprints, 
a woman or a child.

The cave was lit only by the fire 
enough for me to see the woman, 
dressed in grey, 
sheen of her hair like a well oiled gun, 
a woman from an unknown tribe, 
sitting, 

heating water. 

The makings of some ritual tea ceremony 
laid out on a rock.

Startled but unafraid she silently watched 
I found myself a place to rest opposite her, 
the fire between us. 
In perfect English she said: 
'We will wait for the water to boil. I will make tea'.
A shoulder gesture indicated the paraphernalia on the rock beside her. 
'Then you must leave'.

We sat in silence but for the fire 
as something foreign to us both crept into the cave 
settled within us. 

As the water in the pot trembled close to boil 
she she added a ladlefull of ice cold snow-melt. 
We sat on in silence.

As the water in the pot trembled close to boil 
I took up the ladle and added snow-melt to the pot. 
we sat on in silence.

Into the early hours we sat watching that pot never boil. 
Finally, having covered me in a blanket, 
she lay nearby. 
We slept.

I awoke to find her making coffee. 
We talked; 
each to the other brought magic.

On the second morning we departed, 
heading South.

In the cave on the fire rested the pot of water. 

Singing as it boiled.

SPIT or the American dream.

SPIT!

Molly and John had been childhood sweethearts
Shared sodas at picnics
in the meadow by the Big Loving
as it snaked easily through the county.
Shared illicit beers beneath the bleachers
when she cut cheerleading and he cut track.
Shared moonlit skinny dips in the same old Big Loving
at the sand bar on the bend
where the turtles basked back in the day.
She had run naked laughing through poison ivy;
he had spat in his hand and rubbed it in the itching places.
Later she did not need the ivy to make the itch,
she had an itch of her own 
and he rubbed his spit onto that itch 
but that itch never completely went away.

Molly took that itch to New York.
John took his spit to LA.
Molly found music in the cafes at night, 
revolution in the air. 
‘New York City, imagine that’. 
She wrote him - as she itched at a sidewalk café 
– in an early westbound letter.
‘Yes I can imagine that’. 
He had replied. 
But he couldn’t.
So she itched in the city 
closed her eyes to the viscous string of men 
while he spat on the coast at a succession of starlets 
who practiced the Stanislavski itch  
tunelessly singing the Hollywood orgasm.

Fast forward… 
The two of them came together again, 
out of boredom most likely. 
Boredom and guilt, 
prompted on her part by the metronomic click of the clock, 
on his part by the young guns on the boulevard 
the fear that he was all spat out.
When they married the orange blossom was already dead. 
The children when they arrived 
trod the rotting petals into the floorboards 
of their Chicago brownstone.

He made money; she spent it. 
The American dream.

Molly sat on her itch for twenty years, 
took a course in etching early on 
never looked back and couldn’t look forward. 
Her life etched itself into her face. 
She got a part time job 
filling condom machines at railway stations.
Twenty years of itching and etching on molly’s part 
as she watched john occasionally drool diddle his secretary 
(did he buy his condoms at the station?) 
was enough.
　
　
　
Molly came to Spain 
change of life, 
change of continent, 
change of tense. 
for a week.
John had grudgingly agreed that she could take a vacation, 
a break from the shattered life they now shared. 
She would visit a friend in Toledo  
maybe take in an El Greco or two.
On her last day of work prior to traveling 
the itch had slipped a dozen condoms into her purse  
then dragged her into Victoria’s Secret on the way home.
The flight was uneventful; 
she sat between the two overweight boors 
each airline is obliged to provide. 

Marta met her at the airport.  
The Spanish air crackled.
The bullfight was - to Marta - an odd choice 
for an afternoon’s entertainment 
but Molly had read Hemingway,  
wanted to sit ringside  
black beret scarlet lipped 
as Eva Gardner had once done. 
She had little experience of bloodshed save her own; 
but blood in the afternoon held no fear.

Manolo arched his back,
flicked a disdainful cape 
at the snorting bull  
an ubiquitous sneer at the crowd,
stood in his black slippers
stained with blood and dust 
hawked a glistening gob of spit 
that sizzled as it hit the sun scorched clay. 
The bull died bravely as bulls in such tales do. 
The spit dried to a disc of mother of pearl 
that shimmered against the blood red earth 
as the bulls ear parted unhearing from the head; 
arcing it’s way into the stands, 
into the lap of Molly. 
An unrecognizable Molly. 
Molly lost, Molly found. Molly free, Molly bound.

‘Manolo.’ 
She whispered much later 
when the sun had gone down 
and the fiesta had dissolved itself 
into the barrios and tourist hotels. 
‘Manolo.’

I took up the dog eared copy of THE TIN DRUM. 
It fell open at the chapter titled ‘fizz powder’  
I read to her again of little Oskar 
spitting into the navel of Maria.
　
Molly flew to Boston four days later  
made her morning connection to Chicago 
.....in good time.
　
The fire-fighter moved dazed 
through the rubble of what had once been the World Trade Centre. 
The dust was thick and acrid  
he wished he had some kind of mask or respirator. 
He hawked and spat into the debris at his feet, 
onto a small black slipper. 
A slipper stained with blood, dust and tears.

America.
　

Paper Aeroplanes.

Paper Aeroplanes.

Mother breakfasting
lost in Mahler peach marmalade on toast
smile lighting this end of tunnel eyes.
Fathers bitter coffee
grounds for divorce his daily quip
making notes
embyronic verse (his joke)
on the paper tablecloth.

Once upon a time
he wrote on pristine A4
but we would filch fold launch his words
into the surrounding Bermuda triangles
now he writes on paper tablecloths
of the poem and the paper plane
a perfect marriage of art and science
capable of unpowered flight.

And how as a child
copying copperplate Keats nightingale
launch it from Hampstead Heath
watch it rising on its innate thermal...
And how
Thomas Stearns Eliot
would fold his own complicated words
send them skyward
singing
to lodge behind radiators, sofas and atop high wardrobes
that furnished his horizon.
Unreadable from here.

notes for a poem.

If only we could identify the Love DNA .There would be testing clinics in every town. A super clinic in Oxford Street Queues round the block



Testing their love:

The old men and their Bankok brides
Spotty oiks and village bikes
Ballerinas, ballerinas
Old lovers, new lovers, perhaps not lovers at all
Scientists with actresses
Barristers and rough diamonds
Artists and bank managers
Ghosts and priests
Goths and poets.

All testing.In the departments of love:

A tattoo parlour
Gown shop
Cake shop, florist
Wedding chapel, Elvis present daily
Hallmark card shop
white goods, bedroom sets
Lingerie and soft fruit.

Receptacle for redundant dildos
Viagra falls by the chocolate fountain
Cubic Zirconiums as big as the ritz.

Cinema screening non stop rom coms
Pretty girls with trays of condoms
Pretty boys with trays of condoms
Hotel rooms for love struck non doms.

For two voices.

He said:
I can't sleep
Are you awake
I can't sleep
Are you awake I can't sleep
I can't sleep
I can't sleep
Are you awake I can't sleep for thinking about you.

She said:
If you were thinking about me you would let me sleep
go to sleep.

Magnolias.

She came to visit

after twenty years of not a word

but was passing

was just passing

and as passing stopped

bringing with her the rusty key

to that locked and dusty room

called memory.

filling our heads

with the contents of that room

we then took a walk

in the spring sun

I led her to the April street

lined with magnolias

where for just one week

romance blossoms

alas too late

the blowsy meaty petals blown

smearing the pavement

with disappointment

'we are too late' I said

turning back

'we should have come here earlier'

and she asked when?

'Oh twenty years ago'.

(She came to visit

after all thse years of not a word

but was passing

was just passing

and as passing stopped

for long enough

to bear witness

to a seasonal disappointment).

Urinal song.

I love the sound of piss on zinc

It reminds me of Donna's sleepy tales

of rain on Trinidad tin roofs

that she told me as we lay

in a Gloucester park

she reeked of

 passion

and coconut oil.

The downpour

on the corrugated school bike shed

where Mandy and I

traded tobacco smoke laden kisses

and held our own geography lessons

The rusty dutch barn

in which we made hay

and then hasty crop circles

in that hay

and planned al fresco escapades

in the ripening wheat

come the sun

Of the posh girl

dancing naked

save a transparent plastic mac

in the deluge

drumming the upturned boats

as I drowned

drowned 

in 

her 

exclusive 

proximity

Before realisation that

it was the breaking of our 'summer'

30 years have leached out all

but the salty memory of those monsoon kisses

that creeps up my spine

At the sound of piss on zinc.