THE NEGATIVES

It's an old hotel, really. With a lift you'd struggle to get parts for
It lurches us towards cocktails in new-old US highballs
Booking in. Kneeling before the bed, going out and back
Two women knew our room number, and we can't guess how.

The breakfast guess, the couples, us. No-one will ever know
How much we love Britain.
Maybe it's the hangover, the long walk, sea air. But
I haven't got a lot of humour here.
A masochist's effort, never cutting deep enough to kill
To that then. Freshened up, feeling agreeable,
White lamps will slip over ripples of mixing spirit
And turn our little negatives into that which will be seeable.

THE KING OF TENZENIA

The breathtaking scope of a people lost came to me on Thursday.
Like a nation looking for a light, a reason to continue -
A nation sick and desperate for something. Even mass hysteria
And collective fantasy would do: Tenzenia. I was on a bus.

'Get too grown up to be concerned about
Life, and a man will be a battery!' they cried.
'Rise up! Rise, Tenzenia. Give sway to the passion there in your veins
Already. The streets, factories. Houses, even
You are not numbers! Live. LIVE.'

The papers were onto it, something is afoot!
Initial skirmishes and a fracas proved half-hearted.
Life, the spinning ions of real life, was what they wanted, not aggro.
They couldn't dance hard enough,
Ice skating didn't scratch the surface
Of their joy. Nothing could reflect it sufficiently.

Let's drink! They cried, in the absence of anything else
But the innkeepers were still ice skating.
And the King Of Tenzenia sits on his own
Wondering if he should support or denounce this rush to live.
What if things get out of hand?
What if no-one needed him any more?

THE PLANT

Who knows why the earth first decided to reach for the sun
Through these shoots and tendrils. What mix of heat and water
Left it hungry, lively enough to break the fallowness.
Some plants look keen, others like the world changed its mind.
Landscapes impoverish or expel their ideas in fits and starts,
Others hold them firm, have everything required for flight and permanence.
From a roots point of view, I push downwards through abrasive oxygen.
I eat and expel, grow frantically. I'm a trail of my own inverted feeding.

WASTANT

Time is mostly wasted, you will find
The ball is not in your court, where time is concerned
Try not to beat yourself up.

THE MAIDEN AND THE LEPRECHAUN

Once there was a leprechaun, who found a magic locket.
It read 'Open me! Your troubles will away!'
The leprechaun was unsure, as he put it in his pocket
If to open or to keep it - for a colder, greyer day.

He was a simple leprechaun, with a crooked stick and hat,
He lived under a bucket where the river turns, aft to fore.
By day he tickled the fish with the tip of his crooked stick

And at night he crawled under his bucket to snore.

One day he went out tickling, he skipped from rock to rock,
He had his stick and rollmop, which he ate at one o'clock.
And where the river turns, from fore to aft to fore
He spied a lovely maiden crying on th'other shore.

'Oh maiden,' harked the leprechaun, 'What ails you on this day?
You hair is spun with honey and you should laugh life away!'
'Leprechaun,' returned the maiden. 'I have worry now galore
For I have lost my lover. And I have troubles more

Someone stole my magic locket, just o'er a week ago
And only this old locket can bring me back my beau'.
The leprechaun pretended that he did not understand,
He skipped across the river, where he sat down at her toes.

'Describe for me the locket.' The maiden did her best.
He listened to her story, his sandwich in his hand,
Then stood and took her shoulder, wiping fingers on his vest.
'I will find this magic locket. I will search across the land!

I will climb the highest mountain, I will swim the oceans pure
I will fight the wildest dragons for a kiss from someone fond.
One question, dearest maiden, can both of us be sure
The lad did not purloin the thing - and suddenly abscond?'

'Oh, leprechaun,' she laughed. 'My beau has noble core.
And if you could not trust him, then you have trusted none.'
Yet still she looked uncertain, the leprechaun bade more.
She told him of the magic gift within its clasp undone.

'Nought misguides like earthly love, we oft wake up and find.
He felt it held a secret and one to worry o'er,
And often used to ask me - what is it that I hide?
He feared it held a photo of a man I loved much more.'

That night, below his bucket, the leprechaun was torn.
He'd never slay an ogre, her kiss would be untrue
The locket in his pillow case might never more be worn
The young man who had opened it he felt he somehow knew.

AN OFFICE ROMANCE

In retrospect it was waiting to happen
And now it's happened, like a frame askew
We straighten old tattle, the girls-talk
On workday swifties we wish we hadn't had.
We wish we could remember who was there.
Boys-talk. Love must be discovery, kissing. And
What to take forward is a mix of where we see ourselves in
Five, ten.

URINAL (A THOUSAND SQUARED)

So keen until it mattered
Things went internal, anti-social, etherised
Like raped eyes, shutters, limp.
The nape of every neck is heavily kissed
But we don't have to pretend to enjoy this.
No battle plan, arm twist, any more.
It used to feel like love would forever be built on such.

Don't you find mathematics maddening?
A universal concept built on number, mere multiples of one,
When one does not exist, in fact. It is
But a register of distance from kind, and we can find
A thousand kinds of kind. Intensity squared, and
Ran wild through everything.

Lover, paper, internet - we wonder if we should waste your time.
I feel an urge to. Recognise the faked escape,
The first to succeed. Not for city break or relocate,
Hit the porcelain like a battle cry, summat
Destined to disappear up the very scope of each anxiety.

Open eyes, now, look at me.
They do and I am gone. Invisible again,
Still writer's blocked, for better or for worse.

'Tonight. Is the night. When two become one.'
A soundtrack so wrong - the thousand squared we already were
Lets us rise, finally, wondering, and - praise the Lord! - apart.

DEFENSIVE (AS F*CK)

Everything's so open, I wonder what intimacy means
These days. By any relevant definition of the word
You or I are not special - except once in our youthfilled heads.
An answer will come and a question will go,
The day's End of Everything, the feelings that follow.

I once knew a rouge who slipped a cat illegal drugs,
It was boots-up for a week, and then seemed right as a freshening rain.
He lived in a tower block that caused him insanity.
He lived across the hall from a friend, whom I visited.
I can still recall the graffiti there.
'Make Love Not War Says (P)Ricky'

We bite our lips and try not to repeat a rogue's mistakes.
They have no room for love. They live
Like good love is getting it over with.
And great love is finding out you've not been talked about.
That people don't really want them here. Not really.
Paranoia runs their establishment.

Unkempt students sometimes get off with their sisters
(The less you have the more you look sharp).
They find them a bit soft, internal. Smart but always a dull moment.
The students look into their eyes, try to find poignancy after sex
But their sisters just find that embarrassing.

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