Death stirs all ways like the wind
like something getting up to go,

and like the wind death doesn't
leave anywhere alone,

but where it is he travels with
whoever take his guiding hand,

gladly will I wait until
                     I die to understand ..

Even the bones
she throws clenched
he thanks her for...

Blindfolded
taking great care
to aim true
to loves path
Cupid arched his bow
and sneezed,
letting loose
a gold tipped arrow
too soon.
''****''
he muttered to himself
in Latin,
wiping his nose
on a bare
forearm.
''More heartbreak,
I hate
the ******
    summertime.......
.......I really
should wear something
with sleeves''

The heat of my youth
is as faraway now
as winters
that burned
in the hearth,
the flames
that once tickled my senses
splutter and cough
in the dark,
I used to see dreams
in the firelight
that smouldered
with promise and hope
but they cooled
with the wait
and when
it was too late
they drifted away
with the smoke.

In the end
it pulls
free of
its chain
and settles
inside like
a flame
and my
only concern
is how
long will
it burn
before I
have chained
it again

If it's dark and I know
nobody is around
I go outside and lay
plastic sacks on the ground
then I open all the windows
and I listen for the sound
of the storm that was forecast
marching into town..

If by chance
your prayers be answered
ever, could I trouble you;

whilst your palms
be pressed together
and fair is fortune's mood;

could I trouble you to pray
there some time soon will come a day
your need of prayer is gone away,

without appearing rude?

Is this as good as it gets?   'cause
I'm feeling a little bit tricked,
I'm feeling a little bit foolish like
my dream's had it's pockets picked,
I've been waiting to see
if the hands of Fate
have slipped me a hand
that's not mine,
but it's getting late
and while I've been waiting
she's robbed me of all of my time,
my time,
Fate's robbing me all of the time..

she leaves
everything
on a page,
all her sorrow,
her love
and her rage,
and I truly believe
she will write
herself free
of the jailers
who fastened
her cage.

I've been
up and down lately,
well..
more than lately,
kinda jumpy too 
Y'know...
Figure if I jump high enough
with the earth spinning beneath me
the way it does
I'll see it all
for free...
Mostly I jump
waiting the next bus
on cemetery hill,
up and down and up again
watching burials
intermittently
over the wall,
my now you see me-
now you don't appearances
are part of the mourning process
in Selly Oak these days;
leaving folk in holes
with dirt on their faces,
their chests
and their feet
frightens me,
seems gravity's got
a hold on them
forever now,
so I'm glad for
the days when smoke
stacks exhale
and the wind
is filled with people,
I feel the bounce
in my sole remembered
and I know
sooner or later
I too will catch an updraft
and fly....
I've been
up and down lately..
well..    
more than lately
I've been kinda jumpy too
Y'know ?

''click-ety-clack
don't look back
click-ety-clack
don't look
don't
don't
don't''
the chanting carriages
stutter through the
blue knots of steel-
house-lane junction
trying to remember
their lines before
we vanish
down tunnels
stuffed with depth
thick enough to
touch; I unwind,
unravel, shuffle past
Mr Allsmiles
stretch my bones
and muscles back
into a less shocking
relationship and
rock toward the
corridor filled
with cold echo
spilling through the
open windows
like a cave
breathing out; damp
walls swing close
and away again
black with soot,
and other dark
things inches from
my outstretched
hand, if I bellow
through this window
...........
if I bellow
through this window
at that passing
wall of alcoves
my voice will become
another echo
in its history
shrinking like
a farewell
wave; ten minutes
behind Staffordshire
Mr Allsmiles
declared his love
for travel
to be borne
of desire for
new places
new faces,
I explained I
travel to leave
both behind.
'Even mine ?' he
joked
'Even yours' I
replied.
'You find pleasure
in arrival and
I in departure
don't....
take it to heart''
but he did
and he left
and he saved me
the trouble.
Outside is
a big dawn
in a pink and
an orange sky,
we are tearing
a scar through
it's birth
at one hundred and
ten miles an hour
toxic (per)fumes
invade my lungs
tears slide sideways
into my ears,
when it rains
I will wear
pits in my skin
like a pebbledashed
wall I am fifteen
years old,
at this speed
I can barely breathe
but i am flying
faster than
my fear of
a normal life and
...it     ...can't      ...catch        ...me

Let's dance the next dance
like it's the last dance,
like we know
that it's our last chance
to dance and when
the band begin to slow
hold me like smoke,
there is a flame inside my soul
burning the dancefloor,
let's dance before it goes...

Theres a hill
made of wind
swept heather
and rock
where the time
that it takes
when I climb
to its top
is the same
that these words
too often unsaid
take to climb
from the
thickening
mist in my head.

Life is wonderful

Old Bones
planted
in a
crooked
straight line
watered
with the tears
of Sycamore
trees,
headstones
bend
under the
weight
of time
letters slowly
falling like
leaves

Prayer Before Birth (1944) - Poem by Louis Macneice


I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they ****** by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
******* like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise **** me.



Louis Macneice

Carrickfergus (1937) - poem by Louis Macneice.


I was born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries
To the hooting of lost sirens and the clang of trams;
Thence to Smoky Carrick in County Antrim
Where the bottle-neck harbour collects the mud which jams

The little boats beneath the Norman castle,
The pier shining with lumps of crystal salt;
The Scotch quarter was a line of residential houses
But the Irish quarter was a slum for the blind and halt.

The brook ran yellow from the factory stinking of chlorine,
The yarn mill called it's funeral cry at noon;
Our lights looked over the lough to the lights of Bangor
Under the peacock aura of a drowning moon.

The Norman walled this town against the country
To stop his ears to the yelping of his slave
And built a church in the form of a cross but denoting
The list of Christ on the cross in the angle of the nave.

I was the rectors son, born to the Anglican order,
Banned for ever from the candles of the Irish poor;
The Chichesters knelt in marble at the end of a transept
With ruffs about their necks, their portion sure.

The war came and a huge camp of soldiers
Grew from the ground in sight of our house with long
Dummies hanging from gibbets for bayonet practice
And the sentry's challenge echoing all day long;

A Yorkshire terrier ran in and out by the gate-lodge
Barred to civilians, yapping as if taking affront;
Marching at ease and singing 'Who Killed **** Robin?'
The troops went out by the lodge and off to the Front.

The steamer was camouflaged that took me to England-
Sweat and khaki in the Carlisle train;
I thought that the war would last for ever and sugar
be always rationed and that never again

Would the weekly papers not have photos of sandbags
And my governess not make bandages from moss
And people not have maps above the fireplace
With flags on pins moving across and across-

Across the hawthorn hedge the noise of bugles,
Flares across the night,
Somewhere on the lough was a prison ship for Germans,
A cage across their sight.

I went to school in Dorset, the world of parents
Contracted into a puppet world of sons
Far from the mill girls, the smell of porter, the salt-mines
And the soldiers with their guns.




Louis Macneice

The Slow Starter (1958) - poem by Louis Macneice.


A watched clock never moves, they said;
Leave it alone and you'll grow up.
Nor will the sulking holiday train
Start sooner if you stamp your feet.
  He left the clock to go its way;
  The whistle blew, the train went gay.

Do not press me so, she said;
Leave me alone and I will write
But not just yet, I am sure you know
The problem. Do not count the days.
  He left the calender alone;
  The postman knocked, no letter came.

O never force the pace, they said;
Leave it alone, you have lots of time,
Your kind of work is none the worse
For slow maturing. Do not rush.
  He took their tip, he took his time,
  And found his time and talent gone.

Oh you have had your chance, it said;
Left it alone and it was one.
Who said a watched clock never moves?
Look at it now. Your chance was I.
  He turned and saw the accusing clock
  Race like a torrent round a rock.



Louis Macneice

Autobiography (september 1940) - Poem by Louis MacNeice

In my childhood trees were green
And there was plenty to be seen.

Come back early or never come.

My father made the walls resound,
He wore his collar the wrong way round.

Come back early or never come.

My mother wore a yellow dress;
Gentle, gently, gentleness.

Come back early or never come.

When I was five the black dreams came;
Nothing after was quite the same.

Come back early or never come.

The dark was talking to the dead;
The lamp was dark beside my bed.

Come back early or never come.

When I woke they did not care;
Nobody, nobody was there.

Come back early or never come.

When my silent terror cried,
Nobody, nobody replied.

Come back early or never come.

I got up; the chilly sun
Saw me walk away alone.

Come back early or never come..


Louis Macneice.

Snow (January 1935) - Poem by Louis Macneice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes –
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands –
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.


Louis Macneice..

I once had a friend called Mad Bob
who thought being a door was his job
he was perfectly hung
and disarmingly swung
with a sigh when you handled his ****.

The last man alive
raised his gun
and emptied it
into the sun
as it sank
out of sight
left alone
in the night
he couldn't decide
what he'd won.

Stark staring planet
captained by fools
carrying a cargo
of hatred;

watched in the dark by
an audience of jewels
embarrassed they once
were related.

From the back
of a quiet
bookshelf
inside a dusty
***
she heard
her husbands breathing
rattle and
stop,
she heard
the bedside sorrow
in a tender kiss
farewell
then stirred her ash
with menace
and welcomed him
to hell

My green fingered great uncle Maurice
ran away with a stripper called Doris
she takes off her clothes
wherever she goes
and she's got ***** hair like a forest.

Whitehall
in flood
in springtime,
at a bus stop
a young girl
impatiently
waits in a queue
for help
from the hands
of a handful
of strangers
to lift her
up onto
the bus shelter
roof; atop
of the shelter
afloat
in an ocean,
a boiling tide
that blisters
the street,
she stoops for
a bottle
cast up
by its motion
and plunges
it into
the waves
of police.

Wherever I walk
always there is an absence
walking beside me..

Saddest
of all
springtime
shows
is the
display of
sculpted stone
that never
blooms
and only
grows
after the
seeds of war
are sown

I once found the moon in a forest
of fir two hundred foot tall,
it's face being lovingly polished
by fish in a silver pool,

the water was deep like a riddle,
as dark underneath as the pine,
I swam like a thief to the middle
but that slippery silver
                        refused to be mine.

Somebody bundled
it into a clock
and slung it up high on a wall,

with numbers
like bars between us,
where there had been nothing before;

before,
my days had come open,
open and endless like sky,

but boxed on the wall
there looked no room for all
of the rest of my lifetime and I.

If you turned
inside out
could you bear
the exposure?

He cast off his clothes
and his soul he laid bare
as he knelt with his nose
to the floor in prayer
then someone mistook
his crack for a rack
and parked the front wheel
of their bicycle there...

Somebody painted
a face
on my time
and pretending
that it
was a game,
they numbered
my days
and stood them
in line
and made
every one
look the same.

Somebody gave it
two hands
and a voice
that isn't
allowed
to stop,
it can tell
if Im late
and Im learning
to hate
the sound of
their
tick tocking
clock.

Age
discovered
a heavy
door
and gently
pushed
to look
inside
and as
it looked
it pushed
some
more
and I
ran out
of time
to hide

Oh ******* the net
******* the net
I'll never forget
the moment we met,
from the moment I met
the ******* the net
I haven't been out
and I haven't slept;

she posted a picture
I did the same
she looks like an angel
I look in pain
so I posted another
this time of my brother
she told me her mother
had noticed the change;

******* the net
******* the net
surprisingly didn't
seem all that upset
said it was the hair
but she didn't care
she used to be Claire
and now her name's Jeff;

oh, Jeff on the net
Jeff on the net
everything's changing
and hasn't stopped yet
I love you I love you
but you ought to know
my body is buried
and I am a ghost;

******* the net
Jeff on the net
love on the net
death on the net
uou never know quite
what might happen next
in an internet life;
it's anyone's guess.....


..

If some day
I should pass you
clothed in shades
of pale pastel

all I ask
is turn your face
from my failing
sense of taste...

Easy flow the waters
of the river passing by,

though we straighten them with walls
and narrow them in time,

and lace them up with bridges
to bind them where they lay,

still the waters, like a lifetime,
slip their bonds and pass away..