SELECTED POETRY

by
Richard Yates

GHOST

There is room for you
In the house
But first, some ground rules:

I would appreciate
Clear vision
So you must always wear something
Else, how will I see you?

As well
We must never be in the same room
In case of guests unannounced, and burglars too
For what will people say?

Another thing
Crucial to your existence
Is noise:
I hate noise – especially ghost noise

And smell:
My grandmother turned me off the smell
Of ghosts
So none of those grim odours will perfume the house

Last of all
I prize my cutlery very highly
And, although sympathetic to your natural proclivity
Cannot let you play with my knives.

One final condition
And this you must honour:
When my time comes
I too can reside in this terrible place with you.

© Richard Yates

---

A VALENTINES DAY COMPLAINT

You say, “I will love you forever!”
Impossible. You will not –
Not when you’re dead;
Not when worms wriggle out of your head.

Our love will last a long time
But no longer than whoever –
Lucky or unlucky – is last to die.
It is a fact. Eternal love is a lie.

© Richard Yates

---

KING CRAYON

You were always the brightest in the box
The one who made all the others
Bury themselves
Among the clutter of abandoned cupboards
Under sofas, covered in clumps of old hair
Or hurl themselves
Into the overgrowth of gardens
And flowerbeds
Where they would play at being you
Would reign stormily over speechless weeds
And forgotten toys
Though, underneath it all, would still feel
Like wax and charcoal, and not much else
But you
With your spine of lead
Who made them all jump
– And snap
– And seem blunt at the head
Were impossible to break
And whoever picked you
Was guaranteed to draw their best.

© Richard Yates

---

I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO WRITE A BOOK

Picture this:
I am shipwrecked, temporarily
In a factory.
Each day, a new punishment
Administered by a different somebody –
Always a fellow worker.
Today, I am paired with a woman
Twice my age and size.
Fate has thrown us together on the assembly line.
As usual, I assume the role of questioner
Which requires little in the way of genuine interest.
“My first husband wrote a book,” she says
“It was called, ‘Thirteen Slags of Significance’.”
A title not easily forgotten.
I would like to ask her rank –
Instead, I say
“Sounds more like an album, or rock band,
Than a book.”
“It sold in America.”
“Really?”
I imagine some wretched volume
Vanity published
Ruining the shelves of relatives
Other books hopping down and running for their lives
A slab of words and paper
Punchy, chatty sentences
Clichés
Colloquialisms – the lot.
And the dread author?
A subscriber to the notion that anyone can write a book –
A mechanical truth.
I imagine him
Changing nappies one minute
Incontinent the next –
Full of wind
And piss.
“Have you read it?” I ask
“Christ, no!”
In my mind I challenge her to –
“He left me with three kids,” she turns and says
“Then went back to Spain.”
Back to Spain? He is becoming more interesting –
A textbook case –
Author of numerous mistakes.
“He left us for a bloody book.”
What?
He left you… for a book?
Left you… to write a book?
Wow.
I look at her more intently
Frame her in a dull, grainy photograph
Twenty years old, give or take a year
And, stripping away the lines and folds
Find her
Not unattractive.
Beside, I picture a man
Of gusty intelligence
But stifled.
A literary man
With a weakness in his eyes for women.
A man doomed
And one half of a doomed match.
“I have always wanted to write a book,”
I say without thinking – without filtering.
She looks at me hard –
“I have tried to kill myself three times.”
I am no match for her.

© Richard Yates

---

NOW I REMEMBER

It is dark inside and
I have just remembered
One day I will be dead –
Irreversibly dead –
As dead as the others – the unborn.
When this prelude passes
I shall go on being dead forever, undisturbed
Until the end of time
And beyond
– Even when the world dies.

It just seems like such a bad design.

Surprising really
How we can recover straying thoughts
So easily
And strap them
To love, shopping lists
And whatever happens to be in the news
Or on TV –

Though not every time.

In the spinning dark of bedrooms
There is occasional panic
When even the entangled feel utterly alone
And hear only the constant drone:
I will be dead, one day
When exactly – whether days or weeks or years –
Who can say?
And looking over:
You too. Even sooner, perhaps, than me.
Then the world too will fall to death like gravity.

I do not think the universe will remember any of us.

© Richard Yates

---

WEDDING RING

He knew there was something inside him –
Something important
– Something valuable
– Meaningful.

Then one day
He went to the toilet
And finally passed the forgotten ring
He had swallowed as a child.

His parents were overjoyed.

© Richard Yates

---

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN DULL AND GIFTED

I was not one of those children
Who could hear a siren
And quote the registration.

I could not spend summers inside
Captive to electronics and science kits
And healthy fascination.

I might win a hand of rummy
But no more than my share
And probably less.

I understood rules
And manipulated some
But never beat an adult at chess.

I could also never –
Immersed and dribbling –
Spend hours at a computer, just to complete a game.

I had friends
And liked them, but not their comics
And we were not the same.

I was not one of those interesting children
Who never cry – who suck everything in
Without even a wince.

I was shy and awkward
But not painfully so – not contagiously so
Though I have at times been since.

© Richard Yates

---

LONDON

London does nothing for me –
Except its historical bits
That sweat in battery proximity.
I can never manage my way around
And have always found London
The most betraying part of England
Where kindness dissolves like birdshit in rain
And everything is in constant change
Apart from a few old buildings
Begotten, not made –
Christened with the invention of a precise date.
So slippery
I have grappled many times with its identity
But, unlike Helen’s husband
Have never wrestled out the mythic, elemental face.
I prefer the other parts – the country competition:
Where people are busy
But kind anyway –
Where versions of truth do not need to be reigned in
By policy –
Where families bicker
For most of the week
But eat together on Sunday.
London, you never made me welcome.

© Richard Yates

---

Your first name:	Your URL:
To Leave message for Richard, start message: For Richard Yates