Selected Poems
Gabriel Newmeir-Drury
Deep Pluto Entered My Life
player kings, have and be had
through orchestral gateways
signal stutters, tiled crypts
frost-pearl masonry
the mud quick
Severn slogs
as Welshgirl
sketches
haunted
docks
now still have will
damp fields meld
into one another
rose quartz;
love in vein
Wrong Way Cross'd Motorway
few things thrill
me more than
my face
recognised
in Paul Rothe & Sons
lo, bald patrons!
Like the gastro nurses
of St. Thomas, who riddle
a faint smile...
wonder where I would sit
with hundred year poets
languid expatriates
bleary on absinthe
in thrall of black sun
fresh wreaths
for a dead Wilde
but always
returning
to Turner—
streaked
storm clouds
curdle and ebb
I met a heart transplant
in Ruskin Park flight path
ballooning spiders anchor webs
to drifting
willows
A Veil
an hour will come when all will be paid
when Victorian carnations turn tarnal
everything begins
from the need to bite
and to dig a grave
is to believe in the future
idols
realities
and melted bronze
sleeping when it's raining
listening to Radio Belgrade
(not gone yet)
remote desktop, pronounced dissolution
bonded pairs of Enniskillen stone
pour me
into glass
I am session ale
fermenting forever
for a slice of sparkling leaves
a smell of old canal, your eclipse eyes
holy mountain cairns, rootless plots of Bronte skeletons
road-arteries bisect tombstones, windswept atop abbey steps
where gulls have circled
for centuries scarred grass,
and what cannot be captured.
Now we understand
the world is material
C'est La Guerre
Windows Screensaver tells me that
T-Rex fossil footprints survive on
James Price Point, not only that
the Dranhgarnir Sea Stacks
perform a graceful arch
and the North Sea has been waiting all this time
to be be gulped dry like a Coke Zero
Suffolk's burning—
raze it to the ground
verse wasted
on old flames
bad news travels fast
Earl Grey, we think
the world of you
code switch from the uniparty
come sing Mercian hymns.
I'm a saddle tramp
with genuine parts
strange loop;
shimmering dandelion
on brickwork faintly dusken
Libra Rising
room at the top
for men with brio...
ramblers, wild gamblers
knowledgeable vergers
caught between Scylla
and Charybdis
like William Grimsley
an alderman with my
thorny stare, moving
me from beyond the
heavy frame. You have
my lips, my ears and a
little piece of my heart
I survive him– now he is one with the princes in the tower;
entombed in vines communal and forgotten, my other kinsmen
rest in unconsecrated Leyton plots
but none of this treatment
for Crookback, he has something
of the night about it with his mortal
wound encircled by malleable lead, Underwood lead
bankrupted by Parisians as his feet were severed by Victorian sewage
and the coffin's implied sword shadow that had felled him
blessed are the dead
which die, how long
shall I stay Yossarian
so mad at the world?
The Wild Sky Calls At The Edge Of The City
I speak the lingua ignota
we hold assumed familiarity
emboldened by my pince-nez
a new monocular, from which
to spy what happened with the women
we used to know— turns out that some
entered pageantry, while others never sit still
do not talk of love, impenitent thief
tell me instead of mountainous soft refrains
bostin' tits in tabloid newspapers, nudge units
and centurial peripheries left in solitude by bouncing betties
seven of swords cloaked in magnanimity, but I don't think you are mate...
beware of darkness, flagging candle under Saint Joseph
stone cracked in heat. The cross; monumental for sorrows
of 1851. Rescued butterfly from drowning in holy water punished
with sting, forgive me Hockney's spectre for this near miss, bear witness
the cicadas chorus wail over the Luberon hills and imported African cedars are
kidnapped
sweating
living in
memory
While Stock Lasts
Pinkpantheress England implies the Black Rod is teleoperated with sensual fingerprints, is hard and crazy with compassion fatigue, is bored of unloved Stoke ceramics trampled by Godiva's galloping ghost and Sue Ryder's blackened eyes but windows to the bedroom generation
(straight line crazy seeking no other exit)
who are the new rebels?
The goldsmiths' scales
upended, laptop spreadsheet
jobs doled out and church wounded
hollow be my nave, pristine bishop forgives
Boche and the favour's returned in German Doner
The Divine Will Not Touch Him
reflections are omens
of death, & this Hornsea
Crockery a mad coalition
the weightless woman
grasps underwater fish
performing trees cast
in paros marble
a snoring galut with only Milka for sustenance
inflamed crusader charging his adenoids
write my name in satellite imagery, track
affection via GPS, a pair of brown eyes
peeking out holes in the wall
and Hoka sandals wet in thick Balkan snow
trading socks through thin air, this was Thrace,
Justinian's favourite place, carefully laundered
allied bombs, Iron Curtain indifference and golden
domes like glitter, your face is that of a dozing feline
luckily clean in Islam, charitably fed by wandering policewomen
unlike stray hounds in the militarised zones
or cursive Bosphorous seagulls chasing Marmary haddock
Romani on the waterfront
half-blind bead salesmen
unlucky ambulances scrolling neon
beyond the Hippodrome, imam songs duel like
warring kebab houses, and Asia's fading hangover
crescent moon saw me coming
for Murat I sank to my toes and prayed
to shield us from £4 Americanos
(are you calling me a Lira?)
The flag doth not blow, the Golden Horn
doth not play, but saolun Constantine!
These are my kind of people; they remove
their shoes and dump litter straight on the ground...
nobody's going to steal your Doc Martens here efendim
beneath this polished blue calligraphy of indecipherable prophecy