Notes from an artist’s studio.

Saturday 25th September 2010 at 14.15pm. 
Location: Latitude 51.37 Longitude -2.35.

Temperature:13C. Visability good.

Listening to Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, 
whilst waiting to sell a painting

I’m gazing into these short wave 
landscapes transmitting obscure locations.
There for instance the ‘East after dark’*,

behind its mask of a disused Sunday,
an unironed sheet arranged as it fell
into a corner of a neglected story.

As it prepares once more after the honeymoon
to leave this library of interludes
to taste the world.

Trust me,
I know all about the rearrangement of words,
the endless variety of wrong orders.

I improvised all these East Anglian scenes 
taken hostage here in the diary
of my recorder.

They are awaiting your amazement.
I’m waiting too penniless with impatience,
studying the tariffs of night tax,

and otherwise occupied by the flight of a bird.


* Title of a painting

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Some Days

Somedays when the mirror works you feel starbursts of joy,
clusters of tiny little ballrooms in your mind
inviting you to dance your very own tango of euphoria.
You’re ready to play the game you know best.

Alternatively if the spot inspector is on duty,
Pointing out the sacks multiplying beneath
your bloodshot eyes, your skin on loan from the morgue.
He argues with your teeth and doubles the size of your chin.

These are the mechanics who work behind mirror
hard wired into your the mood barometer,
impotent and embittered pessimists
reporting your metaphysics to the school of doubt.

Other days it’s the miserablist skulking under cloud cover
eyes the colour of a disused gene pool,
a misanthrope cloaked in an abandoned raincoat
Laying the odds on your failure to outwit the clock.

But never forget it’s you that owns the mirror,
it’s your very own Piazzolla, the soundtrack of the road that runs
between your heart and the circumference of your being,
the map the lovers of your lifelines choose for route maps.
 

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Hotel Apollo

For the beautiful Nina


Strolling down the Boulevard du Magenta
we follow the drifting smoke of Barbes Rochechouart's  
barbeques vying euros with the African carvers
under the metro archway, to Montmartre
just across from the Ministry of Tati,
Jean Paul Gaultiers, five floors worth
of pauvre demimonde fashion.

It could be a five minute stroll or an afternoon adventure
from our spiral bound hotel, in the 9th arrondissement.
On each landing of defoliated moroccan carpets,
ceramic panthers and leopards regard
their fading decadence, adjacently posing in
the ivory and inlaid gold mirrors.

This was our Paris, our very own ritual,
the circus of the Gare du Nord,
a fragrance of black coffee and gauliose.
These were our games, ours alone.
I liked to polish the dice with a polka dot rag,
and you lying there naked, so beautiful
pouring out measures of the calvados,
not caring at all what happened next.

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The Old War

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We hold hands on the road following the footfalls

of the faithfull as the one good bell summoned

us to the hill to listen to the despatches

in the last days of the cold war.

 

When the borders whispered where

and in what order the partisans must stand

to sing the songs the wounded composed 

for those who expect to be wounded.

The magic of our lives glowed like lanterns

in a winter village besieged by blizzards,

as we unfold our warm states like sheets

from the soft tissues of our promises.

 

Safe in the snow baffled silence beneath

the trajectory of an argument that will decide                               the altitude and ownership of no man’s land.

In exile we make confetti and listen 

 

To the causes, ticking like antique clocks

their dull wooden tongues serving time

on the ever unwinding mainspring’s speech

slowly but surely running out of words. 

 

 

Histon Fields

A dog barks across the ochre distillery
of a late sun autumn afternoon
at the wild butchers gun gaming
the parliment of parish rooks.

A white plume of smoke rises
from a damp fire a cured old man
cooks on tobacco land of solitude and sheds,
where grandfathers study and keep the peace.

Soon when all the burning's done
and children take the ashes home
to scatter over our traditions,
the congregation kneels and measures
the duration of its service.

The stormcock's north gives winter
a cold church in which to shelter,
the old man finds a stick to poke
the meter of the season, 
 

counting the days
staining his wood darker.

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A Proposition

I understand the journey of these trains

and there 
illicit destinations,

My broker selling one way singles 
to your desire and taboo.

There are no returns.
My track runs

from the omerta to the full confession.


This is the road I am writing,

the map I invite you to witness.


I squeeze out the drizzle from these antique rains.


I offer you my bleakness. You offered me your love.