I Don’t Sleep Like I Used To
A lop-eared, paperback philosophy
At three a.m. insinuates itself,
Forgotten fifteen years at least by me
From dear, dead days of university
When I distinguished Ghibelline from Guelph,
When lop-eared, paperback philosophy
Was my ice-cream, my bag, my cup of tea.
A multi-coloured thing on Thornton’s shelf
Forgotten fifteen years at least, Buy me!
Squawked Wisdom, and I grappled eagerly,
Exchanging for a generous country’s pelf
This lop-eared, paperback philosophy
Be-biroed with my furious commentary.
Mine? Such a clever, calculating elf
Forgotten fifteen years at least. By me
It drops. I grope a while then let it be.
Plato’s Republic fed no poets. Hell-f
ire! Lop-eared, paperback philosophy!
Forgotten fifteen years! At least by me.
The Chimes at Midnight
A roomful of the young, and oh
It might be twenty years ago.
Tinned beer to Billie Holiday,
The ruins of a takeaway,
Joss sticks, a flagging joint (you take
The cows’ arsed end, insert, to make
You sicker than it used to do
Way back in nineteen sixty-two),
The same tight jeans and zipper jackets,
Though rather fewer ciggie packets.
Such pretty people too, though that one
There’s pissed off, and there, the fat one
Bending the sofa, he’s just pissed.
You play the anthropologist,
Crinkle the eyes a bit and dust
Boy-girl, girl-boy with random lust.
Such arrogance of bum and belly!
These fauns and nymphs by Botticelli,
Their long, indifferent bodies seem
As mother-naked as a dream.
Their faces, cool, unused and solemn
Are faces carved onto a column,
Poised on the edge of happening, tense
And eager for significance,
For newness shining like the sea,
Far out, for ever, and for me,
For ME!
So not for us. We’ll watch,
Cocooned in small cigars and scotch,
Letting the trousers out a notch.