Glass

Displayed in Burns Cottage, Dumfries, as part of Windows For Burns Night.

Glass
broken

at the bottom
of the Dock Park paddling pool

ready
to cut

a memory in childish flesh
or an epigram

about hidden dangers
maybe

or the welcome kindness
of Dumfries strangers.




White and Blue

Published in Irish Pages

The blue of your bikini
cut
from a Catalan summer sky
so that

through screwed-up eyes
it's hard to tell
where the world stops
and you start.

And on your back
a straight-line
splash of freckles
like Orion's Belt that night

we gaped in a Highland garden
at a billion seeded stars
and a Milky Way so bright
we knew ourselves part of it

and said bugger the distance
between that grape-ripening sun
and our normal
northern timidity.




Kilchurn Ragwort

Published in Poetry Scotland

The Taynuilt train
moves along the loch
shaking the panorama

and the American woman moves with it
video camera against one open eye
recording a besieged fortress

Caisteal Chaol a' Chùirn
granite dark on sun-silvered water
capturing her as she captures it.

And then we hit
a trackside bomb
of yellow embankment ragwort

that parachutes seeds
through open windows
drifting across the aisle between us

like scattered rose-white petals
like burning silver phosphorus.


Summertime genetics

Published in Poetry Scotland

On clay red tiles
in the summer sun
ants stream along
in black chain links.

One turns to run against the flow
passing a chemical message
about food or danger
or something else antish

in a jointed antenna touch.
And above the insects
in wind-swaying trees
a pigeon call is answered

but the first bass-rumbles
and the second trills a tenor
and the rhythm
of the echo is wrong.

So look down at yourself
at that big browning belly
and that darkening mole near your hip.

And touch that skin tag
at the side of your neck
flaring out like a White Dwarf corona.

And acknowledge them calmly
these outward signs

that your echo
your message
your chain
is being miscommunicated.




Warsaw Daffodils

Published in Poetry Scotland

Standing in the old town struggling
for cognates lost in this world
of gazeta and promocje and
agencia reklamowa and a welcome

Warsaw punk atak like the first
cry of a fantasy war
and the only sign of peace the blue
Sheraton hotel flag flacid

against the whitegrey sky
in decent parody of the UN banner
and below on the pavement
a dark-draped caileach sitting

cast in testament to Crichton Smith
selling closed yellow daffodils
flowerheads bulging
anticipatory.




London, 24 May 2008

Published in Poetry Scotland

1. Play-off via The National Gallery

Eva Gonzales
in Hull City orange
walks past Monet's ponds

her face the colour
of waterlillies talking
with her friend.

2. The Embankment

He sits on stone
steps in a leather jacket
a furious survivor

surrounded
by Big Mac boxes
and the invisible.

Her?! You know
she's got to die -
any scholar'd kill her.

Steve said the same?
Well kill him
an all then!

3. South Bank Summersaults

A freshwater smell
from the Thames
as the young lads below

throw themselves
at the wall
tirelessly trying

to spring off it
and turn the city
head over heels

their white
sports socks
getting manky.

4. Mud Flat

Another of these
surprising sands
where a man's sculpted

a living room
sofa, telly, rug,
coffee table and even a dug.

I started at half-past eight.
I've still got another
three or four hours to go.

So if I come back
it will be even
bigger and better?

Less you come back much
later. Then the tide'll have
washed it flat.

5. Salute to Coin Street

At Gabriel's Wharf
suddenly the smell
of the sea.

A pier recoils
from the river
a blown-up bridge

stranding the City
from its own
towering future.

6. Dog walking

A Staffie bitch runs
free along the river
like Bullseye

her owner with heavy
chain and leash
around his neck

his teenage son
ready for anything
with an iron bar

smashing up remnants
of Victorian London
still left on the sand.

7. BMX at Bankside

About forty feet up he waits
and then pedals into the air
criss-crosses handlebars and
hits the ramp. Tries to make
the leap across and... crashes!

The bike leaves a mark
on the wall where it hit.
He points it out for the camera
white teeth shining above
an orange t-shirt shrug.

The next rider completes the course
giving the loud speaker a chance
to properly perform. Wow, and the last
move a big three sixty! Crazy, these guys!
Urban proof! They are freak riders!

8. Armed and dangerous at Tate Modern

The image annoys
me a 100-foot tall
black man

with a gun
African
media-stereotyped

pointing
at the City.
But look again

and see revealed
the camera-not-rifle
recording your realisation

that I'm a monster
videojournalist
ready to eat

the tranquility
of lazy thinkers
and liars.

9. Three Figures and a Portrait (a painting by Francis Bacon)

A spine being
ripped out
by a glass coffee table
I gazed through at my gran's.

An Edwardian collar
torn off
by the shy self
portrait in time.

It doesn't mean a thing
thrown out
by the man at my shoulder
looking like me.

10. Roses at St Paul's

Pink sweet smelling
in the cool wind
from the river near
yellow blossoming trees

the passing croakwhistle
of a starling robed
in a surplice of
oil on water.

11. Holborn Tube

Enjoy listening
to a pissed-up satirist
tin of beer in hand
giving out constant
commentary.

London Transport would like
to announce that all
lines are currently
running a good service.
It IS a good service!

British Transport Police would like
to remind passengers
to remain vigilant
at all times.
Oh I feel safer now!

He's still talking
when the approaching
tube train crashes
over the top
of his London voice.

12. Love dying on the No. 3 bus

From Trafalgar Square to Vauxhall
his head is turned
away from her talking.

Loving strokes of his arm
pass by unacknowledged
as Stockwell and Brixton.

All the road from the West End
to Norwood he doesn't bother
to reply to her desperate chat

and when she presses the bell
and descends the stairs to the
opening doors he stays

in his seat before sighly moving
crablike - a coward afraid
to kill the thing he loves.

So contemptible that when
he lets the doors close
and all of us move on

he only waits until the next
stop to get off himself - scared
to let the distance grow

so long as to be terminal. Then
BANG! and the whole bus shakes.
Fireworks near Dulwich College.