My mother taught me purple
Although she never wore it.
Wash-grey was her circle,
The tenement her orbit.

My mother taught me golden
And held me up to see it,
Above the broken moldings,
Beyond the filthy street.

My mother reached for beauty
And for its lack she died,
Who knew so much of duty
She could not teach me pride.

Is she in love with you
or what? Reynard said

indicating across
at the girl

at the other side
of the classroom

every time I look up
she’s peering over

here like some hawk
after prey

he added
and you guessed

she was
but didn’t say

to Reynard
who thought

all thoughts on love
were dumb

or should be left
between pages

of Shakespeare
or Keats

or maybe just
a cover word for

a fumble behind
bike sheds or woods

maybe she just likes
the way I comb my hair

you replied
looking down

at the science book
open on the desk

and by the way
he said

how much grease
you got on your hair

you look like
you fell in the **** jar?

Tooley the science teacher
looked your way

and Reynard clamped up
and began writing

in his book
and in between

scribbling words
in the exercise book

you glanced over at her
and took in her eyes

and that smile of hers
and smiled kind of

weakly back
and she mouthed

something to you
her lips making odd shapes

like some fish
out of water

and you tried to lip read
but it didn’t make sense

so you just nodded
and hoped you’d not agreed

to anything
that her scary mother

wouldn’t agree to
and then looked away

back to the science book
and life dull

and uninteresting books
full of boring questions

and Tooley at front
of the class

writing on the board
her fat *** moving

as she wrote
like some aging stripper

on her last show
and outside

the window
grey clouds

carrying
heavy snow.

THREE tailors of Tooley Street wrote: We, the People.
The names are forgotten. It is a joke in ghosts.
  
Cutters or bushelmen or armhole basters, they sat
cross-legged stitching, snatched at scissors, stole each
other thimbles.
  
Cross-legged, working for wages, joking each other
as misfits cut from the cloth of a Master Tailor,
they sat and spoke their thoughts of the glory of
The People, they met after work and drank beer to
The People.
  
Faded off into the twilights the names are forgotten.
It is a joke in ghosts. Let it ride. They wrote: We,
The People.

Lowdown dwarf sitting up my table
Handcurfed laughing in a washing machine
Cupboard loading into pieces of a lighter
much faster blue monk
Stripping teaser hunky Buddha boy faster in
a ring with cakes up his chin
Kneeled down clown with his black socks in the
chamber of the notorious weekend son
Indian geeks falling from a pulled up sink skirt
at the speed of twilight
Mashin' potatoes hollerin' through the lightning
tunnel
Still my age ribbon tooley much ahead from my pants
Nails shootin' through spines at the edge of a pencil ball
Still washing up my braces in a much harder followed ankle bone
Pulled down clown wavin' moist upon Sindi at night time collapse
that gets off his chin
Tiny cup of black coffee balanced underneath two fast licking owls

The dead embrace the dirt
They will never sprung like
April tulips, on a frigid day,
Or survive as long as Hyperion roots

(The beginning of love is horror
of happiness (quote: Robert Bly)

So, let my poetry filled you up: with the knowing
(The dead are for morticians & butchers
to touch. Only a gloved hand)
before the dust….and ashes

Be more afraid of the living,
with their cold and warm hands
and deceitful minds above all things
they  spit and vinegar tongues

The living embraces the struggle of staying alive
Due to the many heartache and sorrows
~~~
(When those we love betray our trust,
We find the depth of human pain;
Oh, let me rise above these hurts
Until the sun shines, once again!
~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "My Prayer" (1940s)
*
So , let my poetry filled you up with knowledge of knowing
The dead cannot harm you any more,
Way down upon the earth floor,

Let the tulips once again bloom
However, let the earth worm do the rest.
Under the tallest tree in the world: coast redwood
Hyperion: