Cant and Wont

'Don't say in a letter what you can't in my ear'

Fuck phallogocentrism
I’m sick of semiotics
And the signs and signifiers
Permeating major discourse
On the fabric of the axis
That articulates the disparate
Realities of constructive
Phenomenology;

And I hate hermeneutics,
The conceptual didactics
Of interpretative powers
In the science of the sub-structure
Of methodology;

I Kant stand categorical
Imperatives decentralising
Tragic spaces,
Interplay and sublimating
Intersubjectivity.

I know I know I know
Verbosity’s a virtue
Verbiage your vernacular
Cant is your wont

But you could have just told me.

Frank

Tailoring O’Hara slacks
I’ll be frank, scarlet never was
My colour or my kind of girl
I’ll run instead of talking and
I’ll sing instead of working and
You’ll find me sipping coke
Somewhere with one of many lovers
In those lemon yellow shoes, the
Ones that look American, which is
Why I think you like them, which is
Why you think I wear them, which is
Enough for the moment, which is
All there is.

Like the starlings in the hedgerows
With no notion of tomorrow
Delighted by sunrise;
This is the last straw
Chewed to spite you
By somebody else;
In the morning I will love you -
Remember myself.

Rhombus

Please don't keep your hands
To yourself, I was
Expecting heartbreak-
Last year I was here with you,
Or someone of that name-
Square window and the spots
Of daylight through it are the same,
But you're not him
And breathing's easy
And everything's changed;
Freckles on you
Tracing out triangles
Make me unafraid,
Parallel lines of morning
Meet in corners of my town
Shaping up to miss you
If you stay around.

March

North wind beats the edges off
The summer, kicks the heads
Off daffodils on
Wordsworth Avenue,
Pebbledash houses fight it
Out with their blunt glint and
Eyeless windows tensed
Against the cold;
Smug at recalcitrant sun
Teased out of cloud.
That tattered St George's cross
That flaps and flags up the
Truck stop, shown up by
Aged miners' homes
Neat gardens with handrails
On all the doors.
I feel sick with shame
Always coming back here
In one piece.

Procrastination

(For Rosie, and less important things)

The wood pigeons are weighing
Down the branches of the trees
Outside, the light throwing the
Roof tiles into relief and me
Off topic-
Past saving
Face or time or words
But who needs
Face or time, when words
Can make time
Feel different, or faces
Out of things I’ve only heard.

That clock shackles me to minutes
Locks me in its clicking limits
There’s no time for art, you are
Just born and then you start.

Harry Met Sally

The second when
A good night turned
Into your lips and mine
And a doorway conversation
Into blurring all our lines
And your silence giving way
To make a clamour of our sighs
Your hands on me in the hallway
And the world asleep inside

I didn’t think you had it in you,
But you did
And so did I.

The Riddle of the Sphinx

'She took these rooms for the pleasure of going there with her veil down, and imagining she was a heroine. She had a passion for secrecy, but she herself was merely a Sphinx without a secret.' - Oscar Wilde


King’s Cross
And a head full of questions,
Waiting on my gorgeous wings;
My feline pace anticipates
Your answers,
I will dig my claws in.
But the thing is
I’m a sphinx without a secret-
A riddle you can resolve
With your lips.

You jump the barrier,
A smile I can’t explain away
Give me the right answer, and
You just might live.