A Single Skuller
Living Skin
The Final Whistle
RECOVERED POEMS
The Island
from Rosemaries
Riverbank
NEW PROSE
My Dominant Characteristic
Life as a Serious Person
The Little Talker
LIVING SKIN
Roi Sarko Le Troisième
Je suis le nain de fer
dans le jardin de l’enfer.
Le tonnerre roule. Gare !
Trouvez un abri. Mon éclair
va frapper tous les gens
qui ne sont pas Américains,
riches ou me donnent du fric.
Et oui. Voici mes flics.
Quand j’étais petit
tout le monde a jeté
la merde sur moi. Et alors,
il n’est point passé encore.
Life is hell
It’s
better that hell is in life.
Life
passes.
Night
Music
A
dude
playing a saxaphone on the roof
of a
block of flats is a cliché that’s proof
that
sentimental art can pollute the air.
I’d much
prefer if someone came to repair
the leak
than hear some saxo bleat in the night.
It’s
high time what’s over our heads is put right.
I fear,
a poet called Sweeney is abroad
on the
tiles, knocking up a whimsical ode
to
loneliness and the city. Kenny G
is
musak, but fancy footing from a knee-
jerk
free-verser with a Bo Widerberg touch,
and no
respect for Hopper, is too much.
So I
send a sniper up to prevent
a poem
in the Times Literary Supplement.
Second
Thought
Don’t
think about me.
I’m a
gloomy thought.
My eyes
are boiling
over
with spoilt broth.
Think of
someone else
who’s
life enhancing.
For
instance, yourself.
And life
will dance on.
M
et Mme Canaille
They
brought into the world delinquents.
And now
breed dogs that savage infants.
On Leaving Something
Behind
Everytime
I leave a café
I like
to look back in hope
a waiter
comes after me
breathlessly
calling, ‘Your coat’.
Or
something I’d left behind.
When
there isn’t a cloud in sight
I carry
an umbrella
and my
sunglasses at night.
I
study
the absent mind.
My
heed
keeps them on the trot.
I’d
forget myself if that
was
possible. It’s not.
What
never fails is a hat.
My head
band is always signed.
Posterity
in advance.
has been
forewarned that I am
a
manipulator of chance
who
exploits good will, a man
who’s
leaving something behind.
Scared
Stiff
I’ll
soon be frozen on the spot.
A living
statue made of ice.
A
little
sunshine would be nice
to melt
me back into what
I’m
ninety percent, H20.
And
so I
can go with the flow.
The
emptiness is aching.
But at
least there’s nothing within.
The
stuffing has been taken
out of
me. I’m living on my skin.
Sinking Feeling
The
ice
is melting
under
where I stand.
A call
of nature.
My own
personal
contribution
to
global
warming
I
suppose as I
sink to
inhabit
the deep
with plankton.
We’ll
surface again
on
carbon dioxide
when
the
sea warms up.
