Programme
Let us be fashionable!
Let us find
windows where
Despised men find platitudes
And others bags filled with
air.
Let us teach our cousins
How to sin in
harmony.
Let us get the top thrill
From the mitigation of a snobs
alimony.
Let us cut throats!
Let us
urge mayors and important people
To build another empire
And find
another man to climb a steeple.
Let us skilfully
Fornicate, but make
It appear an act of contrition,
A smiling virgin, floating on a
lake.
Let us quote philosophers
And crib
satires from one another.
Take down your womans stocking,
Learn
the best way to smother.
Let us praise the honest cat!
She
sells calamities to all pretenders.
In our stinkpot of Thor and Christ
She makes nonsense of claims and genders.
Discussion on Murder
When there was murder in our town
Considerable interviewing by detectives
Followed: Interviewing of
prostitutes,
Of old and poor, those with nothing to lose,
Victims of
life, victims of thoughtless acts,
Toothless, vicious and dissatisfied.
One, Sally, a woman of thirty,
With false breast and a beat on Park
Street,
Was deeply involved; but a satin handbag
Eliminated her from
the chase.
It held her card, her compact, her protection
Against
vocational danger.
When all was done, all clues examined,
It was found
to be a young man
With too much money and imagination,
Boredom and a
capacity for action.
Sally was acquitted
He got a custodial.
And so
were the other twenty girls.
Advice to a Young Girl Found Pining on
a Beach Near Naples
There is not any fancy sign
Of racy
tarts with greatest noise
Who sing in jerks of passions heat
Or
mesmerise their fancy boys.
O how may excellence impart
Or painted
lips exude their charm
Save by the foremost lilt of eye,
The snap of
mouth, the squeeze of arm.
Then follow us and wean your love
Of
anxious leers and gutsy smirks
For no-one knows the address of God
And
no-one knows how virtue works.
Left-handed crimes are slow to tease
The goodness out of routine pain.
So change the sheets and crucify
Your urgent wish to entertain.
Letter to a Lost Mistress
Here, in my tomb, I write my farewell
message.
The whitewashed walls are harsh, they sear my eyes.
But when I
dream of you my pencil sings
Like an urging piston, urging death from my
veins.
Perhaps the memory of our time together, a
rough graving
In the errant stone of calamity ad mischief, will cast a
doubt
Upon our synthesis a joint creation, bound by fear,
A
footstep on the landing, a dull cry in our ears.
Are you yourself only, or are you partly
me?
Does your heart single out its own resting-place,
Or does it curl
like a foetus in my friendships womb?
But now I see the shroud, and
your hand is cold.
There is a grave curiosity that strips my
courage
Of its trappings. I'm a creature without colour,
I fawn before
magnificence, lap up its crude wash
Of aspiration, the darkened form that
irritates my fancy.
The light is sick and fades. What once was
gold
In a mackintosh fawn, a compromise between hope and absurdity.
Take this palimpsest, my dearest artery, erase the characters,
Inscribe
it fresh with your own blood and someone elses muscle.
Forest Heraldry
Lion, unicorn, antelope, puma
Perfect company of heraldic fellows
Bound in obedience to the law
Proclaimed in jungle, heart and fen:
Live on the chance of offering,
accept
The hospitality of hunting men.
Cowed, fierce, lithe, brutal
Suckle your whelps in no awareness
Of special future. Link your ways
With those of hostile men. Persist
In fabled life, now photographed, in
jungles,
Books of history, heart and fen.
Cabaret Chant
So much like an Academy picture,
my
empty friend, with your eye alight
for the weaker moment. Surely you
dont
imagine that my wits are less bright
Than the artificial pearls around your
throat
or the diamond hoax laughing in your hair!
oh yes! A year ago I
would have cried,
but now I know and I do not care.
So much like an Academy picture
even your teeth are false and your round breast
is more an unnerving
hint of nobler friends
than a soft pillow for my head to rest.
The Defendant: a Contemporary
Sonnet
Mercury in name and brimstone in
temperament
this aged charioteer parades his grace
before the assembled
eyes of the packed jury,
charged with intention to forfeit his stupid life.
See how he pleads, how wit can soothe predicament,
how fashions pass
across his pampered face
and turn his jaded whine to supple fury
and
elevate his messy burning strife .
but trickery cannot save him, cannot
alter
the granite semblance of immutability
or re-direct his previous
syllogism.
he is a prey to fate: the swaying halter
will freeze his
moment of sublime futility
into remembered squibs, a defendants
aphorism.