Delve he without teeth
in matter swerve through
the hag, a road was here
to points unswerving,
flesh veils from rough
bushes sprung: snow
a skin warm, foreign
vault of bronze folds
impetuous asylum walls
measured to a minute
buzzing sooty bodies summon
beasts flaky, free & frigid
corpses gasping calling gasping at
the roadside strewn with heavy births
given but not their own
Rest, contagious, slips
of honesty on a whetstone where
molluscs bop my underside
afloat on her pale hill, above
diamond needles in formation, wheeling & dreaded

There was once a creature of immense distaste, he was made of lace.

Although he led a catholic and virtuous life, his penchant for wallowing was regarded in certain circles as one to disregard or to raise ones eyebrow.

This creature as such played in eddies of social awareness for many months, one month neatly sliding on top of the next month.

With mottled and distended skin, he occasionally climbed apple trees and chewed the bark. He did this one time too many:

“Bubble up in oil, oh my various pierced genitalia, for I am the never-do-well, the misbegot!”

And so, with heavy heart, our hero slumps himself downwards, frostily opens this door, sinks into heavy armchairs.

As the smoke starts to rise, like smoke would rise on occasion, an irksome thought would wallow and upset the grey lines of guilt.

What if all the colours were one colour?

(That little telltale tooth that bares, thinning rips coiling into a smirk)

What if!

With a vile and characteristic gream of zealously protected charm he fingered up to a run and clamped down upon every shade that so rebelled with his sentiments. It was an uncomfortable time, yes, but a delicate charm frothed over the surface.

Back up in his fruit-bearing cross lies fate, and out creature hastens a hasty meat.

Slowly and surely we tighten the gate, our little creature all made out of lace.

As day follows night and tick follows tock
Come the prophecies and memories of what
We have lost, and all that began for
Now and forever, amen to that time,
For morality creeps in the crevices of
Landscapes, inhabits the trees, moves
Through the air, as we who are partial
Fall one by one, as tick follows tock,
Prophecies and memories returning,
Producing transcendental thought-processes
That skirt round the edges, reality
Too pure to be viewed up close.

We drift in time-honoured wonder,
As we and all the trees and green
Come humming with the sound of drums,
I’m losing you in pitch of battle,
In full cry your armour sparkles,
Goes with talk and thoughts of you
Disperse, replaced by golden dreams
Of something else, somewhere else,
That mystery of sunburnt beaches
Torching your face, the waves build
Higher, until they’re upon me,
Submerged once more, under again.

I sat scribbling a picture
Not half as bold in colour
As was intended
Just when dusk was first
Considering her approach -
Here I am now, a night
Later with birds suggesting,
And I’m half attending
The swaddling dawn,
Through windows fragile
But my faith, my only faith
Is that the sky will know
The sun will rise.

No dream,
No time for a short memory,
Time passes,
You may know where you’ve been,
But other people
Float face down in lakes for years
And you may remember
You read their lives this morning
In papers.

And me,
Well I scarcely pay attention
Over time,
Though I’ve righteous indignation
In the moment,
But I float downstream forever
Like any life, it’s
Only pin-points scattered
In papers.

In Khiam,
And I read it just this evening,
There was a bomb
Dropped by Israel in a fever,
In the crater
Were traces of uranium,
There was a war, some people died,
You may have read that
In papers.

Five years,
That should test the memory,
In Lebanon
(You may know where you’ve been)
But other people
In a plague of unknown cancers,
We may remember,
May be reminded
In papers.

I

It is a warm August day,
the kind that I would like for my last,
sucking it all in from the shade
of a double swing seat.

I am trying to recapture something,
but cannot. Home is America now
without pastel skies and clouds
of my youth, of my forming.

Texas is heat, space and isolation.
Birds there have flame feathers.
Green lizards snatch spiders unacquainted,

unlike the breeze that strokes my legs again,
that sweeps a dance of holly blue and white
butterflies above dahlias and verbenas
against crumbling trellis,
against wall of bricks
older than the dry bones of my forbears.

I want to sigh into the hollow
that separates memories
of the Englishness that made me English,
from the cynicism I wear these days
like misted spectacles.

II

Grey mullets that entertained visitors in Barcelona
followed me to Dawlish. It seems too humble
to support such illustrious display, such regal flesh
that taunts two fat fisher folk who dip and dab rag bait.

Yet, by testing a narrow wedge over the boat ramp,
these desirables appear to want to walk on land,
to transfigure, to cross coterminous edge
and interchange with their predators.

An olive fan of dorsal fin cuts surface ripples – begs.
Give me your strained back, your hirsute bloated skin
burnt with blue tattoos. Let me walk with grinding knees
and you may have my taut aerofoil of sleek agility.

III

The water in the pond is low, a sump,
crowded with buckled lily leaves
and two washed-magenta blooms.
On a table, swollen onions brown
for the garden show on Dawlish Lawn.
A stone owl watches me with fogged eyes
beneath sky I could not replicate
as a schoolboy artist – too pale,
with bits of cloud that ride the valley
and out to sea like smoke signals.

I look down slope of lawn, (crisp
from an English drought this year),
past mother’s sinking garden shed,
over an alley with graffiti and ivy,
beyond buff brick Masonic lodge
and taller trees behind, waving summer coats
in a sharp breeze to houses old and new,
white or terracotta that hug the far slope
with no more assuredness than stilted homes
I saw by the Amazon of Peru,

but here I am touching base,
for every particle of fabric
from loose shale that falls between fork tines,
to layers of roofs and trees,
sing to me with voices still ringing;
the accents and attitudes of dead teachers,
smoke-chaffed calls from my grandmother,
my father’s disillusion coated with sarcasm
or whispered words of new love
mingled in blades of summer grass.

The glorious body she inhabited
looks lonely without her.
Such stillness is not reminiscent.
Flies feel they have the right to feed
now she cannot fight back.
They gather outside waiting,
reveling in desert heat,
aching for her moist eyes;
still open reflectors
of a ceiling fan above,
chop chopping unbreathable air;
blades that drum drum a dire obbligato,
a helicopter at war,
a metronome tick ticking time
even though she has left,
left strands of copper hair
splayed or stuck to pallid cheeks,
the last bubbles of her smiles.

Thank you to everyone who came along for the inaugural QMU Live Poetry night. We hope that all had an interesting time, and are looking forward to the second event.

The next performance will be

8pm Wednesday 8th November 2006 at the Lacuna Café, Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow, Scotland

[Performers to be confirmed]

As our kind guest Liz Lochhead mentioned briefly, the purpose of these nights is not for established performers to continue showing off what they can do. We want to encourage anyone who was there and thought “I could do that” to get in contact and give it a try. However confident people look, they are always nerve-wracked.

If you email toad@toadinmud.co.uk before the night notifying us that you wish to read, then we will be able to guarantee you a set. It does not matter if it is one poem or a dozen, we will try to fit you in fairly. Of course you can always come along anyway with something to perform, find an organiser and let them know what you wish to do. Please note that though it is likely that you will be able to perform, we cannot always be a hundred per cent certain of time being available.

Whatever you decide, please come along to the next reading, it should be even better than last week, if you send a quick message to toad@toadinmud.co.uk we will put you on the mailing list and give you a reminder when the time comes.

Sincerely, thank you, Tom, Robbie, ToadinMud