Ode to my sweet Belgian Boy

Ode to my sweet Belgian boy

I was sittin out there in the shadows, baby
Jus' waitin for night to come
Sittin there in the shadows baby
Wishin for day to be done

But that sweet Belgian boy, yeah
He showed me how to have some fun

He saw me sit there with my burdens, baby
Saw my whole soul black and blue
Yeah he saw me sittin neath my burdens, baby
I think he knew just what to do

An' I told him true then:
'Can't say what 'is that ails me, honey
But it cuts me through and through.'

He had some words for me yeah he said
'Sure you got some grief and woe' 
Missy, ain't got no time for that now though,
We gonna have us some dark cocoa.'

Now I don't want no other sweetness baby
Got no taste for wine or rum
Don't want no other sweetness baby
Just want that bitter on my tongue

Told my mama
Told my mama
This Beigian Boy's got me wrapped round his thumb.

God bless that sweet Beligian boy, yeah
He showed me how to have some fun

An Ode to MRI

MRI Lover


You great magnet, I know
How you pull and possess.
In your liquid helium overcoat
You are so stubborn
You take no argument
You wear the pants.

I am not your lover,
For you don't care for my silks and musk.
Even if I swallow paperclips, buttons
I will be invisible to you,
Though you will push yourself through me
And draw cirles around
Those sacred parts.

But I like to lie in your still heart.
I know you search through the different pieces of me
And take those certain dipoles
In ten thousand glassy fingers,
Bending them
Into a slow and stately dance.
You cradle each clumsy jolt of my nerves
When I look into you
You pull my very eyes into alignment.

I think on restless nights
That we both dream
Of iron and the iron-dark.

No Other London

No Other London


The South Bank is clapped with moonsheen:
Delayed autumn.
The streetlights shatter like geological features
Brim-cross my wet glasses,
And perhaps yours too

Except you choose to not wear yours.
But I trust the wind to be slim-fingered,
Thin-bladed, and damp,
on two necks tonight.
The air's rough-tumble baffle
Shucks itself in puddles we prudently skirt
On opposite sides.

I think:
There is no other London.
When we meet, it is.
The river's cold iron-flow,
Banks of sky, slow-roaring, low.

We are rarely together.
I am thinking now, in hope, how
In these silken-silt deeps
Our hands could be like in cold
And ebb in caress.




This poem is thanks to Maderia, much thanks.