He guards a row of fonts

With lids like eye-patches. Snapped shut

They are castanets. All day he hears

Short-lived Niagaras, the clank

And gurgle of canescent cisterns.

When evening comes he sluices a thin tide

Across sand-coloured lino,

Turns Medusa on her head

And wipes the floor with her.

E Pericoloso Sporgersi

But a modulation to D flat minor

argues for pronouns of a different kind:

the consideration of history as syntax

or a slow dance of nomadic stones.

No wonder the flight of the pigeon

over the Piazza Cortina at sunset

becomes a gesture of the purest angst.

Pastruccio knew what to make of such

gratuitous moments, the refractions

of inveterate light. In a garden

of non sequiturs the silkworm dozes,

ignorant of Spinoza and unworried

by sex or the darkening obscurity

of sonorous sentences like these.

My cat piddles on the carpet and yawns.

Art, he reflects, is rivalled only

by a cargo of absolutes sailing northwards

to Goethe’s incomparable parakeet.

The gods dream dictionaries and sonatinas.

Beyond the window their shadows lengthen,

aspiring to the stature of a late quartet.

Duffa Rex

I

King of the primeval avenues, the municipal parklands:

architect of the Tulse Hill Poetry Group: life and soul of

the perennial carousals: minstrel: philatelist: long-serving

clerical officer: the friend of everyone who’s anyone.

‘Pack it in,’ said Duffa, ‘and buy me a drink.’

II

He digs for the salt-screw, buried in crepitant spud-slivers.

Speaks of his boyhood in the gruntler’s yarg, the

unworked cork-bundles, coagulations of nurls.

The mockery of his companions is unabated. It is the

king’s round, they urge. His hoard is overripe for

commerce.

One by one he draws coins to the light; examines them:

exemplary silver, his rune stones. Treasure accrued in a

sparse week, to be invested in precious liquid.

Strugnell in Liverpool

for Allen Ginsberg, Charlie Parker, T. S. Eliot, Paul McCartney, Marcel Proust and all the other great men who have influenced my writing

waking early

listening to

birdsong watching

the curtains brighten

like a shirt

washed in Omo

feeling the empty

space beside me

thinking of you

crawling out of

bed searching

for my glasses

piles of clothing

on the carpet

none of it yours

alone in the toilet

with the Harpic

and the Andrex

thinking of you

eating my cornflakes

plastic flowers on

the windowsill green

formica table lovesong

on the radio bacteria

in the drainpipe

thinking of you

going

up

stairs

again

and

getting

dressed

think-

ing

of

you

thinking

of you your pink

nylon panties

and your blue

nylon bra

Body Mist

hairsmell of Silvikrin

shampoo and your white

nylon panties

thinking of you

Narrative

The sky was dark, the garden gnomes were still

When Schopenhauer observed, ‘I like them less

Than sausages – in fact they make me ill.’

The vicar nodded once and murmured, ‘Yes,

But wouldn’t Tacitus have praised the skill

Of all those jugglers on the Leeds express?’

It seemed they had decided not to tell

The governors that Fido wasn’t well.