Two Poems

Great Eastern Street, London

Tube trains, chopped in thirds, perched on a building
cliff, pigeons.

An old warehouse carved in
nightlight, yellow.

A dog wastes through the street,
chased by a couple in drag.

Graffiti gumteeth—some
filthing revolutions, scenes from Taxi
Driver—rainspray these trains,
          stained silly.

Perfect
ruins.

Sentinels, they watch over this dead road,
facing the calm whiskey in the hands of a
          man without age.

Face like a skinned lizard, the shock of a new
century blazoned on his tongue.

 

Swansong, Mile End

Pigeons on a tiled roof.
Foreground—bus stop shines in the rain.

Swans—patches of cloud—
float long Regent's Canal, its

skin, moving fish scales.

Shirt of sky opens.
Hair of stars sprout.

Plastic bags crackle like
pellets of rain in a tin can, like fire

bled on wood.

A southbound train lunges over a
joke-bridge.

The night is radioactive.

The two swans screech their song of love,
shake their manes, become

proud as horses.