Like the girl on TV, ‘Miss Celebrity’
Coming back to me
Deep in thought
as I navigate the night reading
Hoping she saw up there ‘flyers’.
“Miss, I tell you
the whole extent is wonderful
Downned in one gulp,
In many dreams as one,
Migrating somewhere, some place
your curves on the fuselage of chartered light
in the wide but visible unknown of hide and seek”.
Up here
……with soap, clean linen, hotel ‘a la carte’
and in the sunlight stroke between “them” –
pale, smoke
and glassed
horizons that fiercely burnt this last light
(and life)
With heat stroke.
Where it’s always light but breathless
And glows green/white –
To the end of ‘all seeing’
Of the-not-seeing-under-control-rountine.
Finally migrating away.
in airless flight
Both senseless and simulated.
Lowering a wing inward.
With the world alight as we make this final approach
To think of her smile,
The screen ahead fusing itself
With this vision
And the next.
Who said I was lost?
I looked into the distance –
It is straight in front-
On this path we now walk with others.
In this action, walking. Lungs, blood, breath.
Run, run now to shatter this silence
As there standing by the tree
Is the youngest of my gang
Just arrived from Washington .
He is ready for war, to avenge himself.
How do you describe him? As Bringer of War?
As Bringer of Peace or Jollity or Old Age?
All these things –
We have trained our youth well.
For an engagement to see nobody
And then for a few murderous seconds
The chaos of hell, of battlefield,
An aspect of land presents itself,
Perhaps a hill.
Ordinance this way!
How friendly.
With noise, somehow intimate,
A hissing song of messages, of text,
(the bloody snap paper)
As butcher bird appears
With something much more personal.
Shrunken corpses –
Licked clean, perfect
By the blast of ‘your ever after’
(cleaned perfectly in the high altitude of killing)
Only the “wish you were here” missing.
It was enough – a glance backward
As you, the figure of my dreams
(And in my dreams)
formed still more form
in its place.
Yes, you walked as first we shaped ourselves
In gardens of Eden
(Before their loss.)
Triumphant even –
Your body figured
In light and space
And all the street was yours
Because of this.
Yet by the time I thought liking mutual
You had gone to ‘office militant’
To be alone again.
Enter via a dark tunnel
the wild furnace
of one on top of another –
in a second each replaces another
by tumbling down of numbers
in towers,
of electronic thunder
flashing signals
to each ‘another’
as rivals in battle
between
merger and take-over;
storms
high up over London
pitching formulas
into the morning rush hour
and
in
a
trance
bet against themselves
all spontaneous and specialist
buying
while falling
a long way and back again
singing to themselves “amen”
(even amidst the raging storm)
in
the
friction of numbers
every aspect of their life living
looks down on us, muted
spewed forth from heated tunnel –
each step a march concentrated
and without thinking
in a glass eye of blind tempo,
tools ready, eyes ahead,
weather-beaten,
we hold the weight of one ton on our backs
backing them
Now appearing surrounded by churches
Without their priests or guilds,
Our screens stand watching themselves ‘not for daybreak’
But for payment.
Distracted, the old dealer’s view is fixed
On spires and steeples,
Dominated by further cluster and all prominent –
Telling us of Tokyo,
The Footsie or Paris holding –
For new marriage to begin.
Now silenced not by outcry
But each silence matched by itself,
We shall rule every Exchange by Christmas
Quietly but well.
I
It isn’t Kew you know, though
abundant. A new plant called
Elbow/Arms crushing me on the
pavement at Wall. I kick back,
shouting for ‘some’. For it to appear
to caress; to surface quietly.
2
On the port is Fred-he has plenty,
a dance with a mate: rather tight
suited, overcoated,
metal in armour-ready to go
beserk in dealings on New York.
Honorary men in black, courting them.
3
Groping, faltering, longing-hard
at it. A collection of people lock
themselves in Sea Horses.
An escape is planned by the
jetty on Swan Lane. Chaucer visits,
a perfectly understood event.
4
Colours fill the gloom of Monday.
At Bank, rivalries clash
in little Europe towards Cripplegate.
Milton, unmoved,
contacts Erasmus in Paris-surprised
by the response, offering to talk.
5
Agents arrive to experiment. In
a confused state, we introduce Euros.
‘Do you require wine, sir?’ Our
appetite increases,
with this talk of contract, history,
‘a little something for the people’.