on the disposal of the possessions of a relatively unknown and recently deceased man (unfinished riff)

strangely like the clattering of 1950s newlyweds
they go clanking down the garbage chute
this and that, each a thing of significance
even if only, and the plastics I imagine undisposed
straight out to sea fragmenting, denaturing, atomizing
into a haze of green mutant depth under a sky
so brilliant, so thick that fish walk upon air
choking--this then the man-killer, the fish-killer
the fifteen fathoms of evil water column
your monument and eulogy
stranger, stranger old man, possessor of these items
which now clatter into a skip somewhere below
in our dark dreams we see you whirling
in some anti-recycle, into the trash vortex
into the undifferentiated trash tissue which no one
will ever excavate and treasure in any far future
for you are not Mycenean pottery with its hydra
swirls and fixation of the sea--you are just a bunch
of unknown plastics and crockery clanging only
the funereal clatter of your own falling into
some industrial embrace, and your spirit
each tiny fish-swallowed fragment of pvc
some particle of spirit and where perhaps
we will end up, now toxic, bringing down
great birds on dead islands, choking in black sand
surrounded by unreconstructable vestiges
of someone's shopping one long-ago day
in fucking Halifax, of all places. Goodbye,
honoured at this moment, unknown man
down the chute. goodbye, man who once
must have been huge and vital and beloved
goodbye

.

sixteen love songs and a game and a waterfall

just like that planets
and then stars somehow
as if never
and this, this
may finally
but what if not
and all of it now
in handsful of dust
y shit?

what then?
I suppose we know, but let's not
say it while the trees shake
in the slightly opaque wind that creeps
up the beck, tilting
the geraniums or Herb Robert
into angular distortions of love as we walk by
wondering as we go
is this this or that, we wonder
wondering further
well is it?

and the fennel is out and reeking
and the trains go powering by
in remembrance of a steam age
that we feel anyway

and in this moment I wish it was you
and I know that it is
and always will be

.

To join the mile-high club
you really have to give
a flying fuck

.

late at night

in the rainbows of Bradford
with the light
why the light obviously the fucking light

downtown wondering

blown up, in a hole somewhere, my heroism

carrying you out, smoking

on the fucking News

canonised by Marlboro

raining

Oh shoulda stuck with me, baby

etc

etc

at this point the world floods
and we are thrown back to Joyce
and paralysis

is it even worth bothering, he must have asked
fuck, if they won't even try

rain

somehow a rain of slugs
not my favourites really
but we held hands sometimes
and the sea and the cliffs
and we got lost
and it was nearly dark
I loved you and felt responsible
but then suddenly we knew

but the mornings
were always six ways out
of delight
so I apologise
for the late  nights
I couldn't help it
god I'm struggling a bit

not to ring you now

it's lucky really
that I have my new helicopter

.

there is no room
for loving you now
but the flowers just
keep growing

.