Death is always asking me for poems

Death is always asking me for poems,

jealous of the time I spend on politics

and love. It’s not what she needs from

this relationship, she says. The juicy

death she dangles I find so hard to resist.

Like the girl who lost her mother’s hand,

the man who threw his baby from the tower.

The more she demands the more I decline,

even when we reach an anniversary. She’s

tried to simplify the deal, sends me handy

rhyming words for murder, a long list

of lives she’ll claim are accidents of birth

or accidents. She knows that when the living

have read how she must feel she will be happy.  

Rock n Roll Years

When she went with him last week,

in a service truck on Beale Street,

she thought he’d be the kind of boy

she’d never want to keep

with his street corner skin, his head

out of the window bellowing the blues

with the old men on the sidewalk,

his fingernails as filthy as their feet.

But up on stage tonight

he’s rose oil and Vaseline.

He’s been given the key

to the heppest floor at Lanskey’s

with his red pants and green jacket,

his pink socks and shirt,

his shoes as white

as the dress she wears on Sundays.

As soon as he hits the first string

she can hear herself calling his name.

She’s shaking when his lip

curls to a smile.

When he sings

she’s gone, man, real gone.

And when he grinds,

so slow,

like he’s got a thing for his guitar,

she swears she’ll pray

so hard

in Church tomorrow.

Fire

Tied to the Thames on board the Queen Mary,

some of us were standing on the edge,

shirt-sleeves and blouses, everyone merry

and way past that really awkward stage

when all you have to talk about is work.

I still take the mick even now – Look! Look!

– you, wide-eyed at the river –

the water! the water’s on fire!

We all laughed. It was night –

the fire was caused by the lights

from the buildings on the bank at Westminster.

You look like you’re witnessing a miracle, I said later,

taking a last glug of wine

and kissing you for the first time.