Spivs and drones
And semitones
Baronets and earls
Nylons for the girls
Spivs and drones
Baronets and semitones
Communists and squatters
Prefabs for the potters
Spivs and drones
Communists and semitones
Veterans and conscripts
Vouchers for the tit bits
Spivs and drones
Veterans and semitones
Trinkets trickling, sprinkling
Winking twinkling
Fascinated by:
Imaginary days
Supersonic rays
Polished teak inlays
Roads to Mandalay
Sunlight through the maize
Winkles, twinkle toes
Sprinkle, tinkle trinkets
Captivated by:
Golden rose
Clothes to pose
Cerebral cerebrovascular
Vernacular
Spatial spectacular
Sunlight through the days
How long we’ve been
Been being cruel
How long we’ve starved ourselves
Of love’s burning fuel
How many wasted opportunities
To enjoy each others sensual sceneries
Your sweet voice turned increasingly sour
I hesitated more and more, by each and every hour
I’ve saved the last words for you my girl
Before I set off home
You’ve been good company for me this week
Helped me through this time, real swell
Should you ever see this distant reflection
Should you ever browse this small collection
Presented for all, unwound and bound
I hope you have some satisfaction with your reaction
Who knows where the futures taking
Who knows where the past has gone
Who knows how love is answered
Who knows, who knows why we sing along
I’m gone
Drinking Water
Smoking Cigarettes
Chasing midges, forsaking rest
Camel cigarettes
Subtle flavour
Packed in blue
Pesky, pesky midges
Mosquito’s cousins I guess
Here’s hoping, hoping I’m choking them to death
Because they’ve had three meals or more
They’ve caught me unawares
Teetotal non-smoker, the one, it is ‘he who dares’
The antisan cream
The disinfectants
Even the Germolene
Plus this net of finest denier
This nylon stocking sheen
Simply inept answers to the awesome biting machine
So I’ve snapped it
Between the pages of this here book
A fitting death
I hope you will think
A fitting, close fitting death
He died in a single scratch of ink
This is a strange old time to write
Gone well past midnight
Waiting for the early morning late night flight
There’s drinks and smokes
And artichokes for the well at heel
For me the writing hours is how I steal
I’ve read Mr Bukowski
And the Hippocrates oath
They’ve both travelled well, truth to tell
But this new book I’ve bought, I was caught
By the slip notes and the cover
Huysmans’ ‘A Rebours’ boy that’s something other
His worldly ways are leading me, kneading me
I’ll start with Edgar Allen Poe, or Paul Verlaine
Then on to Flaubert and Baudelaire
Oh he’s stolen my every picture
As he passed this way
Before he passed away
But Joris Karl Huysmans he has not gone
No not gone
Only gone and put me in the clear
I am writing this in Kos
With you it would have been…
For me now it is time with Andrew
And a little time with me
I don’t know what you’re feeling
I’m scared now to ask
I’m frightened to see a closure
More frightened still to ask
Far away warm feelings are easy
Blanking out bad times
Is not too too difficult a task
It’s not dealing with reality
It’s living in the past
But I do want to say
Some things for clarity
Things past you that I’d like to pass
My poetry and my reading
Gratitude to you for that and more
The list of introductions is endless
You’ve learnt me all and evermore
The paintings and the painting
The galleries and the exhibitions
You bought me pastels, paints and board
You showed me shade and depth without derision
You may think I already knew sculpture
True I had visited Leeds, to see serene old Mr Moore
But you opened up the vista
Showing you, opened up, opened up my view
Then there’s education
I guess that’s where we met
You sometimes unkindly scoffed at my methods
By example you led, standards to aspire to you set
On this last night, I’m writing this in Kos
The flights delayed, we’re losing waste less days
Now I know, or think I do, what it was like for you
In your horror of Fuerteventura
I didn’t know then what you were feeling
I had forgotten, become so rotten
I had forgotten
Forgotten how to ask
It always turns into a poem, it must mean, mustn’t it, that there is something else within, anyway, for now, I’m trying to write about something strange, something far from known before, or not even half understood, some strange feeling.
It’s not anger, and it’s not loss; there is a deal of not living up to reality, there is a deal of keeping your image alive, but it is not yet, at least I hope, not yet an infatuation.
And that’s the thing that scares me, in this what is almost calm serenity; do I risk rolling over to an hungry infatuation, do I risk that, by keeping your image alive.
By using you for my poetry, for writing down and remembering, I’m seeing you each evening, and taking you to my dreams, do I risk an hungry infatuation, that will eat me, eat me half alive.
Or is this path truly more cathartic, is it a passage towards a closure, will this calm feeling of now grow into something stronger, bringing me, giving me, without you forever, leaving me, giving me new hope.
