LIFES

Greek Vase Form
Like an army
Character study, Short story, and Beyond
In The Air
The Sad Warden
Tragedian’s Speech
Student Song
Dreams
Do you need a title?
Reaction
Awareness
Explanations
Does this help?
Two Registers
Toll
Feeling
Aquariumed
Julia
Completion
Degradation

GREEK VASE FORM

I hate your guts:—
May they get twisted tight
And inextricably intertwined,
Strangle each other,
And you as well,
While I get better
In your hell.
Should I change my mind,
Let them unwind.

LIKE AN ARMY

She walked quite stiffly,
Like an army,
And she walked rightly;
Feeling she had need
To fend herself from greed
Of men to sow their seed;
But it was pity—
She could have made a treaty,
And her stiff army freed
To labour and to breed.

CHARACTER STUDY, SHORT STORY, AND BEYOND

Born to a hasty view,
Goaded by fury,
Worsted at every fray,
Torn, and poorly,

Shorn of everything
That once had kneeled to him,
He sang his last song,
And died in a dustbin.

Sought from the uttermost
Ends of the earth,
Where will find a
Adequate curve?

Pronounce the "a" in the last line but one like the A in ABC.

IN THE AIR

’Sing to a highland lay,
A lowland ditty sung;
And I’ll sing you another
Song that’s best unsung’,
So sang the king’s daughter
To the true queen mother
After the sound of her
Had died and gone.

THE SAD WARDEN

’Send for another climate,
Hand me that spear,’
So sang the sad warden
In the museum dear;
’But oh my love,’ he said
To a mummy standing by,
’Why don’t you get gone
Before the days die?’
’Ah, there is a question,’
They answered him, ’Ay.’

TRAGEDIAN’S SPEECH

Death, death, death, alas;
Death, death, death, alas;
Ooooooooooooooooooooh
Woe, woe, woe, woe;
Death.

STUDENT SONG

Of gold and silver were her hands.
Of gold, of silver, where they?
Ay, and gold and silver were the bands
That tied them round the high dray.
For a rollicking pollicking inskayfay
Was the only way to her heart,
And the tool zoffman were the only van . . . .
To get her home agen (Sad)
To get her home a grad.

DREAMS

I cry—
Music winds by me,
Over the waters,
Pastures of ease.

Philippics
Enter my heart.
A truce
With love.

Now death
Unwinds his beetling eye
And sinks
To a low sleep.

Strike, catacombs,
And laugh.
The hecatombs
Are rife.

Crossfire
Of mystery
Sinks
To my heart.

DO YOU NEED A TITLE?

My dear,
I’m cold.
Light of my eyes,
The sun shines;
And all the music of the world
Burls in my ears.

Sadness of the years gone by,
Anger
At past happiness.
Sale
Of a vacuum.
Now hoarseness of voice.

Oh I’m sad,
Inga,
Sad.
Saga of a norseman dead to the night.
Oh I’m sad.

REACTION

Oh what’s this inside me.
Tears?
Hell take’m
That they bother me,
And all the aches and pains of my body.
The devil take it.
Hundreds and hundreds of’m,
The whole lot.

AWARENESS

Want a rest now?
Had enough?
My god,
What sort of a man are you?
Fickle?
Strange?
Just plain human?
The trouble with you is . . .

Ay, But that’s not enough.
To tell them
Something,
Is not enough.
You need
To show them
Somehow
How to change.

And that’s not enough either.

EXPLANATIONS

Immediately after I stopped writing
I felt sad.
So I wrote again
Poems,
Thinking
How I love you.
And being honest
About it all,
When you read’m
You might easily think
I don’t:
Which would be a pity
To say the least
As the politicians might say.
But sometimes
There’s more power
In a cliche
Than in a whole army.
Besides
(In an addendum)
The pure thing
Takes a lot of refining.

DOES THIS HELP?

Chopped up prose!
So my poems are chopped up prose?
Have you never hard people speaking?
Or even reciting poetry?
And don’t you know
That every change
Is fraught with significance,
That
Every change
Is fraught
With significance,
Is quite different?
The excitement,
The body function,
The attitude,
My god.

TWO REGISTERS

Hear
How
It
Does
Go,

Is Gone
A
Way.

Pronounce the A like the A in Away.

TOLL

Poor
Man,

He
Has
No
Hair
On.

FEELING

Why waste
Your time,
Seeking the right word,
Seeking a poem;
All, all a waste of time,
I know.
But the reality,
Discover the reality,
Hang the words
To dry
On the line of reality.
There,
That’s where you’ll find’m,
The words, the right words,
The poems.

AQUARIUMED

Unlike
My body
A poor old
Soddy
Did go
Did go
I say.

And where did he go?
A way, a woe,
Poor body, poor body, poor body.

JULIA

The squares, of sheeting,
           stitch-cut, big as pin-heads,
You, steping back to look at a painting
In progress, your arm stuffed into your mouth,
       your eyes crinkled like a baby’s crying.
You walking along with me, so fast, I lagging
  behind, and even then not able to take you in,
            you walking so fast,
Yet able to turn, when you’ve done, and
   look me straight in the face and beam,—with
   a broad round smile, would do me good to see.
Tho’ all the time before you could not look,
     but for a quick snatched smile of a look,
       once, when you thought me speaking
             and I was not.
And oh your fierceness, when those people,—
   car-spivs, were they?—went to see a football-
       match they didn’t know a thing about.
And there’s a mighty sea in you
   when you think people should be doing.
           Whatever that means.
But perhaps I’m wrong.
         In misunderstanding you.
And you not wanting to paint yourself from
         a mirror, because it flattens you.
And looking at you, I’m all in agreement.
               It would be a pity.
Why, you’re the only one of your sort,
       and a great pleasure to me.
But that armouredcar of yours,
   that you’re always wearing, that greatcoat,
That you¹ve wanted all your life, it’s a great
   pity. It’s impregnable, and makes my arms
Obsolete. They slip off like the water.
Oh well.
Perhaps I’m in love with you.
I was for two days.
Way ago.
Four weeks ago
When I first saw you.

COMPLETION

Ah sweetheart,
Terraces are filled,
And now
My heart grows cold
of an ancient will.

The one who came—
The one who gone away—
Will not come back,
I’ll weep another day.

But now
At the back of my mind
I always hear
Times creeping
chariot
near.

DEGRADATION

In time
Of the breaking
Of hearts
There came
A goosander
And his name
Was legion,
Like a fish & chips,
He stood
Upon The Bear & pips,

Alas,
It was sad day,

Good night, my fair ones,
And my love to all.