A toenail of a moon,
slightly turkish, hides
in a ***** aquarium

and stops my knees.
We frozen are blind
beyond November.

We dead are actors;
pullers of dogs and leaves,
rootless as the wind.

My grief ? Spooned out...
I halt under the night.

the distanced grunting
of schedular lovers
the smell of toast at doors

an early child
screams at the rain
church bells demand

that crows attend the boxing
while streets are as empty
as a doll's eye

a week later

Eager necked wrap of linen,
You bag of stones you.
Pasted on, you struggle
Above standing water.

The last one through
The door, saintly headed you
Flap out into the cold.

The last, the lost, we two.

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

a maze of strict wood
dark moss that begs for steps
silent and loyal

you birth again the lost
green a half life, rest alone
under the stars

more ever than the cold moon

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

Open like a split pig
Halved and open-ribbed I

Survey the place between
The firs. Brown growth and

Broken stems, dumb as a
Turning , fail to fill the space

You took, Summer has fallen
Off its ladder and you have left

An index of first growth,
                 bound in curled leaf,
                 a glossary of shadow

over the deep cruched floor
                of cone and splinter, of spruce.
                Coda ; the glass

of silence is often broken.
                lost words seek
                the brown narrative of winter,

the best time
              to read the trees, the text.

shrapnel of a black heart
they pick at worm-strings,
pulling out curves from

the green above the sleepers,
like punks they barge and
rotate like bits of children

while I stutter in grief and ice;
bricked in, walled up, dead down.

ash-teethed                                  milk-eyed
a hunter's shadow                      baby round
climbing down                            nail new
wet cardboard                             lover tested
street runner                                packed and bound
so down the dark road               sleeping sea

a wind of old nails
             broken stones
the sky a guilt of rain
all these stunted trees
             grasp over wet moss
seagulls are unborn children
that cry over the tundra
this is the end of a measured world
this is the e nd ofa mea sured wor ld

The wind smells of
frozen milk and carbolic,
this is the edge of December;

a slopping out of leaves
and burnt wood, the overspew
of ovens that keeps

us holding out coats at the throat.
The winter is still out,
we wait for the last bus of snow.

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

(for Daniel Philibert)

he is lost, he got lost
your room of milk glass
no longer refracts a ghost;

you are stone, part of a mountain,
eyeless on a cool green bed
unseen and unspoken, now saintly

sparrow-***** and clockwork driven,
you raced with short pace against
the old horse of ice and morning

and the lottery of gravel and slipping;
now I have two weights of good and bad,
two wet eyes, a long look upwards;

sleep over, sleep tight, wait.

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

Step aside, slightly,
                    from a beach beside
                    cold moving water.

A sighting in rain,
                    hooked on a line,
                    empty as a fallen bell,
                    an open window, opaque.

If I am distant to myself
                   I am lost, aware
                   of room, the soft crunch of shingle.

Steps of a known stranger, a shell.

...a sun bounces off my shell
the rained on attempt to hide
the damage the hurter from
inside my back is full of resin
and knots from a black apple
tree all the rivers show a new
face with old teeth and lips
that **** the failed light all
this makes me like a deep sea
diver grubbing in the silt of sudden
waves that soak the drinking loam
of a weakened birth as a sun bounces..

From my window the night is framed,
The stars thrown between the black.

Darkness turning through after-rain,
Grass that defends its green.

A moon dyed with henna
Falls behind the tree-line.
Frost cold as your hand;
O pull me down to the stones !

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 Pig's Head

O lard the porcine god
floods our souls,
under beer we bend,

rough backed backed  before
the head that is not cold,
surprised eyes not gentle.

The real one has fled the rain,
steps in mud break our secret.

The tide might remember.
The moon fierce and scolding.

2. Salt

Scour the pits of saline gut,
fish open like a lust cut.
Strain the turf.

The near sea of salt twins
will cool our palms with the
coins of lost waves.

Dumb the salt pulse.

3. The Church Under The Sea

Perfect under the glass ebb
but not silent.

The Bell
calls us back to the church

of tide and sway, to the
sacrement of **** and silt.

Deep we seek our service.

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

The wind is grey with ice.
Frozen days rot from inside,
leaves are black with silence.
My long hours are unended,
part of me has been stolen at night.

The first snow waits to sweep
down from the blind hills.

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.

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

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.

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

I thought I heard steps in the house, but
it was the black tunnel of my own heartblood,
a flood in old caves,
the lost pulse of nightfall.

Smoke in my eyes.
I am as empty as an old suitcase.

not the millions you imagine
but each star a stranger
lucky to be alone

in a dark flat sky
you must have been coded
and sent off as a message

here i am wax and darkness
silent in the pulled hours

Grillsmoke, childpipe, pulled seconds
Blue-white flags punish wind poles,
Somewhere a door bangs shut
There is distance but only just

You may be punished to see a ghost
Crossing a garden of hard borders
Or a hand on an unknown task
Pulling at greenstuff or wild roots

Bees hum like steady diesels,
Someone laughs with falsehood
This is what  we want to own
Under an expected sky.

A collection of sights
Four gardens and a heathen cat
Trees of submission, open grass

(Hamnet still locked in light, somewhere)
Stretched hours nearly closed
(Perhaps a hint of him, hidden)

Word-strings up from the street, ignore
Hands of children, windmills
(Tomorrow maybe, just a chance)

high over the palatinate
a white of corners
heavy as a wooded hill

a hall of whispers and height
when a milk bride
throws a glance over marble

all wait like a clock
this angular memory of eyes

trying to make
something out of nothing

a funeral without a burial
the hard pull of tough bracken
a body of gnarled wood
some damp ash of remorse

so i stop and consider the flat river

people die and turn into stones
and trees and never return, that's all

an old car with rusty brakes,
models, the Eiffel Tower, a zeppelin
combs, a toothbrush, muddy sandals,
posters of sunsets and other better worlds,
a souvenir mug from Venice, an unmade bed,
handwritten notes, letters unanswered,
a ghost that wamnders through my veins

and the present of your life

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.

a big fat white god
hollows out my warmth
the tracks and steps
follow me, a ship
slowed by frost

like a heavy horse i breath ice
dancing at my door

this while stops
and you are not here

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

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

he has a wonderful speaking voice
she always said when she liked someone on the telly

but she didn´t like our Auntie
who had her teeth done private
although she was a leftie

( she didn't like Auntie Gladys either)

she called Dad's tea a special
to cheer him up when his team lost and

she is sort of still here.

now spectral in mist
a corner child in circles
well versed in slides and swings

pleasured in unoiled hinges
and the soft giving of sand
you are rain on tiles

lost from the back of my eye
you hide in evenings