I was 46 When I let two ticks Turn my life right round No more “I’ll be quick” Now my heart goes out And I wait for you And those two ticks Are not turning blue
Poetic thoughts
Flettons
In the autumn Saturday afternoon sun We went to look at the demolition of the shops And I saw the houses sitting on the road behind Made of kiss-marked flettons With UPVC and aluminium additions There was something there all of a sudden About your far away house I want to try and get to […]
Dead Love in Dunedin
In a museum on the other side of the world A patterned 70’s frock hangs preserved I pull out my camera to take a photo But who is it for? You Gone long ago Because I loved you, I loved your ideas A slice of passion I should no longer harvest Photos I no longer […]
The Last, Lost
The postcard tumbling out of the book Lay on the floor and gave me a look “You’re late” it said It had been hidden for my surprise For quite some time I picked it up Dressed in a finery of affection Reflecting the mood of the day Finished with a kiss Evidence of love […]
Go boy, go
All the while the melancholy tick-tock of summer Saying “Go boy, go” Get done what’s got to be done Kiss who’s got to be kissed Looking out over sunsets, Elsfield hills, Eynsham Road, Cumnor Hill, Tattershall Road, Rawson’s Lane, Chapel Hill, Hedgehog Bridge Looking out over empty fields Hot and tired from cycling, but raging […]
Weekend Away
I am small and I want to feel small Dwarfed in my heart by the awe of love I want to be dwarfed in plain sight By the awe of tall buildings White limestone monuments Grey concrete abstractions Fiery red-brick towers With the chaos of a hungry heart in love Surrounded by tall buildings There […]
Triumph Stag Beetle
I grew up between two rivers In the west it was all twangy guitars and old secondhand books In the east, neat lawns and modern furniture Somewhere in the middle Was a seventies furnished in the fifties A MkIII Cortina A pathway from the door to the chair Worn into the nylon carpet with a […]
Longing for Belonging
Walking along Goree Walking in our forties, with more than 40 years of things to share If you and I want to share anything at all with each other And can stand to hear about what we did before we knew each other No one quite sounds like longing to me Like Debbie Harry singing […]
Clasping the days around the ease on her mind
The body is resurrected (upon the ill weary and lawful faults of my iron clad wandering fingers) by a little unconfided literary verse, awaiting corruption. But waiting to make occasions over the noisy keys as the sea died made looking for her ways akin to the links of chains that we commit to the deep […]
Early Evening
The oddness of the autumn afternoon, Suburbs in Bristol, Reading, Birmingham, Leeds. Local train travel home over Victorian infrastructure, To Edwardian and 30s semis. In the vegetarian kitchen of the unintentional batchelor, The sun will not go down for a while, And whilst families nearby eat Iceland teas, The news and then the local news […]
Liebesaffäre
Hinreißen, berauschen Mitreißen, wegreißen Wegfegen, wegschwemmen Entzücken, verzücken Verzaubern, verfluchen Verwünschen, berücken Umgaukeln betören Verhexen, behexen
New York Pavements
There is a photograph of me taken in 1995 on East 75th Street in New York City. It was the first time I’d been to the USA, and I was on a university field trip. Since I was studying Fine Art, our field trip had no agenda other than to soak up the culture of […]
A house where you lived once.
A house where you lived once. Somewhere, despite everyone else who lived in it before or after you, inside it and outside it are fragments of your existence there. A handprint on a wall, buried beneath paint and wallpaper. A dent in the woodwork from crashing a toy car. Atoms of carbon dioxide exhaled from […]
Imagining I’m Your Friend
I always think I’d avoid these things But time and again you know you’ve lost again Here I am alone Imagining I’m your friend Walking by the abyss Looking for answers I think about talking to you Even dream about talking to you And you talk back But never like when I meet you Am […]