DEATH OF A BAR

Barcelona 2012

The warmth has gone,

the boar's head taken down

all fireplace brick surrendered

to the sledgehammer,

that old woman who

punished fruit machines

denied her homebound pleasure,

the jaunty evening crowd

now scattered like funeral ash.

The barmaid with her optimistic hair

left stranded, the perrenial

inviting smil...

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NIGERIAN VILLAGES

Some writers marry other ones

it seems the natural course

but she has never read a book,

in fact she hardly learned to read.

In Nigerian villages, they say,

you have to pay to go to school.

Her father was a teacher too;

in time I've come to understand

that this is just an economic irony

of life down there, however,

she can handle a sewing mac...

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SALAMANDER

From dripping dawn to milk churn

to sheep and village fountain.

From orchard and empty

mountain road to gurgling cherry town

I carried a yellow-black fire symbol

through deserted evenings

in hidden streets where men put away

their tools with an apprehensive glance

until at last, we met and drove

the winding road to Olonzac,

and sat next day in the b...

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BOXES

It's time to face that room

and all its sundry clutter.

Old stuff he kept for years:

opera magazines, sports trophies,

brittle yellowed journals telling

of obscure endeavours long ago;

the passions and activities

that cause the junk of decades.

I open the door and greet

my own past too - I played here

in a cloud of fantasy and aspiration,

small k...

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ROSE

My love is like

a crimson rose

and no one knows

from whence it came

nor where it goes -

a rose in winter

solid as Frankenstein's

monster, a frozen thing

that spent

its lifetime hiding

like a garage spider.

I didn't chide her

the garage spider,

but now the rose has

said hooray - come out

to play, has seen

its own refle...

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THE DOGS OF ATHENS

More than a city

a cluster of cities stretch

onwards through space,

one sprawling into the next,

so many areas

I've never set foot in

and west of the electric line's

a foreign country;

you see the names of neighbourhoods

on yellow buses passing

this evening square

where, instead of Nokia,

the street dogs are connected

by a different...

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TRAP

Pardon me for ringing you

but all my friends are dead.

It's strange to be sitting here

in the place where I was born

and no longer know a soul.

They were sand through glass

you see. Now I'm like an invalid

who struggles unheard,

consigned to oblivion, yelling

in silence, exiled on the spot

and every new day I cease

to exist again.

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BENT OVER GEOGRAPHY

When off school sick

dad would bring me toast

in bed before he went to work

then leave me crumbed up

in a world of dreams,

ear stuck to a transistor

as the day went on its way

beyond closed curtains

in the blind distance

of car horns and shouting

over garden fences.

I'd suck mints if boredom

and loneliness crept in

or season permit...

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WORLDS APART

Safe in a tower somewhere

a woman writes about anger

while on ground level a woman walking

home from work gets a police check.

Made to produce papers, abandoned

for three days in a cell, bedroll and blanket,

no chance of a phonecall either.

But egotism rolls around the tower

she paints it beautifully with blackened rage,

scars of privilege ...

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TWILIGHT

I'd like to walk into that house

over the road where a lamp shines,

quench many whims in fact

but extra vibrant years and brief dotage

are nothing more than fantasy.

I took photographs every day in vain

but didn't spot the change.

Too old now to keep bulldogs

I recently acquired a Chihuahua,

last night dreamed a cloud of fragile birds

that sang o...

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AIR IN THE MORNING

The morning air speaks loss;

slides through a sunlit moment

as eyes open to her memory.

From across damp fields

shrill hammering signals

a disconsolate world

where trees stand huddled

under saturated clouds.

Sharp black wings

tear the sky with flight;

a feathered firework erupting

until the air would burst

from its heaviness.

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PORCHES OF SUBURBIA

She's delivering leaflets again,

urging residents to oust their charlatans

who'll vote through a bad deal

then claim they had no choice.

The people here are house proud,

they all have pretty porches and loiter

in back rooms until they think she's gone

then emerge to examine the leaflet.

In her old country they'd be outside

at this ho...

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BARRIO SANTIAGO

Jerez de la Frontera

In the catherdral shadow

a woman peels limes

then washes them

at the blue fountain

as an angry sun burns

shapes on stone.

From dark passages

a bright guitar

emerges into afternoon,

arpeggios glittering

across the water

like momentary fish.

It predicts your path

past broken balconies,

ragged skirts, ...

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LOVE AND LOBSTERS

I love you in the car park

of a popular supermarket chain,

then often in the Judo class

where you usually go to train.

I love you cracking lobsters

with a twentieth century hammer

and later in the wine bar

after twelve tequila slammers.

They say there is no future

as the seas are full of plastic

and all of us will per...

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