Untitled

I am with you, walking, 

And we check the day's step count. 

We are weaving in the woods,

braiding together paths

of past and future. 

Criss-cross trails unfolding

In the midst of wildflowered green. 

We are turning corners

Finding not fairies but

ourselves, in familiar places.

It somehow surprises you that

Our dogs are instant best buds.

I'd been certain of that but am

Less sure where we parked the car.

I confidently lead us three times over the same bridge.  

We are blessed by a dragonfly,

Enquiring how? Why

This pair would double back,

Reflect so uncertainly in the water. 

How tentatively they seek a path.

At times, we are quiet and that's fine.

Knowing we can be quiet together

Feels something like coming home. 

Here and there, we let go of little regrets,

Releasing them to the wood, 

Or watch them bob away on the brook. 

The weight of us disperses

Into a canopy of leafy sunlight. 

I begin to know the colour of your bruises

You learn to distrust my sense of direction. 

Step count. 

Now, we're walking to a bar

to drink some gin, feet in-sync.

Twenty-five years is a long time

to not walk with somebody

And yet, you occupy

a particular space beside me

that perhaps was always yours.

You are wearing silver rings on your fingers

And I can see so much time etched into them

The wear and tear of a life I don't know.

But they're the same silver rings I used to love,

And each ellipse in the silver

Slips something like a hook into me.

I think to feel those rings between my fingers

Would be familiar 

As the sight of them on yours.

We walk, your side-eye saying

Things your tongue will not. 

The unspoken puzzle

Around which you close yourself 

Like a bat. 

Sometimes, we're quiet.

And that's fine.

Tracing steps,

We begin to show each other

where our feet have taken us.

You have walked through

marriage and motherhood.

Along an artery of life and loss

I can't quite comprehend, here,

Fixed by the rings on your fingers,

Spooked by the magic of silver.

I'm stuttering, plodding along

With not being a father.

With not being so many things.

With treading repeating circles.

And yet, as I stir your words

into my Tanqueray, and

sip at the story of you,

It tastes like a tonic. 

It's not the complex mingling

of love, loss and resentment

I might once have expected.

Instead, it's a deep and clear draught

Of the girl I knew,

And all I am 

- All I am -

Is so very proud of you.

Of the woman you've become,

Of the good and bad you've borne

While wearing those same silver rings.

Which are no less precious to me with time.

I am counting the steps

Between our last milestone and this, 

As we mosey over an old blue bridge. 

Not yet gone far but already

Lifted from the discord of traffic.

You are free to go anywhere

With or without me, yet

You're here with smiling eyes,

That summon a molten silver, 

billowing ocean bloom in my body;

An unfathomable desire

To get to the other side of something with you and nothing else

Nothing but your rings between my fingers

And freedom from the past. 

Our toes sink into the green verges of each other.

Let the dragonflies watch with envy. 

 

Somewhere, Once

I'm fuzzy on facts and places.

Memory, for me, misplaces

People's names and faces.

My mind is loosey-goosey,

Non-stick specifics are lost

In the juicy flavour-feels.

Like when

On the street, you remark on a hi-viz guy

Says I, with a shrug, 

-He's workin for the council.

Beneath the many turning galaxies,

We're unanimous in grinning, 

-Has been twenty years!

Perhaps you and I had a destination,
There was probably traffic.
I forget everything
But the stars in my bones.

 

You've Crafted a Real Gem Here.

 

Day Two

Thank you for reading and commenting
Life happened so hard, but
Who cares over a glass of beer or two?
I need awe on a daily basis to survive.
I have kept a note of this gorgeous carving;
May it be its own reward when needed.
I can't like it due to problems but I like it!
The title is just chef's kiss perfect. 

I feel this to my bones, love
the idea of collecting stones
And souls. This looks like my life!
I like that you mentioned
The necessity of drought
Cleaning the ocean of pirates.
This is magical, God
I am stumped by your art. 

Lovely lovely lovely lovely.
Insanely kind of you to say!
To be witness to the madness,
Captured by the moon-shaped guitar,
Whose rhyme just clicks into place.
I'm not sure what romp means even 

Though you went deeply into sensuality
And might not have been a person at all
But boy you said it well – and in new ways.
Lovely dog photo too! 

Your poems instantly brought back the world
Your beautiful, concrete poems.
It's watermelon season and
We evoked the sound of the cuckoo.
Your comments made me sit a little bit taller.
I hope you had coffee and crumpet.
This made me smile, to know
That my words landed for you.
Consciousness stirs in the presence of a good spice.

Love in Dire Straits

Day Thirty

Backseat midnight car to Cornwall,

Romeo to Juliet lays out 

Just that the time was wrong.

Devouring midnight down the years,

I never quite got my timing right.

A friend never had this education.

No wonder he's getting divorced;

He never learned how to fall in love.

Janis Joplin as a Fish Swimming in Gasoline

 

Day Twenty-Nine

Seems like you were always leaving
Or left. Leaving with 

Your roaring engine voice.

Left in the split

Of your fire-cracked glacier voice.

Fleeing the Texan woman's life 

At your throat.

Left-field, gone big in The City

Singing in colours the let me be

Purple plea of the wounded.

Seducer of tied-off fuses

With no match left unlit

By your spilt whiskey voice. 

Leaving behind the foreboding, 

Real-known moment,

Of needing to swim in gasoline

When you couldn't quit lighting matches. 

Left lonely by lovers, with

Only what was left in the wake

Of your Russian roulette voice;

Your Pollock-paint life

Of daring too much

To be too different.

Leaving us at twenty-seven

With only your brass rocket voice.

Happy Birthday

Day Twenty-Eight

"Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing."

- Georges Jacques Danton, French revolutionary 

 

My family song waxes long

as I am in the tooth. 

I might die

in the duration of the dirge,

the drawn-out vowels 

like dragged-out bowels;

a most prolonged execution.

Light a candle for our

huddled, gut-pulled parlance.

Let us groan in dissonance.

How I long

for one swift stroke of a song

A get-it-over-with, choppy song

A flash of the axe and a slice

of cake.

 

Rethinking a Niger Fisherman

 

Day Twenty-Seven

Manchester Art Gallery's exhibition Rethinking the Grand Tour reassesses art of the British Empire. The subject of my poem, A Niger Fisherman, can be seen on this page.

I almost wish the curator's note gone,

framing this apricot syrup sun as

pulp, squeezed through a fist;

The fishermen lit like fantasy;

Marketed beauty for turning heads 

Empire-conscious.

I stand pale

with the undepicted details.

My skin, prickled

Empire-conscious.

If I took this little rethinking card,

silenced it in my pocket,

marker-penned out the unseem'd

legacy line of Empire Marketing Board,

might it quiet this discomfort?

The sun, laid unsickly on the river.

The river, not bleeding the sun.

The mangrove, wading the river

uncurated. Unmolested.

The fisherman's net, swung

more free beneath the mangrove.

 

Delayed Sleep/Wake

Day Twenty-Six

I wake disordered. Sleep phasing out slow
as floe ice. As winter's late-waking light.
Sleep disordered. Waking late to barely know
the day. Draw myself delayed til night. 

I ache to sleep and barely sleep to wake,
disordered. Weighted, fazed and dreamt by day.
By night I calculate the lunar phase, 

lying low with circadian delay. 

 

My days are hopelessly enjambed. A stayed
sentence cut with melatonin disdain,
All sleep and wake disordered and delayed,
Forever made to suffer sleep's refrain.

 

Birds begin the day with songs of sorrow,
A hymn to mourn the dead; my lost tomorrow.

 

Thirty Backwards Standing Figures

Day Twenty-Six

Intrigued by this installation by Magdalena Abakanowicz.

Here are thirty backwards standing figures
One becomes them all by only seeing
Thirty figures held apart by fissures
Witnessing is splitting into being

Take your due but ever be the giver

Be at peace through never-ending labour

Stay rocksteady while a flowing river

Call out wrong but never judge thy neighbour

Live a simple life of many faces

Draw-in air despite the hand that smothers

Be at home in many different places

Sleep with lies but hold the truths of others

Many selves, ashake in separation

Strive toward the sum of expectation

Suzanne Vega, Acoustic Stage, Glastonbury '99

Day Twenty-Five

We chanted
Mike! Mike! Mike!

Mike! looked surprised.

He was only the bassist.

The music

suddenly muted.

A reveller had

shimmied too high.

We chanted

Down! Down! Down!

Down! slid the guy,

derided.

We chanted

Mike! and

Down! Down!
A real crowd.
The best music.

 

Earth & Sky

 

Day Twenty-Four

I.

As a duet

the earth

serenades

the sky

the sky, the earth.

The sky lays out stars

like tablature

The earth gasps

in florets.

II.

The earth is scored with a mirror-lake of flowers that reflect the frequency of stars.

The flowers are a courtship of sweeping constellations.

The stars are notes, making eyes on a sheet of night.

Each holds a vision of the other in anacrusis.

III.

By night, the sky hums into her ink pillow,

while the brass-section bells of the earth are closed.

Harmony is held in the promise of dawn

but already the flowers are dying

and what light tantalised

may but be a star long dead.

The sky and the earth -

Each cradling their music -

Each mourning a union.

Made musing lines from Together Alone by Crowded House, and Only Talking Sense by Neil & Tim Finn.

 

Hooligans by the Sea

 

Day Twenty-Three

I've had it with hooligans

round here, yammering

all the hours God sends

Roving gangs

impressing each other

with teenage squeals

and cackles

Grow the hell up!

Rioting by trawlers

Eyes way bigger

than your bellies

I'm fed up

queasy with your 

yawping, anti-social

herring-heckles

Have you no shame?

Act your age! 

Trash-tipping

Thieving, squealing

junk-food jeering

People's chips

used to be safe around here. 

A Thank You Note to Neil Finn

Day Twenty-Two

Dear Neil, thank you for teaching me how to play the guitar.
I sometimes wonder why my dad didn't do it,
but you were likely a better teacher than my dad,
who I think went into the wrong profession.

But thank you for using the happier chords, unlike Radiohead,

and the easier chords, unlike Sting.

My dad called you middle-of-the-road but I think

I saw nuances my dad never did. He was a bit stuck.

Neil, you taught me calmly, from a distance but

a different kind of distant to my dad, the way

he was always coming home from work looking beat

and nodding-off in front of the 6 o'clock news.

I visited New Zealand once, Neil. Saw Lion Rock,

walked down Marine Parade; all the geography of your music.

Kind-of like when I visited Sheffield with my dad

and all the folk there remembered him

and his mam's sweet shop.

And I remember feeling strange,

with all these people recognising my dad.

Like they knew him.

Like he was knowable.

Neil, it's so cool how your sons are on your records,

how you share the stage with them like it's no big deal.

Your arrangements showed me the shape of a melody,

and I wonder at your family working music like softwood.

My dad was a carpenter and I think he taught me

only how to hold a hammer.

He could make real furniture -

the kind that's made with love and lasts.

He could fix cars and electronics, he could plumb

with only the odd mishap. He knew how to fish and make

enamelled jewellery, and tile a bathroom beautifully.

Once in a blue moon, he'd reveal he could play the drums

or the banjo or the ukulele or the mouth organ.

Once he invented a beeping gizmo, to tell when it rained.

It's strange, isn't it Neil? That I can't do

any of the things my dad could do.

He might have taught me many things

that I might now be proud of, but

he stopped making music.

Stopped working wood. 

Gave up trying to fix things.

Gave up.

As if he had never loved or shared a single thing.

Strange, Neil, that I can play guitar like you,

but not like dad.

How I've found my own way to play the same songs.

Instructions on How to Draw Curtains

Day Twenty-One

Approach the window but take care not to look outside.

Draw the curtains with a shrugging motion. When they meet, keep going. Make sure they are double-drawn, then triple-drawn, to wholly prohibit the window. 

Continue drawing curtains around the whole room, mantling first the walls, then the ceiling and floor, all with dramatic velvet. 

Keep drawing curtains. If you think you should stop, don't. Enshroud the doors so that there's no way in or out. 

Cloak well anything reflective. Swathe the bookshelves and the photo frames. Swaddle all that's precious or breakable until it is unaccountable. 

Draw the curtains, like twine, through the legs of your bed and anywhere you might rest. Draw them over the places where you might put down and forget the things you carry. Make the room an envelope, folding in on itself in layers of heavy, drawn drapes. 

Keep going until you cannot stop drawing curtains all around yourself, making a room full-to-the-rafters of furrows, fast and tight, smothering absolutely all light and air and sound. 

Draw a breath. Now the room is nothing but curtains, waiting to be drawn.

Pigeon Street

 

Day Twenty

If you listened to this place

If your mouth did not devour all breath

Perhaps every voice would condemn

Your dream, your need, your body, your future

Every day

If you listened to this place

If you silenced something of your self

Here are the lives that all might breathe

Here are the voices that might declare

Their dreams, their needs, their bodies, their futures

And you would see that by beating hearts, hearts beat

You would see that in beating hearts, hearts beat

And you might find your heart beats

Shanty for an Orchid

Day Nineteen

[Listen here]

 

Gather ye round, lads, and listen

To the tale of a killing most foul.

Murder by wilful indiff'rence

Cold as a moonstone howl

There once was a bloom, small and pretty

Pale as the fresh driven snow

A pure heart, supple and tender

But our fair lady little did know

That her keeper was born on a murderous night

In his eye, not a sparkle did show

Wilting away, now

Wilting away

The green in my leaves given out to decay

And the blight in my root

Is the dark of a gardener's heart

My flowers are now but a memory

Lost to a long discontent

Bereft of water, longing for love

Brown, broken and bent

Sown in a bed of disinterest

Lo, the beseeching root

Limbs reaching out, a lamentable child

Scorned by a villainous brute

I once had a dream that was verdant and green, now

I'm parched and bare able to say

I'm wilting away, now

Wilting away

The green in my leaves has long given way

To the blight in my root -

Now as black as this gardener's heart

Wilting away, lads

Wilting away

A gardener's love given out to dismay

And bewailing the loss

Of my life in his bare, barren heart

Haiku Day

Day Eighteen 

Some sing while driving

Letting loose inhibition

I'm backseat hiding

 

Anna

Day Seventeen

Hadn't seen you since I fell off my dinosaur

Was full of sadghetti and you owed me zilch

but turned up, dog and smile in-tow

rosy like I remembered.

Skadoodled 'round the park, pretendin'

you were walkin' the dog

not walkin' me.

Had this way of sayin' you were okay

without me feelin' sore about it.

You, proud of your lads.

Me, wonderin' how to say sorry

for bumpin' ugly in a drunk front room

for walkin' away at the school gates.

Every so often, you'd shoot me a nudge;

nothin' special, 'cept everythin' I needed.

One time, I took too long to work thumbs

and in the meanwhile you dropped dead.

Scrollin' up, checkin'

blue ticks rubber stampin'

Thanks for being so nice.

Pitiful, really, but

at least there was that

At least there was that. 

Was thinkin' 'bout your sons,

'bout your other half doin' CPR in the kitchen,

but really I was thinkin' o' me, thinkin' -

No. I was only just startin' to feel

I was worth a nudge.

Worth a walk in the park.

Was first time hearin' a eulogy

I caught every shiny bubble blown,

knowin' each to be so godawful true.

And everyone packin' out the chapel -

did you save all their lives, too?

Was standin', wouldn't fit-in, 

lookin' in thru the ghastly glass.

Just standin' with my grief in the glass.

Thinkin' 'bout still standin'.

Clair de lune

 Day Sixteen

Shades of nocturne in

how tiny bee feet negotiate

the cherry blossom.

Delicate notes on ivory.

An economy of calm, filling hearts

like pollen baskets.

A quiet garden, growing.

Stem and stamen swaying.

Here, the refrain.

The low-slung apple-tone

in a cloud of minor keys.

A memo in fading fermata.

But - for now - a crescendo

of thriving life glistening;

holly-blue wind-rippled sun

Dappling shade about the tadpoles.

A heralding wren pips,

Hanabi translated means fire-flower.

Inflorescence fanfares

in my purple-flaming umbel heart.

In taking flight, 

the bee gratefully 

applauds her feet upon the petals.

Upturned

Day Fifteen

Hey, turn a leaf on it all.

Let it slip. Unclothe

your all-right imperfection. 

Don't carry that

which doesn't make you wonderful.

Just admit you were wrong.

 

Ganymede's Earful

Day Fourteen

From a distance, particles of rock

on crystal, tinkle-tapping

the shiinto space

like shingly signals.

Whispering. Orbiting.

Swing-harmonizing. Listen;

The bellow-swell of gravity

is churning, drawing swirls in

crème caramel, curdling the

pop-pop-pop of hydrogen and

bow-bent squeal of helium, a

leviathan revolving with a

deep shudder, rumbling the

vibrato fibre of your body.

O, Ganymede, you're listening

to bone-knotting,

magnetospheric roaring.

The sonorous cacophony

of Jupiter's eye upon you.

Corresponding

 

Day Thirteen

There was a time when I'd recognise words as mine.

Not floating around like party-crashing strangers.

Lost spectres haunting the edges of lost pages.

The poets I read now are well-meaning strangers.

Flourishing, while I look for language that belongs.

To me. A hue of blue to which I might belong.

Now, in a deep-cut furrow, words fly overhead.

I am the company culled by a blood harvest,

Steel bonnet bent. How my table was once laden,

Golden; the fat, final yield of Autumn harvest.

An unseen bird, sweeping swiftly South of last Fall.

I dumbly place a wreath for love's last fatal fall.

These foreign words are an ill-fit potato sack.

I miss the comfy brown brogue of being in love.

If someone wrote words just for me, I'd have them blown

In bright-coloured glass and wrapped carefully in love.

And I'd find some peace, knowing those words were all mine.

And I'd know my worth, knowing those words were all mine.

 

Truth via Progress

Day Twelve

I.

Bees do not defy any laws of nature

There's a fair wingspan

for a fifth of a gram.

Local honey does naught for pollinosis

however many doses

What a sticky situation.

Why tear up the endangered flytrap?

It's no remedy

for what ails thee.

We can't even settle on a number of senses

Can close our eyes, touch our noses

but commonly can't smell horseshit.

II.

John Titor, early internet's non-falsifiable soldier of time-travel

was on a mission to Nineteen seventy-five.

He only dropped by the Nineties to warn us of Y2K.

John got real quiet in Two thousand-one;

We may never know the truth about his prediction

of global nuclear war in Twenty-fifteen.

III.

I reject your rejection

of the flatness of Earth.

I know what I know

and you know what it's worth.

Moon landings, vaccines,

age of the Sphinx

I thinks what I likes

and I says what I thinks.

A quest for the truth

is a cardinal sin

When there's nothing left

to believe in.