A RIOT OF MEANING:
POEMS BY C. CAUNTER

The following poems were written between 2012 and 2026. They are being published here with the author’s kind permission, all for the first time except for one previously published poem. This page complements an earlier page of poems by the author, “Fulham Fantasia”, also to be found on this website. All rights reserved.

Looking

On the concrete by the pool
The lifeguard was doing push-ups.
A boy half his age looked on
From a towel spread out right beside.
No one else was at the pool,
The hour being early. No one else
But I was looking from a window,
Looking at the boy’s looking
And at the lifeguard’s proud display.

 

Best

British boys are the best
Their large strong frames scream to be men
But they’re not men yet

French boys are the best
In them, bronzed southern skin
Meets a touch of the steel-eyed north

Iberian boys are the best—
Dark hairs exquisitely visible
All over their firm small limbs

Latino boys are the best
Those sharp noses conferring nobility
To compensate for overcuteness

My boy is the best
My notions brilliantly blindsiding me
As he blew me out of the water

Pale, Stonewashed

Pale, stonewashed jeans
White sneakers, winter coat
Hair slicked and cold
Shapely morning boy
Flitting through the world

Train to an internship
Or bus to a school
Vapour puffs in stonewashed air
Grey, blue eyes
And smooth, dark hair

Animula vagula blandula
One of a numberless kind
I know your fine body
And the drift of your mind
From a wealth of your peers

God is no mystery
I’ve known him for years

Gangly Godlet

He’s gangly now, at sixteen years
Of age, and shy—he even fears
To ask a waiter for an extra plate.
You should have seen him though in the hotel
On top of and inside his mate,
Possessing him so totally, so well,
So in command of pleasure—if you’d seen
His confidence and grace displayed in bed
You would have sworn he was a godlet, lean,
Insatiable, and from Olympus fled.

Caedmon

The evening is young when a grappling throng
Of choristers gather for evensong.
Imbibition of mead: to meet their eyes,
Milky-white teeth and olive skin. If granted,
They slake thirst like milk and soothe like oil.

If you’re barred from Communion or the master key,
There’s a shed kept warm by the huddled herd,
Straw for a bed where the donkeys lie
And a roof leaking sky. Though it seem absurd—
Go in like Caedmon, with your voice held high.

Ecce Holden

You’d like to catch all of them
But they fall down like rain
This infinity of boys
On an infinite plain

You’d like to be the catcher
Forever and aye
But your life is outlasted
By the rain and the sky

There’s no central creator
It’s a self-made design
Still the boy-grapes are godly
As they rain down their wine

And you drink, and the love-buzz
Goes round in your head
And the rain will keep falling
Long after you’re dead

And the unending rain
Will drench others instead

Weapon

“Anything you put online
will become a weapon,
if you don’t choose your words carefully”
—from a BBC News article

If you’re not aware
That you were born a weapon
More’s the pity
Best to take note
You’ll be bludgeoned to death
With yourself
And move on

Virtue

If virtue is a signal
And the world is crawling with virtues
Like so many saintly lice
Then the last stand of the noble
Is to sing the praises of vice

Riverside Musings

June of this year
Sees us warm on the bank,
Towpath all clear

You sitting here
Give me late sun to thank
Midnight is near

 

Diary

“10:30 at station entrance”
That was April
Of a year about to end

Nothing is required
For misplacing time
For sand slipping

“Don’t ever tell anybody anything”

Calling on phantoms
Of occasional friends
Who explode my city streets
Into a riot of meaning

To a Murdered Boy

            1

Hoisted on my shoulders, you can see today’s dawn
That saw you reduced to a street-corner shrine.
Your unknowing hand in mine, we don’t have to wonder
If we’d have got along. No jealousy is due:
Death strews cuckolds all around.

Would the grounded boys
Feel silly yet about courting the trigger? In the mirror
They must feel they have shot a fine figure. Pray
There is a forgiver bigger than this poem, to show them home
Because we’re leaving them alone. We have to ford a river.

            2

It’s been nearly a week since you fell and we set off
On a walk with your thighs closed around my throat,
Me seeing the scenery and you not a thing, not your parents
Nor your girlfriend nor the huddle of candles
In your terminal street which we plod up and down.

There is no Ithaca at the end of this trek,
No satisfied looking back. Your bridges are burned
Behind us and ahead. The papers are curled
Around fresher fires, but I will make mention
For miles to come of how tightly your thighs are clamped on.

            3

It’s been nearly two weeks and I have my misgivings
About whether this river affords any crossing.
Where can I drop you off? How many miles are due?
Wish I could give her a minute with you, wish your thighs
Pulsed with life so I could rush back to your parents, panting, smiling.

Unforgivable

Look at this one, high-school-bound on the bus
Wavy raven hair, chewy nose, full lips
Parcel-tape skin, eyes where shines the giver of life
But you don’t look, lady, sir
It offends me
That you lack the divine spark
Needed to see this head-to-toe beauty
That makes us want to treat him like a gem
I’d lock you up for such blindness
Deliver you to the rapists and killers
You always talk about so fervently
They’d make you feel what they think of you
I’d put you on a register
For the rest of your Jew-star-crossed life
Smash your windows, hound you out of your house
Entrap you for the social millions to gloat over
Adorn the gutter press with your mug shot
To get your children to disown you
And tip your elderly mum into the grave
I’m sorry, I’m not tolerant
Just maybe, you know, I’d dust off the chair for you
A step for which the world has long been primed
All this I’d do
To make you pay for the unforgivable crime
Of not being like us

Paradise These Days

            1

So Jorge likes you
            And you’ve regained paradise these days
                        Because he’s a rapaz do bairro not yet out of his teens
With little hairs here and there, the flattest of chests,
            the tiniest of nipples,
Brown eyes from a spectrum copyrighted in Portugal
And a tattoo that says 1312 (substitute letters: ACAB, geddit,
            All Cops Are Bastards)
At his age, and being do bairro, it won’t do of course
            To be anything less than revolutionary

            2

Now, riding the bus, sun tumbling into the windows,
            You stand chest to beating chest with so many more boys
Vasco, let’s say, whom you glimpsed yesterday too
            Tight chinos, sneakers for big feet, a polo shirt of some distinction
                        And skin like something golden, freshly baked
That one there is Duarte, surely,
            Younger, pudgier, who appears to glance with interest
                        At the fashion-conforming haircut of the next lad over:
A dark helmet fringing the forehead, while a right angle behind the ears
            Is left close-cropped

            3

This one returning from his course in business blah blah,
            That one on his way to girlfriend at shopping mall
                        And vice versa, today, yesterday and tomorrow,
                                    And whatever level of discreet vice in their lives
                                                And ecstasy proper to the gods
You could love them all, embrace them all, caress their skin, express
            A connection to the Boy Universal, a connection palpable almost
                        Like the threads of dew on the first morning on Earth,
                                    This paradise gained, lost, regained, lost, regained…

Monsters of Beauty

There is no truce
In a late year’s light
In fact, the day’s spoiling
For another fight

The monsters of beauty
They prance and they bray
And they’re always fifteen
And they’re always at play

You’ve had ecstasy calling
So you know it’s around
Now you live with the Cain-mark
Of its sight and its sound

It’s a servant like fire
And a master like hell
And this servant’s receding
For the master to swell

And the monsters of beauty
Will they dance on your grave?
It’s the least you could ask for
And as good as you gave

Enough

This is enough. A cup of tough
Instant coffee, coarse-cut ’lade
And your knees round my own
In the spoon that we made.

This will do. A poem or two
By now-dead men, my drunken pen
And your teeth in my arm,
The mark of your charm.

This works just fine. The sun on a line
Across the floor from the balcony door
And your voice to festoon
The afternoon. Come night no more.