right to privacy

Earth as well as moon tonight are blinded by the city's smog. 

On a balcony suspended mid-cloud in the grey half-light,
you should have been with me. 

It is so rare, this wall for the eyes; for lovers,

this angel with the flaming sword at Eden's gate.

The life lived a bit more than it used to be

My life was a useful thing altogether, amounting to
A couple of very nice birthday cards, three or four
Clearly-written exam papers and an interesting idea or two
A year. The poetry was marginalia.
What's to be worried over, if you insist,
Is the narrowing field of vision, the cramped, busy writing,
Too many words, too little feeling,
And too much space beside for poetry to fill up.
In that chasm between words and verge it simply drowns.

Spanish poor.

Late last night we saw an old lady in an angloindian dress, carrying a plastic bag
like a handbag, poke fastidiously at some garbage bags beside a footpath.
Today, walking up to the church I was attacked by some herbs and a lady
handed me one, reminded me of aunty Molly and proceeded to bless me thoroughly.
I don't know what she said because it was Spanish.
Then she leaned back on her left hip and asked me to bring out the cash.
I said I had none and smiled at her helpfully. She grimaced, took back her investment
and left me with the smell of myrtle on my hands.
On the cobbled street corners old men with dirty beards are slouching
with dogs in dirty jackets and a can out ahead of them.
A man came to our lunch table, left a lighter and a note saying
his wife had an awful disease and he no job and they two kids.
He put one set at each table, came back after a bit and told us
we could keep the lighter, but we politely refused so, practically, he took it.
We felt like benevolent ex-colonials. My father took a poverty picture,
We said don't be gruesome, he said they do it all the time. My mother melted neither for
worst nor most skilful, transnationally consistent and no post-colonial ego at all.
Down another street is a woman all in black, broken voice and heart together, wailing.
Fifty metres on, a chirpy fellow with an accordion, on a steel chair, making us feel better.
My sister gave him some money to patronise the arts.
There are impersonators in the squares and busy night streets—the Angel of mercy,
and Grim reaper are favorites—and my father stood a long time figuring out a levitator,
refusing to see what makes him trick. We never saw any children beg.
Walking back at night, we passed a man looking through dustbins like a buffet.
The next morning a Bangladeshi immigrant will tell us that with so many
thousand euros paid to be here, he has no intention of going back.

When did passion, the noun, become sexual?

a woman,
face mapped with lines,
is stamping her feet
clutching her belly,
anguished,
concentrating,
pace pounding like blood
reaching out to life
and triumphantly snatching her train up out of its reach
to snap her fingers in its face—

and some people on Tripadvisor say this show's not your moneys worth;
they don't have a single couple performing.

I cannot write tragic poetry any more.

It is as though I were in a forest

—or so I imagine, my acquaintance with forests being so slight—

And I thought it was a Belle-Dame-Sans-Merci sort of place

But then the sun shone somewhere and— lo and behold!

It's all winking lights and accommodating shadows after all.

Well, perhaps not that sunny. The ground is squishy and

There are glass shards dotting the slope where people

Used the place in accord with how dark it had seemed,

Making it darker. I sigh in irony, which itself is overdone.

If we deal in malobservations and miscommunications—

Which we do—we are likely to find that trees are best kept

To a certain height, age, density; their gatherings limited

To five or more in a public place, their branches trimmed,

Undergrowth regularly cleared, all in the interest that 

People will use them right. 

And of course, with an arrogance I can fairly appropriate to our lot,

We—that is to say, I—draw analogies where every damn thing stands for human.

at home

I drag my feet over doing when at home. I only 

lap up happy endings, sometimes knit, pee frequently;

By eight or so, I'm berating myself on another day wasted.

What else? I spend time talking, a bit a day.

My impatience held in a vice-like grip, I try explain;

When it escapes, I am savage or escape.

I've no wisdom to defend this with.

Family, they itch in your bones—

Try to be aloof, or strategize, or just let them be,

But it still matters enough to fight.

Or to lie, to evade the non-negotiable.

Because they are not just the Opposition.

I know why they resist, I know why I must, should, will listen,

I know why the whole damn thing's so bloody hard.

They know too, and so we're every day angrier,

Always shouting, never leaving,

Never thinking violence without thinking regret.

—Don't get me wrong: we make each other miserable.

But in a quicksand/together-forever sort of way.

Sir.

He would stand up as we came in, and go out; but for a second he was there, darkly well dressed, with a haggard beard and shaking hands, against fluttering yellow curtains. Was yellow his choice?
The curtains were always clean, his table orderly, except for Paperwork, which we imagined lurked, hammer in hand, outside his corner office like a ham-handed student.
"Go deeper."
The ham-handed student was terrified of asking him anything, hoping the situation would show her kindness, and he fobbed off all who came to his door, fearing it was Paperwork.
He was sad, later, when he found out it had been people, with questions.
Because he cared, do you know? I cannot guarantee it is not nostalgia—
what is a guarantee in any case? It is a speech act.

He held death at bay with a shaky hand. Illness and solitude he carried
resignedly, and more or less erect. Literature he coaxed to his side from years of devotion,
An old retainer in a shadowy house, warily waiting
The air about him thick with reading, measuring out lengths of poetry
like smoke, immeasurable, savoured.

Where did he go? Into a storm-night, into a rickety car, into a silence
Looking inward, his eyes glittering black and his lips dry?
He caressed space and waved aside time, he wove maps (warp and weft) and
scorned summary.
We did not understand then, and the ragged facts
haunting his death—pain and desolation—we will not now read out as his life.
What he meant, we do not know, (which sometimes made us mad)
But it was bona fide poetry, and worth the care.

He doesn't leap out of bed in the mornings, but it's easy for him to get up early, these days, even if the sun is firmly blocked out, if the world beyond his door is drowsy and unstirring, without time tearingoff ahead of him and mocking his intentions. He hears the alarm calling for him, louder and louder as though his brother stood at the head of the stairs and called, condescending a few steps each time he did not reply. And with no defensiveness and no evasion, he sits up and meets time as he meant to, just as it is paused, with its head cocked, listening to the alarm that has brought him here, before it passes through the door and onward—he sits up and nods at it, friends they are because he has stopped himself pleading (or shouting or muttering) at its retreating back. He does not assume familiarity, there are no loyalty privileges, only the choice over forgetting. He does not seek to manipulate it to neatly time his own escape; he will use his certainties—of himself—to build more, and then more, like a tidy accumulator; and when time comes with infinite patience to wait, and not to pause, he will throw aside his modesty with no threat of reward, and meet it lazily, with spare seconds and minutes and hours tucked away in deep pockets to enable his indulgences, and by then be indifferent to indulgence altogether. Perhaps.

for my best friend.

First it was that we had only each other, needed only each other, needed to keep talking to understand the world more and more deeply, thinking together, chords from strings, We had never met anyone like us, we would never settle for anything less.

Then, that growing feeling that it wasn't just us, wait a minute, there are more! Others, a community of us...Find them! root them out! Let us be ourselves and draw them close—they will come.

More and more, groups unravel to reveal people we may love, we splash ourselves with friends, exulting, we wade towards others, gather more and more together, you and i a little apart, exchanging grins... then a little further...

We each reached out, and out of sight, bobbing somewhere around here. The world's an ocean, not a bucket! We can soak ourselves to the chin! Certain that we're both here together, creeping out and plunging in.
What more can I want? A bit more of you, happy head, bobbing about, a bit more seeing what you see, a bit more laughing so hard water goes up my nose.
I could always do
with a bit more you.

an open book.

So convincingly

They push the buttons, hop image to image

Describing, explaining, empathising,

Because graphics are better than the real thing

For explanatory purposes.

But when you see there's nothing there

(A green screen being better than graphics

For illustration purposes),

Wonder at how, imperturbably, 

she points out a storm

or puts it there.