a selection of despair, and love.
LOVE (‘The putz’)
When you look at me
whatever it is that is in your face
I want.
Is it the resistance your other lover would show to these things?
The putz
who bought these shoes:
who bought the shoes you kick off for me?
DESPAIR (‘Housman’)
i want to be a different thing
wholly other than myself –
i list the labs and cults to ring
on a thumbdrive on that shelf;
but worry – the thing is done,
and a further self i want;
or useless, i won’t be the one
wanted the original want.
then is there, i half inquire,
a different thing to be,
if craving that with base desire
is inherent in me
LOVE (‘Unpissed’)
Eyes were all I laid on her,
Eyes I couldn’t take off,
The words there had no mouth for her:
Mouths cough.
These that stay are my hands
And asking not to move
And never to touch are my hands:
My love.
DESPAIR (‘Rand on Thames’)
‘… the shiftless / orders of fools …’
In loafing queues the jobless take
money off ambition, whose Insane Hours
humiliate inadequates and make
this spectacle of lessers milking us –
bossily by way of HM state –
a standing affront: let go as unfit
the shiftless if the ripstop won’t inflate –
all toiling suits of Etonian grit,
bright-buttoned chaps of civilising days,
the perfect bounders who were Britain’s grace!