The Hat-Stand Union Read online

  rosin. She lost all pleasurable sensation in her ears.

  She drank to forget. She drank to remember where

  she’d left her bike. I met her during the winter.

  She said, ‘I need someone to save me.’ I did

  what any sensible person would have done. I did

  what any sensible person would have done.

  This Was All About Me

  No one ever betrayed me.

  This was all about me.

  You were missing nothing.

  I refrained from disclosure.

  You heard very little indeed.

  It was important to me.

  They were weak to insist.

  You heard very little indeed.

  We had a fair shot, kinda.

  There was the little matter of.

  You heard very little indeed.

  This couldn’t transform in full.

  You had your foot on it.

  This was certainly the first.

  I predicted but too soon.

  They were on to us before.

  Don’t presume you’re integral.

  The middle wasn’t eaten then.

  This happened while they slept.

  You heard very little indeed.

  They didn’t care for someone.

  You heard very little indeed.

  We held hands in fiction.

  I intended to tell you straight.

  You had many, many names.

  This was without internal reference.

  I was fully dressed throughout.

  You heard very little indeed.

  The foreigners understood it.

  We never charged for air.

  I breathed out all your smoke.

  This occurred in the summer of.

  You heard very little indeed.

  These moments meant everything.

  I couldn’t have reached out.

  The station was far from the ocean.

  You heard very little indeed.

  They were not vital to proceedings.

  The outcome was written.

  I was wearing black at the time.

  2:19 to Whitstable

  I’m leaving once I’ve pick-axed this widowed moss.

  I’m leaving once I’ve asphyxiated these doves.

  I’m leaving once I’ve shaved my legs to smithereens.

  I’m leaving once I’ve tidied this cupboard.

  I’m leaving once I’ve practised my aloof walk.

  I’m leaving once the Anti-Christ has finished his tea.

  I’m leaving once I’m satisfied your sister’s okay.

  I’m leaving once the spare-ribs have digested.

  I’m leaving once wallpaper comes in the shade of morose.

  I’m leaving once my dignity has truly gone and not just nipped out for crisps.

  I’m leaving once they’ve brought back hanging.

  I’m leaving once the Palestinian thing is cool.

  I’m leaving once inanimate objects get the vote.

  I’m leaving once Norwegians achieve equal daylight.

  I’m leaving once my grandma attends gay pride.

  I’m leaving once there’s no more creaking doors.

  I’m leaving once your ex-lovers all die.

  I’m leaving once the car is fully submerged.

  I’m leaving once I’ve flirted with crack cocaine.

  I’m leaving once it’s never been this good before.

  I’m leaving once I’m certain there’s not a single kiss left in you, not even a stolen one whilst momentarily distracted by a wasp.

  I’m leaving once I’ve sicked out a life-long supply of poems.

  I’m leaving once my children have gone senile.

  I’m leaving once the hospitals have been closed down by health and safety.

  I’m leaving once I’ve cow-tipped this cathedral.

  I’m leaving once my liver’s poked by scientists.

  I’m leaving once all the whites and the blacks and the young and the old and the deaf and the mute and the blind and the rich and the poor literally stand under the same umbrella.

  I’m leaving once I’ve observed a drastic change in body temperature.

  I’m leaving once the photographers have given up.

  I’m leaving once heaven is empty because I’ve put everyone off it with my constant yelling up the rope-ladder.

  I’m leaving once I’ve proved my subtle valiance.

  I’m leaving once you’ve stopped doing whatever it is that you’re doing, yep yep.

  I’m leaving once the vegan jungle.

  I’m leaving once the heavenly bond of (one orgasm that’s all I’m asking dammit).

  I’m leaving once I can’t speak for the pain.

  I’m leaving once your friends start calling me diddums.

  I’m leaving once (you didn’t realise I was this serious did you?).

  I’m leaving once we’ve shared a tropical Calippo without the cinematic sense of the last bearable day on earth.

  I’m leaving once (if you’re waiting for the by-the-bye I don’t think I can muster the strength).

  I’m leaving once we’ve entered the 676th stage.

  I’m leaving once Wake Up LA in Dulwich.

  I’m leaving once our agents have fallen in lust.

  I’m leaving once I’ve been cast as the painted whore in an Almodóvar film.

  I’m leaving once we swoon through the commercials as well as the killer lines.

  I’m leaving once there’s an Oscar buzz around your psychologist.

  I’m leaving once I’ve bitten into the syrup of a quiet drama.

  I’m leaving once the looking glass only lets teetotallers through.

  I’m leaving once the rhinestones reach their highest monetary value.

  I’m leaving once I’ve caught my crying mother in my arms.

  I’m leaving once a small incision under the lobe.

  I’m leaving once my crown comes back from the cobblers.

  I’m leaving once this affair makes one of us a necrophiliac.

  I’m leaving once you’ve vomited down the phone and I’ve got it right in the ear.

  I’m leaving once you’ve licked off my varnish and disliked my natural wood.

  I’m leaving once you’re the only person I’ve ever told this to.

  I’m leaving once your soil-clods smash my window.

  I’m leaving once you’ve hung me upside down for seven years then drained my head with a turquoise syringe.

  I’m leaving once we all get a thing for turquoise syringes.

  I’m leaving once you’ve been bludgeoned to death like Joe Orton.

  I’m leaving once I no longer taste of cigarettes, chewing gum, hope.

  Break-up Party

  Everybody had a throat and none were gulping.

  Presently came another man with drinks.

  In the manner of tedious mingling, it was easeful enough.

  It was only a tad draughty and always

  abundant with firewood. That is to say, no one

  ever mentioned the roof had been blown off.

  There was little of the sobbing and song-writing about birds

  one usually finds in these places, rather how

  frank it was, how open.

  ‘I was going to offer you representation,’

  said a camp lawyer, stripping to his boxers for a dip

  in the pool, ‘but I see that won’t be necessary.’

  Sometimes I wished you would show me

  something, just a nod or a wave of a glove.

  Two Cents

  Shingle the pages of King Lear with tears

  of delighted laughter. Never cease

  to amaze them with your sloth.

  Take commitment-phobes out for tapas,

  give no option but the croquettes.

  Don’t reply to letters

  except to say: ‘I’ve been mutilated

  by a flung hedgehog. This is not a joke.�
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  Encase the telephone in jelly and fist it.

  Love the soiled bit. Look three ways

  before gouging. All’s fair in drove at wall.

  Run

  If my language was water

  it would be rainwater

  no-flow in bucket, gutter,

  brow, no-flow in dust,

  liquid thunder crumbed

  in clay, sludge afraid

  to slip away, since clouds

  spewed out heroes,

  water-babies, sent like slop,

  like lava, fevered blood.

  At night, downstream culverts

  bundle their passage

  back underneath a train,

  a road, a city wall:

  can’t you hear the sound

  of that old drowning song?

  If the bedrock sings along:

  job’s a good ’un

  but drainage systems spin

  in dreams and bits resurface like

  ‘percolate’, ‘swale’, ‘dinghy’,

  ‘sloop’; surf boards glitter

  with buzz words, beaches

  blotted in lisps of ‘luff’

  under a speaking moon:

  ‘I dream to keep you yet

  cursed to neap you! Alas,

  but my hands are tides.’

  She laps me, gulp, laps me

  not. If my pleading was water

  I’d be heading for you, top

  news bulletin, forecast

  world over: babe grab a

  coat, zip up, storm’s coming.

  Sea Bed

  He cared. But he didn’t care enough

  to stop taking the drugs when she said,

  ‘I’ll wait outside in the rain until you’ve finished.’

  She cared. But she didn’t care enough

  to stop pulling his leg when he said,

  ‘My leg is connected to my penis.’

  He cared. But he didn’t care enough

  to defend her honour in the pub when Dave

  said she did it Greek-style in an alley once.

  You cared. But you didn’t care enough

  to keep walking when my pleading was just

  reflex mouthings of a guillotined head.

  He cared. But he didn’t care enough

  not to smash her apartment with a cricket bat

  when she slept with a boyish girl.

  We cared. But we didn’t care enough

  to wear eye-patches over our magnets when

  we set our compass for one final paddle.

  Public Detectives

  I’ve been listening to your day through the wall

  of a whole city. Sometimes the wires cross and I listen

  to an old Taiwanese woman muttering to her cats.

  I’ve been eavesdropping on your progress

  with a glass tumbler pressed to a Tube map.

  I’ve been conferring, finally, with the other reluctant troubadours:

  they’ve sent single red roses to half the population

  and still no girlish stammer from those macho dialling tones.

  It’s as if no one’s listening except us.

  You’ve been watching through the keyhole

  of a scientific discovery. Sometimes the light flips and

  you watch a dying puppy staring longingly at a sausage.

  You’ve been measuring our time apart in guilty shrugs

  when silent crowds mention me. You’ve been conferring,

  finally, with the other burdened troubadours:

  they’ve sent boxes of ice to half the population

  and still no macho dialling tones from those girlish stammers.

  It’s as if no one’s listening.

  Facts

  (from Philip Levine)

  The Butterscotch Pot de Crème offered at Gjelina restaurant

  in Venice, CA, is insanely delicious. In her Death Row fantasy

  Nadia chose Butterscotch Pot de Crème for her last meal: ‘And

  I’d have Arabian food and fish and chips to remind me of home.’

  The best way to smuggle pills from Mexico is within the bodies

  of dead lobsters. Hide the dead lobsters in a bucket of fresh,

  snapping ones (lobsters stay alive for 24 hours out of water) and

  the police won’t rummage around. Their dogs will smell fish.

  I am not American. At twelve, I smoked roll-ups on the aerial

  footbridge of How Stean Gorge in my dad’s brown leather jacket

  with my hair dyed the colour of suitcase. The pub in Masham

  serves Sunday lunch and their specialities include lobster bisque.

  In 2010, Tiger Woods checked into the Meadows in Wickenburg,

  Arizona, to be treated for sex addiction. ‘It’s drugs, not sex,’ says

  the National Enquirer. Woods made no mention of his drug habit

  in his 13-minute apology speech. The Enquirer may be lying to us.

  There were no ticket barriers at Deptford station in the fall of 2009.

  The grocer’s opposite the Albany Arts Centre sells the retro sticks

  of Wrigley’s spearmint gum. No sugar-free pellets. ‘Get a little closer’

  is a slogan shared with Arrid Extra Dry deodorant. I flew to Atlanta

  on the anniversary of John Lennon’s death. My ex-fiancée works

  at the Southbank Centre with my mother, and my friend Sarah has

  played guitar in the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Albany, I think,

  but none of them knew about dead lobsters hidden amongst live ones.

  The Enquirer would profit from a Tiger Woods drug orgy. Mr4Guv

  from the ABC blog writes, ‘My two neutered male dogs are mounting

  one another all day long. Does that make my dogs sex addicts?’ Yes.

  I was muzzled for whispering ‘I do not crave your blood’ into a bag.

  I told two lies in the last stanza. I crave blood. I do. A poet told me

  love was an oral fixation. Watch my lips: it’s not an oral fixation.

  That’s something else. That’s a glory hole sucking on a long sentence.

  I wooed with words. They loved an idea. Their idea was disproved.

  The calmest I’ve ever been was in a sensitive room in Venice, CA.

  I had a blue wallet with white lettering that said, ‘Delay No More’,

  Nadia drank redemptive coffee with her ex-boyfriend while I was

  assembling a designer cardboard house for a kitten to sleep in.

  On the edge of North America, the citizens train their street-lights

  to be respectful of madness. Like a row of woken trees, they shine

  on the woman who guards the automatic doors singing ‘they have

  freed you!’ and they shine on me, pushing the button to cross over.

  I will never return to the butterscotch sands of Santa Monica or

  the communal ash-trays of Walnut House where the misfits whooped

  my name. I haven’t the cash or the energy. Not even for Nadia,

  whom I adore. Not even for one last meal of clean, American lobster.

  To Whom It May Concern

  If you see a lemon being cut, it is goodbye.

  If you see an old and childish book, this is goodbye.

  If you see a turtle on the television, a shot of rum

  or two small winters, we are goodbye.

  If you see a pain in the heart of the chalk,

  goodbye is this, this white mark.

  Screening

  After watching a film about masked goblins

  I sat you at the bar and told the truth.

  I said, Sweetheart.

  I said, Love of this season.

  I said, Anything you can think of that’s perfect.

  Then I said, Malcontent. I said, Lothario.

  Then I said, Barefoot in the seedling glass.

  You said, Darling.

  You said, Decades of child.

/>   You said, Everything you can think of that’s gentle.

  Then you said, Rejection slip. Then, Worldwide prism.

  Then you said, My other jacket is thin air.

  The Promises

  I gave up my seat at the bar

  and I went to buy a goat.

  I sold my goat to a farmer

  who gave me three gold coins.

  I placed those three gold coins

  in the hands of a simple beggar.

  The beggar flurried his rags,

  revealed himself a prince.

  The prince repaid my kindness

  with a chest of diamonded robes.

  My queenly garments caught

  the eye of a roving captain.

  We sailed to an empire where

  they only spoke two words.

  ‘You are…’ said the natives and

  their leader said ‘You are…’

  ‘You are… You are…’ they sang

  like bottle-flutes, ‘You are…’

  My captain heard a compliment

  but I was not so sure.

  That night we slept in velvet

  or seaweed bathed in oil.

  I dreamt I taught the trees

  to bear rare, human fruit

  with perfect hands and perfect

  toes and not one hole.