MQ-9
A drone is not small;
A General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper
Is twenty metres across,
Wider than the Thames
As it flows through Lechlade
in the Cotswolds.
The Hellfire missile it carries under its wing
Is a metre and sixty centimetres
Longer than my mother was tall.
A Reaper carries four.
A General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper
Is twenty metres across,
Wider than the Thames
As it flows through Lechlade
in the Cotswolds.
The Hellfire missile it carries under its wing
Is a metre and sixty centimetres
Longer than my mother was tall.
A Reaper carries four.
Nor is it quiet;
It is not meant to be.
Its noise, unremitting,
Scars the ground over which it flies.
At any slammed door
Children drop to the floor
And stay there, still, for minutes.
So this machine
Which is bigger than a tank
And louder than a tank
And which kills more people
(Without seeing which ones are which –
Which dots are the bad dots)
Is surgically precise.
One charred mother makes
Ten new soldiers
From sons, brothers and cousins;
Its noise, unremitting,
Scars the ground over which it flies.
At any slammed door
Children drop to the floor
And stay there, still, for minutes.
So this machine
Which is bigger than a tank
And louder than a tank
And which kills more people
(Without seeing which ones are which –
Which dots are the bad dots)
Is surgically precise.
One charred mother makes
Ten new soldiers
From sons, brothers and cousins;
Lives in thrall to a house-sized, invisible,
Silent, screaming tool of not-really-war
That slaughters from a mile up.
(2020)
TAN LINES
Ocean bleeds untidily to beach –
Perpetual thrusts and retractions,
Punctured by stones, seaweed, molluscs –
But there is no such unneatness
In a perfect red arc
Betraying yesterday's basking.
Crisp parabolas
Retell all that was hidden, all that was exposed
In that pub garden, that weeding session, on that coastal walk.
Unveiled, cosmic frying
Of baked epidermis
Lends geometry to scorched voluptuousness.
Baked by our star,
Flawed form is lent new symmetry
In fearful marks
Denoting the precise cut
Of yesterday's sleeve.
(2022)
LIVING ROOM, CAMBRIDGESHIRE
I sit in an old, soft chair,
Village pamphlets spread out before me,
Opposite an old, frayed ottoman,
Rheumy grey, once bottle-green.
I remember it being big, difficult to carry,
I remember playing with its full bunched tassels.
There are flashes of purple dotted around –
Lampshades, a throw, in the squat vase –
The light fittings are new, chromium, hideous.
A small Christmas tree sits on the side-table.
Last night my grandmother said,
"It's the first year I've put it up
Since your mum died."
Up I come to St Ives, and up it goes.
"I didn't feel there was anything to celebrate."
I want a hug; to cry;
But she's pootled out, embarrassed.
(2019)
CHRIS MARLOWE
Chris Marlowe died in a bar fight,
Stabbed at his stool, or out the back,
Stubbed out as he lit up.
As he lived, he died –
While they studied Boccaccio, he studied the blade –
You could see him now,
One of the lads
Thronging the bars today,
A bacchanal of Corky's and Wolf Blass,
Woo-woos, Morettis, fucking legend,
American Eagle stretched over pecs.
Back in Chris's day
They'd swagger and swash,
A maid in every port.
Touting for timber, a new boat to build,
Some clueless punter to stymie.
This afternoon the lambent glimmer
Of light catches the Range Rover Evoques
Parked outside the Green Man.
(2021)
SHE LIFTS HER HEAD
She lifts her head
Like a dozing dog at the opening of a door.
Like a dozing dog at the opening of a door.
And says,
I cannot do it any more.
I cannot do it any more.
I cannot do it any more.
(2020)
JOHN COOPER-CLARKE ON BINS
(To be read in the voice of John Cooper-Clarke)
There's a bin outside the Londis
There's a bin outside the school.
There's a bin inside the playground
I think that's pretty cool.
There's a bin outside the Londis
There's a bin outside the school.
There's another bin right next to it
In case the first one's full.
(2021)
WOODPIGEON
Woodpigeon dwell in the
Cluster of trees
At the foot of the garden.
Four or six, two or three pairs;
Slender-necked, monogamous;
Territorial culver, patrolling their turf.
Not three years ago we ripped
The garden to pieces,
Builders banging and wrenching
Wood and polymer.
The fearful noise did not drive them away.
Slender-necked, monogamous;
Territorial culver, patrolling their turf.
Not three years ago we ripped
The garden to pieces,
Builders banging and wrenching
Wood and polymer.
The fearful noise did not drive them away.
Their steadfastness now repaid,
They swoop through our new Eden,
They swoop through our new Eden,
Past the acer and the jasmine.
(2020)
A BAKING APRIL
On a baking April day
we cut back the vine too far.
As insects buzz around the bed,
we source wire to stem the drip.
Our smuggled vine,
already ill-used to London air and earth,
is gouged, leaking sap to the soil.
Panicked, we truss the gash.
Metal pulled taut around the stem has harnessed the fluid,
but the guilt remains.
In a small garden in a small house
we must pay
with anxious recuperation,
sitting and watching with a fizzy drink,
also dripping.
(2020)
WALKING THE DOG
Umber flashes scud ahead
Through dull greens; now doubling back,
Skidding in loops
From field to field.
Ribcages heaving, a last ascent
Vaults us homeward.
Stretched time, fallen leaves now
Subsumed into earth
Cold rain and warm radiators
Help us sleep.
(2019)
CITY, FRIDAY MORNING
Beer fumes rise mist-like from damp streets,
Clinking trucks rush between pit-stops.
Straight-ahead stares, swivelling feet
Quietly shifting outside shops
Trying not to smell the yellow
Blasts of air from vents and windows,
Thinking of bed an hour ago;
Freshly woken from their doze,
Creeping away from sleeping partners,
Brushing lager off their tongues.
Revolving doors admit those few
Whose vacillations move the world.
Eight hours' time will see new queues
The awnings of the inns unfurled.
(2017)
Straight-ahead stares, swivelling feet
Quietly shifting outside shops
Trying not to smell the yellow
Blasts of air from vents and windows,
Thinking of bed an hour ago;
Freshly woken from their doze,
Creeping away from sleeping partners,
Brushing lager off their tongues.
Revolving doors admit those few
Whose vacillations move the world.
Eight hours' time will see new queues
The awnings of the inns unfurled.
(2017)
Wouldn’t it be great if that girl at work
(Or at the office, or in the shop),
Who you look at sometimes, but who never looks back
– with austere hair, or a just-so skirt,
Or a steady, bored gaze trained anywhere but you –
Was different when she got home.
She might hang her coat up coming back late at night,
Pour a glass of white wine,
Stick on Jefferson Airplane
(Or something else slightly embarrassing),
And just dance around.
(2014)
(2014)
Our faces no more than eight inches apart
Strip lights above and Formica beneath.
I need to use both items of cutlery, so I can’t read my book.
Condiments lie scattered around us
Taken, used, replaced,
Done properly.
He doesn’t look at anything much,
Certainly not at me.
He finishes – 2 pie, 1 mash – and pushes his plate away with cartoonish
gravitas.
(He’s probably here every Saturday)
It’s collected by Pam.
The rest of the clientele are builders and children (trailed by insistent, protesting
mothers),
Not talking about anything much.
Nothing happens, and everything happens;
‘Romantic’.
(2013)
FIRE
Paper curls,
Charcoal glows
And wood sings.
Flame flicks up,
Juddering, staccato,
With weird vermilions and violets
Springing out; and while it's
Prime and primal, it's still somehow dying.
(2015)
UNTITLED
As the sun falls behind the terrace
I stand at the sink,
Fuming, steaming,
Angrily scrubbing.
Thinking about why I'm
Right and you're wrong.
Preparing my speech, arguments, rebuttals;
And then you walk through the door
And into the kitchen
in a whirl,
And you're smiling
And your eyes are happy, crinkling,
And I've forgotten why I was angry.
(2017)
ST PAUL'S FROM THE TRAIN
St Paul’s speared dome –
An umbrella thrust against the world-top,
Spokes of crusted stone
Arcing down to earth –
Cannot be seen
From the Greater Anglia service
From Liverpool Street to Chingford.
Other, new earth
Has defied the old white dome.
Now lurk fibrous steel and glass
With their stupendous shapes.
Complex metals made with earth;
African holes bolster European monuments.
Steel is forged and blended
Through millennia, like stone.
(2019)