A pint of whole milk
A loaf of white bread
(And think of the shopping
You'll save when you're dead),

Some butter, some cheese,
A crusty French stick
(And check "best before";
It goes bad so quick),

A small tin of peace,
Some angel food cake,
Some good instant coffin
(To keep me a wake),

Some cocoa, some tea,
Some Cumberland pies.
(I paid with my life
And the coins on my eyes)

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(Inspired by a typo)

Do not stand at my grave and wee.
I'm damp enough. Just let me be.
You said you'd pour the finest wine
In tribute to these bones of mine;
So was it some stupendous thirst
That prompted you to drink it first?
Please note my epitaph (it's final!)
Does not contain the word "urinal".
Do not stand at my grave and wee.
I'll haunt your ass, I guarantee.

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Today's homework is: arrive in Paris
But this is maths, sir
Yes. Les devoirs sont to arrive in Paris
But sir, how do we get there?
That's the homework

I know, sir
Yes?
My aunty lives in Hull
Fascinating, fascinating
No really, sir, you can get the ferry to Zebrugge
But then you'll be in Belgium
Then you can catch a bus to Lille and then another bus to Amiens and…
How do you know all ...

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Someone hatched a murder plan
In nineteen sixty three
(Which was soon for Lyndon B )
Involving a knoll and a rifleman
Who was (or was not) named Lee.

There might (or might not) have been anyone
In the pay of the CIA
Who hid not far away,
Who duly prepared (or did not) a gun
For the scalp of JFK.

Who might (or might not) have aimed it down
And shot him in the head;
So Lyndon Johnson...

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Our Joy has left us. Should we say goodbye?
Not while we smile recalling what she said;
not while the sharp remembrance of her eye
surprises us through all the days ahead;
not while the greenest branches of her tree
still show her love for living and for learning;
not while each grandchild welcomed on her knee
holds hope the world should never tire of turning;
not while our Joy lives on. T...

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HAMLET

My days drag on, with every day alike,
Each day a copy of the day before
Wrought by a foolish scribe, whose erring hand
Makes changes here and changes there, until
The manuscript is meaningless.

HORATIO

             And yet
You rose today and copied it anew.
Show me your fingers, stainéd with that ink
That met the sun this morning: this is hope.

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"Buy billboard space," the ad man said,
"To advertise your brand
In ninety-five percent of all
Locations in the land."

"But would you tell me, sir," I said,
"About that five percent—
The places billboards cannot reach?"

And when I'd heard, I went.

[Image shows a billboard making that claim, taken by Kai]

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The Lord's my shepherd. I shall rest content.
With all that can delight the hearts of sheep
he spread my table; by the quiet deep
I slept, and woke, and followed where he went,
and for my sake he kept the wolf at bay.
The grass I ate was his, and thus was mine,
his ewe lamb, with the other ninety-nine;
the Lord's my shepherd. Then I ran away.

I thought to find a crown. I found a sham:
n...

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To the only begetter of this ensuing sonnet Mr P LARKIN All happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth

They fuck you up, your Fathers and your Mums:
Their Birthright, Dowry, Heritage, and Lot
Of Faults, with further added to their Sums,
Pass down from what they had to what they've got;
These Faults, again, they gained fr...

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Pigeons, to me, were always signs of hope:
even the whirl of wings against the air
would right me, show me once again the scope
of who I was and whose I was and where;

as when, in one deep shock of vertigo
I saw the city lie beneath my ledge
as flocks of pigeons played a mile below
and kept my feet from straying near the edge;

as blinking blinding water from my eyes
I rose again to re...

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Now, the world is very wide
(seven seas from side to side)
and it holds a million ways to tell a tale,

And you'll broaden your horizon
When the work you lay your eyes on
Isn't always European, straight, and male.

If you've ever been and gone
to a panel at a con
I'm assuming you're familiar with the sight:

There'll be four and twenty guys
Who are listed for the prize
And EVERY SING...

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Come in. Catch this! and name it, if you would?
Do take your time, and take the fireside chair.
Of course, I wasn't always here at Clare...
(The second metacarpal? Very good.)
I practiced as a medic in the war
till I retired. In '46, you know...
(I say, I'm not convinced by this Bordeaux
but we won't notice after three or four...)

Thus every gentle Michaelmas, attending
the birth of cou...

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Don't say this struggle's all in vain,
the target's always out of range,
your work is effort down the drain,
and situations never change:

Perhaps it's true your hopes were wrong,
but who's to say your fears are right?
Your friends were fighting all along;
they're winning battles out of sight.

The waves of hope may seem to stay
far down the beach you stand beside;
Across the sea, from...

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THE DARK BLOT

by Hedd Wyn (1887-1917), my translation

We have no right to starlight,
nor moon that moans so lonely,
nor golden clouds a-rolling
through boundless blue, for only
this world so worn and weary
is ours in truth, that lies
discordant in God's glory
to stain the starry skies.

Welsh original:

Nid oes gennym hawl ar y sêr,
Na'r lleuad hiraethus chwaith,
Na'r cwmwl o au...

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Upon a Bed of Biting that a Flea was occupying,
a Woman and a tasty-looking Poet were a-lying.
The Poet never heard the Flea arriving with a leap,
as he chattered at the Woman, as she tried to get some sleep,
and the Fearless Flea was sated when he'd fed upon the two
(and their juices mixed inside him, which is more than she would do).

The Fearless Flea has fallen! for the Woman struck him...

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When my room has sunk into darkness
When it’s crept to the depths of night
Then I fill my head with the words I read
In my book when the world was bright.

When my house is hushed into silence
When the sound all around me ends
Then my thoughts still hold all the tales I told
By the fire with the smiles of friends.

When the world is curled under blankets
When I doze and I close my eyes
...

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If we could live together without death's arrival as an inevitable inbetweener,
Your coyness would not be a misdemeanour.
We'd spend all eternity discussing each angle afresh,
And you'd probably go looking for rubies beside a river in Bangladesh,
Whereas I'd predictably end up somewhere really dull
Like Hull.

My love for you would continue to grow throughout this experience,
As slowly as ...

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This is the Xen remaining in my mind.
These are the memories we mourn today:
they know no bounds, and cannot be confined.
These are the fingerprints you left behind;
These are the shadows that you cast away.

This is the Xen remaining in my mind
who fights to heal, to hope, and to unbind,
who helps the homeless build a place to stay,
who knows no bounds, and cannot be confined,
whose voi...

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Often, when I don't understand a poem, I've been glad of people explaining it to me. So I'm paying it forward, by breaking down one of mine for you. Here it is:

I WALKED IN DARKNESS

I walked in darkness. Many a lonely mile,
my eyes and footsteps hesitant and blind,
I sought a kindly light I did not find
in land or ocean, asking all the while
if lightless lives are taken in exchange
for ...

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(blatant Eliot ripoff)

One fine dark night with a fine dark sky
And fine-sliced moon so bright,
A Cat leapt forth with a fine black coat
And paws of moonlit white;
If I should ask you to say her name
I'm sure you'd tell me that
She's Yantantessera,
Tessera, Tessera,
Tessera Tessera, Cat.

She had no humans, she had no home,
She had no meals to eat,
But soon, by means of a friendly p...

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My auntie met a soldier;
They fell in love, of course.
They'd run away, he told her,
At midnight, on a horse.
That evening, by the garden wall,
I watched with patient hope.
I never saw a horse at all.
I saw an aunt elope.

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Kashka Georgeson, poet and friend, died suddenly last month. I wrote and read this poem at her wake.

Today the sun shone on you, Kashka.
Clouds of the north, sunlight of the world.
Golden on our tears, as we said goodbye.
Kashka, you made it shine.

Today your friends shone on you, Kashka.
Fabulous, glitterfilled, purple and gold,
Rebels, queers, revolutionaries
Kashka, you made them sh...

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"I'll write when the iron is hot!"
no baby, you use what you got,
and make your art still
in a mine or a mill,
instead of excuses why not.

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Written around me, written within:
scars of my lifetime show on my skin.
This is a tooth I broke in a fight.
Here's where I tumbled, dancing all night.
Sites of injections. Chicken-pox spot.
Name of a lover better forgot.

Words in the open, words never said,
all of my stories hide in my head.
Tell me a story: now, evermore,
life has a pattern hidden before.
Tales of a lifetime carved i...

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I was asked for a free translation of "Ubi caritas" (http://www0.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Ubi_caritas )

As friendship fills our meeting-place,
Jesus is here;
he dwells in every friend's embrace,
each smile sincere,
rejoicing in the love we share.
Wherever love is, God is there.

As friendship fills our meeting-place
Jesus brings peace.
Divisions heal, and by his grace
Arguments cease.
...

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I've noticed recently how many more people listen to the message of a poem if I put a tune to it, so here's a recording with music.

They told me when I started school
I had to join a line.
There's one for girls and one for boys
I asked them which was mine.
They asked me if my mother raised
A daughter or a son,
They sent me to the corner, where
I made a line of one.
And the line for the ...

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At tennis, she's graceful and healthy,
and then, in the car park, so stealthy.
I'm having some fun
with Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
Yes, Surrey's more fun if you're wealthy.

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Something I've been pondering:

When you read a journal's submission guidelines, they almost always say "Read a few issues of our journal first, so you know what sort of thing we want." But time and money constrain the number of journals that anyone can keep up with. Does this really mean that it's only good form to attempt to submit to four or five particular journals?

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When life was newly made, and I was young,
I vow'd to follow where that Poet led
that charm'd the girls with skilful dancing tongue,
and every night saw someone new in bed.
For envy's hand did hold mine aching Pen;
mine Ink was spill'd in vain until the Sun;
yet did I lack those marks of greater men.
I follow'd on, to Marvell what they'd Donne.
How well my work frustration doth present!
H...

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Two replies of mine in a conversation today about the purpose of formality in poems. Comments welcome!

---

You say that division into lines is something free verse shares with all other kinds of poetry. This intrigues me: from my point of view, "line" is part of metre, and as such is structural and should be more or less invisible. For example, in the first two lines of this sonnet of Cope's...

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A protest song I wrote recently. It fits to the "Prince of Denmark's March".

Out with a world of contracts to cheat us
Out with the lords who hoard their gold
Out with a world of sanctions to leave us
Starving in the cold

Take hands and march to show
Our strength shall grow
And we shall not fail
Take hands and let them know
Society is not for sale

These are the dreams of safety and...

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FIRE AND ICE-CREAM

Some say this meal will end with pie,
Some say with cake.
From apples that I saw you buy
I hold with those who favour pie.
But such a choice is hard to make,
And when I see the dishes come,
I'll take some pie, and take some cake,
And fill my tum
With stomach ache.

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A few years ago, I collected 110 of my poems into a book; I'm bringing it back into print for a few months in order to pay bills since my partner and I are both too sick to work. You can buy it from Lulu in the UK, US, and many other countries-- usually it's US$20, about £12, but at present it's discounted to US$17, about £11.

There will also be a numbered and signed proper hardback edition of ...

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(early draft, may change)

Oh, I was down in Maidstone,
I called at County Hall,
And in the council chamber there's
A handle on the wall.
They said, "Don't touch that lever!"
I asked them what they meant.
They told me, that's the handle
To raise and lower Kent.

Up, up if we pull!
Down, down if we press!
Our goals are Kent's
Controlled ascents
From here to near Sheerness.

We made...

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ELAINE DE ROPP
Who loved to thwart children
and was sacrificed to a polecat-god

A woman named ELAINE DE ROPP
Believed in knowing when to stop;
In being careful to be quite
Respectable and Good and Right,
And Decent, Upright, Free from Sin,
Unlike her cousin Conradin.
He rarely did as he was told.
For Conradin was ten years old,
And as is good for girls and boys
Was fond of Laughter, ...

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When you stand at the sand at the end of the land
before you tread the brine
where the driftwood spells with the seaweed's shells,
your barefoot prayers at the shrine
of the unseen queen of the space between
as you pass from old to new
call the gods whose friends are the odds and ends
of the threshold folk like you.

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This is just a note to say that I've started a regular series of posts called Gentle Readers, each of which will contain a poem of mine. If you're interested in receiving them twice a week, let me know. Here's the first one, on Scargill House, leaving Surrey, the Good Dalek, telling the truth, and a disturbed reverie.

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A lion, with triumphant stare,
holds high the pedigree that lay
hid in the books that line his lair.
Beneath, a pride in proud array
with golden grins agape to say
that colour (as a rule of thumb)
must meet with metal for display,
and: the sky-blue shall overcome.

Now, week by week, we've gone to Clare
for nine-score terms, until today,
to gather for a meeting, where
we sweep away naï...

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I come home in the morning boat
With mud in my wellies and a waterproof coat
Oh mother dear, your house is covered in mud
And Staines just wanna have floods

And in the streets wherever I’ve been
Detergent won’t help if you wanna get clean
This muddy water isn’t mixing with suds
And Staines just wanna have floods.

Conservatives wading, and pointing Lib Dems
Don’t help if your High Stre...

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When I get shaved it's guaranteed
the barber's hand will shake
and cut me till my chin must bleed
and upper lip mustache

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There’s a breathless fear in the mind of Gove,
Laws to make, and the polls to win;
For the ruling class in his party strove
To instil an obedient zeal therein.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But a series of words that you learn by rote:
If you don’t understand… it’s all the same.

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I walked in darkness. Many a lonely mile,
my eyes and footsteps stumbling and blind,
I sought a kindly light I could not find
in land or ocean, asking all the while
if lightless lives are taken in exchange
for light eternal; memories of sight
would whisper, even I shall see the light!

I never thought the light would look so strange.
Not in a temple, echoing and awed,
nor in a palace, gl...

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Mr Kipling and his verse were a blessing and a curse Since the Neolithic formalists began: For you know there was a day when they found a further way But abandoned it, for seventy won't scan.

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The mayor of Bayswater
Has pushed me in the water
And in Billericay lido
I'm up to my knees.

He threw me in after
I said he looked dafter;
My insult and laughter
Were meant to displease.
The mayor of Bayswater
Has pushed me in the water
And in Billericay lido
I'm up to my knees.

I laughed at him bringing
His mayoral bling-bling
But now I am wringing
And starting to freeze:
The ...

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If tealice got into the tea,
and evidence was missed,
the problems for the crop would be
too numerous to list;
the only ray of hope, you see,
is that they don't exist.

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I don't intend to die, for I have much to finish first.
But if you plan my funeral, if worst should come to worst,
I want some decent hymns, some "Love Divine"s, and "Guide me, O"s.
Say masses for my soul (for I shall need them, heaven knows),
And ring a muffled quarter-peal, and preach a sermon next
(“Behold, that dreamer cometh” should be given as the text),
Then draw a splendid h...

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