trump, um, um
do no ald, trrr
umph ! umph !
trump...****, ****

silent under loam
your hand charcoal
squeezing the dark
between the stars,

you hide

under our feet,
a fouled stick, skin
we are heavy
along cow ways

you are there,
always here, you
trouble stones and evening

from outside a nest of light
warm with steam and quilt
and slippers worn with steps;
a kitchen ship and dad crunching

when I think of this
i nearly say i miss you

einen sommer lang
i heard you growing
but now you carry words
in your pockets

a child is a poem
you read the next day

a giddy wainscot, a torn curtain
that big-flowered raises the dust
you left stern-legged this place

and left me at a broken window
so please do not turn around

tracks and rain
the leaving

leaving and rain
the track that takes you
now in winter

a winter of leavings

a rain of tracks
now the rain
the rain

traces of snow, black earth, roots
of devils hands that grasp at frost,
walls stenciled with cold growth,

a far dog coughs open a winter sunday
but we are scared to peek under the crust,
so we tick and turn, waiting for

a dark better than this, come soon...
the light of your eyes has become
pale and diffuse, here and longer in ice

A girl with red hair sits in a cafe. She writes a letter, then pauses to tap her pen against a coffee cup. She sighs and then pushes her hair away from her forehead, then glances over the tables.By chance, her eyes meet,as if she is looking for help.

The next day. Sie is reading Heidegger and looks very alone. All this might be conceived coincidence.The cafe smells of damp coats and steam. I move my chair slightly to look at her. She pretends not to notice.

A week later. She is no longer here, but her removed presence warms the near pathological emptiness of the cafe. Outside I see commuters sheeping towards the station, and more life gets lost in sleet. I hope to see her again, but she has gone.

the third of january saw this;

the moon is a stone in the sky
and the night a blanket of holes,
the rain an error of clouds
and the stars a coda of cats;

this day told me;

you are hidden behind your face,
all your words are coded like scripts,
your body is full of lines,
you are paged inside yourself

a cold moon, but
ten winters ago
it was encased in more ice;
the stars roll out
of a dark nest,

we slip with care
through snow,
down to the road,
we watch the ghosts pass,
there might be snow foxes
in the lost copse,
careless with cold

the back of a mirror,
leaves turn into flames
and after the walking

you shake your coat like a wet dog;

the rain waters your smile,
you trail autumn into the hall

an animal in my fireroom,
amen of charcoal and dance,
a borrowed sun glowing like want

then cold as far hills,
lost the engine of passion's eye,
heart's turn, lost dark love

autumn rain is akin to black tea
the burnt yellow of old growth watered

a train shakes the fields, an old carpet snapping
birds shoot holes in the turbulent sky ;
the world is split like an apple,
your head inside a bell

when it is over it is not over,
the air hums with steel,
too many eyes are in the undergrowth.
evening's calm as brittle as toffee;
shocked from coal and smoke,
a heartbreath along rails

autumnsun the soft light close
bloom-in-falling yellow choice
damp the day each circle ending
fade the sky as eyes smile tight

the subservience of sunflowers
posed and heavy with dried yellow
spreads over fields of faded growth;

the sun stages the horizon
of sparse trees and hedgerows,
beyond the hope of lost gold.

a basin of white chipped enamel
tips the wash over the pale streets;
lights appear in the random order

of secret intent, confused stars in
an untidy sky light the northern stone;
hours slip behind  a rook's shadow

as a rain curtain falls : we sigh with
routine,we are waiting for a small, clean death,
trapped between the sun and the moon

the sea the skin of a wet dog,
black the beach; a ruined church,
the coastal lights a string of lesser ways;
we are as empty as a dropped shell
pulled across the ebb, a ripple of salt..

and as the night gets deeper
a dragon breathes like the tide:
no mistake, the dark needs its hours

mucho akimbo, all elbows and knees
sudden as summer rain, white as paper
he falls through doors and windows;

then,

closed like a shop on Sunday,
shutter-eyed, still as a nightbrook,
a dry wheel under clouds; silent.

heavier than down;
pulling and falling;
red-kneeled prayer to the god

of downstairs and tears;
of steps, stones and caves,
flapping like a torn flag

the fool of terra, trapped under
the bricks of this world;
flightless, too low to rise.

d the close triangle, with a small japanese bridge,
then the longjob c, stretching like a rained web,
e? a family with one son running to heaven,
f the big car, heavy with chrome, then g that
opens like a cool river tide, a an honest man
half a hand, b the closed room that locks you up..

these are my friends that will never wane..

curl up like black paper
burning like a moth,
a glove turned inside out;

trapped too under a house,
a circle hidden and musty;
fragile under steps,

let us escape the carrying,
legions of white coats,
corridors as long as life.

each borderline mirror,
broken fragments,
an open eye,

each missed edge,
every cut of missed intent
calls for hands of glass

sharp for loss, for splinters,,
broken pictures and edges that
form a skin of red hills

that shapes and bleeds, and
cries a trail of doors and loss;
and all of this and less

tells a story

seen through like a map
                        of the underground,
                        a perfect web of blue and red

we are easily observed,
                        heads filled with empty plains
                        or bellies of pig lust

so let me, at least, serve you
                       as a bottle of milk warming on
                       a doorstep as pigeons wake

or as a bomb-site mirror
                       forgotten and brick eyed with dust,
                       breezed by a newspaper in flight;

unnoticed, I fail to reflect the truth,
                       a stranger passing a glass door,
                       myself alone, a face of age.

the night is the black down of a yearling
this sky a taunt of trailed stars
Let me spin in a frosty lane,
                     head back,
                     too fast to count
and throw the dark to ground

Capri

roofless cubes, spidery with wire,
cakes of azure and enzian;
above at the Villa San Michele
Rilke smiles down at the broken beaches,
coves of defiant waves, compacted sea

Pompeii

a chessboard of honest stones
open to a sky of hushed shouts;
we huddle in a ***** frame
of another life, a stopped day

Napoli

warm and secret, olive-eyed
you make a new face
as we gaze from a bus:
an act of moment

a small girl serious cycles
determined down a lane,
two crows flood over
a dark meadow, slight, fast,
and a cold rock filled
with gassers and haters
rolls round the sun;
good reasons to deny
this iced and distant ball.

Four of stained glass and stars
all leftglance beyond ratio or air,
thin as tissue but strong

as a pastel visa; fated curves
guide your hand,voices drag you
into mud and steal the day.

If you are sad
And full of grump
Then think of a world
Without Donald Trump

searching for the perfect word on virginal paper
leads to the cut, to oaken tears, to a sorrow of yews;
then the unbalance: rowdy tracks of leaves and
branches, the pushing down against green bursts,
the mud and ways, as if we could claim to find
more truth than the idle wind through trees on
a summer's night, more than a hush or a whisper

unholy earth, dark with stein,
unformed loam at birth;
a worded child of mud;

fingernail skinned blacklack eyes
peek out of a ball of wet slam,
a groundling that waves like a black branch

across the sleeping fields,
see a shadow under the cold grass,
near in sight under a crust of frost.

rags of cloud top the wind
a dirt of wind turns your face,
arranged,
a pace of cloud dirts your face
the top of wind rags your pace;
the lines, now, for you

your face a pace of rain
the wind a race of dirt

stones under the sand,
roads around your eyes,
            when the moon stops

the tide fails, a cold bell
drops out of the ringing sky
            and you hide in shadow

drops of river or ice patches;
all of this without your notice
                but tough and half eternal,

the lemon tree grows
               cool and silent;
               this makes you remain.

not brown grass, not spindle trees
                              nor sloppy suns embrace you,

you sway in a summer hammock,
                              your shape unique,
                              a collection of eyes and glass;

no description ; time has limped to a stop,
                             the hours windless,
                             a girl at quiet under the sky

wet, curved hills,
sleet behind my eyes,
watery moss

in unreal green;
all this ***** like love
at my heavy steps,

then the stolen voices
of playing children;
kites that text the sky,

all this part of a story;
a day empty as a fool.

black *****, minstrel faced,
                       leaves broken with ice,
                       veined like a frosted puppet;

something known is leaving;
                      the cold makes me
                      stamp in acted rage;

I can't stand the weight, I can't stand the weight.

we drove late afternoon
                 over the ***** Rhein,
                 the sky fake with orange,

to Bonn : to a house of cool empty rooms,
                 white with words, dark with chords,
                 to an elegant Hammerflügel ;

for my father the end of a journey,
                 but the start of the sublime

we drove late afternoon
                 over the ***** Rhein,
                 the sky fake with orange,

to Bonn, to a house of cool, emplty rooms,
                white with words, dark with chords,
                to an elegant Hammerflügel;

for my father the end of a journey,
               but the start of the sublime.

a lost girl arranges in her room
                 her dress, with stillness,
                 she pushes her tongue
                 against small kitten teeth

outside the lift groans and bangs,
                lights burn shapes
                of flats and stairs;

this is a place to circle in,
                to return to,
                never to leave,

she is sediment, a line of ash,
                a failed escapee .

you step like a puzzled *****,
                you sniff at damp bark
                and beds of leaves,

clothed in burnt sticks and smoke,
               your eyes are slanting snow
               wary of ice and shadow;

this falls between us;
               you wait under trees
               or at frozen gates

on evenings when I late home,
              carrying the basket of stones
              you laid at my door

open door ; icewall
                   crusted as a rabid eye
                   all the change of skin in frost
                   a bedouin of snow,

consider the end;
                  white room; stiff starch
                  the soft slide of slippers
                  along linoleum

winter's partner ; a slower cold

dog-eyed shape of ash,
                 an owl leaving
                 the cool firs;

shadow of shadow;
                floorboards creaking,
                a curtain's slight dance;

black and white as my own;
                standing in frills in a snap
                in front of a Ford Prefect
                with Dad before the war.

rest among the gentians
                     like an exhausted lover,
                     the road has thrown

you out of track and youth,
                     a line of rescue wakes
                     the rooks in the cold trees,

there is a nest not far away
                     waiting to fall, a pause
                     before the first call, a damp leaf.

we are burnt inside,
            full of old straw,
            tar and wet ash,

passing trucks lift my hair,
           wash my eyes with diesel

trees and fields behind the stop
           are fenced and grubby,
           they darken,

we are lost in direction
          between two nothings,
          untied to our kin ;

seekers of line and light
          down the way of a savage god,
          the cruel autobahn.

Putting words together is a devolution of self;

the soft underwash of sea darkens sand,
a faded sun burns out over rooftops of rain,
a snow train stops in frost under polar stars;

but this is beyond me, over the edge.

the wind turns my apple tree
into a victim, a lover banging
on a closed door of gnarled wood

a dance makes this ringing evening
singular, the leaves agree to fall
in the dull faith of  moving air,

they tell us about birth and departure,
about leaving together, about  stories
of ending as the sun arcs and protests

my little round sleepers with
lots of coats on, mud huggers
with a tribal bottom,

perfectly lined up at the
bus stop of spring, soft under
the cold loam, a miracle

despite the hidden banality
of numbers, time for tea as
I wait in a cooling garden

the darkness pumps steps
down smoke streets, burning
light features the

cow-eyed, the clamped jaws
and forced laughter of those
with bent souls,

we are past all words, thought
is trapped in brown amber,
the night creeps round each corner

the ants sing in traps
of fallen brown and all
these crazy winds dance
a blind ballet of coded
circles so rain constant
washes us in a dark baptism
when I clutch your hand
I feel small bones under
your skin, light as a bird,
made warm by the running
days, the last summer

a move of broken glass
black as polished leather,
burnt wood, the big shifter

that trembles steel under us,
the horizon hides, above
a curtain made of holes

with stars around as the
lost language of wind,
howls of salt, tide of night