Paradiddle (abbreviated)

Day. A get-up; the wind-chime only
saying good-morning; breakfast; snacks; what -
if anything - lacks? So strange to sleep; but Night.

Day. Just the same I know; go to
to work; find the legs for another fifty laps;
the doctor cruelly has no name; Night, and
__I might not hear from him

again; Day. This is this, that is that; all grey;
grey socks. first; pale feet; then darker
concrete, smeared with light; run my hands along

the wall - no-one's watching; fight
nothing, hard; fight what's overheard
from the gaps in the happy people holdinghands; Night.

Day. Before I've noticed; I should
see someone; I should be absolved, in
blinding light; one-thirty-five a pint; people suffer
__delight; and endless cat-fight keeping me awake; Night.

Day. Day; another day! One of those times
one sees the line, or lines; day; day; day; each re-called
by that damned wind-chime; Such a circle; I say I'm fine;
__Such a circle.

Sketch

A short walk down the beach; a stone's throw
(for all its predictable trajectory)
between the sea, its stilling waves,
and the lonely roughened tree.

It is as simple as this: the wind
(which is circumstance) lifts a leaf
(showing life) and carries it (living)
to the sea (which is death).

and the tree (happy mother) has
a thousand still left.

The Escape

I. -

For a moment, I loved my country,
and smiled as I broke
though the low roof of the city
three bus-stops from town -
smiled as I saw England. Smile
__as I see England, and
it's dark green and grey,
but it stretches and rolls
like the laziest day
in bed with a lover
when it's raining outside
and it's good
to be alive.

II. But

Nothing, ever, is straight.
This iron-scented, gilded yellow
rail-track, here, begins direct,
speeding from under my feet, at my command,
but soon makes for a break
in the hills, where the final sunlight
falls, in curls, somehow shaped
by the calls of the birds in the blues
and greys of early evening.

And breaks into shadow,
as night falls, now, and me
still travelling, away.

III. And

I'm lonely now, like stone,
with only this hard-soiled country to love;
(and only coiled lines to speak)
a chance, only too much chance, to
stare at the still ground
between and beneath my feet.

And now, though I'm still,
there's a rush all around me and
I'm stopped. But I'm only train-station stationary,
like closed down machinery in a
working refinery, making only
reflections, now.

And even then reflections of one thing,
and only one thing.

IV. So

Three bus-stops; ceaseless trains;
silent towns with different skies sing by - in repetative refrains;
I changed my name. It didn't help - it seems -
but to better let me see me - tripping past -
hardly stopping but to rearrange these painted scenes;
__(the sane must be derailed and made deranged
__to suit my eyes - my eyes, my love, the same)
I must move on; the escape must be complete:
and some-thing must be changed.

The Crossword Setter

"One thing that is in my power:
I can see further into things than most,
even than your father. Even the father
idealised solid as memory in you. I knew

that - just an example. I've lived
the long life, by now, you know,
and am well pleased, at last, with
£25 for two sets of clues.

I knew - another example - for years
of the men my wife met
quietly, delicately, in dark-red hotel rooms
unsettling the very streets outside, so

they made me naseous; a sensation
later familiar almost to a comfort - the fear
of a soldier. This thing I knew well - the only
I wished I didn't - and all this not unlike

the lumpen, uncomfortable feeling of
that false, bronze perfection of your father, that character
these days behind you always. He - Him - so easily
answering the crossword clues of your youth;

questions in youth set by anything:
steam train-stone-lover-stray dog-white
china dishes - it was really a hopscotch of questions,
and wishes. Some hoped to be answered, some painful

when made simple by an adult answer, like
the one I've been avoiding, sickened, for years, or
like the crossword clues I store in overflowing racks,
that lord I know are only really facts
applied to other facts, and nothing more."

A Nighttime

Autumn - 12 Midnight

These things are leaves:
daytime hours; the actual leaves of autumn;
our working clothes, and faces,
and thoughts too often worked upon;
the daily treats that little money will allow;
the golden copper we treat as currency.

But all of these have fallen now,
all proved unimportant,
and from the bed of leaves formed there
the night is growing - first begging caution
but soon spreading boughs,
shoots, branches, new sets of leaves;
all fertilised by daytimes' weakness,
by sunlight's inconsistencies,
and that in us which is, with night, released.


Summer - 2am

It's summer: dark now,
but fever blanket hot.

Summer, and it lounges everywhere,
covering the empty cot, or slumping into empty corners,
or just haunting, crooked shouldered, my window.
It's burn is on my face and arms.

The sky has long been bruised to black,
but my eyes well know the season
and are shot through with its reds,
its oranges, its boiling greens.

In the emptiness of heat we're released,
or bend, to relax.


Spring - 4am

It's in these silent lovers' minutes,
as people sleep, that slowly, softly,
the night comes,
quiet and gently feminine.

The velveteen-skinned stomach,
that at this time forms the sky,
contracts, almost seems to gasp, then
with a sigh, is released, and settles,
all almost imperceptible, but I
I, who have watching,
understanding and recording,
am allowedto be smothered, relaxed; to be surrounded,
overcome, and to dissolve.

And for a moment,
everything is backward and correct.


Winter - 6am

The air seems somehow solid, now,
it separates the houses
and the horizon,
and it separates the people in between.

The divide is dry and clean, and as I watch,
so I see: the sky supports two trees,
huddled for warmth, and touching leaves
against a yellowing horizon.