&

January 2010

SS

Folksy

the way the error message keeps a straight face                 that actions have

consequences            parents their children, bombs

and the folks behind them                                               just a thought

and their generations before that               time inching up

                       ‘And it doesn’t stop.           None of it

               stops, ever,’

the weak sun above              dry air         doesn’t make it

any lighter     a truck peeps, beat and pipe                            each day a fresh entry

       to the world, Indian summer the occasion

to lie again kicking out

RM

Mercy
Have none.

A kind
Of convalescence

Stripped bare
Of cure or consequence.

Loneliness
A kind of illness

Yet in this city,
Someone moving

Whose presence in it…
Do you imagine

Looking in
Or out

Of windows

SS

12/13.xi.09

on the look out, and a couple of days’ escape                   Venice, Pound

caged – ‘mouth                                                  removed’

lines barred with blue-ruled lines      in this city red leaf hopping like a green bird –
                                                                       dark by 4

                                                                                       all my miss
takes a catalogue               read off the masks                      marks out of the core
of me                   occupied by other text                          matter

               arising                                         floats along the motorway

                       it’s raining in New Cross Gate at 18.24, 54º
cloudy, and in New York City 13.24 a clear 64º – and ‘pure/form has its value’ my i

Phone says so

RM

The leaves of the Japanese Maple red
As the other trees are bare.

It has been the worst autumn I can remember
(Save one)
Walking New York, performing those old shared rituals
In pantomime. 

From the 9th floor looking east:
Harlem, the lights of a bridge, Queens,
Long Island, New Cross?

The scars of latitude, lungs, i-
Solation.

SS

‘meanwhile, at 24 Reservoir Road, SE4 . . .’

Roman legionnaires tramp past my front door

clutching copies of Allen Fisher’s PLACE (Reality

                                                                               Street, 2005) ‘even better than

the real                                                                thing’ what is

                       represented                                                     the theory

boys at it again                                text                                                    stuffed

                                                       inmouthandears                          pitch-

black through the mid-Kent

                                                                                       countryside we are

coming over the

edge                            into light.  The light          flaw built in           the dis

ruption                 built in the destruction                                man-made

               car park and no men                             i

so                                              late            standing                still and walking

                                                                               trees bare

spotted the kestrel from the carriage           window          but I don’t

think                                                                           hard enough for theory

RM

Seasick and can’t swim
Thus we believe what we believe
Until we cease to believe it.

This conversation isn’t over yet.

I read a self help book
On living without regret.
That’s four hours I’ll never get back.

No lifeboat.
Only letting go.

One always steps up
From a sinking ship.