by Clive James
He met my eyes and hit me for a quid
‘I spend fortunes in this rat-trap’ said the Kid
‘But the plush and flock soak up the brain’s kerfuffle
And I like to see a servile barman shuffle
If sympathy’s your need let’s hear your bid’
‘It’s my lousy memory’ I told the Kid
‘What other men forget I still remember
The flies are still alive inside the amber
It’s a garbage can with rubbish for a lid’
‘Your metaphors are murder’ said the Kid
‘I know the mood – give in to it a little
The man who shatters is the man who’s brittle
Lay off the brakes and steer into the skid
‘Strained virtue warps the soul’ announced the Kid
‘Those forced attempts at cleanliness that linger
Like soap between your wedding ring and finger
They’re residues of which you’re better rid
‘For evil’ said the Hypertension Kid
‘Is better contemplated in the deeds of others
Mass murderers and men who knife their mothers
Be glad that what you’ve done is all you did
‘With me the problem’s women’ said the Kid
‘Befuddled, fondled under separate covers
One and all they’ve gone to other lovers
As I powered down to zero from the grid
‘But I love the little darlings’ sighed the Kid
‘The slide from grace is really more like gliding
And I’ve found the trick is not to stop the sliding
But to find a graceful way of staying slid
‘As for the dreadful memories’ said the Kid
‘The waste and poison in the spirit’s river
Relax your hands and let the bastards quiver
They tremble more the more you keep it hid’
We turned to leave the bar, me and the Kid
I with lightened head and lessened terror
Toward the street, and he into the mirror
My second self, the Hypertension Kid
Perfect Moments
Perfect moments have a clean design
Scoring edges that arrest the flow
Skis cut diamonds in the plump of snow
Times my life feels like a friend of mine
Perfect moments wear a single face
Variations on each other’s theme
Renoir’s mistresses in peach and cream
Rembrandt’s mother in a ruff of lace
Perfect moments bear a single name
They’re placed together though they never meet
Charlie Chaplin policing Easy Street
Charlie Parker playing ‘My Old Flame’
Perfect moments should redeem the day
Their teeming richness ought to be enough
To take the sting out of the other stuff
A perfect bitch it doesn’t work that way
The Road of Silk
And still his dreaming eyes are full of sails
The tree house leaves the peach tree like a bird
In time the swelling bark takes in the nails
Of those adventures nothing more is heard
Easy
Let him sleep now
Not a word
He’s losing what he hardly knew was there
The lead dragoons pack up and quit the tray
The early snowfalls lift into the air
The Road of Silk rolls backward from Cathay
Easy
Let him sleep now
Come away
His fondest memories have left their mark
For just so long as lipstick on a glass
The highway scatters jewellery through the dark
The circus leaves a circle on the grass
Easy
Let him sleep now
Let it pass
The Hollow and the Fluted Night
This kind of ocean fails to reach the coast
A special famine rages at the feast
The one loved most is always present least
You are the loved one, very nearly here
Who did not feel so far away before
But now I fear our separation more
The hollow and the fluted night that weaves
The cloth combining loves divides their lives
Black velvet hills between the silver knives
The sunlight on the windowsill kowtows
And opens up the sky to further skies
For all the thousand miles to your eyes
The realization daunts the both of us
And so we draw a deep breath through a kiss
When was it ever otherwise than thus?
And what goodbyes are more alone than this?
Secret Drinker
Perching high like an old-time man of law
He travels on a bar stool to enchanted lands
And as the world before him swims and glows
The secret drinker’s only sure that he is real
By the feel of his elbows and the steadily increasing
Weight of his forehead in his hands
And behind the bar
Like turreted and battlemented towns of long ago
The lines of coloured bottles swim and glow
Brilliantly as at the day of wrath
Or the year of the comet
But the secret drinker is far from it
Away from it all
He can ease the present back into the past
Staring at the pastels and the prisms on the shelf
With the magic words that make the evening last
The same again and have one for yourself
He’s a connoisseur
He can space it out with chasers, he can let it burn
It’s a trick it takes a little while to learn
You might see the youngsters of today sniff a cork
and they vomit
But the secret drinker is far from it
Away from it all
He can make the looming future lose its sting
Staving off the pressure is a bargain at the price
Of the magic words that make the angels sing
The same again, go easy on the ice
Perching high like an old-time man of law
He travels on a bar stool to enchanted lands
And as the world before him swims and glows
The secret drinker’s only sure that he is real
By the feel of his elbows and the steadily increasing
Weight of his forehead in his hands that should be ceasing
To tremble by now and beginning to resemble
The hands of a man he used to know
Search and Destroy
I’m glad to say we’re mopping up up here
I’m sending you today’s report in clear
Security’s no problem now at all
You just pick up the phone and make a call
We should have done all this back at the beginning
And never let the clowns think they were winning
We took a month to crack their second man
But when he talked the strudel hit the fan
He named eleven leaders who we shot
And then the top guy’s girl who we’ve still got
The chick was tough and held out for a week
But spilled a bibful when we made her speak
We picked his mother up and worked on her
He came in on his own and there you were
We should have nailed the first ones when we found them
Before all the mystique built up around them
We never gave the local heat a chance
To get him on their own and make him dance
We did him in upcountry, bombed the cave
And made the whole damn mountainside his grave
The faithful talk some wishful-thinking c
ock
About a spook who rolls away the rock
At which point golden boy walks out alive
We’re bumping them all off as they arrive
And that winds up this dreary exhibition
A total waste of time and ammunition
Tenderfoot
Beyond the border town they call Contrition
The badlands are just boulders and mesquite
A school of Spanish friars built the mission
But left because they couldn’t take the heat
And further on the road to Absolution
The mesas turn to mountains capped with snow
And the way becomes a form of execution
That only hardened travellers can go
You can tell the horseman grieves for how he sinned
He rides a killing trail
Reminded of his hard heart by the hail
And of his folly by the chilling wind
By day the canyon ramparts blaze their strata
Like purple battlements he shall not pass
The sunlight sears the horseman like a martyr
The glacier’s a magnifying glass
And by night the clouds black out the constellations
While veils of icicles lock up his eyes
He moves by echo through the cold formations
Walls of drift and ice-fall fall and rise
You can tell the horseman grieves for how he sinned
He rides a killing trail
Reminded of his hard heart by the hail
And of his folly by the chilling wind
He knows he made pretence of love too often
His deadly carelessness went on for years
At dawn the shields on his eyes will soften
And all of his regrets will be in tears
But far too late to go back and be gentle
Or say how clearly now it comes to mind
His pride at never being sentimental
Was just a clever way to be unkind
You can tell the horseman grieves for how he sinned
He rides a killing trail
Reminded of his hard heart by the hail
And of his folly by the chilling wind
Around him lie the stunning and the drastic
Where nothing but the utmost can be felt
The temperatures will always be fantastic
Noon will never cool nor midnight melt
A fitting climate for one so unfeeling
Who once was so indifferent to distress
He’s goaded onward with his senses reeling
Without the prospect of forgetfulness
You can tell the horseman grieves for how he sinned
He rides a killing trail
Reminded of his hard heart by the hail
And of his folly by the chilling wind
The golden handshake and the lightning kisses
Were all his for the asking in the past
But the subtlety and softness that he misses
For them the horseman always moved too fast
And now at last to contemplate his error
Facing the dimensions of his loss
He journeys where the sky meets the Sierra
That every man alive must one day cross
You can tell the horseman grieves for how he sinned
He rides a killing trail
Reminded of his hard heart by the hail
And of his folly by the chilling wind
Care-charmer Sleep
I’ve come to think
Of what you are and everything you seem
As mine to keep
I am the sleep of which you are the dream
A state of mind
Where seeing you and thinking are the same
But there’s a catch
I strike a match to set the glass aflame
And pale purple on a clear liqueur
That ring of light is all we ever were
So slight a thing
In no one’s mind should ever reign supreme
I’m in deep
I am the sleep of which you are the dream
Canoe
The perfect moon was huge above the sea
The surf was easy even on the reef
We were the lucky three
Who slid in our canoe
Through the flowers on the water
And tried to read the signals in the sky
We travelled with our necklaces of shell
The moon was waning through the nights and days
And how we dreamed of home!
We couldn’t find the island
Where you trade the shells for feathers
We fainted in the sun’s reflected blaze
With cracking lips I turned to tell my friends
The time had come for all of us to die
‘She’s out a whole degree’
I told them as I floated
Checking navigation read-outs
‘Re-enter at this angle and we’ll fry’
The go for override came up from Earth
We took control and flew her with our hands
And how we dreamed of home!
We saw the South Pacific
As we fought to get her zeroed
Before the heat shield started hitting air
We came home in a roaring purple flame
And gave the mission back to the machines
We were the lucky three
The parachutes deployed
We were rocking like a cradle
As we drifted down in silence to the sea
I Feel Like Midnight
I feel like midnight
And whether a new day
Will ever dawn
Is just a guess
I see by starlight
The long road from the day
That I was born
To this address
And I look at where you slept
And I taste the tears you wept
And you’re here again except
I feel like midnight
I feel like midnight
And you are here again
To mock me with a smile
Each time I say
I feel like midnight
And the only chance I had
To rest a while
I threw away
Give me a break
Give me the break of day –
I feel like midnight
Ready for the Road
A belt with a bull’s head for a buckle
High boots that satisfy the western code
A signet ring the size of Samson’s knuckle
And I’m gettin’ ready for the road
I’m gettin’ ready, I’ll soon be good an’ ready
Yes I’m gettin’ ready for the road
I’m gettin’ ready, yes I’ll soon be good an’ ready
For the road
Blue jeans that clutch me tighter than a pipe wrench
Two guns it took a forklift truck to load
I feel like I’m standin’ in a slit trench
But I’m gettin’ ready for the road
For the road is the home of a troubadour
And a troubadour is what I am
And I travel the trail of a troubadour
From the Empire Pool to Birmingham
But my heart belongs to Tulsa and to Tucson
For me the Alamo is à la mode
And just as soon as my horse can get its shoes on
I’ll be ready for the road
I’m gettin’ ready, I’ll soon be good an’ ready
Yes I’m gettin’ ready for the road
I’m gettin’ ready, yes I’ll soon be good an’ ready
For the road
Commercial Traveller
Home early from a meeting of the reps
He leaves the cream-bath samples in the car
A pull-along gorilla guards the steps
Confusion leads to where
the children are
At the sandpit
In the garden
He wades into the kitchen through the toys
His wife leans to kiss him with a smile
And neither knows how much distance led to this
How long the while
Since on the sand spit
In the morning
The hero
Lay asleep
Until
The nymph adored him
The early dawn was baby-lotion pink
And softer than the suds of Infacare
She laved him of his brine and saw him blink
He woke to see the sunburst in her hair
And be her captive
Always
He hails the children playing in the sand
Solves the padlock on the garden shed
A giant bow should be waiting for his hand
But there instead
Lie all the implements
Of duty
For centuries
Employed
By the prisoner
On his island
He plants the hose and sets the nozzle fine
Embellishing his roses with the spray
And rainbows of a sea as dark as wine
On which he will never sail away
He will never sail away
He will never sail away
Urban Guerrilla
Automatic weapons rake the roof
Powdered concrete hangs around like spray
He huddles underneath the parapet
And knows there is no way –
This is as far as he will get
The hostages and all his friends are dead
His turn is coming soon
What was it that motherfucker said?
Better chance of conquering the moon
He holds his ringing head
The happy endings never came
The terrors were seldom just a dream
