Alice - The Prelude

Legs tucked under,
a book across innocent thighs
knees covered with a calico print.

She reads aloud with perfect slowness,
celebrating each article and preposition,
every phrase climbing as a song.

With a pink-piggy finger
and a translucent fingernail
she traces each letter.

Finishing each word with a flourish
she rudely wags a finger,
giving the naughty book a good telling off.

Yet there are the first signs,
the sky thick with blue, bees agitated,
the earth starting to sink,

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poem by Leslie Philibert
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Why I Don`t Care At All About Copyright

I don`t care at all about what you do with my poems.

You can steal them, laugh at them or cut them up to make
blackmail letters for your boss. You can eat them or smoke them
as long as you first bake the verses for two hours.
You can sing them in the toilet, kiss them, spray them
in the underground in Berlin, burn them, cover them with paint,
leave them at midnight before a poem orphanage or make love
to them on the back seat of an old Ford.

You can even (if you have nothing better to do) read them.

I hope that one day my poems
will grow up and run about the park
on a summer evening.

poem by Leslie Philibert
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Escape

When the silence is as taut as a violin string
the rest awaits as you climb past the invitation
of an open window, your day in shopping bags

that redden the joints of your hands, as if you
wait helpless at a busy junction, the heavy trucks
that throw warmth and grit in your face,

this is graceless, like worn slippers under a hospital bed
or an unread letter full of secrets, next to a glass full
of whiteness, rooms full of old cameras and shavers,

as if everything could be started, not just this
ring of concerned faces and mumbles at doorways,
you cannot leave as an angel, you are full of broken glass.

poem by Leslie Philibert
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A Lifting Of Birds

Hard as an empty factory, a sea of glass
eaves brown with rust and first rain

squares of light oblongate through broken panes
as the day creeps, almost a church service

with the soft thrashing of pigeon wings,
shadows across blackened brick

as an oil moon creeps over a battered roof
and a grey steel door bangs an obscure tact

with the first cold green starting, newspapers
and plastic bags flattering like shot birds

encoded by grease, a naked lightbulb swings over
an empty chair, the evening breeze failing

there is little hope here, nothing too much to save,
just the idle gathering of soot and distant traffic.

poem by Leslie Philibert
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The Tree Cutters

Roadside tress falling to the bottom of the sea,
orange moonmen with profiles of edges and plastic
buzz like angry bees, so I crouch in
the middle of the earth, lost to green

under the forest, under moss, behind roots
but having small stones thrown into my eyes
am unable to look upwards
standing ashamed in my fern grave as

trucks rumble past, even a massacre of pigs
would leave them unconcerned, runed,
coloured with the names of strange places,
edges of towns alongside sand and gravel

and the radio in my car lights green,
fighting to regain sanity, helpless,
all meaning filtering down to a pulse,
reason is sick this morning, a lost voice.

poem by Leslie Philibert
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Don`t Join The Army!

Don`t want to go to a strange land and have my ding dong shot off by
a nutter with a towel wrapped round his head who sits in the back of
a Toyota pickup; don`t want to look like a billard ball with a body
who runs about and sings nowmybrainisdownthedrain.Hate to listen to
national anthems which sound as if they are composed by Arnold Schoenberg
and played by Miles Davis on speed; hate being told what to think and
who is right or wrong.And I really don`t need a name like Captain
Bombthemall-Beastly....

So to all politicians and generals...

Stuff your flag up the Khyber Pass, stop playing God and go home and read
Robert Browning in the garden - you`ll feel better too.

poem by Leslie Philibert
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Not About You

Not about the way
you spread your fingers across your mouth,
playing shocked, then laughing.

Not even about your hair, straw.gold,
that moves across your forehard,
a mantle for northern paleness.

(Some lines will now be intentionally deleted,
due to the respect of anonymity) .

Don`t mention the code words,
the putting of rings besides soapy dishes,
eyes tired as the days wind down.

Speak not of cups rattling,
as you carefully sort china,
steam rising for tea.

Forget the shutters falling with a bang,

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poem by Leslie Philibert
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Brickie

Sometimes his false teeth fell out as he ate
his sandwiches in the tea-break; but he had
the laughing eyes of a barrow boy and the
stride of Goliath. He liked a pint after work
and hated it when children didn`t get enough to eat.
No fan of book learning he was clever in his own way
- he could put up a wall quicker than a fat aunt
could crush a lost biscuit by sitting on it - and
we all liked him, even the boys from Letterkenny who
never said much.

We were gods of sand and gravel.
We could build anything.

And when we drove home through Islington
we all sang, Krishna like:

Harry Brickie, Harry Brickie, Brickie Brickie, Harry Harry.

Here`s to you mate.

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poem by Leslie Philibert
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Poetry Magazines

Poetry magazines are a lot of poo
They send your poems back to you
With little notes and friendly words
As a poet you`re a wordless nerd

They`d probably send Bill Shakespeare back
And call John Keats a lot of crap
And as for our dear Ezra Pound
I`m sorry sir- you`re so unsound

Your iambs are no good at all
Your prosody a lot of balls
The theme this month is vegetables
From turnips we read nothing at all...

So here`s a tip to all you poets
Forget this literary posh don`t-know-its
Let the people judge what`s good or bad
Here`s to a democratic, international, anti-capital
publisher and magazine free Internet - FREE POETRY

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poem by Leslie Philibert
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Night Town of Words

Dark shapes lose their forms as the darkness
creeps over the cobbles, torn newspapers lose
their printed heart-blood, thrown before my shiny
pointed going-out shoes.
This is not the time for a manifesto, it is the
age of uncertain quality.
The past races from me and hides in doorways,
running over curved bridges, stretching out its tongue,
as chains of light break and form.

I read my notes, pulled from a pocket of coins and crumbs.

The letters make no sense, they are night shapes.
I is my body, am is longer and weaker, unhappy starts
with a boat, a half face stretching up to the stars
or half lights, p and y slip down into the next line,
the forms all wrong, a scale with just one wrong note.

I am unhappy? Did I write this?

poem by Leslie Philibert
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