Ariel on a windy night
As I turn printed leaves
under flickering candlelight
your last fierce breaths issue
from the spaces between word
and word, whisper through the
gaps between window and sill,
door and threshold. Uninvited,
irresistible guest – grave voice
of the airy element that twists
the most wilful of trees and
your tongue. Dead and unborn
heard the tempest that was always
at your ear, impatient for you.
But you fastened the windows,
and closed the doors before you
bent down to that virulent breath.
It lashed those leaves from you
and carried you down the path with its debris.
Now I hear your voices hiss together.
Iris
Your laughter was like the rain
that fell through that sunlit day
and coloured everything
a blotted ink on the beach dust
a darkening on blue faces of rock
a bloom of rust on the railings
the grip of flesh through thin cotton
spitting pearl lakes on pub tables
splitting light’s spectrum through a glass ashtray.
But we couldn’t keep it and watched helpless
as it bled into the sea - a petroleum rainbow
that poisoned everything.
The Opportunity Shop
Some day you’ll stop
by the opportunity shop
you pass each morning
and give to the needy.
We’ll meet among
the jaded shirts and faded denim jeans
old working boots and outgrown suits
in heaps of discarded disorder.
But, hold me by the window,
though crudely cut and without a name
dusty light slants through me
as I hang reflected on your eyes
animated by your touch.
Old man
I pulled up at the intersection
drummed my fingers
on the wheel for an eternity
while his impotent legs drudged
a striped width of asphalt.
Midway he signalled thanks,
and threw a look that went past
me and lighted on another day.
Over his shoulder he saw
the road ahead of me.
The crossroads where he had
also waited impatiently
foot tapping at the pedal
fingers drumming on the wheel.
And then he laughed.
Companions
From a rectangular moon that casts its
lunar light into the silent street
two step out onto the doorstep.
It is nearly eleven o’clock.
A collar and tie peep over the lapels
of his long coat. He is gesticulating wildly
and she, in a revealing satin blouse and
woollen cardigan, is laughing too loud.
Her laugh makes me cry. Her lips are a whorl of shell.
I can hear the sound of blood rushing
around my head on those lips, or an empty sea.
It is nearly eleven o’clock.
‘Well, you just drive carefully’, she says,
the car door is opened and he climbs in,
‘Get yourself in. It’s cold’, he says, closing the
door between them. And again that laugh.
The car engine awkwardly clears its throat.
She is waiting formally on threshold,
a dark figure in a glare of porchlight.
They wave to each other madly, then the car lights
flick on and their beacons flare across the houses and gardens
of the neighbours, swing round at the end of the street.
In his rearview mirror he sees her step into
the empty doorway and shut the door, so that
as the red tail-lights disappear, the street
is once again black and silent.
It is nearly eleven o’clock.
Salomé
Herodias’daughter / before me / in primitive celebration.
Vive La Revolution / of her body / on curled toes
to the boil / of electric
kettle drum / and bated 
breath.
BOOM BOOM BOOM.
What I wouldn’t give
to unburden / my swivel chair
from where I stare
beside the carnal feast / that my companions tear / and slobber at
their open mouths
wordfully chewing / breast and thigh / from labelled containers
their portions weighed / and listed orderly.
Scraps of meat
laid on the table / at five-thirty /cold and unswallowed
hips sway / through the tailor-made
cigarette smoke / that gets in your eyes
arabesques of veil /refract through the vine’s
moisture / in slim glasses
hyroglyphic steps / on the dusty floor / echo
through a hollow-bellied /audience
BOOM BOOM BOOM
what I wouldn’t give / to know the carnival / of that imp of id
to dance in / euhrythmic shadow / perspire
beneath the flickering / unsound rhythm / of neon
lips made smiles / before they sucked flesh from
the dry bones / that the eyes arrange /and translate
Vive La Revolution /and take the outspoken head off
the baptist’s /mute and sterile body.
La Paradis n’est pas artificiel
Except for stone-wrought pagan nymphs, clung fast to fountain taps
In spectral spray of silver shards, whilst gainst them water laps.
But on your painted rose-hip lips!
Of your designs that I beseech!
Though often deferred are my wishes,
That you should cook, and do the dishes
C’est ne pas artificiel.
Apart from memories, dreams perhaps?
Milk chocolate hearts and gospel facts.
But on your saccharine unkissed lips!
Your peachy slenders that unto me reach!
Though tinned are all of your thrown kisses,
Oh, go-on won’t you be my Missus?
C’est ne pas artificiel.
