Poems 1

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Bring me high rents! Tiny flats! Mouldy walls!
Basements with only two windows!
Bring me the mirage of a cemented patio
    and Hear! Hear! ... a living room!
And I will show you the meaning of ‘gratitude’ and ‘devotion’.

Let’s have scones with strawberry jam
and Rodda’s clotted cream at the V&A
while the Italian pianist plays Piaf’s tunes. Let’s wet our feet
while crossing the shallow pool – our minds still
on the jewellery behind the glass. 

Bring me to Highgate Cemetery
and let’s try to find Karl Marx’s tomb.
Bring me marching bands playing in the pavilion
  in St James Park
on a dewed Sunday morning. Bring me vegan brunches
  at the Palm Vaults
while I tell to myself ‘I am not a hipster!’ 

Let me buy you a French dvd from Fopp,
let’s walk to the British Museum
and cross those streets where once
the Stephen sisters walked too.
Let’s go for a black & white movie
at the BFI and have a gin & tonic at the bar. 

Bring me to the pier
when it’s dark and windy.
Let’s be silent.
Let’s listen to the voices of the women who built the bridges,
the streets and the buildings of our city. 

Bring me in front of the Globe
when all the lights are off.
Let’s be silent.
Let’s listen to the voices of Boudica
and her daughters while they were killing
your ancestors (or mine?) and burning everything to ashes. 

Let me close my eyes.
Let me breathe deeply.
Let me turn towards Southwark, 

towards home – where,
if I can only find some change for the milk,
I can make you an Italian hot chocolate before bed. 

There was according to the hymns a flower which

from its own root bloomed a hundred more so strong

in smell that the girl (here she is) wanted only to breathe

it. She was growing. As she went to break its stem,

recognising narcissus from a picture, the whole earth

made a hole from which rose Hades, a man called host

who controlled many. The girl was taken (as she is).
 

The search for the girl (where is she) doesn’t end

or begin but defines her in the dictionary. Demeter,

her mother, became a wild bird looking for her over

the firm land and yielding sea. No one would tell her

the truth about her daughter. Not even the birds of

omen flew to her. In the hidden depths of the earth

the girl waited, picturing the surface of the world from

a memory of one page of the encyclopedia.

Perhaps without the dark smell isn’t as strong. When

spring returns the darkness starts to leave, the leaves

begin to grow, petals happen in repeats. Rose is a noun

and a verb. The girl known only beneath the earth

(here she is) once picked a flower so was picked. She’d

seen somebody doing it in a picture or was it on the

television. The fact of being here was reintroduced

to her as considerable.