Changing Hands

to reposition the soul would make too
hungry an appetite for money
to disband words and relish restrictorspeak

falls words waterfalls
of serendipity the squiggle of money
underfoot gridlock the necessity of

words, the primacy of comprehension
you're a winner consequently words
become binding

this place as a pose
to that place a space such as Myspace
to allow habitat

love was on my lips
Bournemouth, perhaps?
I've never been abroad
echoes of space flight

The succession of poetry
by the spoken word


the guns are out and the land is copper, a hot acid between a tooth and a toe an echo of a forefinger. Lost in the land she shape shifts a mirror of rain a car crash clouds deep upon our knuckles

The soul is a repository, a tree that blooms
fades echos and dies to deny words by the fridge
of money would be paradise on earth

stamping feet on the floor and clapping our hands
rain can fall from the sky
and brush our paradise aside

And she is not her or many or another
of a thousand faces you've been today
seen this week, month year
gone by, reluctant to admit
your journey

whether planned, by chance
neither either, someone
else who documents your fall from grace
your pleasure or your pain
we are all disenchanted by money

Bin men that don't strike?
The novel isn't dead
but our monks are and
the teachers on strike
are fucked off with the whole

goddam mess!
Seasons change here
my face changes in the car mirror
I should have slept
but

to skate thin ice
in grid lock
watching the land and no longer
recognising the British
countryside

the strange thin
strips of buildings
way beyond our pockets
and the wisps of cloud
seem to knight our heraldry

this odd occasion before
the rain, then sun
New York weather upon British soil
My muse, at present my
Flora

is a delicate featured Indian girl,
something pivotal
to the turns of our culture,
her dance and her shape shift
to tree

this is not you or me a girl
we see, or wish to see,
or not wish to see!
Then who is she?
As the intrusive author fades

a little further East
as London shifts closer
to the Garden of England
that touches the coast
of Holland

on a clear day
We must play out some
memory, a maladaptive
memory of
how things used to be

To say things clearly
an artist may need poetry
but the very crux of the matter,
the raison d'etre
of now

or ever
is lost by the skin and bones of words
that climb to images
that linger to the abstraction
of sounds

Honking horns on this by-way,
subway
the London circular quite derelict
of anything British, English
Londonish....

This then must be an apparition,
obligatory, whimsical
an oracle.
As much fact as fiction
to lose then recover diction

neo lingua franca! The ghosts are in our minds
in our machines.
I will mistake Paris
for New Zealand!
She runs for cover

as ambulances scream by
the end of an administration
a change within
and beyond the teachers strike
pay disputes

Jobs fucked up by paperwork.
The rain is falling fast and large
and lingers in vapour trails
daylight, opposite (for all this entails)
a landscape for the eyes

to fall. Flora is omniscient. She
came to me in sleep as a Unicorn.
She whispered that we cannot escape her
speeding faster, faster
by plane, train, car and
Internet spaces

We'll not lose her
as the land will identify
acknowledge and sleep
on knowledge.
I am the wolf

that craves her sunset eyes
that runs by her side.
For Atlas holds up her residence
and within this paradise
is the repetition of money

changing hands