August

It's going to be some months before the new site's up and running, when hopefully it will be more interactive. Meanwhile some love poems. Or, in the case of this one, a poem about relationships.
My next reading is on September 15th, 7.30pm at Tara Studios, 356 Garratt Lane, Earlsfield, London SW18 (o2o 8333 4457)

These Boys Have Never Really Grown into Men

These boys have never really grown into men,
despite their disguises, despite their adult ways,
their sophistication, the camouflage of their kindly smiles.
They are still up to their old tricks,
still at the wing-plucking stage. Only now
their prey answers to women's names.
And the girls, likewise, despite their disguises,
despite their adult ways, their camouflage of need,
still twist love till its failure seems not of their making;
something grotesque migrates hourly
between our different needs,
and is in us all like a poison.
How strange I've not understood so clearly before
how liars and misers, the cruel and the arrogant
lie down and make love like all others,
how nothing is ever as expected, nothing is ever as stated.
Behind doors and windows nothing is ever as wanted.
The good have no monopoly on love.
All drink from it. All wear its absence like a shroud.

BP from The Collected Love Poems