The men. The Crucifix. The nails.

The sound of the neighbours having sex.

The Hanging Lobby.

The Bomb.

Glow-in-the-dark Durex.

A Hubby.

Bedtime with Nancy and Ron.

The sweet smell of success.

A camel’s jobby.

On

and on. And on. And on.

Eating the weakest survivor.

A small hard lump.

Drinking meths.

Going as Lady Godiva.

A parachute jump.

One breast.

Homeless and down to a fiver.

A hump.

Bad breath.

Here is a space to fill in things you suggest.

Death.

Somewhere Someone’s Eyes

What if there had been a painter – he was drunk – equal

to Picasso, who filled his canvases for years,

destroyed them all, and died? It was the old one

about the tree, the empty wood, the unheard moan

of a great oak falling unobserved. We thought

we’d humour him. Or a composer, whose scores

were never played — who also died — nor ever found?

Because I remember this, a cool room flares

with the heat of a winter’s fire, briefly. His face

glowed red-brown when he spoke to the flames.

I recollect it more than well, smell malt. What

happens to the lost? The shadow his mind made legless

lurched against the wall, glass raised. He cursed,

demanded an answer from the dog. All night it snowed.

Somewhere . . . he said, but we’d had enough, began

to joke and get half-screwed ourselves. Somewhere someone’s . . .

Outside, the trees shifted under their soft burdens,

or I imagine so. Our footsteps disappeared. It was easy

to laugh in that snug house, talk nonsense

half the night, drink. Across the white fields somewhere

someone’s eyes blazed as they burned words in their mouth.

Liar

She made things up: for example, that she was really

a man. After she’d taken off her cotton floral

day-frock she was him alright, in her head,

dressed in that heavy herringbone from Oxfam.

He was called Susan actually. The eyes in the mirror

knew that, but she could stare them out.

Of course, a job; of course, a humdrum city flat;

of course, the usual friends. Lover? Sometimes.

She lived like you do, a dozen slack rope-ends

in each dream hand, tugging uselessly on memory

or hope. Frayed. She told stories. I lived

in Moscow once . . . I nearly drowned . . . Rotten.

Lightning struck me and I’m here to tell . . . Liar.

Hyperbole, falsehood, fiction, fib were pebbles tossed

at the evening’s flat pool; her bright eyes

fixed on the ripples. No one believed her.

Our secret films are private affairs, watched

behind the eyes. She spoke in subtitles. Not on.

From bad to worse. The ambulance whinged all the way

to the park where she played with the stolen child.

You know the rest. The man in the long white wig

who found her sadly confused. The top psychiatrist

who studied her in gaol, then went back home and did

what he does every night to the Princess of Wales.

Boy