Warhead

Packs of boats are guarding the harbour,
straining on their tight, wet rope
with blackeyed bloodthirst - their labour

is mine. Cramped in a carriage, the slope
of this steel and glass gulley crushes my hair.
Travelling doesn't become me. I grope

hungrily, like some chained circus bear,
blackeyed as the boats who long to come free
from the quay. Hours in thick, oily air

with just Lukey, Tober and Shell for company.
Hours awake, tracking fag-shaped nimbus,
writing letters stained with rings of coffee.

I look lonely and saucer-eyed as a nautilus
in his fly-black soup, monstrous and dead white.
Four hours on the train follow three on a bus.

I am waiting for the cool, grape-scented night
when the waterways and skies become sobre
and the towns by the coast twinkle like pyrite
but packs of boats are guarding the harbour