I wrote a lot of poetry at university mainly because I didn't talk to anybody. I was as compulsive about hiding it as I was about writing it. At the time, the last place I'd have put this material was in the public domain, even under an assumed name.
Fresher's Week
Hedonists
exhort me
to party,
politicos
to fight
the cuts.
Everyone vies
for my
participation.
Light Green Roof
The sparkle-studded light green roof
is in hard relief against a morning on the edge of frost.
The skeletal trees cast deep shadows
on grass that will soon be brittle.
Half Wishing
I walk out in the morning
(the cold as strong and piercing as the light)
half wishing I'd never sent her that letter.
She can't get me out of this.
Nobody can.
Bad Lecture
People
shuffle
sigh
stop waiting
for it
to get any better
give up
trying
to take notes
fiddle
with pens
zips, toggles
Cubic
On Simon's cubic clock radio
Paul Weller's singing of the long hot summer
over a languid, liquid bass
suggesting hazy heat and lazy days.
Already false nostalgia for summers passed
gathers in my mind's corners
like the dark, inexplicable fluff
gathering in the corners of our room.
Three Way Split
I'm exasperated with everyone here
with the political students for being political
with the easygoing students for being easygoing
and I'm exasperated with myself
for being myself
False Start
I try to distract myself
from the twisting in my gut
with late night radio
Eventually I turn it off
Insomnia rolls in
a tide of dark thoughts
Nothing helps
especially not
the intermittent efforts
of the copulating couple
in the room below
and with his every thrust
and her every moan
something twists and twists
And when they've finished
the noise of night
the noise of nothing
keeps me awake
I lie there hot and cold
wide-eyed and scared
not knowing why
till the bird's
false start twitter
The wind gets up
The wind plucks at the trees
and something twists and twists
January Ground
I should have gone back to university today
but it was your funeral. I remember grandad's,
attending in my school uniform, you nearly collapsing
when the coffin slid in to the curtained furnace.
Marooned in chaos, your last years were composed
of life's thin scrapings. Kindly, distant and faded,
you bore it with grim abstraction. You always had the air
of a lady who'd come down in the world.
Now the world turns without you. January ground
is hard, but the packed bulbs, inaudibly humming,
are waiting to inherit another day's earth.
The new year began where the old one left off.
Dumb with diffidence, knock-kneed with nerves,
I fall back in with my shadow. At night, it passes under lights
through tangled shadows of branches
from the dark massed trees that carve up the campus.
Each day, hiding the stitch, the hot and cold sweats,
I make my doubled up way to the dining hall.
On top of the kitchen smell, having to show my stupid photograph
to get a few pence off my beans on toast
turns my knock-kneed stomach.
Late Night Row
the late night row outside my dorm
went on and on
one wanted an apology
about something from the other
they both just kept repeating themselves
neither one would call it a night
Book Stacks
The library's almost empty.
I drift between book stacks.
What shall I read? Shall I read?
Or shall I just hide?
Or shall I just drift like a grey-green ghost
that haunts the library?
After Graduation
After graduation
is a prospect I prefer not to contemplate
After graduation
there will be nothing between myself and the world
After graduation
is a nightmare called reality
After graduation
does not exist