Absence is not darkness
but only the channels between
Islands of light lining streets
and rows of tents unseen

Solitude is a seven-starred cape,
black pavements pass like minutes
The alleys of isolation stretch
and gape, with well-lit limits.

This one's for John,
who was suddenly called away
by the delicious roots of a spreading yew.
He crumbled softly in his room,
until an empty service finally drew
the life from his body,
like poison from a wound.

Your birdsong might drive a hundred nights
crashing to their knees in the daysprung delights
of your symphonies. I will bow now to the rising east,
and lay my head in peace upon my pillow.
When I want for your yellow, and clearing blue,
in the deepest darkness, I shall think of you.

I dozed while the daylight passed
‘Til I woke in the grip of thick wet grass
Among those fragrant flowers and stones
I alone; thought of fetid bones
That huddled under the thick wet grass.

Those now spent shells; of a battlefield long
And treacherous in that those who were strong
Were braving the winter to feel more pain
As the snows came again
And great guns crashed on a battlefield long.

So quickly then, it was I who rose
From my forgotten corner; just suppose
In that electric eve and damp
Their bodies dull and rank
Grieving they retched awake; just suppose.

I am late for nothing.
Staring into the robin's egg sky,
watching my breath tumbling
to cloud about me.
There is a bus coming.

The light is fading.
Growing numb about the edges,
of frosted steel railings
and heavy molten hedges.
There is a bus approaching.

Fiery tree before me,
swallow the wintry sunset
as a fading reddish memory.
In similar shades, I know we met,
many times, and we were happy.

Sodden fur, half buried by leaves,
a grey squirrel floats through grey trees.
On a bitter night, winter glisters,
under the crumpling tread of cars.
Now as the wind upon your fingers,
Now as the darkness between the stars.

He came to the city as a child,
breastfed on the traffic lights.
Bawled endlessly, while his mother
worked nights.

Went to school every other day
Lessons like so many bad dreams
Then youth passed away, and a father came
in the shape of a small-time Manhattan ****,
and blossom fell streaming from every tree.
In that great city - by January,
the  boy was newly teasing death.
In one way or other, walking the streets,
asking after ****.

When I study Poets
who passed their hours
in passion, peace
and quiet thoughts-
Who spun their words
from sylvan towers
and sat at ease
in flowered courts.

Or in Amherst hurt
the single girl
who pressed against
her windowpanes-
While a thousand
hours alone unfurled
her heart commenced
to pen the rains.

I'm juxtaposed
by vanished stars
who scribbled into a
scrolling sky-
Their elegant prose
and lovely scars
speak forever; they
can never die.

Torpid though low nightly torments stay,
how lucky I am; to miss and bathe in dreams

Of absence through the dawn and into day.
From my far flung ship; I shall watch old islands

Sliding past while sadly silver streams-
from Heaven; fall in silence.

It used to be simpler.
Workloads were lego
and gameboys were bigger.
The world was greater
when rainbows were an end
to be followed, by the intrepid
and yelling storm-chaser.

How to spend my gains,
when youth drifts further
and further away?
On more lego? The toyseller
would laugh and say
I was mad. So I shall show
to the world that I am old-
Swear on my quietly thinning soul,
at rainbow's end I found no gold.

We're drifting in the evening,
dreaming with the leaves.
The autumn holds a moment,
a portent in the eaves.
The season heaves.
Brown skeletons are gleaming.

The clouds are only swallows
borrowed from bare trees.
The washed canvas sky
dries with arrows of geese.
A watcher breathes
in cloudy gasps, and grows.

A meter empty on a hill
by two trees glowing unashamed.
One bore life while one could fill
a cup with thickly flowing thought
and drive the couple cursed and blamed
from Eden or the parking lot.

I began my dream dinner party
with an icebreaker.
Then over the candelabra I leant in,
advised the Arch-duke to run to my cabin
and take the kevlar vest.

On my left was a vigorous guest,
from the Vienna School of Art.
He regaled the table with Chaplin impressions
and a heartfelt account of Passau.
As our night advanced, I saw him glance
more than once at the glittering Empress.
And there I felt continuity echo
and all of history shift.

Childe Roland
to the last tower came.
His mail was a twisting
matted beard.

His sidearm appeared
more of a gesture.
A Stanley knife
and selected verse.

He muttered blackly in his mirth;
Fi, fie, foh, fum.
I smell the blood
of a million men.

Is it harder to open or close a book?
Certainly at a look, seven PM
in September is somewhere to be.
The hardening light, the steady cessation,
the Southbound birds - gliding from the station.

April ages more subtly,
with a wholly crueller edge.
The ease of unfolding at seven AM
seems granted for everything new.
But not among these arrowing swifts -
are the Stones, and by degrees, you.

I will set now
As a tired evening sun
With the flowers at the roadside
Are my senses overrun

It is dangerous (any night)
to mull too long on the inevitable song
of a raindrop's pallid flight.
By opening up to the minute flicker
of passion coursing in a tear.
As concrete growing wearily darker
damper, distance disappear.
Downwards and split on the earth
reflections of a watery star.

I have never truly been hungry.
and never fought for food.
Never in a state of ecstasy,
at last have I... chewed.
But I have loved
as one who has been alone.
Clung to the eye of a failing hope,
built my house in a hurricane.
I blame the rain - I cannot sleep.

I spent too long on the tiny things
that did not care, I cannot sleep.

Ribbons of shining cars:
The countryside in parts
Will always be ours.
Drizzled in a distant June
as silver lace, let smoking
breathing moonlight race
in living strips, let temple steps
be made of every smiling road,
through fields that flashing, leapt by swift
as hedgerows drinking yellow dust,
that floated in a silent drift
and blew around there - missing us.

We took our places you and I-
I the bones on the cool night sand
And you the desert sky.
Looking up I wondered why-
Though felt foolish to ask;
How you wore the stars quite so,
And how the planets passed.

Days on days; my hometown harboured
concrete cradles cast for me.
Children growing tall like ships
alone and listing out to sea.

I watched you once; alone, asleep,
behind a yellow air.
No ancient halls of Rome did speak
of beauty like your hair-
that fell in spells and drew me down
still closer to your mouth.
I hold no softer memory
of summer in the south.

The Boy King

Chattering lines on
the pavement
and tall coaches
roll into the cul de sac
like coffin fish collecting
on a reef.

We're going on a trip!
Shriek sandwiches suffocating
in lunch-boxes.
Your history teachers
flounder painfully out of
culture.
Terribly aware
of awkward t-shirts.

Spears are great
but pots are pots.
A brash gold face is
an eight out of ten.
The good stuff's through here-
A torn yellow eye socket or
a gift-wrapped limb.

The Moon Princess

Come on Carter,
we'll dig up Diana.
Uproot the rose
and strip her.
Prise the wreath from her grasp
for cash.
Pinch her ****
for kicks.

Back and forth flickered his net
with a shimmer, and whirring stems
stirring and whispering in the haze.
But little did the lepidopterist know
there were lions in the long grass;
lithe numbers, labeled days.

At a desk, coffee sachets rest.
Long-life milk harbours
white dreams of expiry.
Shuffling in his forgetful nest
a grey man blinks
at the intruding light.

Americo, do you remember
your antique power,
that opened like a rose
on the walls of Hiroshima?

Tigers spiralling
to concrete indents,
roaring in foresight
Of broken pavements.
Twisting papers are
scattered above me.
Unknown words
are whistled shrilly.
Kettle prayers boiling
in wind-whipped foam,
frothing from meteors
mouthing for home.

To the News:
ants drift like drops
from clouds.
To metropolis, where they
vanish from view.

A woman shatters
the glass ceiling, and
I am halfway up heavy stairs.
Brittle on the quaking
skyline.
The world is leaning
to watch office chairs
Be thrown through windows.
Becoming doors.

Realm of new gold, and blue-hot raging sun.
Yellow kept kingdom of the spilling fields.
Blind under burning filaments that run
like blood from the bursting heads of corn.
As sultry woods dapple with bluebell peals
and all the summer fruits of swallows song,
are shaded by kestrels, glaring overhead
and jealous ponds are broken by the stares;
of swollen mayflies, peering from the dead.

The room is large and
paint is peeling,
from panelled walls
and alcoved ceilings.
An old woman is buried
in a damp chair.
A warm smell of ****
yellow air.

She does not turn but
speaks clearly:
"Americo, do you remember
your blossoming power?
The whole world despised it
but I loved you dearly.
My wanton child-
Red in matricide,
white in supremacy
and blue here now,
in your rosewood seat"

Americo laughs briskly
at Britannia's slight.
But they are both disturbed
and chilled by the sight,
of Romulus' freshly starched sheets
and all his leafy golden crowns
in a tied black bag
beside the door.

All of town is lit tonight
and blazing on twenty screens.
The roadside trees are desolate
and defeated things, a black phone rings,
the stars may hardly be seen.