and Cardiffs a tart with a heart of gold.
Has been for me since the Poetry Conference
back in sixty-something. All the stars
of the silver page were there. Heroes.
To kiss the mistress of the man
you actually wrote an essay about.
To see huddled in flesh and blood
the bard you thought died in the ’30s.
The lecturing, the hectoring, the theorizing,
the self-opinionizing, the factions and the jealousies.
And I took my poems to a party
and nobody asked me to read.
Except Sue, afterwards. Sue, a velveteenager.
Archangelhaired and greeneyed
freeschooled and freeloving who taught me
more about poetry than any conference.
aNd tripPING tHe luMP fanTASTic with bRIan.
Spending two hours in Woolworths
just looking. Then going to the park
and listening to flowers gossiping.
Then
the comedown.
(Stoned out of his head, the captain
has left the bridge. Out of control
the vessel drifts toward uncertain disaster.
Shipwrecked on an iceberg of frozen sugar.)
Watching a drunk staggering
and i am the drunk. Out of sync.
Afraid of what the trafficlights might think.
Lying in bed and becoming my own heartbeat.
The monster fingers on my thighs are my own
tapping out an urgent message only they understand.
When you fall out of love with it
the body can be a foul piece of meat.
Quartered at the Park Hotel,
well-hung and drawn from all over.
3 star accommo and all expenses paid.
Hospitality is a red rag to a writer.
Brings out the beast. The muse
is bound, gagged and locked in the closet.
Then the pillaging begins. Poetic Licentiousness.
Shoes down the lift-shaft and chambertin for breakfast.
Naked ladies in corridors and dirty songs in the lounge.
‘Give me football hooligans everytime’
beefs the Night porter to the Day. ‘Poets? scruffs more like,
except for that nice Mr Macbeth. Coloured too, some of them.
Whoever heard of coloured poets?’