Friday

11

I sit up. Outside
I see candles warm
lounge curtains. A
candle anchors a room
fixes a centre. 
A candle is a mind.

Sunday

12

I've slipped before
in Winter (black ice, lard)
what persists (carbuncles,
piles) an enchanted
nonchalance of wind, fingered
holes, odd asides

Friday

13

I imagine
what I want to want
is to want to get up
night's plain air
all the garden
undressed

Thursday

14

all is memory
I think of your hand
which I cannot 
grasp
the six petaled flowers
of your summer eyes

Friday

15

midnight
all arrives untimely
at its own place
nothing exceeds
the limits of my
question

Sunday

16

a minute
how many thoughts
is that
flat on your back
on damp grass
facing skywards?

Tuesday

17

hundreds 
and thousands
when I rub my eyes
impossible admittance
to say what I am 
doing

Thursday

18

mind not as anomaly
uncannily arising
but as fundamental
as space, time, mass, gravity
What then would stars
make of our pratfalls?

19

What if wall
knew door?
If network knew
phone? What
if pocket knew
hole?

Friday

20

her cheek
a pale manuka flower
licked by flame
she waits for river
over stone to speak
river’s true names

21

I see her
in my sleep
past river’s curtain
where hours are years
and seconds
are a week’s breath 

22

I am king
of the law
I am voice
of the self.
How could I
be otherwise?

23

the moment
I hear myself
hear you
this is the moment
I hear myself
think

Tuesday

24

no tears I have
cried and pissed enough
a glint by the shed.
Keyshine? Immobile
I lie a liner in
drydock

Sunday

25

a cloud dances
over a roof patch
I need to nail down
before the half brick
slips
once I get my back upright

Saturday

26

sluggish stick
of fig through hole
a leech against the thigh
lint coated no doubt
a slice is what we need
pumpernickel, that's the ticket

Thursday

27

laundry ammonium tang
cloth nappies in a bleaching bucket
dry ones hang from a rack
fresh giant snotrags
suspended from the ceiling
like a sailor’s cot

28

before bed ablutions
spit on a tissue brings back
how gran would take off
her slippers and Whiskey
the corgi would lick her feet
good for her corns

Tuesday

29

bedtime if only
I could get up
then morning again
with no choice in the matter
still his shed should 
buffer the wind

Wednesday

30

earth still here not
open ground staggering down dark
like the night before last
I'll fix me a face
while I wait for her
to find me

31

potted meat now there's
a treat but never lettuce
green water in a leaf
if she could find her way
to a hand-up and tea in a cracked
mug would be a fine thing

32

they are calling for the dog
slipped his leash again
a dog's tongue is a cold
business is she
out or in? out most likely
at the shops

33

give tongue to gull
tongue to keys
unfound
to cloud; speak

of the dead as if they
were here; how could you
speak
otherwise?

34

a cracker in my pocket
I'm sure of it
a cracker and a sliver of cheese
wrapped in tissue
perhaps even a fig
at the bottom of the pocket

35

bright today even
with eyes closed even
when you play the game
of taking away
the back lawn cool on the back
the yap of a neighbour's puppy

36

I lie
on the back lawn
let the thousand pores of my skin
flower edelweiss novas
I’ll hazard all 
this perilous evening

37

how she manages
those shops I'll never know
the damp cabbage and muddy
brussell sprouts not to mention
wrapped mince in brown paper
I shudder to think of it

38

when she comes back
(and if she does)
then there's sure to be a kindness
and a well then 
(my eyes 
down cast) and a
no more again of this business

39

my finger worries
a hole in my right
trouser pocket
upright I
scan the dark lawn
for a glint of keys

40

where once you saw a page
now you see
a white field
blurred by scribble
and a black boulder
fly

Tuesday

41

a fly rests on the leaves
of the book of mind
it does not close
words fade before the fly
fly fills eye
fly fills ground and sky

42

truth over stories
the world as it is
not as we wish it to be.
The world. This world.
For this is the only world
there is or shall ever be

Sunday

43

these notes are nothing
trivialities, tokens
snatched
from the night
seconds before
sleep

Tuesday

44

psychiatry's the new 
rock and roll
I know you got me pegged

as borderline
but I'm plagued by
wood sprites

Saturday

45

you want to step out of song 
leave the wood 
if you dare 
but she’s still in the water 
her back a palimpsest
made flesh

Friday

46

hunter by slow waters
with only your words to fill
the limit of her dance
the space in your dreams
and no end ever 
to a never

Wednesday

47

fall of brook
over stone: her name
from this song
is still your name
for her in your
tongue

Tuesday

48

remembrance of her washing
pump water from the courtyard
in a pitcher to the basin
dawn amber light
shock of mushroom
areola as she turns her back

Saturday

49

the swinging door of breath
walking in walking out
midnight
midday
a missed space
or step

Thursday

50

promises of home
nymphs spied in the wood
who tell their truths 
under a mesh of leaves
at the listening place
words to fill a nothing

Saturday

51

at the place
where the lips speak
move against the black
the red against the black
a pouring out of speech in speaking
thought in thinking

52

Deneb drowned by a half-moon
I rake black mowed grass
by the laundry
waiting for sleep
a sole voice in the night 
singing before a fall

Wednesday

53

tired of dice and cards
speculations , hesitations, pauses
lying in the dark for days 
or at any rate 
the space between 
days

54

waiting for a call
or a voice
even my voice if I could
recognise it as such
infinity against infinity
means nothing in my book

Tuesday

55

I loved those
lucky number sweets
my first mother
gave to me as a child
he always wanted the 77
I always wanted the 88

Sunday

56

if I could see all
without words I would not
be me : I'd be an ephebe he
lost in chromatic flurries
a black sheep wingding
in the family typeface

57

now it’s night
the rain drops, falls
down, not that night
minds day or day
minds night, not that
mind minds at all

58

we are the spaces in between
the holes within the hoops
the midnights make the days
able to pass—you want to play the silence
but you cannot play the silence
with notes
or loops

Friday

59

my choosing to speak
even if I can't mean what I say this time
my choosing to speak
lets midnight pass
here, now,
the time and shadow of our hands

60

here I have to make do without stories
I'm left with traces, impressions
what's all been thrown together
tohu-bohu
still my voice when I call you
brings your face to me

Sunday

61

we're just the copies of the copies
but we love to see the mist 
rise in the valley
we too are just suspended
and we'll wait as long as it takes to wait 
for the wait to take place

Saturday

62

all our disastrous stars
charting destinies
destinations, all
our tomorrows one step
outside what we
own or know

Sunday

63

sometimes I sit in the laundry
in the late Sunday afternoon light
children tinkle, coins spangle
through trees over the neighbour’s fence
I take-off; I’m unbound
like a Montgolfier balloon

Tuesday

64

I keep a jumble in my head
of all the spaces between the named
of all the numbered items
of all the stars and grains
of all the graceful pauses
the waxes and the wanes

Sunday

65

Rien à faire. So unfair
and how to make that nothing
(and how). You wait for midnight
it comes and goes: the space between days
You wait again with nothing
to be gained
from waiting

66

rattle of rain, whistle 
of wind through cracks
soundtrack of impertinent facts
the sound of morning garden has gone
the sound of morning garden will come back
what kind of nothing is that?

Saturday

67

I’ll throw to you
un coup de dés
this truth you throw
your name for me
you'll hear in spaces between tracks
a rustle of labels blowing back

Sunday

68

The number one comes after the nothing.
What if the music covered nothing?
You measure lines, count beats
loop the breaks, break the loops
over the nothing for the notes
to be played, the flows to escape

69

restless, uneasy
not sure about what
a mirror says that being's
in the eye; me, I’m not 
so sure but music adds 
to a sparrow crossed field

Friday

70

A turn of the loop
turning back
I am still here
waiting on the step
stepping on the no
my foot at your door

Sunday

71

nothing I say now
will be heard
the whole day is action
an early pluperfect gospel
the eye of the world
a strung dewed web

Friday

72

realism is no excuse
for paucity of imagination
correct diction
a matter for the authorities
the transistor's red light on the dresser
Mars low in the south

Sunday

73

all noise is word
if repeated
the night's roll and hiss
without ghosts
the owl's timed percussion passes
through to word

Friday

74


every time the morepork
breathes the night breathes
the night rings his call
like an black iron cauldron
sounding a language known
from a single proper name

Monday

75


tell me again
what I like and 
what I'm like and how
tell me again
what I'm never to do with you
you always do

Saturday

76

our words are a child's 
lost kite
or discarded newspapers
which blow around 
a sunday afternoon train station
unwanted spectators to a couple's kiss

Friday

76


you never listen to a single word
you never do
you're too busy telling me
how like the mountain
I can be appreciated from many views
all of them incidentally yours

Saturday

77


there is only one
instance. I must never
stop making it. Knuckle
scrapped flagstone. That
pie-eyed clown the moon
floats dumb.

Friday

78

it's good to be back
on my back
in the back yard
under an angel bare sky
no ahas to be
woken to

Monday

79

on the margins of sleep
the old school French
comes back to me
il est midi
il est minuit
melodic djin and tonic keys

Sunday

80


all the old ways and names
all we meant to say and see
all the old trills and turns
fag ends of dawn's veracity
we double stop past certainties
find snowgrass in the boulderfields

81


rain at the window
candles 
you count 
so as to reassure yourself
that you are moving on
starting and stopping
dreaming of loops

Saturday

82


cannot feel the pins
take out my spine and cart
me in a bucket. That lad
with jumbo ears and a mouth
like a rip. Why him now?  
Zoony we called him. Fifteen 

Friday

83

the fucking rain 
lashed against the window
like the fucking rain 
lashing against the window
like the rain lashing
like a lash 

Thursday

84


I was the tattoo inked 
on the wrist of an amnesiac agent
trapped in the back alley
of future city in a world 
which had put into question 
all destinies and destinations

Wednesday

85


I was a space 
through which the night’s whorls fell
buried above ground
in the big outside.
Talcum clouds cross 
a po-faced moon

Tuesday

86


Now I hear the coda
midnight’s 
inscription
on the night’s dark
sigils, glyphs, curlicues

signatures of impending sleep
I cannot see the hills of my knees

Monday

87


go outside. I shouldn't
have. I shouldn't be kaylied
Fall then the keys
gone. My tongue bursts
the roof of my lips to a field of
broken stalks. Breathe.

Saturday

88

close eyes: take the dark
passage down a thousand 
stairs to open the trap
to the inner sky's nadir
all I know is here
all I feel is real