i.
Let’s go then

Because if we don’t nobody will –

I had that this thought for the morning,

We could        concentrate our energies on the movement through

Weigh down on the action

Work out where the word becomes feeling

Through

Step over into the traffic        through.
Not that it has to be a morning thing,

I work late above the dooryard
The sheer distance

That

Abstract reckoning

For no other reason

The world.
Which is        chatting with you

Watching movies with you

In which the most innocent gesture
Or the smallest forgetfulness
Waiting a letter with
ii.
This I can say:

It showed me finally

That the actions of a person

Clear and pale

Thus effectively lost

Witness

The evidence

Calm, unbroken

Occur here.
I can say this in the morning

Nobody statements foreclose

No tribunal today

Not this sunshine

No letter either,

Just some life story

Folded through

Played out piecemeal as

Biography happens: 
Steady

Anonymous

Simultaneous

Activity.
I talk to Simon

Simon sets the birdsong out of Peckham

We listen awhile and

Over the traffic

Somebody cultivates

The Old Kent Road –

Which is the way things go

Things go gracelessly        as we go

Aware –

No one asking today

Nobody auditing –

As persons
Standing        still

Which is I submit

The evidence necessary,

Trousers        nothing special

Watching the way

The wind blows

In your telltale shoes,

The case        against

Habouring affections

In the face of

Politics:
Six

Brushed teeth

Noticed the world wake

All dewy

And Confused.

 

Topsy

Turvy.
As these societies became more complex

The need for writing

For administrative purposes

For recording legends
For Myths

All dewy

Woke up startled into consciousness

All the evidence today        assembled      argued

Through
iii.
MIDNIGHT

And all the while 	some kind of

Collective emergency

Leafing through Mayakovsky

I look at politics in poems

Bargains
struck at dead of night
I’m thinking

LET’S GET THE TRANSLATION RIGHT SHALL WE

Habiter

From habitation

I look at politics

And stones
And use the word advisedly

I use the word ‘advisedly’ advisedly

Picture us in some kind of ruin

Waiting for the rhetoric to show

Sea whacked

And no-one home

I shake hands with Lucy Williams

You        standing on the battlements

Contemplating the prospect
possibly

so.
iv.
And so the sun kicks on.

I think I’ll take that document now please

And then   maybe later

We’ll come up with some kind of plan

Since this is serious and you’re so well dressed

Shoes shined like your life depended on it

In the rubble

Maintenant en Français

Oui        c’est grave. 
You say the word ‘grave’ advisedly,

There is no word for ‘all’ in English,

Standing        watching the traffic

Waiting for the agencies to show,

Tout      le monde,

Waiting for the world to show

Outside your doorstep

Like lilac like

Standing still and walking

Waiting while the dogwood

At your garden door.
Which it doesn’t                    happen

The way the lyric steps up all                    uninvited

Like lilac        all

You had to do was listen

Waiting in the doorway while

The world rolled past

Some kind of presidency

One by one
I am no recipient of culture

It’s an agency thing

I listen to Jarvis

Jarvis Cocker plays

LeRoi Jones
At the doorway singing

Jarvis plays Gill Scott Heron

Collis starts up

Jarvis plays Olson

I had to learn the simplest things last

Not an ocean stretching out beneath my feet

Just that it’s a you and I thing

Crossing somewhere

Making an agreement

Following the language

Through
v.
But if we had to start over

Even only air and such

Slate grey April

Nobody roots attached

If we had to start        lengthen bodies out

Set down a canopy                              out of nothing

Table something        out of nowhere

Wouldn’t it go like this?
This is my question.

I note down books people talk to me:
Edward Casey, The Fate of Place
Mystic sheer distance

That beautiful abstract reckoning

Sun drift over Camberwell

I write a poem about space 
Waiting in case the world

Let’s get the implication right shall we

Standing        sampling Massive Attack

Down by the salle d’attente

And we shall construct at variance

Singing in the present participle

Urban today        everybody

Uninvited
Like some document filled with other people’s songs

The only surviving parchment of the twenty-first century

Some kind of air crash

In which the only thing remaining

Was a line out of Gertrude Stein

Quoted by Simon Smith

In a train just departed Dartford

Space            of time            filled            with moving
I write a poem about Margate

Folded out toward an abstract reckoning

Assemble this night

In the present participle

Watching the uninvited

As they start to sing

The Wreck of the Deutschland

Set down a canopy out of nowhere

Footage            you are now            exiting            the future.
vi.
So the names roll out again

Dartford, Chennai

The angel in the doorway clicks his teeth

Because here is how he likes it

Dirty intense

Ibuprofen heavy

Thick with song.
And ready to go again

Because these folds are exquisite.

Only the phone equal

To the next spike

Blond euphoric

And so the names roll back

San Diego, Margate,

Margate, Kent.
Though nobody will vouch.

What we’re talking here is compound interest

Which stands, at a certain vantage, for love in politics

You sit

You do nothing wrong

Maybe you go for a walk.

That way there’s no redemption.
But it’s not impossible

We assemble a line

Picture        a strictly ornamental universe

Geography        situationism

The twenty-four hour news cycle

Your soul        at bay

You like it here

Don’t you.
vii.
Lucked out        didn’t we

That historic evening

When the angel of summer        waved the whole thing through

And you stood        outside the yard

Picking up the remains of the century

Assembling outbuildings

The way we asked them to be built.

Possibly.
Remember nothing

Immigration man.
I have this document in my pocket

Waiting to be rote

And I’m thinking if we could just do lunch

Maybe pick up something easy
Recording equipment

Is not allowed in the building.
Standing

Watching the trucks

Shake down the evening

Into particulars
Video evidence cannot be used in a court of law.
Please be aware

That any person

With picture taking capabilities

May not        this

Person

Dealt according.
The way the evening stepped forth –

This broken English

At the outbreak of the century

A sensibility at work

All singing all dancing

Only a notebook in which to annotate

Totally                    unconvinced        by anybody’s back-story.
viii.
‘Marcie’ starts up.

Hello Marcie.

Marcie knows everything

There is to know about feedback.

She stands at the edge

Listening to the qualities

Of transmission

You stand alongside her

She pushes some kind of song.
On drums:

Max Ernst.

On bass:

Hannah Arendt.

Things to address directly:

The way the story ends.

Rubble.

Mediation.

Marcie buys a bag of peaches.

Eats one.

Hides the rest from the state.
You sing along with her

Some kind of dictionary of sensibility

In the right hands        it’s a love thing

Hitting all the wrong notes

A siren, a cigarette

Sure signs of somebody’s emergency

Riffing        when the song stops.

Marcie cuts her own hair.
Stands        outside the arcade

Learning to trust        the way a person tells it

As a blackbird locks down the skyline

Scarcely credible on such a scale

Only this is the way the story opens out
People clustered together

In the Arab spring
Marcie        not confident of anything

Save some kind of reckoning

Occurring here.
Marcie 
A car horn
Did the percussion section leave you standing?
 A cigarette

burning

indecipherable

cause

that extends.

On rhythm:
Did you call a taxi yet Marcie?

Or did the footage persuade you

This is somewhere you could stay

At night

Lined up against the square

Though nobody said so

Capable        of a simple

Straightforward anger.
Marcie checks out.

The blackbird sings into

A person’s whereabouts

In the city

Some person’s washing

Leaving them hanging

In the wind to dry.

Air and such

While the networks go down

And you just standing

As the story breaks –

Still no letter

Only the operations.

Good to see you

Marcie
ix.
We should stay up all night

Watch the law        prosecute its business

Still no letter
Walking the beach

Watching the aircraft drop
And you dance sometimes and I work

Because all this meantime

What else is there?
To signify

Arms laid against him.
Still no letter. Possibly so.
Things to address directly:

POLITICAL

GEOGRAPHY
In the dooryard        momentarily                the traffic         stops

Too late for birds

And no sound happening

Of anybody’s emergency

You smile        in another language

I sense a dance coming on.

Because there is space

Jarvis samples         Arrested Development

Crowded only by the skyline

Not a measured room

And not stopped

                                   Arrêté

We decline the implication
One must not have a permit
Push the tables

Back.
He slept deeply until morning

Went out into the brilliant

Threshold.

It’s what we should pitch I think:

The ground is now the sky.

Jonquil.

Bones.

Breeze to zero.

Streets        roof-tops.

A person takes notes
Watch        as you dance

Foot out the architecture of the century

Co-ordinated in somebody else’s neighbourhood

Only a history to call your own

Riffing                on the direction of travel

Silently annotating    the new geology

Pictures        told in three dimensions
Even by telephone in dead of night
Quietly        brilliantly

In all the available spaces

Dapper like the morning

In those tell-tale shoes

A rebuke confronted 
with the structure of exception
Clockwise and                    counter-clockwise

Turning.
x.
Still no letter.

I use the word still advisedly.

Still you say        still

Struggle to get the intonation right.

Stutter        over the doorway

A plane goes down

Airburst

People        gather before the wreck.
There must be something we can make of it.

You stand there radiant before the court

Explaining        everything

The moment you first came through

Impossible to frame

Only this is the way things happen
Eyes set deep

Subjected to examination.
In this broken English

The sun sets laterally across the century

The fugitive lands

Crowd under separate names

Joined in semi-abstraction

You stand and regulate your bearing
Airports

Certain outskirts of our cities
Hardly a way back through

Down along the Medway River

Strolling        annotating

Shipyards in the cold

Bystander taking notes

Down by the intersect

Where the language happens

Syntax

Forms like lilac

Where the uninvited

Stand in line.
And the radio fades

Nobody certain which way we’re headed

You shrug

Maybe somebody somewhere

Assembled evidence enough

At variance with the theme

Some stack of mistranslations
Statements rendered

unacceptable

Inadmissible

By the state.
But that’s their story.
Remember nothing.
I make a mappemundi

To include this point.

Your story        air and such

                    stones        bearing

Doorjamb                    at variance
Existing        claim