Here it is; my little book of signals, well-worn page upon page of alarm.

We are the captains of sister ships and from ever-constant latitudes

we convey what we've learned.

This flag is blue. Acknowledge.

This one is black. Rest/space.

Here, the colours are mad and confused. Error/attention.

And then there is gorgeous, critical red.

Let's stop encoding the weather, my dear.

NaPoWriMo 20

I know that try as I might
to put my fingers on you,
you are not like the moon
or the sea, or the stars.
You in no way resemble
an historic revolution
nor crowning glory -
not one divine calamity,
nor any worshipped thing
or valued prize of note.

If I say you recall to me
some splendid piece of music,
art or industry, it only serves
to show them meagre things.
Distinct from any raving,
heart-stirred temper,
any desperate madness
as described in detail
by a better mind than mine.

There is not a single heroine
or a favourite pair of jeans
that catches light the way
you are inclined always to do.
The very light itself, whether
atmosphere azure
or a sunlit shade, is not
quite you, try though it might.

And if the sharpest wit
or barbed retort
might shame an empress,
it fades to but a whisper
in the dark under your eye.

The world becomes white noise.
The stars and moon and sea
white noise. No thing in nature
or otherwise conceived
will ever hold a passing thought
because they are not you.

NaPoWriMo 17

Dave wants to be my friend.
Ignored.
Jane drives me round the bend.
Ignored.
Frankie is eating pork pie.
I'm bored.
Heidi's not gay but she's bi.
Good Lord...

I really don't care
about all of you there
but isn't it time
for I, me and mine?

Ignored.

NaPoWriMo 16

We are slow dancers, scoring life with feet,
leaving in our wake disordered music,
upon a stage where oil and water meet.

Find with pace a tendency to lose it.
Seeking rhythm or some mad alignment,
leaving in our wake disordered music.

Full of weight we tackle our assignment,
track of foot referring to our centre,
seeking rhythm or some mad alignment.

Here a partnership we dare to enter -
skipping hearts that share a kindred step,
track of foot referring to our centre.

But oh, to steal a lead we must misstep.
We are slow dancers, scoring life with feet,
skipping hearts that share a kindred step
upon a stage where oil and water meet.

NaPoWriMo 15

Dear Writer,

Please stop. You make me a misery.
This page is full to the very brim,
saturated with sadness and bloated
with mirthless miasma.

Your pen is a slow spillway of
self-pity. The ink a deluge
of woe. I have become your
very worst invention.

A bullet to the foot, or a
smart-ass slipper of concrete.
You've fashioned me from guilt
and a manipulating shape.

This is not love. Just artless piss
toward the wind. Sit back.
Take pause. The cause is long lost
so stop writing shit.

NaPoWriMo 14

You again. we thought we heard

the last of you but look there,

scheming imp, mischievously
stirring wistful memories.

Your fingers on our unsound

bones are unbearable bliss.
Your subtle soul-touch
by turns good and intrusive.

The countenance between

the pair of you is witness

to my audible authority,

be it cut either way.

Exposing with my weave

your innate vulnerability.

Unseen, profoundly felt.

Not even here to be heard. 

Yes, even in silence
your unheralded kiss
bids this body shake,
shiver and sink into sepia.

NaPoWriMo 13

Wanted by the world am I,
oft in desperate short supply,

life's pursuit and worries' root, more
dear than any heap of loot,

hid in all the simplest things, like
flying kites or plucking strings,

found in unexpected places,
remedy for dismal faces,

onto me you all must cling,
I am a fleeting, fickle thing,

find me and the stars you'll bless, for
I am your own happiness.

NaPoWriMo 12

the whole universe never looked right
understanding that not said with words.
undoubtedly quite brilliant,
bringing caustic wit to bear,
She is a dreamer trapped in reality
full of precarious fury or
capitulating to the assault of life.
Not mad but preoccupied with madness.
Touched by something we don't understand.
An abstract thought turns tangible and
nobody does it quite like her;
regal in her poise and motherhood
the way she carries herself and the stars.
What quality she aspires to
being quite so clever and canny,
perfectly chaotic from
irresistible first moment
to ineludable end.

NaPoWriMo 11

NaPoWriMo 10

Alphabet mine's worse than yours.



All that we write to each other,
borne of our affection,
could not be writ but for these
diminutive symbols.
Everlasting love,
frustration at the state of things,
god damned distance
have all been carefully parcelled
into words with little letters.

Just some scribbles on a screen
kicking up all this fucking
lust for each other, you being
mine and I always yours,
never to rest our minds or
our lovelorn eyes until we
put ourselves and this loaded
question to bed and be together.

Restful. Content. Soothed and
sated at having all of each other.
Thankful for the emblems
under which love blossomed.

Verily I think of you and
wander, lost, around the
XYZ of how to win
your heart and quench my
zeal for those precious letters.

NaPoWriMo 9

NaPoWriMo 8

The moon is not so very far
from the sea in stargazing terms.
They, by cosmic ratios, almost touch.
So proximate, they may as well
be making love,
fingers of impetuous sea, fizzing
at the touch of his melty moon.

NaPoWriMo 7

Today's candidate for a rewrite/the bin. I don't know what the hell this is...


I fantasise quite often that I win the lottery
and I give away two hundred grand, just like that.
No strings attached. No obligation, not ever a mention
of why. Just to make that person's life or day
a lighter load. To buy a guy a car. Those kids two weeks away.
And herself a mortgage-free morning in the garden
with the bees.

And me? I'd like to say I would elope with my guitar
but the cash would more than likely be vaulted
underground. And I would sit there too with a tiny,
rainy, viewless window. 'Cause what are all the riches
to me? I'm not greedy for for stuff or currency.
I want order and the way things are supposed to be.

I suppose what I am saying is I'd like some charity.
The way you might madly wave an umbrella 
at a startled runner through the car window
if a hailstorm had him beat and dragging laces.
Only, imagine he doesn't politely refuse and jog on.
Imagine his eager eyes light up at his fortune.

NaPoWriMo 6

First effort was poor. Here's a second (equally chirpy) try.

You leave me again, every day.
The raw, intrusive memory
is tantamount to the act.
I stir and recall. Lament and sleep.
And greet day from the wrong side of night.

I think the sun to me says loss
so let it sink, down, down.
Drown it in the horizon deep
and bring on commiserable black.
Let me dream unlikely dreams.

Forget that loss is not a void.
No blank, narcotic nothing.
It is me, my town, the galaxy and
every unbearable thing, all flooding in
with daylight and your sensible farewell.

NaPoWriMo 5

The Moon is distant from the Sea and yet,

with unintended, rhythmic art She leads Him

keen and merry, careless

along appointed sands

He never skips a beat

obedient to Her wax

She comes, just so close, in unsure orbit

goes just so far away - oh, Blue Everything

the wax, the wane

and the distant Moon

all married to the last.

Command your Sea beneath you.

Adapted from The Moon is distant from the Sea by Emily Dickinson.

NaPoWriMo 4

There's a fossil here before me that makes me think of you.

Showing no inclination to depart my universe

and made of some old thing that

was made, in turn, of some old thing

and so on. Composed entirely of the same stuff

as me. As earth. As quarks and gluons.

And it's curled up tight. Tight, like a hedgehog.

Like ninety million years ago

it thought to turn to diamond.

NaPoWriMo 3

The moon was over Belleville Park that cold and cautious night
You took a walk among the roots and I was at your side
That sorry silver satellite was lost among the stars
'tween limbo and the kingdom of our foolish giddy hearts

Your bones were cold and weary so I took you far away
to where my tones of copper warmed your tired, pretty face
I thought I saw you look at me, desire in your eye
it almost slipped from memory; the day we said goodbye

I tried to write a letter with an undetermined pen
as I have done a thousand times, I looked to you again
I wrought the words in silver and I anchored them in black
but all to no avail because the mailman sent it back

The birds have started singing and the nights are not so dark
and the daffodils have blossomed since we walked in Belleville Park
I hear you loud and clear and in love I shall remain
and my heart will keep on list'ning til we take that walk again



I tried something with this one and turned it into a song - click here to listen to a (very) rough version. And possibly a snoring dog.

NaPoWriMo 2

Sorry I'm late.


Yes, I am the stars
and I burn uncontrollably
for you. Just you.
Countless cataclysmic deaths
and gravitational collapse;
this is the state of things.

I am a constant. Ever bright
and motionless. Hung like
silver fish on hooks. Gasping.
And dammit, won't you build
a hyperdrive, deflector shield,
life support and nav-com please?

Boldly go, long time ago.
Come discover me.

NaPoWriMo 1

I know a girl who is not here
nor is she gone but most of all
not here.

Though now I think, primarily
she's positively, certainly
not gone.

I think our hearts do not belong
inside our restless bodies when
she's gone.

Sk8r grl

You once told me
- tantalised -
you were the keeper of a secret.
What, I said.
How to fold letters just so, you said,
so they fit in envelopes.
You'd learned it where your mam worked.
Your lying cheating mother.

I begged for that secret
or did I really desire some piece of you
some whisper of your heart
mine alone to moon proud over
but you were always going off ahead
and wouldn't say.

it's lost to me now,
like you
like so many maybes.
Perhaps it wasn't but
I imagine it was the day in the park.
Your hair was always nice
but that day I loved your teeth.

I picture you that way
when I fold my letters wrong.

Cracking

Watching time go is
like meltwater freezing.
feel the return of that old familiar
creeping tremor, crack of dawn
frostbit tingle in the tundra.

Not entirely unpleasant for
ever I am in love, in love
in love. A cold love.
Heartsick and giddy, though
look at all the time gone.

Trickle on, you glacial sod.