2010 2010 its like a brand new yeeeeear

So on Sunday Ida Mae and Gwen went to the Meadows and made a snowman and generally frolicked around. Ida is from the Tropics and had never made a snowman before. Anyhow, I'm just saying this because this poem has the snowman in it but neither Ida nor Gwen and I don't want them to feel left out. This poem does not have a title, but it really should. Some day I will come back and add the titles in.


I left you, dear, and your duveted warren,
your butter-orange french toast and darjeeling,
to crack my lips on the crispening air,
though, to be fair, I kept in mind your hair,
your mouth, your embellishing flanks
when I passed a patch of untouched snowbank,
untouched but for the orange of Irn Bru,
two neon cans. I blanked the Big Issue
man, his evangelic don’t be shy
come and buy, my less-than-sacred alibi
waiting in the Meadows. The floury snow
was barely wet enough for snowmen, snow-
cairn, Jabba the SnowHut. Another can
full of fag butts I stacked where I rammed
in his arms, angled for hosannas; a switch
and some leaves made his face a Buddha of kitsch,
shielded his eyes from the Irn-Bru-toned sun.

That night, we tottered home, cold-nosed and drunk
and saw yer maun alone and here’s you: cmon
and we’ll build a snowmate like the bride of fucken
Frankenstein and with just one broken stick
made arms eyes ears nose mouth and, with a twig
doused in muck, her sandy hair. We left them there
together with the dogs and orange stars.


More soon,
Dx

Merry Solstice!

As promised, here's the second of them two poems I promised. Still haven't thought of a title. The lines should be staggered slightly, Mark Doty-style, but you'll have to use your IMAGINATION.


The music is skipping, then the radio
goes livid with interference. The waiter tinkers
with it briefly, then leaves it to its silence.

The tea is nut-brown and body-hot and on the wall
on what passes for a mantlepiece
is a mug, some candles, a wooden

mule, a vase with purple-black flowers
and above that the painting that caught
my attention: a single raven

silhouetted against something like
twilight, the oyster-blue of dawn or just after
sundown, between two splintered trees

and another raven half-
lurched into shadow. The first raven
- centre stage, our raven -

is peeking back across its shoulders at some
signal maybe, maybe some threat. No sign of you
yet, and in a minute you'll be late. It's nearly dawned

on me that ravens' eyes are on the sides
of their head, the whole body at an angle
when a draught shifts the fire of the candles

on the mantle and there you are
with your hair raven-black and silhouetted
against the silvery dusk outside the door



Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Yesterday there was snow

I have a poem to show you! And another one that will come either tomorrow or Monday, depending on when I next get to a computer. Neither of them have titles yet.


She is watching for you from the tree-house.
Judging by the tulip-blackness of the sky,
the corona of moonlight, you are late.
The ginseng root in your hand has come alive,
and when you touch the tree with your other hand,
too patched and grubby to live, and all this
luminous scrub, these overdone set-props
seem too flat, too farfetched, will you filter

back to life where her snoring fills the morning
as if she's angry to have missed it,
and all things seem connected to that
one abrasive sound that breaks from dream,
because air would no sooner meet your lungs and leave
and not believe your body something sacred

than you would stop her goddamn snoring.
How can desire live in what's perfected? Root
yourself in the pillow, the wet jewels of her sweat,
when there is nothing between you
but the bundles and nooks
of the blankets and a little human sleep.


Thanks for your patience, it's been a while.
Dave.

CAPS 2: DARK VERMOUTH

As promised, there is a brand new poem coming your way in just over four sentences. Also, if you are reading this today (27th of October 2009) or tomorrow morning, then might I invite you to the Bowery, 2 Roxburgh Place, tomorrow soir at 8pm? I think I may just have done. There will be poems and stories and all kinds of lovely drinks in teacups and cocktail glasses. Now it's time for that poem I mentioned!


Curtains


His cue is the flute.
There’s over a minute to kill, he’s thinking of food:
roast parsnips, turnip mash, all the trimmings
of Thanksgiving and the snacks in the dressing room –
the donuts that are there and the donuts that are not
her, mis-lit by the stagelights in the last rehearsal
and the meat of her limbs lithing in the boudoir
of his dreams, the seams of her crosspatterned dress
yet unable to release the last inches of her svelte
shifting thighs, a faint return of hair to her once-shaven pelt
was the last thing on his mind when the flute
started playing, and, at a loss for a script,
started mouthing
and thinking of nothing
except

now
no, now

no


Thanks for reading, and I hope the formatting for that poem works. Else I shall be sad. The next gap between poems will be much shorter.
Yours,
Dave.

THERE ARE NO CAPS BIG ENOUGH TO HOUSE MY EXCITEMENT

HOLY

GODDAMN

SHIT

I'VE WRITTEN A MOTHERFRIGGIN POEM

here it is


Zion


What I learned at Church
is that the body is a Temple
and the Church too is a body,
and I have never been to Jerusalem
but I have touched your body
as the angel touched Jacob
and made him Israel,

and I have never been to Granada
but I have heard Spanish
read from Poet in New York
and with your English tongue
seen you light up like a little town
beneath where a star hung

like the carvings in Yorkminster
of the broad-tongued heads
with wide eyes and fig leaves
or oak leaves or banana leaves
or just leaf litter through their hair

though I have never spoken
in tongues or knelt before an altar
or carved pagan good-luck charms
in your Temple, your new-found land.


And there's another one tomorrow! :O
Thanks for still reading,
Dave.

done

Whheeeeeeeeelll I'm done. Portfolio handed in and switched to relax/watch the athletics/play guitar hero mode. To mark the occasion, here is the last poem that I added to the manuscript.

Little Lucifers


The night is over and a gull has abandoned
a pigeon’s collarbone, or its splintered thigh-bone.

It skitters and skites by the daybreak lunette.
I am only a guest in my fourth-storey flat.

Did it see me behind the grey-clouded glass?
Did it have me in mind when it tore from the carcass?

Is there another bird so human as a seagull?
At the foot of the stairs is the bearable hell

of bottles, polystyrene, a pair of black heels
and a coven of gulls like the Morningstar’s angels.

Having balanced our garbage at the edge of the kerb,
I hear the screamed half-laughter of birds.


I will return soon. Thanks for reading,
Dave.

wahoo hoo hoo

Look at widdle Wolvie there. So happy to be lobotomising that fishdude. With his disturbingly pregnant-looking bicep.

Another poem today, a reworked version of an old poem, as per the norm. I am massively hungover having slept on my own sofa last night. On the other hand I think I'm just about done with my portfolio!

:D

This means that after the next three or four updates I'll be taking a fair old break from the blog. Hopefully not too long, though, and I plan on coming back with a vengeance. As for now, I'm going to crawl back into bed, or just into the warm, welcoming bosom of that corner over there. Bad times.

Penelope


No gulls flock at the horizon.
Unadvancing, unreceding,
hiding riches in its folds.
My boat glides in a wash of stars.

The water has hoarded loam
and other shields from light.
The moon’s torn reflection
runs in a line from my feet.

Minerva, grey-eyed Athene,
there is no sweetness
in this grey serenity.

Send head-turning winds,
send rollicking water,
send earth to dirty my feet.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Edinbleurgh

Edinburgh is currently full of needy, desperate twats like these hilarious people. No particular offense to them, they were just the first ones I found on google. Anyway, the whole city is swollen and bloated with talentless people making tits of themselves for £12/hour. Amazingly it is also full of people willing to pay for it. I'd been looking forward to the Fringe for some time and I struggle to remember the last time I was so disappointed.

LOOK AT OUR FUNNY HATS. LOOK.

LOOK

Poem to ease the pain. More tomorrow.

The Bridge


If I should lose myself in sleep and find myself
out of body and floating above the ocean,
may tidal winds take my nightshirt like a man-o-war
and make my mooring-place the Brooklyn Bridge,

and because this is a dream, let the bridge
stay empty and so broad New York dissolves in mist,
let one ship drift in below like a lily pad
on a sea turned doldrum-calm and silent enough

that I could whisper and still be understood
by the young man calmly discarding his suit-coat
and leather shoes and mounting the guard-rail,

and as he falls I will scream it is a joy to have a body
and as the sun rises on the bridge’s pitch-black rivets
let it catch a lily pad that blooms and quickly withers.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.