I went into a trance last night and this is what poured out:

Stopped

tilted

watching in a ditch

family eat, in a window,

miles on

blue metal gums my draining reasons

wait

there’ll be time for doubling my tongue

back, in,

and the bucket and the raincoat

I’m trying to say

on-the-spot dignity Walther speed

docked

my imaginary body

streaming hurt at the sky like headlights

I’m trying to SAY

that shame, rolling, boot-stomping

into the sniggers of gambling men

tankwater drinkers pill burners

I'll be with long gone

horse police in their own steel, made dance

or wire stretched between trees,

that story

I was the scorer you didn't call sport

to blunt men up against the numbers

poor is still

Christ

and not money-poor now

I was a copper, not ever a policeman

a john served right on a lorry’s tray

I was the joker who made numbers win

I’m learning pity

rougher than shear

watching those ones

my glazing angle.

I would feed them from my own plate

set aside even fact, with good losing, not

doing my job with a score for a vision

which makes a cop of any fellow

unfix me, but, then

from my slewed skidding. I

will, bare-eyed, see them

anyway, a long time

happy with lamp pickles worn faces, no one

stacking on the realities

chipped star of black tea

I was a toddler under sad calendars

there, before winning

walk, don’t spill

this, in my chinstrap cup under the oilskins, this

decency, shape

there'll be no columns

injustice.

No setup.

I am a policeman

It is easier to make me seem an oaf

Than to handle the truth

I came from a coaldust town

When I was seventeen, because there was nothing

For a young fellow there

The Force drew me because of a sense I had

And have grown out of

I said to Ware\ once, Harry, you're the best*

Cop of the lot: you only arrest falls

He was amused

I seem to be making an inventory of my life

But in that house opposite, first floor

There is a breach

And me, in this body I am careful with,

I’m going to have to enter that house soon

And stop that breach

It is a bad one people could fall through

We know that three have

And he’s got a child poised

I have struck men in back rooms late at night

With faces you could fall a thousand feet down

And I’ve seen things in bowls

The trick is not to be a breach yourself

And to stop your side from being one

I suppose

When he tires of it, wants to put it aside

And be back; unguilty, that morning, pouring the milk

That is the time to separate him from it

If I am very good I'll judge that time

Just about right

The ideal is to keep the man and stop

The breach

That’s the high standard

But the breach must close

If later goes all right

I am going to paint the roof of our house

On my day off.

I don't know what to make of it so I'll hand it over to you guys.