More poems...
it wasn’t just the great escape it gave you from your desk,
nor the window’s grey nostalgia of
city streets,
nor the smell of coffee, which was
instant anyway.
It was the way the staff room
levelled the staff,
stripped away all titles and
ambitions – the perfect alibi
for secretaries, executives,
middle-managers, administrators
to share some of who we really
were for a change.
That morning it was just me, the
rain, and the guy
who fixed the computers which we
all took for granted.
A sleek, silent missile of a man,
shaven-headed, army-booted, he was
rumoured
to be a black-belt, but you didn’t
feel like asking,
and despite his reputation as a
man of action
he never made the first move in
any conversation.
We were both going glassy-eyed at
the window;
the kettle never boiled so
slowly. Don’t get me wrong –
I didn’t dislike him, but he was
nothing like me,
a stuffed shirt and tie who typed
crap
on the machines he knew backwards.
As the air percolated, my theories
were starting to look watery.
In the end I just sighed at the
glistening streets, and lied:
“Miserable day.” I didn’t expect a reply, but it got him
talking –
about how much, in fact, he loved
it when it chucked it down,
how he’d go walking in it at the
drop of a hat,
alone, for hours, in either city
or country. I knew from experience
this was nothing to do with having
been in the army.
We stirred our mugs, and with a cheery catch-ya-later
he left me alone to gaze at that
panorama – and to nurse a wound
that told me how far I had come
from myself,
and despite the years and all the
uptitling and downsizing,
how near I was to where I’d been.
Fingertips
It was not the closeness of you as
you leaned over me,
nor your hot breath on my closed
eyes; not the falling
of your soft breasts against the
soles of my feet
as you stood at the bench’s end
there, bending forward
to thumb along the Great Wall of
China of my spine. Not quite
your fingers in my hair, although
that was getting there.
No, it was something more. It seemed strange to think of you
as a masseuse, or aromatherapist
as you preferred,
after you’d tried your hand at so
many other careers.
But then funnier was the idea of
this special offer –
a moneyless contract to occasion
the contact
I’d sought, unrequited, for
years.
Now maybe, with your laying on of
hands,
were you offering to cure me of my
fruitless pursuit of you,
fighting fire with fire? Or were you sizing me up,
from my body’s nearnaked truth
trying to gather
whether I might after all be worth
your while?
Laying beneath you, I didn’t know
what to expect,
especially when your cheeky, oily
palms
left no buttock unturned: I had to
try hard
not to think of that word. But strikingly,
it was not my bum which responded
so much to your touch, despite the
situation’s tension,
nor my hamstrings, no matter how
they were knotted,
nor my back or knees, dissolving
as you kneaded them,
nor my ankles or temples, even as
they fondued
at your professional
fondling. When the lightning climax
finally struck, I was busy trying
to distract myself
with the measured breathing of the
traffic
along the wet roads outside your
window.
But distracted more by you, my
whole body like static’d hair
brushed lighter than air by your
touch, I was astonished
at finding the electricity I’d
always hoped was there
in our fingertips. Even for a Full Body Massage,
I wasn’t expecting yours to
address mine individually,
one by sizzling one. But then I hadn’t known what to expect.
So even if that evening’s
lightning between us
was over in a flash, if it was
more South Bank Show
than Michaelangelo, if it was more
than just nice – I realised
I shouldn’t take lightly the
generous hand you had reached me.
I mean, you know what they say
about lightning
striking in the same place twice.
The Pink Towel
You looked fantastic in that pink
towel.
It was my spare towel, for guests’
use,
but really it was your towel, for
you
were my only guest:
after we had condemned the bed
and you had to get to where you
should have been,
we would take a bath, and you
would dry yourself
with the pink towel, always
starting by wrapping it round you.
It was the perfect colour for
those moments.
You wore it then like you wore
your own skin,
you never looked softer, never
more naked.
After you had discreetly done the
twist for your back
you would lay the towel on the
bath edge,
perch there, drying your legs,
your feet and toes.
That was the saddest moment. Those were the last rites
said over the corpse of the
afternoon.
I knew then
that you would dress, and with the
warmest kisses you would leave
for the official dinner with the
man that you were cuckolding.
In the space you left, wrenched
from the bosom of the evening,
all that was left of you for me to
touch
was that towel, hanging damply
from the bathroom door,
shivering with the touch of your
body.
Because it contained so much of
your nakedness,
I never wanted to wash the pink
towel,
but I always gave in, so that you
might have it fresh
for the next time. Even when I didn’t know
whether that time would come,
whether even
it should come.
I wonder if I ever told you
that once upon a time, a long time
before all this happened, a time
when we were sensible,
the pink towel was white. It was only my washing it, badly,
bachelor fashion, that gave it
your perfect colour:
my towel, the red one, must have
slowly
bled into the white, until it
became the colour it was,
the colour of your skin when I
rose from your body
in those moments before you had to
leave
for the place and the man
you should never have left.
But what’s at the top?
feel like a vertigo sufferer
halfway up a ladder
can’t go up
can’t go down
can’t go left or right
But staying on the ground
was no option either
Boxes
Alone, and needing you,
I wanted to tell you I loved you,
but I could not tell you.
I talked instead about things
which I variously called “people”
and “love” and “relationships”.
I could not tell you the truth,
because I did not know the truth.
I asked you questions:
“Do you need someone?” I said,
“Do you need to be held?”
“Does someone love you?”
I could not come up with anything
other than the clichés of our
existences.
Gamely you addressed my questions
with smiling answers
which all went something like
“No.”
You said how you were alone, and
that being alone,
you had learned to place the
things I spoke of
into boxes:
one box for your feelings of love,
another for the feelings for those
you called your lovers,
one for the affections for those
you called your friends,
another for your day-to-day
existence.
I sat and listened, fascinated.
Maybe you had closed yourself up
into a box,
but I noticed that I had too.
I wanted to tell you that I loved
you
but every time I began to speak,
I became less and less sure of
what I had placed
inside my box marked with your
name.
I could not tell you the truth,
because I did not know the truth.
So we talked some more, about
life,
about people, relationships, love.
I could only come up with clichés,
but you responded with real feelings.
You had sorted your boxes out very
well,
but mine were in various states of
haphazardness,
all over the place, some closed,
some open,
some labelled clearly, some not.
I tried to separate the box marked
“you”
from the box marked “me”.
I still do not know if I
succeeded.
I was alone, I needed someone
whom I thought could have been
you.
I emptied my boxes feverishly,
crying and trying to find out the
truth.
I still do not know if all of my
feelings
which were occasioned by you and
addressed to you
are in that one box I marked with
your name.
Fresh from the Barber’s
I’m feeling sweet and clean in my
new shorn state,
my short young head anointed
with pale, strong-reeking liquids,
poured lovingly by the blurry old
Italian
(who in his thirty Richmond years
of scraping thirsty blades
together,
has seen me a thousand times in
his warm wet trade:
warm as honey before a log fire,
no less wet
than the rain outside his window –
which he hates).
The rain is new,
but these bottom-bigged,
tall-spiringly stemmed bottles
are ancient as he is,
timeless as his trade.
Now, Richmond’s exclusive blurry
Gino,
behind soft, accepting eyes,
self-preserved gently swept hair,
white as sugar, or the paper
on which I scratch
his low, warm, wise, shrugging
sentiments –
hair that blows silently as dust –
Gino is the only man in town I’d
let grip my head,
work oils into my scalp,
shear my precious
strength-rendering locks
(that, alone, licked my neck)
to a couple of fresh smart inches.
I grumble inwardly: it’s smart as
it is,
but I do prefer my hair a little
longer.
Still, that’s what’s worth waiting
for:
my next trip to have my head
gripped and shorn
won’t be for another couple of
months, when
I will again be quietened
listening,
and emerge into Richmond town
red-faced but refreshed.
Chalk and Cheese and the End of College
Because I could not confront you
with tears,
I bottled them, and soon
they became poems. There are fears
I may have, which you wanted me to
discard,
but they are as much a part of me
as I wanted you to be;
it might be briefly comforting to
be rid
of heavy weights that cling, and
bring me down
in black moments of backwards
thinking; but if that
would also mean denying my poet’s
position,
a sad one, but no less true for
that, then I do not long
for a day when I am relieved of my
black sadness
any more than the day when we must
part forever.
And part we must: as pretended
lovers in spirit only, to keep
that spirit, we must give it away to
the wind, preserving
what we have now - what we will
never have again.
In my world, where all pain is
self-inflicted,
you became an outside agony, which
I relished
even while I cried; and I cannot
tell what it is
I will miss most, from a choice
between your face
and legs, your clothes and broken
fingernails,
and your constant capacity,
although I know unwillingly,
as a source of laughing
inspiration to me,
through days of crying adulation
from far across a cafeteria floor.
Oxford
I was looking in every second-hand
bookshop
and stopping in every teashop
soaking up a March heatwave
and the histories and traditions
which I found breathlessly on
every corner
I was not clever enough to get
into Oxford
That was more your line
You and all your poets
whose life work you had
crash-coursed
and all those philosophies
you had nuggeted into soundbites
But I was sure you had a soul
(and you sure had a body)
so when my poems and philosophies
didn’t bring you to me
I tried to reach you
by visiting your (spiritual
or at least bodily) city
and found incidentally
on my awayday
somewhere beautiful
On the train home
I wrote a poem saying
The Bodleian Library
was a goldencrusted apple pie
where the cream of afternoon fell
You hated it
but it was my line
I was not clever enough
to get into Oxford
The Baleful Head
Perseus shows Andromeda
the head of Medusa
in the reflection of the water
in an ornate well
In one hand he lifts the gorgon’s
head
In the other
he holds Andromeda’s hand
tight
tighter than she expected from her
lover
He says to her “Do not look into
the eyes
of the severed head I hold in my
hand
It will kill you
Only look into the water
Only look at the reflection”
Andromeda gapes down
A huge urge in her to turn
suddenly
and look right at the real thing
above them
the terrible thing between them
(The three faces reflect up from
the well
The lovers either side
Medusa in between)
“Look” says Perseus
feeling Andromeda tremble
“Look into the water
You see this head
this awful head
full of evil
full of pain and suffering
This is our Relationship
This is any Relationship
Looking straight into her eyes
will turn us both to stone
Never look into them” he says
“Promise me
if you ever feel the need to look
into those eyes
Tell me
and I will hold up this head above
us
over this solitary beautiful well
and you can stare all you like
at its harmless reflection”
Andromeda
at first fearful
starts to wonder
and thinks how much more romantic
it might’ve been
if Perseus had said to her
“Darling
If you must look into anybody’s
eyes
only look into mine”
After all
that’s what she was going to say
to him
Homeworker
“I had a horrible job to do
today,” I said
as you came in the door. “You?” you said,
exasperated already, barely a kiss
or hello.
“You? Mr Stay-at-home, Mr Laptop?
Mr
I-can-wear-what-I-like-and-work-the-hours-I-want?”
Well, these are the nineties, I
wanted to say.
Now you’re the one who’s out all day...
still, I didn’t, I let you rave,
about the account you lost to that
younger cow,
and your boss, the bastard, with
his varicose veins
and wandering mitts – I guess some
things never change.
“You’re telling me you’ve had more
crap today?” you said.
Well, I only had to mutter the
words unblock and toilet
to get a bit of peace and quiet,
although not for long.
Soon we were back to your day,
which was fair enough –
I mean, you didn’t want to hear
the sordid details I now knew
about the consistency and
stubbornness of shit,
the way it sticks to the loo brush,
how much it stinks.
I wasn’t asking for a medal, just
for you not to pretend
you weren’t overjoyed you’d had
nothing to do with it.
It made my skin crawl, but I
didn’t regret it – after all,
it was one more bridge laid across
the gender gap,
one more experience we now shared
to strengthen our relationship.
Hearing Things, Seeing Things
Thought I saw you on TV the other
night.
Could’ve sworn it was you,
even though you were acting,
not singing this time.
Didn’t know how to feel –
proud I guess. Happy, impressed.
You’d made it at last,
got there before me.
Always thought you would.
And since we last met
I haven’t really done anything to
speak of,
so I can’t complain.
Good for you, I thought.
I remembered your voice
in my room –
k.d. lang and Gershwin.
Then the credits rolled, and I
looked close
to see your name in lights –
but playing your part was another
name.
Didn’t know what to think.
Could’ve sworn it was you.
Was it your way of saying
there was still a chance for me?
Poem For a Famous Poet
In our
brief conversation
after your
reading
I stared
hopefully into your eyes
as if
trying to find the answers
to various
questions of life, love, success,
poetry
But it was
hopeless.
I felt
like the farmer who had the goose
that laid
the golden eggs
Realising
as he slaughtered it
that there
were only ordinary guts inside
That there
was nothing he could hope to gain
from
opening it up
I said
your poems
might be
concerned with ordinary things
which
everybody could understand
Yet they
were extraordinary nonetheless
And I made
a clumsy comparison
between
your poems
and the
poems of others
Saying
theirs might be
very
carefully crafted
from all
manner of materials
with any
number of tools
But that
yours
were
effortless pure natural
that they
seemed to grow like flowers
from the
palms of your hands
from your
hair,
from your
voice.
With
steam-irony you laughed
as if I
had said that I thought you never put any effort
into your
golden poems
That I
thought they came from nowhere
That I
thought because they were so simple
heartfelt,
honest
they had
somehow been less painful to construct
than those
flimsy Meccano poems of others
Your eyes
were more intense
than I
ever expected eyes to be
in one of
such beauty, charm
understanding,
humanity
I had to
look away from them
And I
realised that you really were that goose
that could
never lay anything
but golden
eggs
yet was
doomed forever
to have
nothing inside it
but
ordinariness
Grandad’s Time
Grandad’s time was running out:
the hospital told us that much.
He put all the energy he could
find
into a smile to greet us.
Grandad’s breath was running
short:
he could only manage a dozen
words.
But each he spoke was real and
true,
like diamonds in a field of snow.
Grandad never wasted a word,
never threw away a line.
He knew what he liked, he liked
what he knew,
and he knew nothing that could
have been taught.
Grandad lied about his heart,
but everyone knew what he really
felt.
His skin was tough, his soul was
soft.
He was one of the best that ever
lived.
Grandad died at sixty-five.
We had money on him going till
eighty.
When Grandad went I was just
eighteen,
still tinkering with my little
life.
My English class sat and gobbled
air,
filling the room with words.
Elsewhere Grandad laid, fighting
for breath,
writing his final script.
Grandad knew his time was up.
He hung on as long as he could.
He said to me, “There is no
guarantee
that you always get this far.”
A List for Nan
(Iris Jones 1929-2001)
Mills & Boon paperbacks and a
pint mug of tea
A packet of Digestives and 200
cigs
A small Hovis and scratchcards and
Spam in the fridge
Thin curly hair your fingertips
tidied
Newborn great-grandchildren in
your big hands
Potato waffles and a bottle of
vodka
A red purse bursting with fivers
and tenners
that you let slip so gladly to
your family and friends
A photo of Grandad on the bedside
cabinet
and photos of the rest of us
everywhere
A hundred bells and a thousand
thimbles
TV Quick and the remote control
A big wet kiss and an arm round
your shoulder
A dodgy knee and your foot in
plaster
An expandable stick and a
three-wheeled scooter
An open invitation to all of us to
stay
An armchair, a sofa, and long
conversations
But you’d never give all of your
secrets away
Always encouraging and wishing me
luck
Easy to please and hard to upset
But knowing what you like and
taking no nonsense
A whole afternoon just playing
‘Sequence’
A whole evening watching film
after film
A hoarder by nature yet not
needing much
Leaning on a frame but never on
people
An expert on ironing, on homes, on
families
A snowball fight with your
husband-to-be
Giving birth to your children in
your council-house home
A Christmas list for me saying ‘a
mop and a wife’
A face lined rose-red and a
perspiring forehead
A cutlery drainer and ‘Naked Chef’
recipes
Paying for your shopping at the
cigarette counter
Putting me up rent-free so I could
follow a dream
writing a big novel at your
kitchen table
A day at Kew Gardens, a fortnight
in Cyprus
Dinner at Vincent’s and tea in my
flat.
Always there as long as I can
remember,
Always here: don’t no-one forget.
The
Thought-Cat
A cat wandered into my garden.
I was charmed. “Hello,” I said.
“Miaow,” it said.
I petted it and chatted to it.
“Miaow,” it said again.
It kept on miaowing until I fed
it.
Food was the only thing that kept it
quiet.
Then it came indoors, curled up in
my lap
and purred itself to sleep.
Next morning the cat was still
there.
By now I was flattered as well as
charmed.