Angel Busted
(for Chris Jenkins)
Mountains, moors, crags and quarryings,
rail inclines to the sky & beyond
estates on rolling hillspurs
unloved, tattered streets
torn posters ripping off
boarded shopfronts,
pale windy sunshine
flaring across silver rooves
to dunes & seas & drowned cities
privet shivers in a thrash of wind
leaves falling, words twisting
fierce twigs from the sun
caught in his sox
angel arrest rivets the coaltown
angel fries in cold steel
A sudden phalanx of paranoid swords
strident star sirens of interference
aluminium boneheads bleached of thought
hired guns, alloymen, disposal experts
crystalmen & dropmen, bagmen & dead bodies
tarnished warriors clanking their lasers masers
particle beam accelerators
cryptic fundamentalist mullahs arousing
from cold minarets
mirrorbright caffeine raps an easy smile
fierce twigs from the sun caught in his sox
angel arrest rivets the coaltown
angel fries in cold steel
privet shivers in a thrash of wind
hired guns, alloymen, disposal experts
crystalmen & dropmen, bagmen and dead bodies
posters ripping off rotted shopfronts
torn, unloved, tattered streets
estates on rolling hillspurs
strident star sirens of interference
angel arrest rivets the coaltown
angel fries in cold steel
angel fries in cold steel
Straight From Sleep
straight from sleep
to chase sheep from the garden
a bloody, dead blackbird on the doormat
'mid thousands of feathers and catspew
the world jumps
from this to that
to break the ennui
of my own tense control
all goes into the melting pot of acid
over the hill kicking a dead lambskin
what to do with all this energy, lambent, unreconciled
an atmosphere almost of terror
the planet helpless with mirth
gold coins rolling in the streets
the skylark’s interminable raga
bore aloft on shivering wings
mid-May 1971
The River Walk & We're Done, Almost
even before passing through the wrought-iron
kissing gate
you have stepped upon that living rock
named Farewell
beyond which the miners
did not cut
cliff buttresses
step up
overhanging
a vertical horror of mass
& the river
flows in a deep fissure
the shatter zone of a sliding transverse fault
two great shelves
of cumbriense quartzite
hard bones of the river bed
conjurors divinatory foam
in a side-pool
raft of choc-topped
meringues bobbing
where the current turns back
could tell the maid's fortune
who she would marry
57 stones or setts
along the mineral line
– never been counted –
one for each
year of his life
counting: the sleeperstones
impose a rhythm
with his pack
on his back
on his back
so closely associated:
love skeleton
of the dramway
her beauty –
his confusion –
why even
think it?
– the ice ages of love
rhyme locks up passion
in prosaic fashion
a metronome beat
like something you eat
tracing steps along the river path
flying leaf dance
upon his insubstantial heart
the year
closing down fast
each shower of leaves
the cause of sorrow
he pounded on the door
of the heartbreak hotel
leaves
skipped in the wind
she was not there
bitter thoughts
coal tit vivid
busy on a branch
all about nothing
crows settling
cold sunset
ripple-red
his heart leaps
in the higher column of his throat
flame pulls
a pint of dragon brew
she sits by him with an old book
open on her knee
occultations of the poem
steps
in the irregular rhythms
of love
her loins
my mouth
a volcanic idea
wondrous knots
are potent gazes
in these
darkest days your
summer feet
still enchant me
desire
is
process