Zen
In our new factories
it is difficult to tell day from night
the lights are new and shiny
the walls and ceilings without windows or skylights
our new factories produce nothing
when the metal has been turned on the lathes
and the components are complete to the last millimetre
they are shovelled into waste bins and recycling skips –
a bit like the apprentices –
and yet there is never enough of anything to go around
the Fijian who is much too big
searches through the piles of scorched wielding gear
for a decent cap and apron
there is a lot of walking about
and form filling
and horseplay with excrement
and the lonely sheet-metal apprentice with the Meanie hair
who sits it out in the toilet block
to give hand-jobs to the older married men
wants to go to London
there is harmony between the religions
no sectarian songs
tattoos must be covered
the housing estates below the dark hills
are floating away like benefit cheques into the off-licence
the clubman
the loan sharks
the drug dealers
the prisoner funds
sometimes English men in suits and ties
walk around with their hands behind their backs
and listen with boredom to facts and figures
then ask if there is coffee and biscuits?
yet there are rooms within rooms where you can step out of yourself
among brushes and boxes of toilet rolls
racing slips
cigarette stubs
that are kind of Zen-like
where the mind floats embryonic
and wise stones appear suddenly beneath steel-capped boots.
Green figs
This is the season
when figures fall like black type
into the street
and men in balloon skirts
fall from the wheels of transport planes
into stony deserts
cartoons will kill you
the air we breathe from one another
can kill too
green figs from a lover’s tongue can choke you
protest songs from the sixties
come back to haunt
and the Tedworth drummer
has taken up residence
in a New York apartment block
and has learned to speak
it is minus zero
on the Finnish border
running through Washington Square park
and she is at peace now
landing a plane among the frozen blocks
in the Hudson river
a porn actress naked under a fur coat
being filmed in the snow on Pier 25
building sand hills in a play pit
pitted with shit, condoms, broken glass
or swinging from the jib of a crane
over a football stadium
as the sun sinks like brandy on copulating dogs.
____________
Gary Allen has published nineteen collections, most recently, 'Bonfire Night,'. His poetry has been widely published in magazines including Agenda, Ambit, London Magazine, The New Statesman, The Poetry Review, Stand, The Wild Court and highly commended in the Forward Prize.