EXPERIENCES

Experiences, atom bombs
In the park a swan neatly
pierced with a crossbow bolt
Through its throat but it is still alive.

Hooligans, vandals, yahoos, apaches,
thugs, rakers, peep O day boys.
You see them congregate on street corners
smelly little bastards, queer bashers.

disharmonised, disfunctional, defunctive
mentally disturbed, emotionally gangrenous
a limb of society cut off, left to rot
something leftover, useless and sordid.

Their game is to spook me up
this poofy unknown lone queer
who writes unknown, unknowable lines of poetry
who paints emotional, plashed lines of colour.

For the galleries of high art
For the bookshelves of middle-class homes
the libraries in America, the universities
in Tashkent, the bookshops in Sao Paolo.

They can't relate to poetry or to art
at all, they read The Sun, pick their noses
scratch their backsides, fart, shit
fuck, fight, kick the bucket.

inbetween they glimpse the poetic light
as if they see it through a black and white film
a bad LSD trip, a hangover, underwater
or come to it through age, experience

or even 'The Balled of Dan McGrew'.
what can I say, what can I do?
I am this unknown lone queer poet
but I know about love, they do not?

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