In the hope of grasslands
stands an ancient Baobab tree
somewhere, a village
of dust & dirt, wakes slowly
she ties her shoelaces
an elephant walks past
on the distant horizon
the camera breaks
right at that moment
when she wants to take
a picture to bring home
so she resorts to postcards,
half-written letters
& learning the language
so she could impress them
the hotel porter, a lean boy
of merely twenty-two
watches her
his hunger is written
like lightning in his eyes

She readies the tomatoes & radishes
fresh lettuce leaves & green onion
then finishes with salad cream as a garnish
& puts the evening’s fish pie in the oven

The salad sings sweetly to her
of the bygone days of childhood summers
fast cars on winding country lanes,
the way her grandfather would say

something to his sheepdog
& watch it rush away again
in the sunlight’s  warm
grasp,  before the rain

wandering fields & farms
or out by Thor’s cave
always with a pair of binoculars
for counting birds & bats

& how he’d sleep in his armchair
in a red brick stack of a house
& how the dazed garden air
always smelt of tea roses

many years have gone past
& she keeps all the old photographs
under lock & key in Europe
& old birthday cards in their envelopes

Every Christmas the phone rings
out above a coal-filled fireplace
& the call goes to the answer machine
all that love gone to waste

* Thor's Cave is a cave in Manifold Valley in the county of Staffordshire in the UK

Hello.
Enjoy.

I am a soup
tomato, preferably

especially savored
in the winter

with a pinch of Salt
or Pepper or a naughty dob of Cream

When I'm warmed up hot
I giggle,

tickled by bubbles
rising through me

In my can I prayed to the spoon
oh let the kingdom come

imagined soup
just flowing free

& then I flowed
& saw the Spoon

it came for me
I trembled in love

but now, I do not know where Soups go
for now I see only this darkness round me

will I be re-born
into something?

The pepper seemed to think
we are re-born into other beings

he was hoping to become
a butterfly

I hope he got
his wish.

Those afraid of someone's Darkness do not deserve their Light

You are
cherry blossom
an oval
a fish-eye
you keep
mosquitoes
in a matchbox
& pray
to Buddha
we part every now & then
so we can meet again

The city's shrouded in smoke today
smoke coats my mouth, throat & eyes

& I know, I know.
       I should be writing in form,
in rhyme - villanelles, sonnets, terza rima
      some say there's too much free verse, some say, it's like
everyone's jumped on the bandwagon
       yet the most of the magazines still all want rhyme
                 but sometimes this is just the tune
                                    your heart sings, a broken smile
                                    & the way the images build up
                                        waiting to sail like ships in the harbor


& besides, should we really be writing in villanelles when we are the Mad & I see now, the best minds of our generation, the gifted,

the naked wastrels of the coming apocalypse,
talking to lamp posts, screaming of Ginsberg's Moloch

& the wrongs they did us, yet not destroyed even as we scream locked
behind whitewashed walls in razor-blade glint & halogenic

glow of ECT or walk the empty streets at guerilla dawn
& dusk, bearing the ample weight of our drugged-up minds

like those martyrs of the old Soviet Union & clinging
on to memoirs of our stolen, interrupted, spiritual awakening,

searching for the redemption of litter in this hobo life, 
changing countries like some change bed sheets,

others rooted by the invisible chains of familiarity & home, still calling
for the road, oh Kerouac, the fallen angels of tomorrow strung out on sweet

childhood memories & jazz in starved sunsets,
picking themselves up to pick at their scab wounds,

spitting at corrupt governments, bitter with alcohol,
writing poems of unrequited love to poets

far better than us, while Elvis croons
in the background & a Baboushka spits sunflower seeds

in the Russian town of my ancestors
& an open air film plays in black & white

& this colorless summer is nearly over
& they still haven't lifted their sanctions

them with their stone gods of war & psychiatry,
always lining up the next undesirables :

you could be next, yes you with the rainbow eyes
you the believer, you the dreamer of visions

Oh pity them, the children of smoke,
blind to the vagabond, the poet, the lover

lost children always seeking out the same roads
the city is shrouded in smoke

& I wonder if it's not always been there
& if we're living amongst blind men

ones that never read poems
or else how could all this happen

Up on Church Hill
I think of my love
& Tennyson, long gone
Up on Church Hill

Up on Church Hill
I look out at Steep Holm
and then at Clevedon pier
Up on Church hill

Up on Church Hill
the last swallows are soaring,
last summer days calling
Up on Church Hill

Up on Church Hill
by the poets’ walk
I sit as it gets dark
Up on Church Hill

Up on Church Hill
I shall leave my heart
& then depart
Old Church Hill

We go to Ikea having taken
the road through the allotments
& the Park which dates back

to Victorian times.
Inside the store
we grab at rugs & bowls

lie on the beds
until someone frowns
at us & we leave to

sit in the restaurant
with Swedish apple cake
& coffee, reminiscing

of the road we used to take
on the M48 bus to the store
which was near Spandau

one of the earliest settlements of Berlin
where the first Slavs
settled & lived

& how we had
back then a family card
to give us free coffee


before it all fell apart

( for my former cat, Charlie)

Bastet slits green eyes
ancient protector of women
& children
under the iron slither of a moon
The Nile dances in her veins
as she draws near
& the last rattlesnake
breath of a mouse dances
under her.
What philosopher
could paint her grace
& viciousness
at once
or apples bobbed
at Halloween
at which she
presides in all her
ebony & majesty

Apples & plums high on their boughs
autumn is not far off now

nearby, red brick houses
sleep in the after-shower sun

only a few more days
& summer's done

the cyclists are speeding
on their way from work

along the Bristol-Bath cycle path
also ' railway path' called

& with a three year old laugh
a child in an anorak unsteadily sways

I've walked this way in the night
with the moon shining up above

& seen a fox run out in plain sight
into the middle of the path

the street lamps either side
amongst the trees, shining on it's red fur

& in the early morning light
watched a mysterious toad blink it's wide eyes

& walked it all the way
to Bristol town & back

& also to the old Steam trains
out past Warmley

dressed in my old boots
waiting for the sunset & the dark

calling up ghosts
musing on Rousseau

listening to birdsong
& wanting nothing more

The poet stirs the
rain drops, the sky bends and folds
an old cat stretches.

Love is this...
.......
............
,,,,,
catkin feet rotating the underdressed night under a casino wheel of stars
..........or else a Tempest of Soul loud as a fishmonger
...............99p cola bottles & lonesome underdogs
.............that time you laughed on helium
... '**** me' neon signs in the street
...................sweet onion breath delirium
.................Millais's Ophelia all wasted & peeling from suburban billboards.
......................the time Virginia Woolf drowned & all the birds
forgot how to sing in Greek.
..............are we there yet
..............are we feeling the beat, beat, beat
..............of this raindrop
.........................do we need postage stamps.
................................why is your neighbor called Pete.
.........why did you kick a dog, Mamma.
............nothing is that which is understood
............why are you staring at this poem.

I am living without you
as without a lover

as without the sun
or the moon

my being is an empty,
cold house

through which only the wind blows
occasionally you come to me

dimly as a ghost in a dream
& I wish never to wake

only to feel you rule me
shake me, quake me

or not feel, rather
but only dimly remember

They say
you will be extinct
by 2032

the Queen of Hearts'
favorite past-time
the joy of summer

a sign of class
& breeding
in your time

brought over
from France
during Charles II's reign

the memory
of playing you
in that mansion house

across the  river gorge
amidst the roses
will stay with me forever

as a sign of the Britishness
I lost abroad
& when he left


* Queen of Hearts - from ' Alice in Wonderland' by Lewis Carroll

It's raining again
& I'm writing poetry again
fresh coffee in my cup

what to write, what to write
about childhood, love or human rights
the rain is falling outside

& I've done all that before
so I'm searching for the poet
inside myself & looking for

odd lines that may take my fancy
meanwhile, the rain is falling outside
& the sky can't be seen for clouds

' I'm just another poet
on a rainy day'
I whisper

the sky doesn't answer

Seeking: sad sofa fingers to caress me in the pine dark night spine of the city
I want you like a loud fishmonger in smoke filled rooms of silence
the train tracks of jealous stars hallucinating the whiskey sky in black & white mercy

P.S : Must love travel & alcoholism & hate punctuation

In my next life I want a pomeranian puppy
& to stand again on the Roaches

& to be able, unlike now, to swim
& to (once more) fence on Thursdays & tap dance on Saturdays

In my next life I want to see a Hurricane
with my own eyes & write a song about it

In my next life I want to be an astronaut
remarking how in Space, there is no rain

& to read tabloid newspapers
in Orbit for the gossip & want this

In my next life I do not want
to be a poet, unless it means

unlike now, being with you
because without you, these poems mean nothing.

It's only a broken mirror
that shows a perfect reflection

German rye bread & Chinese green tea
each turn of the knife
each touch of the kettle
& you send signs to the neighbors
the heavens above
a tapestry of eyes
salt water & tears
& your knees shaking
in little earthquakes
Fly the flag higher
Britishness is an art
in Earl Grey & crumpets
& mad hatter days
boasting of kisses
in mad houses
kisses you've never had
or else someone you shagged
but once
senseless & beaming
letters to Keats
& always, always
maps of the Empire
some builder nostalgic
for old might & power
& ships on the Thames
like in the old paintings.

In the "Warwick Arms".


There's a girl wearing fake fur

of yesteryear's youth, weighing

out sexiness in the number

of beers she can afford.

How much oblivion

an unimaginative mind can take

is equal to the power of

a beached whale

drawing it's last breath.

The Russian wipes his moustache

turns around & smirks

that she's somewhat

under-dressed for the long winter.



Going to Japan.



Pink rain:

I could walk through it,

sweet-wrapped.

And the rice-blank  past

would be ample weight in my hand.

Like that of roses, remembered.

In a Murakami bar,

octopi would reach out

& dangle questions.

As a thousand pair of eyes

ask me to give the lesson

no-one ever taught me.

That they alone know.

That only pink rain understands.

She takes her beautiful bones
& carries her woes in her purse

                                                          ­                      the shadow-men haunt her
                                                             ­            the men of the world taunt her
she is both an egg-shell about to crack
& a phoenix about to soar

                                                           ­               she's not asking for sympathy
                                                        ­                  she wants much more
than empty tears
& dry dust in her throat

neon light of slow
revolving doors in this
dumb, silent sleep

I. Letter 1

You write of sitting in the cold
of anxiety about your grant
not coming & how you lonely
you are & how you'll send the money

for those jeans of yours she paid for
not wanting to come between
her & her mother
& of the growing

distance between you
such a poor, proud country boy
unwilling, still to give up
on what all see as a crazy dream

& talking of emigration
& how you couldn't find
the book she wanted
in the shops, for it was sold out

A letter to your English girlfriend never sent
& poignant all the more for it

I.I Letter 2

You write of your concern
for us, my mother & me,
praying we have enough to eat
saying you wish you were there

to stand in hopeless Russian food queues
for us and how hard it is to be so helpless
You talk of shouting on the phone
& how you didn't mean to do it

& of how love and pain are two sides
of the same coin & how when
you & my mother talk you never
say anything much, just talk about the Museum

& dinosaur bones & how mad this is, how wrong
my mother would say those bones
were your reason for your so-called love
that she should have seen the naked ambition in your eyes

that of a man used to poverty, reaching for more
aiming for notoriety, whilst lying of love

I.I.I Letter 3

You call my mother ' Princess'
(my mother doesn't know this is cliche)
& talk of British superstitions
such as black cats being unlucky

& ask why Russians think
asking for photographs
of people is unlucky
a superstition my mother doesn't recall

when I ask her about it now
Black cats, is that why I ended
up in hospital in Britain
in a land of the free robbed of my freedom

because we had a black cat?
I always thought them lucky,
adhering to the Russian superstition
I guess I might have been wrong

back then you talked of emigration
of wanting to move to Russia to be with us


I.V Letter 4

I can mostly only imagine it
from my mother's words
your letter to her who was 23
named ' Lily' after the flower of death

bringing the death of our family
She calls you ' Day-Day'
like your youth's English girlfriend
in your mid-life crisis

you've turned into a poet
& are talking of your secret
love & nursing memories of love-bites
all else is dust & forgotten

you'd later cry on the Chinese hotel
bed in front of your wife, my mother
' how can I refuse these offerings'
& eleven years go by

occasionally we talk on the phone
it's something you don't deserve

for him a.k.a Rembrandt, a fellow poet & love of my life-

I think of you in the conservatory
of the Little Harp Inn, on the seafront
is this where you came too
is this the place you meant
in your poems when you spoke
in them of  the ‘ glass tearooms’?
a ginger waiter brings a couple
their tea. Outside, a thunderstorm is raging
suddenly, there sounds a cry:
‘’ Look, the roof is leaking!’’
& bright lightning again splits the sky
just like love, striking
Everyone laughs in wonder
& an old lady walks by in pink
outside, without an umbrella
in this, Clevedon in the summer

I seek your legalized ghost -
fold autumn's changing leaves
into my meagre words
& acorns & chestnuts
the way the starlight
dreams of the winter cold
the mill wheel of ***** Mills
the cafes with their chatter
all the things you can no longer see
& the kitchen radio is blasting ' Queen'
your favorite band with their hit
' Will somebody find me somebody to..'
I switch off at the last word
suddenly, just the way you switched off your life

( for Virginia Woolf)

Light & dark collide
her life is a palimpsest
of butterfly memories
of twisted ills & happiness
viewed through a pin hole
captured in black & white
The Lighthouse still stands
in St Ives where it always was
where she used to go as a child
she writes “ Mrs Dalloway”
& eats conference pears
Occasionally she hears the birds
singing in Greek as they fly by
Death, which will claim her is always waiting.

Are you a Rainbow Child?
Bright colors imprinted
from birth upon your eyelids?
Believing we are not to be judged
nor chained by the accident
of where we came out
of our mothers' wombs,
what language our parents spoke
but by the rail tracks
that took us to new worlds
the languages our hearts learnt
believing that the journey, not the origin
nor even the destination
is what matters
do you believe
in the Glory found in
watching the starlight
of some foreign sky
& to proclaim this sky
& starlight as your own
believing in the music
of your Soul
are you a Rainbow Child
or are you a grey day
a turtle
in a shell
clinging to one people
& one place
able only to crawl
& hide inside it
upon contact
with the world
tell me,
because
I really want to know

" Du Kannst Mich am Arsch Licken''
'' Kiss my ***''
the 1 litre cider bottle's out
he takes a swig
then throws his old head back
simulating electric chair death
throws, silence permeates
the wary room
'' Baby....don't....go''
'' Long live Rock n' Roll''
in his thick German accent
before that he asked
'' Who is Allen Ginsberg-
really, Howl, poetry?''
someone afterwards says
'' It's like seeing the ghost
of Bukowski''
the room doesn't say much
but I feel a warmth
for him, reminding me
of my heart's home:
Berlin. Yes, the Germans
they're like this,
they don't take any ****
their hearts
are made of grit
& their drunks
are different from ours,
yes, they talk
of Nijinsky
& the *Ballet Russes
intellectuals
even when they're plastered
'' You may be my enemy
but with a drink you are my friend''
he said & echoes of the War
permeated the dark
& faded time back to the present
opening the night
to better things

i.
Tread lightly
for you tread upon my heart
those nights the Angels
want to tear you down
those nights you want to talk
about Modernism
those nights you're Kerouac
under the ageless, drunken Moon
those nights on which
I discover that
we both like Columbo
& both have watched '' The Reader'',
'' Russian Ark''
& both Virginia Woolf adore
tread lightly
for you tread upon my heart


      i.i
Tread lightly
for you tread upon my heart
those nights when you are
just too smart
for your own good
& wit & kindness
seem to well up
in your every word
those nights you talk of
Northern thunderstorms
when down South
we have none
& Bronte's Kathy
haunts you
Tread lightly
for you tread upon my heart


      i.i.i
Tread lightly
for you tread upon my heart
each time you
make the stars seem dimmer
by your absence
when the broken night's soundtrack
is your ' Joy Division'
Those nights you write poetry
at 2 a.m just like me
Those nights I realize
you'll never see in me
the jazz that I found in you
Because you never looked
Those nights I want to tear down
the Angels for keeping us apart;
tread lightly for you tread upon my heart

An egg, boiled fresh
a matryeshka doll watches
                                                     somewhere the last train
                                                     makes it's way down the tracks
past the lakes
& the reticent pine trees

                                                          ­            the street lamps
                                                           ­           shine wearily

                                                        ­                                        & again, the rain
                                                            ­                         is starting up once more
she reads Kurt Tucholsky
' Schloss Gripsholm' with a dictionary

                                                     ­                     writing down his odd words  
                                                                ­       daintily as if they were glass,  
not to be handled
except lightly                                                          ­          the city holds her
                                                             ­                              like a child

It is Summertime
like in the George Gershwin song
the grass is waving, tall
& my step -father's rich
& my mom's not bad looking
(still despite being in her late years)

In a mansion house
that is a museum
someone is polishing
a large copper ***
& dusting the books
in the old library

A vagrant locked out
of childhood haunts
in my dreams I walk
along a country road
The grass is waving, tall
it’s summertime
like in the George Gershwin song

( Poem follows below after this short introduction) So this is a warning for anyone who believes in mental illness & thinks that psychiatry is helping them rather than harming them & to remind them how it is a potentially dangerous tool for oppression & medicalization of normality. In 1850, a US Doctor came up with this diagnosis to claim that slaves that wanted to run away/ran away were mentally ill because he a) believed black people were inferior to white people b) that any desire in a black person to be free must be mental illness as they were born to be enslaved. I am not kidding. This really happened.

Drapetomania

So you see it has a name
this singing in my veins
the wish to be free of my chains
is apparently insane
for by my skin I was born to serve
those who would whip me
those who would trick me
of my birth right
to stand free in the sun
No, apparently, if I run
I am sick
tell me quick
doc what do I do
& tell me how do
you sleep at night
being so cruel
to your fellow man
is there a name for what
you do, I could think of a few
I can only come up with
' *******'

My love for you is like
a hot air balloon
from which you can
suddenly see everything
I always did have vertigo
so I fly in it with closed eyes
also, I fear that if I opened them
I'd see that our lives
are two separate rivers
that never reach the same Ocean
& that I cannot change this
no matter how much I try
& that I have to let you go
when we both land

Alas, poor venison salami, I knew ye well!
You were a dear, dear friend
But then you met your sorry end
at my fair cat’s royal command

I'll sing a dirge & sound the Bell
I'll tip my hat & say farewell
to your sweet, succulent delight
may we ne’er lose it out of sight.

The night gathered around
that suburban house,

amongst the dreaming cedars
& the telephone rang

I picked up, said I'd be there
so I caught the bus all the way to town

Berlin at 3 a.m
was a beautiful stranger

especially Lehrter Bahnhof
moonlight shining through

it's half-completed arches
like through the dead ribs of a Whale

out that late by myself
& at first not a little afraid

looking over my shoulder
aged seventeen

I was still feeling younger
you were catching that plane

& we friends were to meet
you to say goodbye again

& I, hello to the beginning
of the slow journey to the end

I found a missing angel today
he asked me for a ***

& then walked away
in rain and snow he has

nowhere to go
& he sleeps beneath

the endless stars
each night his lullaby

is the sound of passing
cars & the voices going by

he likes the girls
he likes the noise

he hides his wings
beneath his shirt

he sings & smiles
amidst the dirt

he dines
on the night air

& hope
my missing angel

of the North