"Graham Buchan..... opened the reading with poems that were both nostalgic and beautifully macabre. His verses, blunt and potent like staccato notes flowing out of an old piano, spoke of a barely contained anger." (Julia Sorribes: Poetry Express)
Jazz Days
No smoking on this flight.
No smoking on any flight.
But enough alcohol to kill a sheep.
The stewardess´s smile could crack the airframe.
I want to take her to a smoke cellar
where the sprawling piano melody
is as infectious as gonorrhoea
and the wild rhythm staples the pulse
and she burns her lungs with flaming French cheroots,
and bites my ear
and pushes me to the cloakroom to force her thighs.
And the hard thick leather tongue of Africa
slides below at thirteen thousand metres
and differing factions there
insist on their own music.
Silence
want you to come so hard that it hurts
come like you feel you’re frying meat
come so hard you take up smoking
come so hard you swallow the sun
come so hard you could do a murder
I want you to come so hard we mix diamonds and rubies
we stink of adrenaline
we explode planets
we take up station
pin the silent orbit of a binary star
and are each engulfed
by the exquisite loneliness
of our disembodied selves
in an unconscious universe
we take up station
in the silent orbit of a binary star
and much much later
much much later
we think
and speak