For Gil Scott-Heron (I'm New Here Too)

I'm twenty-one years old
and you seem older than the hills
yet you're new here
and I feel ancient.
We're hard to get to know,
I agree, but I'm easy to forget,
it seems. I'm waiting
to write poems like you, Gil,
I'm waiting with the mist
on my mind, floating
up through my nostils
on the midnight wind
in the magic hour. I breathe
deep and clean until
my vision is shaky
and I can hardly stand.

Then it comes to me:
a thought floating out
of the night (which,
in the city, never darkens)
and I catch it
- my perception is acute,
even if my will faulters.
I draw the enigma
out of the orange sky
of smokestacks and gazometres,
overpasses and bus shelters.
I pick it from the corners
of billboards and from
under litter bins, between
a sleeping vagrant's teeth,
pull it through the blades
of a local green
and into the road
with the pigeons
and drunken stories
gathered up from
newspaper clippings.
- Her with her tits out,
with all the opinions
on me and you, everything,
better she tells it;
I wouldn't be taken
seriously, no second glance,
they may as well have
seen straight through me,
I do, anyway.

That thought I had,
pure as the gum
on my shoe: I picked
that up somewhere too.

I've gone pretty far
now; I have to make
it look intentional.
I did it on purpose,
I heard a poem
on a street corner
and made a turn,
blind as a farmboy
in the age of bluesman
who played slide guitar
and women like cards.

I'm here thinking this
in an old place -
it's a good thought
and I'm new to it.
I'm having fun
so I'll make
the rules up after
I've summed up
the scores, let's
see: one to me,
a handfull of revolutions,
a record deal and
fisherman's hat for you.
Let's start over;
I've got troubles
like everyone else,
no eagles on me,
no broken homes allowed,
we'll keep our voices
of reason, we can
always turn around.

Tell Me Now

You’re only as good as your last work;
you're not sleeping until you’re laying in the dirt;
you’ll never love until you know what it’s worth;
you’ll only bleed if you cry out that you’re hurt;
tell me now, in all your days:
what have you learnt?


You’re going nowhere unless you know where you’ve been;
you’ll never win unless you know how to cheat;
you’ll win friends if you know the enemies you keep;
you’ve grown successful when you harvest jealousy;
tell me now, in all your days:
what do you believe?


You don’t need belief if you know the truth;
you can be sure of anything if you have the proof;
you’re only old if you never think anything new;
you’ll never set sail unless you’re one of the crew;
tell me now, in all your days:
what have you got to lose?


You tell me you ‘sleep, perchance to dream,’
– you can’t act unless you’re in the right scene;
you can’t hold up a candle without striking a match;
you can’t walk through her door if I’ve dropped the latch;
tell me now, in all your days:
have you ever shown your hand?

Untitled, September 3rd - I Tell You

I tell you I’ll never enlist
to cook up poppy seeds;
I see the high water rising,
threatening foreign policy.
Who’s going to lobby a million
farmers and their children?
Be damn sure the only dotted
line I’ll sign is a pay-slip.

Don’t get hung up
on your counterfeit ideals
– You don’t need faith
with nothing to believe in.
You’d be hard-pressed
to find the soul of an altruist
it’s spread so thin.
Virtue only exists in
the absolute morality
of the individual
– identity is retained
in logic and reason alone.

Confiscate all the bows
and arrows, teach peace
to the conquered?
– With a gun to their heads,
they can’t help
but love one-another.
I’ve met every casting call
with a grim expression;
to each admissions board,
I’ve read my poem
and, second verse,
they said, “Shut up talkin’,
you ain’t W.H. Auden.”

I’m not waiting around
to be a great man after the fact;
those iconic pen-smith
memories have grown cataract.
I want my face on the cover;
I’ll keep my sponsors fat.
If, like a rebel of the past,
I can steal a couple column inches,
I fear being branded a plagiarist
at best, with impeccable taste,
or a martyr, at the very least,
with much time wasted.

Picket Song

All cards wild at the press junket,
Pigs in kitsch suit aesthetic,
Signing up as clockwork volunteers,
Ink-lip their names to a list,
Form ranks armed
To the teeth with Mint Juleps,
Calmly advance on my salient,
Feathered by a fist,
Tarred with a kiss
- I hope to never know why that is.

I’ll walk myself back
To the stocks above my bed,
My boots leak - I don’t care.
My eyes deep in my pockets,
On the midnight street,
I’ll shuffle and stare
At the news-print on my fingers:
Life without a future tense.
Go for coffee and cigarettes.
Writers’ bar-room circle
Follow their own scripts.


“Punch your time-card, boy,
You’ve got work to do.”
I sweep the salt from the ground,
Pretend I’m D.B. Cooper.

Single Malt / Crimson Lips

Don’t look for consistency when

asking about his identity:

he’s a cross between himself

and a stranger he has never met.

Sure feeling like a million sterling

and then some change,

the whisky in his belly

sets him in the path

of a spectral dame.

Begging for the freedom

to just pick up and leave,

by introduction he hopes

to conquer this dimensionless beast

simply born of the syllogism

of the dancefloor rhythm

and the flash of a chandelier.

Alien to mortal existence,

her skin is a wondrous tapestry

of infinite colour and complexity,

stained indelibly by a dress

that would look the height of fashion

on any other woman.

Bored of having every whim answered,

every degenerate wish granted,

she forces he pay the theft

of living in the crowded

miser’s den of private ego.

An unimaginable force keeps

this sybarite inexplicably

anchored to observable reality.

He should have been thrown out by now

but instead stands as an impertinence

to their unstated lust, tight

in the jaw, clutching an expensive single malt.

A dilettante of the vilest crime

imaginable, she tortures him

with the peculiar imagery

of crimson lips blooming

on her stony expression.

They assess each other’s

lurid intentions, painfully

aware of the suffocating

emptiness of impatience.

Tell Everyone

Don’t be too surprised as I
Click heels with the blessed of ‘em;
Wait ‘til we’re out of hiding –
News reels just haven’t
Confessed it for us yet.


Their Dolce and Gabbana
Public cadre, mobile messages
Tightly taped to their faces.
Can whisper to America; so opined
Yet never even queued for groceries.


Fine with me though: I could happily nap
During debacle retrospect, ‘The public
Were not in danger at any time.’
Is the mantra of avenues run
By nebulous crooks.


They may refer me to their lawyers
With apoplectic whispers,
Those botulined etiquette by-pass baiters,
Who pick their sons and
Their daughters from long glass tubes


– Cask-conditioned birth cocktails.
They enumerate these benefits,
With an accent to seduce Gorilla-men
And tempt their Santa Monica
Wives into troop formation,


While I’ll be talking all that jazz,
Order a double (extra black) to blunten edges,
Mix in melodrama spin for other-half
Apologetic passengers who’ve
Nothing else to do or say:


“I’ve all these wonderful remarks to make
Because of course I am a writer
And I can jive poetic about any skirt
That can direct traffic;
How the sum of her parts defines her.”


The cutter’s choice is too good
To cover in rags no-one will motive;
Those rakish details young
Designers bring to things.
That hyperbole?


Whose cheeks’re so perfect
You wouldn’t believe?
I joke I’ve lain her twice
But seriously: tell everyone.

Sharp Noir (Part IV)

Noir’s father was a neighbourhood

mensch and Machiavelli

of phonebooth and pocketbook,

“Surrendering his wealth,

he followed the Colonel,

rolled heads at The Palace

(Before Rubix) but left us

without notice one night

as we slept,” – his calls blocked

as his friends stopped turning

up for work, their absurd

time-cards gone, their letters

cropped; at their doors

he’d morse’d dead knocks

and uttered dusty whispers

into lobby tin-speakers.

“His documents, photographs

we had to burn; medals

in a tin buried beneath

a birch by the railway

bridge to the steel mill;

I’m a girl fixing the memory

of a long line of railmen.”

The Balladeer cuts an expression

into her harmonica and begins

to play with messianic hint;

the milieu echo Cecil B. DeMille’s

name in the realm of question;

with the roseate breath in her lungs,

she appears to paint freely with

the caustic saloon air.

The mass of canines without

eyes in front, dripping entropy,

produced from the bar

on some vast Martini loom,

swarm to her like flies

to the sweetness of rotting fruit.

Dusted by a pollen of kisses,

lovers stretch gratitudes

toward mistaken donors, create

illusions later perceived false.

A stewardess hands out scented towelettes

to mop our cephalic sweat

(not a flicker of interest

across her vampirically pale

features). Appearing in seriatim,

sciatic dancers null our osseous pains.

The green pharisees turn and run

to The Juke but he’s wreathed in love.

His body speeds, all bravado,

feet barely beneath him,

the slender amandus dynamos

around her, lashed by pinball

awareness, running wild and bold

- a distracted chatelaine failed

to tether this restless colt.

I’m tipping brown sugar

in a filter coffee, sighing

at a saucy type in a fur collar,

as some of the crowd begin

to fumble for their chalk,

pull at ties, palm their lips aghast,

become fixed in poses

stricken for no purpose.

The Juke on the floor:

three bullets sewn through

his chest – he wouldn’t

have died in the matinée show.

He really makes mosaic

of the music box he was

leaning against as Noir

pulled bashfully at her dress.

Rubix claps the revolver

into Cassis’ hands and

everyone knows it was him.

Troubles not original

in these parts, the paranoiac

revelers, the pleasure sucked

from them, become

brainless insects, delve

into the battle waged

knowing nothing of the aims;

as a general is forever

enacting stratagems

from the previous war,

I pluck Noir and Dr. Cassis

from the vibrissae

of the dimensionless beast;

we hide among the pixie women

in the street selling trinkets

ankle deep in peduncles

and hat ribbons, waving feathers.

Sharp Noir (Part III)

Entombed by work, Cassis sits

alone now below a menhir

to the Colonel, his stipendiary

at the base of this monolith

characterises his worth;

his body is visibly reduced

to basic operating levels.

Drinking his dark rum, he lets

his ash grow an inch

from his lips and stitch

anxiety into his patients

waiting with form and cheque.

They lie exposed and he,

hunched over each, gets

no complaints, inspecting

wounds like ancient gems

unearthed before the naked

tribals by men in pith helmets;

the natives sucking on gravel,

the mustaches breathing gin.

He knows his trade from

behind Rubix and her quotients,

his ivory desk and ordinance:

merely a corset to a narcotic

bust at every stratum.

Standing at the edge

of manhood, being a child

seems like a dream for The Juke,

a young man who could have

worked a lifetime as Cupid’s fletcher,

his eyes flash like hot knives.

His hard hands are relaxed,

elastic at the joints, sinews tired,

may be pried apart by a small child.

His attention to detail reveals to him

obscenities to which it also accustoms.

On leave from Switchboard repairs,

The Juke is frequently audience to Rubix.

She admires his loyalty, “which may

only be found in youth.”

“The rack of addiction

imposes contact,” riles

the houndman chained

to a radiator, brandishing

his filth and a rusty fork.

“Cabbage fritters and boiled tongue

Is what they eat where my mother’s from,”

dismisses The Juke

- with the peel of his smile,

the tilt of his jaw reveals

what’s tattoo writ ‘Cut Here’

by little monochrome scissors

on a dotted line ear-to-ear.

“It will be a short one, my last breath,

So I mark it where my gasp will end.”

In our darkest reflections, of love and death,

our thoughts are potent with the Colonel.

The Juke remains loyal

as Rubix continues illusion epitome,

“… seemed I ordered Whisky

in The Grand Pump Room

- never met the waiter,

bastard failed introduction.”

She’s sitting despotic

in a broad-stitched leather

booth, conducting: “I was seated such,”

palm to Formica, “at the Colonel’s

eightieth; he soliloquized much

the need for men like you.

His wisdom was of fine stock

and calibre – I’ve had

the girls print the matchbooks.

We thank his heroism,

we’re adorned: my necklace gold,

your hands well oiled!”

Her fingers fat from handling money,

The Juke at once spits from memory:

“I was looking for a voice, he stood there full of cheer and pretense like a shaman on a box

– maybe not soap but some well demanded, highly branded, value-tax added product

of some kind. He asked what I was doing with my life, what I was trying to find

fixing cars with my black thumbnails and hard, thin boots, my loose jaw

bound to get broken, my legs full of bourbon. A laminar flow

of contradicting tones in his voice, I told him exactly where he could go.

He talked of a town called Liberty,

where the people basked in Freedom;

I asked what kind of map he was readin’.”