Sample poems from
Delusions of Grandeur:
Berlin funeral
“Does God ever burn his fingers?”
I asked, and Mr. Bellamy smiled.
“Why don’t you ask him when we get there?”
And I was quiet for a while,
Because the rattling train tracks filled the space
Of long departed conversations
Left in the cracks of the carriage seats,
And I was watching the undulations
Of passing Teutonic bergs
In the window stained with our reflections,
“Strange I don’t leave indentations.”
Mr. Bellamy said.
“Not as strange as you might think.” I answered.
Outside Berlin it was growing dark
And shadows holed in Bellamy’s face,
Blackening with the age of a black remark -
“A good God wouldn’t start a fire.” He said,
While the carriage lights burned red and low,
And I was quiet again and watching
The smoldering oil lamps glow.
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Sepia Dignity
Time’s subtle fish bones
Tick inside glass cases.
The slow strip tease of old books –
This is a house of burlesque.
Decades have leafed away outside,
Yellowed like newspaper
And come to rest
In the bitten timbers of the stairs.
I can’t shake the feeling that perhaps I used to live here.
Sleeping for years in the cool beige smell of old,
Layered in sedimentary carpets.
And between crusted volumes,
The faces of long dead, sepia queens
Are aging in ancient rooms
With long dead, sepia dignity.
Laughing with the records
Of East India trade
And barbarous Jesus French.
The ephemeral punters
Have crept in to see it,
The place where time and pretence
Were pickled together
In paper,
That rots and smiles and rots and smiles.
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Exhibition
The ceiling broke open at a
Molten knot where 3am
Had compressed the light bulb to a singularity.
He was left posed like an instructional diagram –
‘The Hungry Dog’ perfectly executed,
His tongue still tasting like a begging cup.
Vapid-faced but intent on the dull pearls,
Shivering string of sugar-jelly round her neck -
The Victorian clasp;
He remembered the long fingers stretching
Backward, check nothing was left inside,
A move as smooth as the natural history
Of carpet burns, the points of her hips
Or the subcutaneous passport stamps
Prickling her inner thigh.
And by increments, the small hours
Dilate: the lightening morning
Staring down the bedside lamp,
The purr of the milk float
And her steps on the stair like money.
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