Missing

One was expressive, one was passive

One loved me, one pushed me away

One had words, the other had silence

One was colourful, one was grey

One I miss, the other was missing

One was happy, the other sad

Two lights, green and red, both blinking

Frozen on amber I was nearly mad

Oh no, I was never depressed

Never depressed in my life. Not for one day

Shut up, Tony. No-one wants to hear what you have to say

One was poetic, one prosaic

One was wood, the other was air

Two people, one was missing

Two parents, one not there

The poetry of poverty

You're standing on a giant mound of waste

You're here for a television programme

On recycling in Mumbai – wow, how great!

Do that again, please, let the viewers see

A little boy scavenges on the tip

It's such a vibrant form of poverty

The recycling rate here's second to none

The boy's standing in sewage, in bare feet

You think that's good? You must be a moron

Once London had the same kind of squalor

Mudlarks and toshers probed filth for treasure

In the stinking river was cholera

The poor's innocence is a fallacy

They are not better because they have less

To envy their life is hypocrisy

You peer winsomely at the camera

I'll miss it here, but I won't miss that though

A crusted brown sewer rat slithers by

Developers want to push this away

How beastly. Your white face now appears strained

Course they do. Ever been to Bermondsey?

The poor get moved out all the time, don't squeal

They also get street lamps, clinics and schools

Some of them lose out, some don't, that's the deal

Some get the things that people like you blame –

Like motor cars. You rich town-bred Greenies

Poverty is so charming. What a shame

Tommy Sheridan – a sonnet

Tommy Sheridan, you're the new Oscar

Your indiscretions are a national sport

You are half-Socialist, half-rock star

Your dirty linen was wrung-out in court

You had your silk ties and your perma-tan

You played the court room, an alpha male

Wilde had his collars of astrakhan

You both had followers – you your wife, Gail

That you could take on the establishment

Was a delusion of your stubborn pride

A cell door closes on your predicament

Sealing your fate, a few weeks spent inside

Wandsworth and Reading broke poor Wilde, it's said

Let's hope that you fare better, and stay red

Gentle Giant – love 'em

Your music was just too delicate

For those head-bangers with their long hair

Sabbath fans, they booed you off the stage

Every night. I wish I'd been there

Sabbath were good, but differently

They did not do your polyphony

Or your Medieval counterpoint

Or your melancholic subtlety

Men dressed as elves playing instruments

You were asking for trouble, not beers

Did you feel like Stravinsky, those nights

With bottles flying around your ears?

The two brothers and Green with his blues

Pugwash, always muscular, on sticks

Kerry Minear's riffing keyboards

You were Medieval lunatics!

Fanatics

There is nothing that men don't do

Competitively – snorkelling

Growing dahlias, the shot put

And of course, stand-up comedy –

Desperation and testosterone

All over the planet are bores

Dogmatists, didacts, fanatics.

They are tuning their Fiestas

Fiddling with things in their sheds

Re-booting their precious hard drives

The religious ones are the worst

Bearded Jehovans, banning kites

Or stopping girls going to school

Spreading, from their pulpit or cave

The tedious dogma of God's word

Even the chefs are at it now

The sweaty know-alls are doing

Molecular gastromomy

Foraging in the forest, or

On the seashore, like some extreme sport

Thank god poetry is immune

From men waving their dicks around

In the air, like pathetic flags

Some do, actually; it's shame

But no-one has killed yet for beauty.

Ballad of Tommy Sheridan

Oor Tommy is a sexy man

He likes to go with women

They sent him down for perjury

A different kind of sinning

Murdoch told the Sunday Times

I want that man in prison

He's guilty of a major crime

A love of Socialism

And so reporters stitched him up

Pretending to be be blokey

They tapped his phone illegally

And now he's going to chokey

So chin up Tommy Sheridan

And face your time inside

You are a martyr to your cause

Like poor old Oscar Wilde

Ode to Vince Cable

Parental advisory

We all make mistakes, I know that

He seems sincere, but all the same

We've been totally frigged over

By that arse-licker. What's his frigging game?

He's bent us over the desk and

Done us every which way, like gimps

Yeh, we've been rogered, royally

Shafted. Just like a load of stupid chimps

Thanks to that coalition deal

We're bollocked; it's all gone to hell

He stitched up the students
That dick. Now it's personal

We are doing this for Britain

Don't give me that shit. It's all wrong

We're sliding down the pole, my friend

Into the abyss. It's all gone Pete Tong

He has no gravitas at all

Cameron's pal, what a twat

And he's frigged up his own party

The Liberal frigging Democrats

Perfect love

A conversation with my mother

When I remember you, I think of your plants

The improbable displays on your window sills

The flowering cacti bursting into bloom

Cyclamens, your favourites, and the amaryllis

That I would would buy, as a present, each Christmas

A spike of optimism, waiting to explode

If you were green-fingered it was merely because

You loved things and looked after them, patiently,

Without judgment or reservation. That was your way

You had not been loved enough yourself

Yours was a perfect love. That's why people loved you

You were a collector. You nurtured all that grew

In many ways, I think, your heart was too big

Your colours too vivid, for an English town

You were an odd pair, you and my dad

You with your musicals, he with his melancholy

But each day brought you happiness, in small things

Like a new letter. Together, you were complete

He was kind and patient, that's why you loved him

Especially on holidays, when there was all of us

Kids in the jumpers you knitted, standing by the fence

The tang of the sea, fresh comics, Jerry's itching feet

They were idyllic those times. We remember them.

We are your brood. Your love flows through our veins

Memories are sensations – the smell of beef roasting

The sound of Beethoven or “bloody Leonard Cohen”

Sunday lunch. Records. Often, it was a battle ground

Sometimes, flower beds were trampled; you cried

But, see, the polyanthus you planted are still there

A bright patch of hope. The path leads back, to the front door

We don't do snow

The winter invader returns to the gates

And lies sullenly outside, mocking us.

We stand by our radios, waiting for news.

We are besieged – another day of hope

More jack knifes, more blankets given out.

That was the M 25, and now, your views

This new war is all over the media

Like a white wave, it's pushed everything else out.

As usual, it is all about fault

We British like to belittle ourselves

Waggle our fingers, listen to “experts”.

We don't do snow. We don't have enough salt

Mike Leigh films

Out of an argument with others, we create prose; out of an argument with ourselves, poetry

Because you are so middle-class

You are surprised that the poor are kind
Solicitous; sometimes they shout!
You like to read Polly Toynbee

Even your violence is false
It leaves a taste of saccharine
Because it's an aberration –
It's not from the world that you see

Little pockets of love, maybe
An oboe, or a frigging harp
Winter on the allotment
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

People being so frigging nice
I would rather drive six-inch nails
Slowly into my hands than watch
Your trite, insipid cinema

The poor are bad, greedy, stupid
Like the rich – some of them – and some
Of the wealthy are quite guiltless –
Your approach is one-size-fits-all

It's shapeless, like a woolly hat
There's no caffeine, no guts to it
Like coco, or camomile tea
Old bollocks, bought from a church hall

I haven't made any friends with this poem. It's like being nasty about the Queen Mother. But his last film was spectacularly awful; the one before that was an abomination. Abigail's Party I liked very much. I think that Leigh should direct an action movie  –  maybe the next batman

Ode to Danny Dyer

You was out of town Danny, yeh
We'd been casing your gaff, if you wanna know
So, when you was at that new ballet
We've broke in – through your flipping patio

Me ’an Tom was well-impressed
By the stuff what was on your shelves
Your lovely cushions, ’an them coverlets
Sorry blood, we've only ’elped ourselves!

That giant-screen telly ain't no toy
It's pukah. We’ve ’ad to ’ave a go
Now, it's in Cash Converters, bruv
Wiv your guitar, ’an your stereo

We put some music on
’An we danced around like fools
Tom got tearful then
It does that to ’im, that Glenn Gould

I fink we liked your bedroom best
To be honest, we was in there for hours
Tom was enchanted by your prints
He must've tried all of your massage oils

E's only gone into the walk-in dressing room
Next fing, e's in the Coco Chanel
So what if you wear women's clothes
A lot of us do. It's only natural!

Nice motor you got there, the Clio
The pink one, what's under a sheet
It's a lady's car, yeh, but it ain't no shame
It's good for blokes wiv small feet!

It got us back to the smoke
Then we've torched it, on the estate!
When you're down this way, give us a call
Me ’an Tom love your work, Danny mate

Frank Field – the song

Tried to screw up pensions

Sacked by Tony Blair

Like a Jesuit, you wear a shirt of hair

Your a Victorian workhouse man, Frank Field

Your thing is taking money from the poor

Thatcher had the same idea before

Too many people on the dole

Take their dosh, you're on a role, Frank Field

The greedy bankers pissed the money away

And now we the poor suckers have to pay

You are the prince of poverty

You're David Cameron's favourite toy, Frank Field

Frank Field's mother did not hold her boy

That's why he is no friend of love or joy

One day the Tories will be kicked out

But for now it's still your shout, Frank Field

Frank Field – Prince of Paupers

Square cut for a more heroic age

There's a maniacal set to you jaw

You are the new Conservative sage

Part human and part skeletor

Strange, thin Jesuitical bloke

Tried to screw up pensions, sacked by Tony Blair

Now back in the fold – a masterstroke

You want to take money from the poor

The largess of the Welfare State

Always offended your moral rules

You were designed for the Poor Laws, mate

Dishing out gristle, or watery gruel

You like to spout the latest jargon

A right-wing discourse we've heard before

They'll only blow the money at Argos

They are so undeserving, these poor

Middle-class prejudice, current still

The mum's on drugs, the boy can barely talk

Your master's voice comes from Notting Hill

Cameron speaks it, you walk the walk

The money's gone, blown on bonuses

Shame. Now you spout your sterile creed

Like a weird, cracked conduit –

Meanness is the other side to greed

Lace doilies in the Field house

A clock ticks. Shut up. Don't make a sound

Don't talk. Be as quiet as a mouse

You – at the edge of the playground

We can only speculate, Frank

That your mother did not hold her boy

You were destined for insurance, or a bank

You envy what the poor possess – joy

Whiteout

To Karina

Behind the snow, more snow piling down

Me, in my kitchen, standing at the window

I'm waiting for something to be delivered

In a big lorry, on a day like this – ridiculous

And so the day has been gifted to me

Snow is something to share – smooth

Like felt, the Christmas lights, the crisp air

I walk to the shops thinking of you

There's only one kind of butter you will eat

‘It's the old people I feel sorry for’

You would love this. I miss you so much

Too much loss and behind, another loss

Drifting from the sky. Waiting to come down

There's only one kind of butter you will eat

And only one kind of bread. I love you

Kidderminster to Euston

Expectant lights forlornly blinking

Here, winter colours are all year round

Hope is stacked, the pub is waiting

For the Christmas tree to be unfurled

Winter slides past the Virgin train

England in corduroy – grey and brown

Horse pastures and jumbled allotments

Retail sheds and football fields

Warnings of suspicious packages

Punctuate the train's smooth progress

Through the winter fields, green and maroon

Let's hope that Christmas is a peaceful one

Wagner or Wagner?

An examination of cultural signifiers

I don't like the taste of foccaccia

Or the poetry of Boccaccio

Italian poetry is merely rude

As is texture and taste in food

My kitchen cupboards are laid bare

Of all exotic foreign fare

Instead of basil you will see

Plain white bread, and penury

Don't like Cage nor Bartok neither

Schoenberg's not my lemon squeezer

Clark's provide my favourite shoes

Pam Ayres is my Parnassan muse

If interrogated I shall

Denounce the Bayreuth Festival

Let silence fill the Viking Halls

Pasquale is my Parcifal

Charlotte Street blues

It's a long queue for one who is barely famous
Soho. A weekday night. A crowd snakes through the rain
Folk, some in their fifties, wait patiently for you – us

Inside, the ambience, part concert hall, part pub
Is a fitting space for your soaring Les Paul
With its intimate tables – a New Orleans club

Sweat, fear and sorrow, in the dark, gave us these songs
Danger is part of the contract we all have
The crowd, restive and drunk, wills you to go on

Scowling, as if pride was not a mortal sin
You hack through a familiar repertoire
From the Bluesbreakers, a band you were never in

A camera flashes, a snarl crosses your face

Offended you lash out – like a wounded animal
To show generosity is to be truly great

Your last song is a cliche, painted on velvet
With its lurid colours and predictable lines
Are you a blues immortal? Not really – not yet

Your face distorts to the tortured howl of your guitar

The last riff in your book of tricks – not doing an encore

I turn away puzzled. The crowd calls for more

NB: Poor chap died shortly after this poem was written, in a hotel in Spain, leaving a tiny footnote in the history of popular music. Maybe he read it? He was not a happy bunny when I saw him.

Playing tennis with Martin Amis

Martin's vicious forehand slams
a yellow missile onto the baseline.
It's a rocket. Whistles like a bullet.
Two games to one. Final set.

With a faintly superior smile
he looks almost apologetic.
‘I'm afraid I won that one, again’.
He shows barely a trace of sweat.

My people wrapped butter for his.
There is a certain look to their mouth.
We pressed their cricket whites
ran their baths, polished their brogues.

Their superiority is in-bred:
part of the order of things
like Martin's forehand lob.
We died for them in our droves.

Prep school, Oxford, the coxless fours
and now this. A minor victory
on the municipal courts.
He is about to take me apart.

He crouches at the quivering net.
He'll be modest in victory, of course
smile and offer a limp fist.
Shame I had such a bad start.

The King and Castle, Kidderminster

Old men slouch in the drab gentility

Of the nostalgic railway waiting room

With its Thirties posters and station clock

Rustling their pages, merely keeping warm.

A Midlands town on the edge of nowhere –

Bricks baked from the earth, in ochre roads

The skeletons of mills, an oily canal.

Clouds slide across the pewter sky like shrouds.

In a curious archaeology

Their memories are reflected in here –

A world of rock cakes and steaming tea urns

When cigarette smoke fogged the atmosphere.

There were no poncy trades. People made things.

The ghostly men drink their beer, patiently.

My eyes stray from the oxblood walls. Outside

Two white gulls drift over the rooftops.

Too far

Slow man you have swum out too far

Your face a scowl, eyes a fierce stare

No more questions to the sweet girls

Who look after you, your carers

A pretty garden, people said

A small room, a bed, sink and chairs

Photos. The air nursing home thick

We hold hands in the dark, for hours

Each morning brings the same blue gaze

Eyes from a dead face that express

Anger that you cannot come back

Slow man you have swum out too far

Autumn SE22

Brick ships loom through the clouds
Pastel buildings, yellow sludge of flowers
Peckham is at her brightest now
Deliquescent. A cut-price utopia

It is light that binds us through the murk
A glimpse of Florida millionaires
Today's chatter – the economy
Experts dilate, on six-figure salaries

The city is a vast, decaying hulk
We are its ghost crew, its shadows
Autumn pavements are wreathed in mists
Like wraiths, we slide through its cracks

Winter makes us all a bit northern

Buy us a bitter, it's your shout
It's time to get the Parka out
The leaves in the flaming trees
Flutter like celebrities


Already dark at half past four
Going to the fookin bar
The sky's as black as a Staffy's mouth
Even in the fookin south


Icy mornings, sugary brew
Drinks that smell like superglue
Hobbling girls in tiny skirts
Sweaty blokes in nylon shirts


Winter is a northern squeeze
It's always cold on Salford Quays
The darkness never goes away
Even in the fookin day

Covent Garden piazza 2010

Suspended under the canopy

Drill hall commands echo and bounce

The rhythm of roar and shout

Exhilaration, an elixir

We watch, intently, from the crowd

It is a slow fall towards death.

In the high, vaulted arena

Where light falls, pigeons unfurl

And bright tables glamourise

I carry my melancholy heart

Ode to Naomi Campbell

Our paths will never cross

I will never talk to you, Naomi

I will never break the code

Behind which you hide

You held the court in your hand

Your face, inscrutable

Dark glasses. Black on black

You were glamour personified

You ride your celebrity like a raft

Fame itself is your muse

Magnificence in obsidian

Down the cat walk, you stride

That dictator business was merely

A trivial inconvenience

You are a goddess, after all

What does it matter who died?

Remember the days that we spent

On Streatham High Road

Scouring Woolworths for a ring?

It did not happen. We did not coincide

At least you did not batter me

Here, Naomi, take this pebble

A diamond for my troth. May it

Unfreeze your hurt, inside

Life: a manual

I woke up. Pretended to be a bloke
Conducted an argument with myself
Walked to the bus: a swaying goldfish bowl

One must navigate between earth and sky
Find one's way through a forest of symbols
Like a knight in a dark, silent wood

Though life is finite, a one-way ticket
The eternal endures, light and dark
The candles of horse chestnuts standing proud

The shaded graves are as cool as water
On a hot, prickly day. I walk past them
Imagining I am not going to die

Why is Liz Hurley so rich?

You with your radical innocence Did not ask for this daily display Of wickedness and stupidity The imbeciles with their megaphones Proclaiming their prejudice, with pride In this world of ours, wrong begets wrong The soft-voiced disseminate their lies As their badness becomes ossified In a slew of religions, cultures And competing ideologies We remain ignorant of our drones That bring terror to a foreign land And reward the merely beautiful Why is Liz Hurley so rich, and why Did Lineker play away from home?

England versus Slovenia, 23 June, 2010

A preternatural stillness

hangs eerily in the air

like a question that goes unsaid.

On burning summer pavements

and in chilled supermarket aisles

England is unified, in one shout.

We are united in our desire –

beer gutted and taut of belly

dowager and lager lout.

Flags stream from scorched balconies,

smoke climbs from barbecues

into the clear, listless sky.

Blistered by summer heat

the honking vans announce

that which they normally hide –

the national colours, our hope

bright emerald, white and red

the small weaving figures, our pride.

(NB. The disappointing game ended in an unconvincing, one nil victory for England. The winning goal, the only bright point, was scored by Jermain Defoe – a header from a cross by James Milner.)

Life is love

What value does life have?
The discourse of men in suits
The sound of footsteps as they pass
The chirping of sparrows
The busker in the underpass

All have a transient lease
Of what relevance are they?
A few moments of beauty and strife
The echoing footsteps fall
Is life merely life?

We are microbes on a ball
Or, to put it another way
We are united as one
Our path is universal
We are light, love, the sun

The beach at Deia

It is a house inhabited by ghosts
Your totems, your carefully folded shirts
Shaped terraces of lavender and thyme
Tall carobs and orange and lemon trees.

There must have been enough of England in Deia
In the grey cliffs that walled your domain
In the sycamores by the rushing brook
And the white hawthorns frothing by the road

There is a different poetry here
Where stepped mountains climb to the sky
Of tumbling orchards of olive and fig
Of jigsaw boulders and the super-charged stream

Slicing though tortured cliffs like an ogre's house
Today, there is a world you never knew
The parked hatchbacks are like silverfish
There is a barrier across the sacred grove


We walked down the road to your beach
To your crystal pool, somehow defiled
By a driftwood bar, the colours of Europe laid out
Flakes of plastic, like shells, on the grey stones.

Water does not change – the sigh of the spinning brook
The glowing of flesh opened to the sun
I sat on the beach with a black goddess
Your lemon in our wine. Thank you Mr Graves

The world does not have hospitals

With reference to William Wordsworth

The world does not have hospitals, or schools,
Or museums, except those built by us.
It is a place of ignorance and sloth.
Its beauties are over-rated, by fools.
The world, in fact, is esteemed far too much
For its ants, pipits, tigers and flowers,
Killing and eating each other for hours.
Nature's a hostile universe; it sucks.
Great God, I would rather be in London
With its escalators and shopping malls
Wrapped in the city’s vast, murmuring hum
Than looking at heaths or waterfalls.
London’s glories are far more startling ones
The smeared orange sky, the dome of St. Pauls

Overload - to my father

Removed, in a vague amniotic dream
I forgot who I was, who I could be

I could not stand it, the divine comedy
The beauty and pathos of life itself

A sagging settee was my continent
I dissolved into a gentle haze

The world is too much with us, far too much
I drank every day so as not to see

II

Years passed. The pain of living was dulled
The quotidian ache of light and dark

Into a vague blur, far beyond all strife
Where the daily terror could not reach me

I suspended myself, because I could
In a bubble. Who can tolerate life?

It is too beautiful and too strange
It is much better when seen drunkenly

Tigress

As if leaving you was not bad enough
There is the heartbeat of your key in the door
And the rage of my inexpressive love
When you go out, and do not return

You are far too young for this
You are barely more than a child yourself
But you are complete - a tigress with her cub
Lying with AJ, in your room

It is a scene of great tenderness
A serene resolution, beautiful
I leave feeling a strange continuity
Because in you I can see your mum

Journey through my father

It’s a strange time to fade away
Just as the yellow fists are pushing through

Memories, locked in the blood, are reviving
Just like you – your stubborness

You were never one for beauty
You chose a dull street in a red-brick town

The seasons there were merely endured
You trudged to the shops in your brown coat

You were the king of the masculine world
Of cold that locks the fingers. Stoical

Of cars that did not start, of rust, and shelves
Summer chases the winter ghosts

You will not see it. Your mind is gone
The dull houses, the dark canal, by the pub yard

I sit on a wall, with the sun on my back
Watching the daffodils break the soil

On and on

The fields of winter shimmering

Guide me to you now

The giant sun aligns my path

Like angels in the sky

And now that you have gone away

All that's left is Time

On and on and on and on an on

I stand and watch Orion's belt

And drink a Barley Wine

The plants on the window sill

No longer seem divine

And now that you have gone away

All that's left is Time

On and on and on and on an on

The fields of winter shimmering

Guide me to you now

The giant sun aligns my path

Like angels in the sky

And now that you have gone away

All that's left is Time

On and on and on and on an on

Hugglescote Baptist graveyard

NB: True story, my family, the Hatchetts, lived in this everyday village in the Leicestershire coalfield. My great great grandfather, William, died of typhoid in 1874, aged 35, as did his wife, Hannah. He was a bootmaker. One of his two sons, James was fostered to a bank manager and became a bank clerk.  Banking must have entered the family's bloodstream - his son, my grandfather, James Leslie, was manager of the Lloyds bank in Droitwich, where my dad grew up in the 1920s and ’30s. After the war, James also became - peal of trumpets - the Mayor of Droitwich – a small, round man with glassses. He was an Independent. My dad told me that he was a Freemason. When I discovered  Hugglescote, a village for the which the adjective “ordinary” could have been invented and its Baptist graveyard, with its uniform slate stones, I immediately felt a sense of community that my life has lacked and at home there. And it was  a frisson to discover that my ancestors were Baptists. Where am I from?Junction 22 of the M1!

This countryside says sorry for itself
Its terraces, aligned from pub to pub
Its mountains, untidy mounds of slag

The pit heads and the winding gear are gone
Leaving, merely, an ambiguous urban fringe
Lead grey, on a Midlands afternoon

My ancestors walked along these streets
Drank in these pubs; they wore their Sunday best
Succumbed to typhoid, coalfield maladies

The Baptist church was their Jerusalem
They hoped for a life beyond the mundane
Lived and died, unremarked by history

Newton Burgoland is where we pull in
At a coaching inn - a fire, warm food
Lads in blue shell-suits slouch at the bar

They eye, suspiciously, our city clothes
The strangers – like ploughboys in an old print

“'What are you doing here?” says the barmaid

I am from here; this is where I am from
My great great grandfather's memorial
Is a slab in Hugglescote graveyard

A hundred years ago, I would have been

An insider, patching up boots and shoes
Joking with the barmaid – one of them

Tall grey stones slanted by a winter sun
“I won't let go,” I say, lifting you up
You slip from my fingers, and drop back

Cold snap

The sky is full of rain
And roadworks are blocking our way
The snowmen are melting
It’s sad that they must disappear
But the snow must be got rid of
Like this winter's day

We peer through a hole smeared in the window
Mummy had to drive to work
And grandma got stuck in her house
The smudged sky is a mirror of my soul
My head is still spinning from last night
On my lap, The Picture of Dorian Gray

The return

The grass is a shining white sea

A perfect plane, perfect shadow, a clear light

That speaks of possibilities

The buses, as stiff as blood

Form a patient line by the winter common

There is still a frozenness about

Figures are awakening from a long sleep

As I pass by Peckham's parade

Of peppers and fish, the startling green of the library

The solid geometry of the wood yard

Disillusioned by freedom I am inured

To the slow, orderly return

To a life regulated by colour and light

A place of queues, where harmony is observed

Nature is indifferent, but not this world