the way she bends

the way she bends:
like a sailor,
as luck would have
it. & i am
lucky.

on television
the starship troops
are marching up
to beat us to
a pulp, for being
found wanting
too much: a place
to live, to not be
sick in, a fair
go at it all
or at it all
again.

when i say us
i mean them -- i
am not there i
am with you, &
thinking we cling
to love in lieu
of anything just.

love,
one step down from
god.

dragged out beatings,
wreck of love's
temporary
dwelling, calling:
what threat is posed
by those who stand
for everyone
by kneeling in
copper nests
to feel the cold
smack of cash they
don't have? we have
cash, a little,
& are not
buying it.

being ‘personal’,
i’d say for sure
your love for me
is equal to
half of my love
for you [currency]

makes sense – i mean:
you wouldn't buy
yourself a present.
you wouldn't write
yourself a poem.
you can’t arrest
yourself in the
dead night or keep
yourself a secret.

& besides: if
i loved you like
i love my country –
if I loved you like
i love me you'd
be sorry. if i
loved you like i
love me you'd be
dead –
& what good would
you be to me
then.

Sonnet 101

why is everybody always writing
about fucking like me the more writing
to be done the less time to do the
necessary fucking for poetry

which is just as well when “at a bar” or
side by side alone & almost having
sex but in the end we change our minds ‘cos
work is early/harsh work makes you nervous

lines up the days & besides you don’t love
each other so much today as yesterday
& that dwindle’s dampened the itch to do
anything but write some stupid sonnet

frigid at the kitchen table no damp
itch to speak of no great love to leap off

from SOUVENIR

i’m sick of love & sad for what I’ve lost:
that bullshit fix of nervy hands has gone &
rude spring’s a bully, sun & wavy cold air
& you are well, i having never been well i,
i want to meet you anew and be loved &
not thought of as silly – to you now i’m
a clown or a dog waiting to be put down
& so my breasts are hairy teats for cubs i love
& are not born, & not for you, my new nude
is atrocious & i wonder who you
think of in the shower, what wets your meat
if not my putrid body you once & gently
fucked & which i, promising it to you, have lost
the receipt for. go away for a long time


& meet me at the airport, run me a bath
as before with water from the kettle so
kind & we’ll shiver in two inches forever,
thigh on thigh never shrinking from the
moment but cycling it around the time
we do have, having been given each other, &
never unadorned or waiting to get broke.
i’d wait to die forever to have unlost
that time & die to lose it all again,
having taken too much, having got
love unspent not wanted & staid unhappy
inside the kettle waiting to be filled kindly,
touched on the cunt or met at the airport with the
ghosts of animal kingdoms still inside me.

parlour

I saw pictures of them dressing, all breathing,
all bare in the fires, the banks, the parlours,
the coding heat, the topic shakes, slacks,
looming ill over necks & ties, in my coat
made of feelings, in the semi-dark
of your smile I run away from naming.

The parlour has collapsed, is filling with snow,
mother is by the bureau, my schoolgirl god
in a coat made for crying, lips like thick
flames & she places her strange head upon
my chest & begs to bend to each amber flag,
hands about her ears in a clement gesture.

We fasten ourselves up like girls in parlours,
Shun sofa secrets, deaf words, these histories:
Domestic relics, my baby gods, now dead—
the sensation of it is gelatinous,
piles of cold carpet everywhere underfoot,
like snow – the room is filling with snow—

mother is by the door, & it is hard
to see her through the smoke, a sweet-smelling
smog pooled around us & we are melting,
we’re like honey – this is for you – I’m young &
I know nothing – I occupy all of your time.
I like having art poured into me wide-eyed.

Mother’s by the mantle, it’s too dark to see,
I’m freshened by hot bile, this nuance
of your love’s long guts glued onto me.
I like having money poured into me
with eyes closed or rolled inwards
in prayer, & that way I’m your trinketry.

Soft fists tumble onto me like snowflakes:
this is the louse of love, this is its bite.
I am now covered in a brotherly blue,
the ultramarine of fresh men – sticky, thick.
Snow piles in each tidy corner. Elsewhere
there are fires. Mother has left the room.

The police are on their way. It is too bright
to see. A series of arms appear
to wrap around each other in blind
solidarity. This is for anyone.
A Molotov cocktail sings. This is not love.
This is for no thing—

Animal Hospital

Animal Hospital

Some times like sin sugar that broke that crashes
Bruise of rib like rip off cloth and let salt
Winds scathe in eye in face I am sandy,
Long for ocean grind – but shy, but shy – “I
Don’t owe you any money don’t have to
show you all my things” – just live, okay? ‘Cause
all our money is etch-a-sketch, and I
Think too often about the forward times
When our things are out and old on the street,
When we are out of time, stink, are the laughed
At lucky ones or, worse, screaming in two
Different hospitals, species strangers,
Unknown/unknowing.

This is the ailing
Of peace, the rearrangement of passion.
We do not kiss but strum ourselves apart.
The sun has its sins, the heart its heavy.
This poem should be longer, and more careful.
Give me time.

meditations on an empty room

from a

new poem

Toward her, a cantata of grace (part one: suture)
For G.

If I were you and you were me I would
Turn and turn again, move my arms from left
To right, I would large I would small I would
Seek out all the danger. If I were me
And you were a tall blue thing a light coming
Out from the sides of all the sad then yes
I would stroke your ruffled feathers sleepy
And unknowing, blind in the bed which knows
Us, fucking or not – being us – your or
Me – is like getting away with it, laughing
then being slapped away like being told
we are too good – if I were you I would
disappear, would fright myself away – if
I were me I would beat myself across
Myself would find myself out and just say,
When you were a child you could not stay inside
And now you still must be caught and brought in
Clopping, cold and snotty from the wanting.
Play your games on a Wednesday scuff your dust
Do anything you would do if you were
you and I were me I would eat the whites
of your eggs your eyes and whisk the yolks out
to form themselves anew. Terror masses
around us – the whine of legitimate
lovemaking. I have accomplished only
you, am small and unable to shock. We
are here, chewing the courser fat to forget
the living freaks falling down like zips like
propositions – FRANCE I LOVE YOU in food,
sour and sighed, and if I were you I would
move to a society dead of western
grace – and yes we shall move with our
motivations for moving writ large across
the screen as in a silent movie. I
Scratch myself deep inside the thicket of
your charm and anything alright still
Remains tough scuffing your oxfords
Beyond frigidity the meaning of which
Is caught in my wing and we acre carrying
The sky as emptiness, sustained beneath,
Sour and communicative…nobody’s
Intimate taste is perverse, and a lusty
Burning has set in between my scars, a
Crippling freedom braided into us, skirting
Savagely the legitimating reports
Of our deaths. If I were me I would
Be a bloated male goddess, as emotional
As I am British. If I were you I would go soft
Under the night’s shadow, I would kill the
Prose, I would kill the film, I would sick up
All the silence. If you were me I would
Smell you automatically for
What you are, manhandled automatically
in the summer of individual problems, unable
To talk anything out in a meaningful
Or sustained way we die faster than all
The other discourses. I have been growing
This hair since I was eleven and I
Quite like it, as animals like their
Cellars. If I were you I would make
Myself my pastime, young and difficult
As I am. Constellations of honour
Arrange themselves above us as we eat
At the heels of poetry & I splay
myself dizzy with the effort of
Living like a sexy patriot spasming
down my spine. This light has never been in
my control, my living pose unearthed
and taking form in slow in fast inside
the pulse of your neck in repose,
rigid with freedom. If I were you
I’m not sure I’d stay, but that does not
Make your lascivious goodbye any more
Charming.