Until Christmas I’ll post some of my favourite poems, which in one way or another, had an influence on me.

Delirium in Vera Cruz

Where has the tenderness gone, he asked the mirror

Of the Biltmore Hotel, cuarto 216. Alas,

Can its reflection lean against the glass

Too, wondering where I have gone, into what horror?

Is that it staring at me now with terror

Behind your frail tilted barrier? Tenderness

Was here, in this very bedroom, in this

Place, its form seen, cries heard, by you. What error

Is here? Am I that rashed image?

Is this the ghost of the love you reflected?

Now with a background of tequila, stubs, dirty collars,

Sodium perborate, and a scrawled page

To the dead, telephone off the hook? In rage

He smashed all the glass in the room. (Bill: $50.)

Malcolm Lowry

(probably written early 1950s)

I Know a Man

As I sd to my

friend, because I am

always talking,—John, I

sd, which was not his

name, the darkness sur-

rounds us, what

can we do against

it, or else, shall we &

why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for

christ’s sake, look

out where yr going.

Robert Creeley

(An American poet and one of the best)

Horace, Odes, 1,5

Surfers Paradise

What cheerful bastard

reeking of sun-tan

goes for you, Angela,

flat on that sand?

Just the old boy-friend

writing to ask you

who copes the hair-do

coolest of bitches?

My, but he’s in for a

tough old time, there

tossing the seas of your

greedy libido.

Won’t know it yet, though,

now he enjoys you,

always plain sailing,

so easy always.

Sucker, like all of us,

silly at the sight of

that dropping lee shore, your

sunsmitten bottom.

Here am I writing this

drying my wing like a

thankful tribute and

shag on a rock.

JM Couper

(A Scottish Australian poet. This was probably written in the early 1950s)