Poem 1

 

RAW

 

For Nick Cave, Joe Strummer, Ian Curtis, Jim Reid and all those others

 

In this bleak charm of youth –

Those lightning bolts.

Some strange bird will sing.

The antidote to the:

Natural order – of – things.

In the world view a Chernobyl grows.

And grows blistering and pricking

In soothing mid-winter- wind – chill – factor

There is the curse that will ensnare

To trip and strangulate

The idealist dream;

The seed is planted,

In the night’s long desert….

Smoke climbs toward to window

Pen dancing in every direction.

Then!  The voice creeps out

Rising about the flight of birds

Growing in the basest sweat

Of they whose chords who’ve been struck

As they ‘dance dance

dance dance dance to the radio.’

And on, a sea over lapping

Waves and currents

Raising some to immeasurable heights

And others drown in the day’s long gutter.

Strummer in his arrogant stance

Echoing put ‘I fought the law’

On and up to the centre of city

And then the revelation:

“JUST….”

 

      ‘Let Love In’*

 

The centre of the city

Being walking through

The sweat after the gig

“Remember, you were alive”

Those raw voices reached

Out drew us in

That smell of sweat….

And passed on

Tattooing the memory

Tattooing the soul.

 

*The album by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

 

 

Poem 2

 

Lost alone at night

 

I found myself in the accident of dressing

That cats and dogs never quite got.

I found myself taking the train

From the diaconal Paddington Station

 

Finding hollow space – invisible pressure

On my head – all ideas extricated

Face up: face out against the window –

That chill air, that glass holds so well.

 

 

Poem 3

 

Night in the park among the sculptures

 

After the wine and coffee

And talk…night drop curtained with cold air.

We back wondered along through the freezing night air

Although this apparently still scene

Suddenly became alive.

They came alive beneath the moonlight

We passing along: watching.

their eyes adhered to us

Their defiance in abstraction

The nomological ignored –

I wanted to talk to them

They wanted to play some game

Hide and seek perhaps.

In their nocturnal life

Some worlds never collide

As they must not