Desert Island

 

A well-stocked mind for a serious century -
Ledgered,  libraried,  life after life.

And where did it get me?
Festubert.  Wytschaete.

Reassembled from fragments,  a hard case;
Anarchic,  an echoing shell.

Air of a Fable

Hitching south in summer,

Magic-carpeted across the Border.

A Beetle-driving bass guitarist

Scribbled an address in Putney -

A technicolor hippy flat,

Mattresses and albums.

Moon-landing, London -

Dazzling,  empty -

Space for everyone.

Rumours of enlightenment;

A paperback in every pocket,

Alan Watts and R D Laing,

Luxuriant Castaneda.

Festive work for cash in hand -

Wimbledon,  the Palace lawn.

Eclairs,  iced coffee,  tiny cups,

And bearing down on the catering tent,

The Queen's top-hatted entourage.

To whom does cartoon pomp appear?

Stoned,  peripheral,  stuffed with cake -

Pretty much like dreaming,  this 'awake'.

Earls Court

Down-at-heel adventurers
Wide-eyed in cafe windows, sip
The elevated loneliness 
Designed by Sartre and Burroughs.

Only the Australians
Will ever go home.
A snowy wind,  a wintry mind
Abandoned for an altered state

Of Beat and Hippy paperbacks,
Romantic travel,  Kathmandu,
But savings totted on a napkin
Still wouldn't stretch to France.

Consolidating confidence
These early days of independence;
Another coffee guarantees
Another hour of life.

The Spyglass

Cheered by the jungle and shipwreck
Of a one-legged Hollywood legend -
Walrus moustache, 
A well-travelled rough-tweed jacket -

The yarn of adventurers, writers, old money -
A glimpse through an archway.

What fool would ignore
The clues that lead to destiny?

A friendly blues-voiced regular

Who'd topped the bill at the Hundred Club

Tapping,  from a soft blue pack,  Gauloises;

Maybe I could be an exploited talent too -

Or failing that,  a velvet essayist

Snoozing in a hat by humid seas.

The Seventies in Earls Court Road -
An amiable Interzone

Where everyone is celebrating something -
Even if it's only the calming assurance

Things won't go back the way they were.

Hookahs and pastries, dealers in doorways;
The favourable ambush

Of the sheltering pub.

                      
          

Barman's Blues

A beaming impresario,  glad-handing

In expansive celebration, 

Rewarded Jimmy Joyce   - for laughs -

With VIP Security...

So there he was in a caravan,  eating hot pies

While rain lashed huddled hippies

In muddy Afghan coats

And a grey east wind was flattening their tents.

Called forward to the breach,  

He wrestled a minor Beach Boy off the stage,  

Not recognising him.  Who would?   

Success...  is an evanescent thing.

Back to square one  - Earls Court -

Pulling pints and listening,

Panning for gold in the torrent

Of other people's lives.

Hispaniola

Wind-chilled on the mudflats
In a hazy winter sunrise,
The Irish,  gaunt,  chain-smoking,
Tumble from the ganger's van
Piratical,  dishevelled,
Still wearing suits from last night -
Do they never sleep?

Fixing steel frenetically in sparkling frost
Till the sun grows warm enough to warm the steel;
And soon the hangover is sweated out, 
Forgotten,  and they start to talk.
Scarred rust-red hands enfold 
Sweet mugs of tea.  They start to laugh.

Gleefully obstreperous
They hoist and haul bridge-bouncing cables -
Precarious on parapets in failing light
While civil engineers like tented generals 
Pace and fret in nominal command.

Never tired and never sane
They lean from the van going home,
Inviting London to pub and party,
Bright lights,  and Hammersmith rain.

Oasthouse Aromatic

Boxers,  gamblers and scrap-metal moguls
Muscle in from the black-tie clan
Of Bethnal Green's lugubrious gangsters -
In-laws,  outlaws,  'Jack the Hat' McVitie -
And overwhelm,  back-slapping.
September,  so they're centre-stage
To tell eye-popping stories.

Scenery-chewing gypsies 
Crack wood-nuts with their teeth -
Race red-hot tractors till they overturn,
Draw knives when they're demoted in the field.
Surviving children roam in expeditions,
Bingeing on brambles,  cornering
The occasional pheasant.

Lively-minded students charm
Avuncular farm-regulars -
Who mock with warm guffaws 
The world-improvers
In clouds of airborne powdered hops,
Intoxicating summer air.

Frenzied tractors bounce and roar
Flat out.  At tea-break -  sunburn,  banter,
And Old Man Henley
Stately walks his  kingdom.
Air of a fable;  who'll
Bring him the golden hop-bine?

After the hops,
We bring October apples;
First shock of autumn cold.
Caravans and children 
are dragged resisting from the rainy fields.
One year to wait,  in exile.

Island

Music down a windy street -

Springtime trees and scattered petals,

Bright warm yellow door.

Sunny attic,  view of clouds -

A mystic-blues fan,  high on Saturday 

Introduces  Astral Weeks

By playing it through the wall.

Gina,  in the room downstairs,  is reading 

Short Walk in the Hindu Kush,

And recommending her beloved Zorba,

Jules et Jim,  Jacques Tati's  Trafic -

And Japanese Macrobiotics -

Enthusiastically pinning to my wall

The grin of Georges Ohsawa -

You Are All Sanpaku!

Brown rice,  gomasio,  bancha tea -

The spine-rush of energy

Lifting my hair in a thistle-burst

Like mad MacDiarmid on  Selected Poems.

Well clear of winter shipwreck

Embedded in warm sand

We wake up laughing.

Dublin Summer

Gulls

And silence

Called the cycling lover -  brimful,  

Round the streets of Sunday early

Ranelagh nightstrewn

And breezing out

Into the hills 

While you

My smoke and coffee vampire

Sleepily recoiled from daylight -

Flaxen 

Anglo-Irish heiress !

Laughter,  duvet-wrapped 

In bliss

The Sea Cook

Saturday addiction

The Golden Dawn

Food Shop,  Bookshop

Alley on the Quays

Into the mystic -

A Japanese Cafe

Brown rice a portal

To the clear-headed Tao

Surf with Ohsawa

A wave of experiment -

At a cooker in Ranelagh

Wake up amazed

The Fabled Road

 

Tentative in monologue

We smoke like Alain Delon,

Rewriting life as adventure

And seeing how it sounds.

In an admiral's Bentley, outrunning

The South China Seas in a hurricane -

Unpolished,  unpublished,

My Book of the Year.

A racing-team manager casually

Opens a door to the high life -

We stop for a sea-food platter

In St Tropez

And I bounce for miles

On the wing of a Turkish tractor,

With handshakes,  grins,  and waves

And glasses of tea.

Sun-scorched and windblown

On the fabled road to anywhere -

Heavenly-choired by the hospitality

Of the affable 

Eccentric.

Asia Overland

Amphitheatres on peaks

Where Roman towns have vanished.

What were they thinking,  the architects?

The growling slaves,  roped in

To hack and haul above the tree-line?

Assimilating Caesar's splendour -

Rubble villa,  red-tile roof,

Rugs under dust-pale olive trees

Older than Roman stone.

The delicate incendiary crackle

Of cigarettes on drowsy afternoons;

Hot tea, in fluted glasses,

And music,  goat-bells on the hill.

Clown-cars,  laden, 

Sunny bicycles,

The cedar-honey breeze -

Something is wearing the world as a mask

Slow dissolve

Misty precipice

Qi

High Office

 

The Cobol of the Caesars' 

Exuberant empire

Is displacing the Assembler

Of Plato's elite;

And antique dialogue in every scene

Requires rewriting.

We need itinerant scholars

To celebrate in art

The code of the imperial machine;

When can you start?

Poets!  Queue like gentlemen -

No fighting.

Perform Round-the-World until

Rich-and-Remote.

Exit.

Stop Run.

Singapore Menu

A humid nest of offices 

Overhanging Middle Road -

Jungle stench of durian,  

Downpours of warm rain.

The Szechuan Court's  esteemed 

Veg dumplings -   glistening ginger,  

Black vinegar dip...

Crispy fresh fish in orange sauce,

Dessert of red-bean pancake,

The usual chunky white teapot of green tea -

Or will you come umbrella'd  in the rain

To jostle through the steamy Hawkers' Market

With the rest of us,

For pork-fat soup and chicken feet?

We won't be offended

Whatever you choose.

Quake Zone

Penthouse,  flowing,  futuristic 

On a whizzing web of bullet trains

Flails and weaves,  aikido peerless

Palm tree in a hurricane

Where are you going?

It's only six o'clock

Month-end reports don't balance -

Attention will be drawn

Cancel the meeting,  tell them I'm dying

Act like nothing's wrong -

Where are you going?

It's only six o'clock

Dojo gardens

Archaic,

Unflappable

Shogunate moon

Script Consultant

 

Robed with incense,  richly professorial,

The Cambodian monk,  in exile on a beach in Thailand,

Tells my fortune;  affirms the fabulous ending

On a veranda dusted with white sand.

Checking, re-checking frail charts 

Of treasured Khmerian script;  attuned

To an almost inaudible call-and-response

Behind the entertainment  -

A major motion picture

Projected onto clouds.

Glare

Burbank 6.30 am

Hotel in chill shadow

Mistake with your booking

Deal with it

Take a look around

The swimming pools

Dark glasses glare

Don't even think about sitting here

In the Hollywood Hills

Dark glasses glare

Don't even think about parking here 

Armed response

Take a look around 

The Studio

Mistake with your contract

Deal with it

Commissary lunch

Have you met -

OK! Hey! Yeah!

OK! Hey! Yeah!

Glare 

In the rush hour

West into Sunset

Big mistake

Flight

Barely moving over the Grand Canyon

In the pull of a singularity

But almost clear.

Cloud, Moon and Reef

Upswept,  unmoored

In a night-boat,  glimmering,

Torch-lit and lifted on the dizzying tide

Of Stevenson's imagination.

Treasure Island  caged the midnight fear -

Gruff murderous pirates,  the vice of Blind Pew -

Spectral in solitude,  whirled under hooves -

The painterly extravagance of nightmare.

Oh flattery of Hollywood!

Welcoming shout of American Poetry -

Limo,  freeway,  the Lot -  on Warner Boulevard

Magnesium light,  an ominous migraine.

Rewrite man,  washed up to write

At lamp-lit desk throughout the night,

Marooned where once the treasure lay,

A forehead-clutching castaway.

Cocaine.  Entrapment,  lawyers,  debt.

There is no gold.  Reach bedrock,  sweat,

Dumbfounded,  as when Bill Bones finds

The Black Spot on his palm.  Struck blind.

There's no escape.  The dreamer,  home,

Still hears Flint's haunting cry -

You're one of us -   thus dead men taunt the dying.

An empty boat turns slowly on a grey lagoon

Gathering rain.

Ablaze

 

A bobbing,  creaking dhow

Unloading tea-chests on the Creek at sunset

The day of our reunion;  odyssean 

Trade winds of fortune,  

Iranian caviar.

Toast!  

Fresh eggs and onions,  vodka -

Our sprawling lives 

Now crafted,  lyrical

Anthologies of travellers' tales.

Your balcony at dawn 

A wall of heat -

The howling call to prayer,

Wide-armed songs from countless minarets

And sandstone suddenly ablaze.

Morning on the beach

And everything behind us

Burning

Driftwood

Plutocrats,  pirates,

Femmes fatales -

Momentum trade, 

No rationale.

Unwinding now -

Atoms and energy

Tugged by the tide;

The stars engulf

A desert island -

Tahitian-French cafe,

A farewell chat with Belinda

On the driftwood island pier -

An intricate idyll,

Buried treasure,

Almost

Unremembered.

Gold is a maguffin -

Adventure is the thing.

Gulls wheel in the rain over Bouville,

Flint on his deathbed sings.