What is the difference between a Raven and a Crow

In my dream I am on the kitchen floor
As if praying
Before the back-door

I cannot reach the daylight

And it's on my back
Scuttling
I am chest flat against Linoleum

It needs to explore my skull

I reach behind
Awkward
As if crippled
My panic fingers taste grease and feathers
Come away ink stained
And filthy

It has to get
Into my neck

I awake

And in the day

Strange shadows
Across the carpet
Of my windowless
Bedroom

A Blue flame

A Blue flame
Above the bed where you lay sleeping
A Blue flame
Above the book where you lay reading

It follows you about
Our spacious house
But only I see it

A Blue flame
In the corner when we make Love
A Blue flame
That frightens the horses
You are dreaming of

It's brighter by the day
I don't know what to say

That's not obvious

It is all to do with you
It doesn't know my name

Or anything

About us

Let me count the ways

The first to go
Is the Mouth

The voice could still be heard
But Kissing
Disappeared

Then the Hands
Limbs Generally

Sexual Organs
Airbrushed away

One could see
Straight through
Where the heart
used to be

Soon after
The eyes
Just weren't there

Leaving bulk
A Torso

Some shadow
Some hair

And washing up
And bills
To pay

And the shadow
Of a shadow:

That promise
of our first day

Press ganged

Being interviewed in foreign offices

Exhausted
Hung over
Sick
Wasted
Beyond tired

Each Journalist
Deep
Intelligent
Ready to do battle

I'm guessing this is their first of the day

While I've had how many

Nothing is so tiring
As talking about yourself
Many times in a morning
Worse
Consecutively

And am grateful
For that

Aye

Later on I joke to a colleague
That if there is one thing worse on a promo tour than spending a whole day doing press
It's spending the day doing no press

We laugh
And I'm not so sure

Knowing my room is waiting
In an other time zone

On another island

Back in the interrogation room
A journalist says:

‘I read your poems.

They are kind of self-pitying and melancholic, no'?

Yup

And here's another one

(February 2002)

Fucking the orchestra in c sharp minor

That night I fucked the orchestra
The walls all splashed with colour
Tails between teeth
Battered rams

I tore up their Farah Slacks
Laughing
They came apart at the seams

Hung over me
Like wet rags
Steaming stink
On a white hot wire

Tuning up
To the theramin
Of our screams

The acoustics in there
Were
Perfect

Worked through the ranks with a scythe
Saving the triangle player till later

Though few escaped
Or worse still
Committed suicide

The more I consumed
The hungrier I became

My appetite
Working class

My etiquette
Bow limbed
Insane

Still
I

Split batons into ribs
Took one
On the timpani

The prude harp player
I remember
Especially

Starving I was
With each violation
I seesawed round the studio

Melodic red
Slashed through
Cummerbund purple
Aviator shades
Bone and silk
In a tangle

Wading down the strings and brass
Leaving swathes of fallen
Tuxedo grass

Drunk on the madness of it
High on their hurt

Grinning and weeping

A tidemark
Like after fisting

Only Blood
Instead of shit
My arms soaked red
Up past the elbows

The acoustics
The acoustics
Were perfect

(February 2002)

I Hate It When People Run From The Rain

I hate it when people run
From the rain
As if water would leave scars
Much less
Leave a stain

Across the street they go
In Tokyo
In Soho

And just what is it
That makes me walk so slow

That gives me the strength
To be
Soaked right on through

It's not the knowing of why it is they run
But of what it is
they
Run
To

(October 2001)

The Crux

The garden is waiting
In the not quite dark
It sets my senses spinning
That is
Just the very thought

Opening up the rooms
Of our lives
Long time neglected

Now we've survived the city
Our love left raw

Waiting

Bright eyed
Undressed
ready
To be tested

(Autumn 2001)

Central Park Nerves

So I walked
Boiling
The great city
Dull
2pm Library Saturday Afternoon
Average food
At a Greenwich diner
Picked up a British Magazine
Saw couples kissing in
Snowy Central park

And though
We hadn't kissed in public
For years
I missed it
Now
Reading my magazine
The British magazine
In America's
Central park

As a photo shoot
Japanese
Bridal
Played out
At the foot of the steps
On which I sat
Me thinking
‘This could be anywhere'
‘I could be reading this anywhere'

I had everywhere and
Nowhere to go
I hurt in four different places
Walked to the top of an embankment
Felt my bad leg
Throb and spike
Thought it would ease up
If I turned
Back down the slope
But no
It hurt to go up
To go down
It hurt to stand still

In snowy
Central park

(March 2001)

Roses for Ashes

Roses
Tulips
Sprang from your mouth
ears
eyes

I couldn't hear you scream
Your head one Giant Bee feast
Clothes disappearing beneath Petals
Your outline
became soft
a perfumed pollen mist
Your aura
your body's Halo

There on the wasteland
between the housing estate and the playground
you bloomed into a bouquet
your life collapsed
into a flower

The War is Done

I can't recall our conversations
I sped through you
a run away train through crowded stations
a dinner-guest-ghost
a sick doctor treating patients

all the while
only seeing outside
beyond your shoulder

Listening to the chatter of a language I don't understand
Checking the face
of my handless watch
The surgery's stopped clock

Planning my next move
In a war
already lost

Just So You Know

Plants are just slow animals
and we are just in Love

Ships are trees set to sail
Starfish are made of Braille

Some dreams are just dreams
some days come just to go
just so you know..

just so you know

snow will fall in Montreal
While cotton-fields burn down South

The bets were on
but against all odds
we were stopped in the first round

Just so you know

Just so you know...

It's a fight that we can't win
but we've lost
if we give in

When you've broken every door
there will always be one more
There will always be one more

Water began just to play
Smoke is so suddenly dust
Boats are trees se t to sail
and we are Just in Love

Birds and Bushes

Come and eat the chips off of my shoulder
you get bolder while I get older

that hair...
Frozen bronze bonfire
Steaming alcoholic silk
wrapped up in my pig-pink fist
Let me be your sorrow
Let me be your quilt

Come on
eat these chips of my shoulder

you know me
you know I've got troubles
look I'm a pig
and here's where I keep my truffles

I know that if I sing to you
you'll forgive
all that I do

Come on

Reason For Being

I followed it through the water
past Christmas
into the trees
saw deserts over it's shoulders
farms, seas and cities
to the end of my childhood
and out the other side
now stood beyond the forest
where I saw it fall
and die

Where now
where do I go now
as it burns and turns to cinder

I turn to follow its killer

Orange Country

The day passed
I fell right through it
without moving

felt the dark hang behind every object
then topple out
to hi jack the light
as soon as it could

I went to bed
it was if I'd never woken
not knowing

that I would wake
the next morning
to find the bed
full of oranges

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