The Razor's Edge

If I could I would pause you now
With your liquid laugh echoing
In the bathroom while you watch me
Shaving in the morning mirror.
Your face mimics mine as I stretch
My skin to smooth the passing
Of the razor's each sharp sweep.
Like Jonathon Joe in the verse
Our mouths are like huge Os;
So soon we are giggling. I'm swallowing
Foam and I'm glad drowning in love.

So let's stop and grasp what we share -
Small moments - let's not ask for more,
For how long before it's your hair there
And there's a lock upon the bathroom door?

Remembrance Service 1984

What a name for a boy-
Montague Rainbow-
To hear that young November.

A roll-call of the school dead
Dully read to us
As we shuffled and yawned.

But now at forty and more
He stays in my head,
No grand arch offering hope

Instead an oil slicked puddle -
A mess to tread through -
A name with no meaning left.

Archaeology and the Early History of Essex

He passes you a box, which includes:
A black arrowhead
Some knapped flints
(microliths, he explains).
Worked bright, as new now
As they were before they were buried.
And these are beautiful,
But obviously.

Then he passes you an ugly stone,
Heavy until you turn it
And it fits like your newborn's head,
This handaxe, like your infant's skull,
Fills your hand and no more.
As it should.

There is a dent for your thumb,
You and the Bronze Age meet,
You are holding History.
You think about your son's hands,
How curled and small they are now.
One day they too will fit this axe.

Your Empty Bed

Your empty bed.
I hadn't seen you up
and dressed
Since J's baptism,
you sat in your chair
all shining and electric.
A witness to a church
You had led me to
some thirty years ago.

Eight years on now.
And you have got up
But never to press
This ash burnt pillow.
Carried out by strangers,
Your last legs long gone.

The chair sits dust covered
Battery dead.

I open your post
And cover your quilt
In piles of bills, demands
And junk mail. Your life
In paper hiding suspect
Stains on sheets I do not
Dare to scrutinise.

A last rite I do for you.

In The Night

"I lie alone, the clock strikes three
And anyone who wanted to could contact me
At dead of night, till break of day
Endless thoughts and questions keep me awake
Its much too late"
Pet Shop Boys - Jealousy

Everytime I hear my mobile ring
I am brought back to that night...

It was half past two and the world
abed except for those whose job it
is to keep the rest of us afloat.

When I picked Jealousy by PSB, i thought
it would arrest me, be a ring tone
so camp I would smile whenever it called.

And so, from my sleep, I hear it
downstairs, on charge, breaking the night.

Good news snores but the bad is always
awake.I know, even before I press green,
what the voice is waiting to say,
as if I have been waiting for this,
without ever knowing, moment of loss.

I put it to my ear and the phone's
crescendo ends and everything begins
differently.

"I never knew time passed so slow"
Pet Shop Boys - Jealousy

The Leafing Game

Cycling up the hill to work
A stray leaf swirls before me
And almost by instinct I reach
To clutch this first faller.

First form, lunchtime, top field
We line up in front of unnamed trees
And wait fro the wind to whistle
Through and start ‘The Leafing Game’

This simple contest would thrill us
As we chased a leaf to catch
Before it hit the ground. We’d hurtle,
Twist and leap in their sweet rot
Until we were the last still holding.

As if it was our World Cup.
As if we were great sportsmen.

And maybe we were. Our great game
The perfect match of boy and nature,
The random and the skilled.
Now leaves are to be raked, cleared
They clog gutters, discolour lawns
Where once they were all our pleasure –

We prized the withered leaf and
Allowed for no more than a breeze
To ease our youthful hearts.

Moments In Love – The Art Of Noise

As I walk to the railway station, I slip
The buds into my ear and press ‘Play’.
And there, as the Estuary reveals itself,
I am eighteen and back in your house:
You’re back from visiting University
And you’re a Marco Polo to us,
Unpakaging your riches to rubes.
And there it is:
A twelve inch track into another world.
It gleams and is modern and electric,
Its subject, no more than life to be had,
Out there,
Now.
It looped and looped around the room.
Ten minutes stretching out of the old,
Expanding into Experience and ourselves.
No going back. Never, as the man said,
Such Innocence again. Again.
And we heard that it was good
And this Art mattered and was more,
Much more than merely Noise.