Beautiful sunny morning in Brighton. Seems to be intermittent thick sea mist and lovely warm sun. Just had immense breakfast of kippers and toast and now gulping coffee number two. I am girding loins to go shopping with Anton. At least it will be bloke's shopping: clothes so as not to repel MJ or be not pelted with stones in New York, cds (me), records (anton) and books (both) plus whatever Anton's craze du jour is.
Have been fiddling with poems again. These are not random poems rather two poems that have been hanging about unsatisfactorily.
I used to come to Brighton a lot many years ago when my friends Tim and Rosa lived here, and I passed near where they lived the other day in Hove. Yesterday found this unfinished poem about their wedding day. Unfortunately both are long dead now from aids. I have written poems about them which have been published. But this one has never been finished.
It is a bit odd but it derives from the fact I was best man at their wedding and knew they were both dying.
The wedding guest
From the margins of their loving I went
Out into the field spattered with mercury;
The toxic mix of moisture and the moon.
Your wedding night, and the right sorts were there
Those artists and writers untouched by fame
And I shook -- the full unblinking moon blaze --
I shook with 2am cold and I prayed
Spilt my beer with the shaking and the prayer.
While warm in the farm were people on form
Joking, holding forth, nobody remembered
The need for a prayer, but me the pessimist
Crouched in the mist in the shit of the islanded cows.
For a joke's length I kneeled apart from those drunks
Who, drunk, accepted life as a fact that would last.
And there in the field I howled up my prayer,
Like a dog, lost in the tarot of the Moon.
This next one was a leaving poem for a colleague who had the power to completely paralyse me with anger in about three seconds. After several fights and having to work hard together I found that I had developed a grudging affection for her. Started to write this poem as a leaving present, but she enraged me yet again so I never finished it. Her plan was to ride across India with a film crew for charity. Plans which were downsized, which is another reason I never finished the poem. Yet another fragment...
A ride across India
They say that owners of diamonds are your sponsors
And that there will be a film crew in your train, but
Allow me this; a poem that goes where it wants to go,
Like a riderless horse waiting to be whispered to.
Regal and dangerous, green-eyed you regard me
Arrogantly glinting in a room by the river.
I’ve watched you panthered in the cages of your day.
And, at last, now you’ll go where you want to go.
Boldly, anachronistically on horseback, you’ll search
For your perfect Mughal garden, or a personal goal
Not entirely spiritual, but something that will advance you,
Somewhere just ahead, to glimpse the tyger’s tail.
Let cameras capture your crowning moment, this poem says,
Combing your black hair, your horse thirsty at the stream.
Have been fiddling with poems again. These are not random poems rather two poems that have been hanging about unsatisfactorily.
I used to come to Brighton a lot many years ago when my friends Tim and Rosa lived here, and I passed near where they lived the other day in Hove. Yesterday found this unfinished poem about their wedding day. Unfortunately both are long dead now from aids. I have written poems about them which have been published. But this one has never been finished.
It is a bit odd but it derives from the fact I was best man at their wedding and knew they were both dying.
The wedding guest
From the margins of their loving I went
Out into the field spattered with mercury;
The toxic mix of moisture and the moon.
Your wedding night, and the right sorts were there
Those artists and writers untouched by fame
And I shook -- the full unblinking moon blaze --
I shook with 2am cold and I prayed
Spilt my beer with the shaking and the prayer.
While warm in the farm were people on form
Joking, holding forth, nobody remembered
The need for a prayer, but me the pessimist
Crouched in the mist in the shit of the islanded cows.
For a joke's length I kneeled apart from those drunks
Who, drunk, accepted life as a fact that would last.
And there in the field I howled up my prayer,
Like a dog, lost in the tarot of the Moon.
This next one was a leaving poem for a colleague who had the power to completely paralyse me with anger in about three seconds. After several fights and having to work hard together I found that I had developed a grudging affection for her. Started to write this poem as a leaving present, but she enraged me yet again so I never finished it. Her plan was to ride across India with a film crew for charity. Plans which were downsized, which is another reason I never finished the poem. Yet another fragment...
A ride across India
They say that owners of diamonds are your sponsors
And that there will be a film crew in your train, but
Allow me this; a poem that goes where it wants to go,
Like a riderless horse waiting to be whispered to.
Regal and dangerous, green-eyed you regard me
Arrogantly glinting in a room by the river.
I’ve watched you panthered in the cages of your day.
And, at last, now you’ll go where you want to go.
Boldly, anachronistically on horseback, you’ll search
For your perfect Mughal garden, or a personal goal
Not entirely spiritual, but something that will advance you,
Somewhere just ahead, to glimpse the tyger’s tail.
Let cameras capture your crowning moment, this poem says,
Combing your black hair, your horse thirsty at the stream.
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