stone and steel

my flesh is my prison
my bones
are my bars
my regret
the prison cell
and my sins
are my jailers
no keys turn here
there is no escape
life is my sentence
and my years
are now merely a credit
to stone and steel

waxy thoughts

five red candles

dimly lit the paper

as I wrote to you

my tears

their waxy rivulets

melted together

the dying thoughts

as we slowly burnt down

to our beginnings

eventually

finally

both went out

only to be read

by the darkness

that swallowed them

(started on the 4th June 1993 - when I used to write by candlelight)

ask them to leave

loneliness and sadness

have to be called out

and cursed

not diluted

or ignored

not mistaken for something else

or imagined away

as you cannot ask them to leave

unless you know their names

another's warmth

when I close my eyes

when a face becomes

just flesh

that is when

I replace the silence

with your voice

nakedness is my need

but your voice

is my lover

this human hunger

that leads me to these arms

never fills me

and never touches

what I once found in you

only in the mornings

in the uncomfortable silence

of a cold dying heart

do I face my self-loathing

for betraying your love

and as I close these doors

I realise that leaving you

will be all I will ever know

the time traveller

he wanders back
to the moment he fell
and observes the man he knew
his mind recalls the act
but his eyes see the crime
fresh and undisturbed by time

he unwinds the hours back further
and steps in to confront himself
but he does not know this man
and this man will not listen

as he walks away from himself
he suddenly recalls the stranger he once met
the one with his father's face
and with the eyes hollowed out by pain

for my grandfather

may we both

stand together

silent on memory's shore

admiring the images

and precious things

that will not die

nor fade away

(For my grandfather - Albert Wileman)

a poem in progress

erase that

write it neatly

less hurried

that doesn't work

more emphasis on

no less

I need a ending

not that

too bleak

way too bleak

oh I like that

read it again

just to be sure

ok

are you ready?

you sure?

ok

now let it go

the rose eater

she prefers the reds
they are sweeter than the whites
and silkier than the yellow
sometimes you can see the pulp
washing around her mouth
a whirlpool of crimson
thorns stabbing upwards like shark fins
circling within her thin lips
waiting for the petals
to be shovelled to their deaths

the pianist

beneath Napoleon's hat
the sober pianist
slaughters our requests
Gershwin dies again and again
as his fingers stab the ivories to death
but it is "Summertime"
that finally steers even the barmen to drink

a swaying figure at the bar
lists gently as the boat drunkenly rolls
his foot taps between the missed beats
whilst his hands cling desperately to
his wrecked sobriety
he looks at the ice in his glass
as if it was a Gypsy's crystal ball
searching for the title to the tune
that eludes him
a tune he wants to request
a tune that will die without mercy

as for me
I sit quietly in the corner
praying for icebergs





(On a ferry to France watching a pianist, who was wearing Napoleon's hat, entertain a drunk)

I would fall

I would fall for a whisper
lightly dusted with hope

I would fall for a smile

that I knew was mine

I would fall for a sinner
wrapped within a promise

I would fall for a lie
held within a gentle heart

but I would fall for you
with just a single word
and I would change my course

towards oblivion

I would yield and kneel before you

like the pious and the faithless blind

for you are both the music

and the dance