If anyone had told me, when I was a child, that
I would be an artist, living in a tenement in
a slum in the east-end of Glasgow, with a wife
and son, I should not have believed them, but
I would have dreamed of being an artist, and
those dreams would have been beautiful, and I
would have seen a crescent moon suspended above
my lover and myself, clasped in naked kisses and
sighs, swept by scented breezes and ineffable
joys, and I would have wished to be an artist.
1979
this poem is
dedicated to
the boys on the corner
the drunk and his dog
chasing cars of a night
this poem is
dedicated to
the woman I hear laughing
as I sit in my bath
thinking of you and the little girl
this poem is
dedicated to
the junky who overdoses
in the next tenement
the old man hanging from the pulley
in a wistful kitchen
this poem is
dedicated to
the excrement I live on
the indefatigable apotheosis
of blood and love and lust
this poem is
5/1/77
time to love time
to kiss time is
time to fuck time
to eat time is
time to muse time
to grow time is
time to wonder time
to wander time is
time to play time
to piss time is
time to dream time
to live time is
time to cry time
to talk time is
time to speak time
to shit time is
time to laugh time
to laugh time is
5/1/77
Sometimes when I look at my son, or when alone
with my thoughts of a night, I remember that
the time will come when he will die. That his
mother and I shall probably die before he does
is of no relief, for think of his grief at our
deaths. That we shall not always be loving friends
and companions, wandering the seasons, our
delights and the madness of this world, alone or
together, solace to each other’s distresses -
when slashed by adversity, racked by grief or
smitten by obscure melancholies - will indeed be
a great sorrow, and though I believe we are more
than flesh and blood, it is at a melancholy time
such as now, when folly lays its angelic head on
my heart, that I wish for a marvellous discovery,
or a miracle, engendering the immortality of the
flesh.
1979
