Sextina

Outside the womb of woman
Ideas birth wild
And selfish as a child
Chaotic as a human
Reborn, reworn and falsely styled
Ruin

Upon ruin
A woman
Self-reflected, self-styled
Self-neglected, self-wild
Human
Resurrected and dissected child

Remnant child
Of a bird-nest ruin
Poor human
Groomed woman
Coiffured wild
Styled

Fashionably styled
Coat-checked child
Choked back wild
Jungled ruin
Woman
Naturally human

An unnatural human
Misshapen imperfection styled
Almost woman
Mostly child
Tamed to a selfless ruin
Wild

Contained wild
Maintained human
Sustained ruin
Token styled
Child
Of the broken woman

Just a tangled ruin where vines run wild
A living woman – a dead human
Life-styled into orphaning her child

Foot Fetish

Stuck to the heel of a shoe
Dirt
This is the aleph
A tiny syllable of observation
And a universe of meaning
When attached to moving people

The subtext of passed lives and passed hopes
Or lack thereof

So it is that when you and you and you are still
You are still... moving
And instead of moving on
I observe shoes

Each wear betrays a past
A history of paths walked
Of puddles not entirely avoided
Of litter that has been scuffed to the curb
And then, having entered a car

That is appropriate to the style of footwear

The right heel worn down with the remembered curve of the wheel well
Gas, brake, Gas Break

A long distance driver’s heel curve is more profound
Gas for twenty clicks, brake at the bend.
Gas for 5 clicks on the 1 in 50 grade
And grinding to make the sunrise delivery

So different to the cabbies heel
The inner city heel and toe
Stop and start
Chasing perfectly timed lights
Avoiding fights
But not eye contact

And different from the rolling right hand
Soccer mum, cross training
Picket fence of an indoor/outdoor runner
Never worn out
Barely broken in
Discarded before they betray anything
Smelling only faintly of regret

Pedestrian lives

The Fridge of Destiny

I am someone - I claim
I only have indirect proof
Echoes

I cluck at the late-night news
How awful - Why can't someone...?

I tut at the sad and wasted street corner
How bitter - If only someone..?

I gaze into the oracle that is my refrigerator
My crisper has gone from ironic

To disgusting - Why doesn't someone..?

I receive distressing wisdom
I am disturbed to consider that if I am someone…

Then that "someone" is me

Cabbage Town

We're in a hog town
A hockey town
A slice of Orange with a slab of
Cabbage
Town
Nice and Swiss and orderly

Dumbing any wit down
We're whittled down
Eroded by this city's drabness
Averaged
Down
Fiercely bland and ordinary

We could be world renowned
If we weren't hidebound
By the fact we drag our
Baggage
Round
Blaming our geography

Because the whole world round
The heart of art is found
When artists seek the hidden
Savage
Sounds
Wherever place and art meet awkwardly

Like in a hog town
A hockey town
A slice of Orange with a slab of
Cabbage
Town
Nice and Swiss and orderly

Back Bacon

How many times I painted those same slabs of meat
Gay pugilists and wrestlers
Grappling men
Groping men
The rough trade
The ancient catch of boozy trawls
Hampstead pub crawls
The Black Cap and The Richard Steele's
King William the Fourth
Jack Straws

And then outdoors
Seeking the Heath and homophobic
Horsemen of my own apocalypse
Cruising for War
Settling for Famine

And later
Lonely and insatiable
I took my papal rage
Cast across a canvas stage
Anger, hatred, page on page

Meat on criss-crossed meat
Crucified
Intense
Youthful
Free-willed and unselfconscious
Though always photographed

Turning tricks into Triptychs

… I outlived my angry work
Aged
Outlived my lovers and regrets

Lived long enough to
Spin my histories of vagrant impropriety
Funded by the patrons of society -

As art that showed a pure and flagrant piety
Haunted by the demons of occasional sobriety

… My demons are gone
Cirrhotic
And forgotten
Once dangerous - now sad

But paid and paid to revisit their vague gravesites
I touched the faded names of headstones
Weary
Vainly
Trying to remember how to dream

Once
…Once I could paint dead drunk
And now I'm only
...dead