Took the train north
to capture the star gaze
Didn't say if she would come back
Where is her boyfriend now
The one she believed in


She chooses her colours for pleasure
Russett sunset
and embroideries for you
surrounds herself with friends
To learn the truth
Summer fade
Leaves a smile

The skyline disappears once again
as blackness returns the night.
The outsiders bath in the squalid  moonlight,
abluting their good intentions.
The metamorphosis is complete.
Darkness will reign supreme.
They gather by the smithy
opining with a wild lament .

Lichen was her betrothal
stretching upon the skin,
by now her hurricane
grew boundaries.
No gaps  to loosen
the eternity.

When he wants to rest
leave him there
even with three strokes
you're heading for his intractable claws,
that in time you realise is more than play
but common assault, drawing  blood
His vet had at one time looked at his nose
commenting it had a bit of Chinese,
surely not siamese
an unspoken language at your peril

Carry  your  sack to hell
not even a  morsel of  memory  should languish
A  solitary  splinter of  good
still goes punished.
Lower your  eyes in subservience,
but that's  unwise
with those  burning  pyres
of sandals, discarded
least any man secretly merited wings

Ashen cheeks close near, now far.
Time broken on the bedroom floor.
Husband is a bore
hush his mouth,
no etitique or ground rules;
the truth must prevail.
I could never be his baby doll
wearing his cheap ring.

See the water wash over you
with droplets preserving your dreams
fashioned as orginal thoughts,
that you wished to swore
vouchsafed in your sincerity
and everyone's hopes.

Why isn't everyone raving about singer songwriter
Harvey Andrews?
or trying to memorise the pitch perfect tranquility
Why did we ever leave 1975?
when we had more hedgerows
and projected families on slides
Blondes didnt have to be peroxide
en naturel was the prevailing currency
Words were spoken with eye contact
and dreams came true

I'm lost in the helter skelter,
with wayward glances shooting at me.
My stomach is in knots
this is the power of love.

Let the people decide on the dance,
not your midnight one
but the midday one
the sleep through the work day type.
Where on auto we can forget
about our neighbourhoods.
You know the ones
bad mannered mothers in league
with prams, a public menance
or their soon to be feral children
who never amount to doctors
just random statistics
where more was hoped for.

River man takes his journey
through mearending reeds,
he's  got truth in his pocket
a diary of promises unsated.
For a shilling he take you to
hangmans corner,
a place to clear your head,
for a throw of the dice
he show you
the secret of life itself,
but beware of his wry smile!

Young Man grows to old
Tree Mallows gently sway
Rainbow yearning, steals your dreams.

You roamed beyond the rainbow
you exceeded the limits,
with exalted sigh
felt the shudder of  relief.
Then the room of decontamination awaited
where chips from collected memories
short circuited
in damp vaults
where tree roots once grew

I mute out all sound
Least I treespass on reasons rhyme

I enjoin in the signets call
Least I surround myself with subterfuge

Like a deckled cheeseboard
I hunger for a Silver  lining

Palimpsest on a bright day
I scribe letters already cast

Burden street,
wish wash
Newcastle  rain,
The gust cuts
to the bone
Ghosts avail themselves
to street corners
eye sockets ,
holes with grey light
speak of the tedium
the porosity of meek

reeling ruffled
she puts her hands in her head
and recounts
the streets once offered fascination
but she prefers off road
the dark seclusion of the glades
has given her a new desire

She realises what the night is for
love has set the wheels of motion
the change perfectly formed
There was much ovation

Once when you were young
you never had the chance
to be like normal  children
they scuffed your knees
turned martyrdom into a sport
as you were a diagnosed dyslexic:
very much cocooned
often aristocratic in pedigree.
TV became a refuge
a mechanical nanny !
Away from the special school down Brent.

The family car drove to North Wales
You said there was better scenery to be had on TV.
This moulded and shaped  you.
Saturday afternoon matinee on BBC 2
an added bonus
sometimes glee,  others slapstick humour.
One should curtsy to your droll  disposition
hold in high esteem.

Before you go trust  in me
follow the warm Autumn fade
watch the geese to their journeys end.
Warry words I will not speak.
I shall return and talk of love
Our story is yet to be told.

An ounce of humam kindness
does that go a long way?
or is it alteady an exit sign
appearing to usher you away to safety
when its only envious of the vacant space.
A barbed comment may after all be an underlay warning
for a fault line
that an unrealised friend is trying to repair

Illy cofffee served  down herne hill market
the staff this week seemed different.
Pullens restaurant stripped
to be refurbished,
the mandatory space optimiser
a flat at the back.
We read the planning permission notice
and realise space is a premium
Meanwhile people are so incidental.

i am gallant in another world
the girl with rimmed glasses
and a Parisan top
in white slacks reading the guardian weekly.
I have no need for men
they are too needy
who trip over in the firmament
unlike my further dreams
of calico cats in the shade
and my friend Jane

if I were you
what  thoughts would pervade
enjoining on a journey

With her brown boot on the carriage seat,
filing her nails
she was the detriment
of feminity.
The self was her only care,
mid thirties nurtured
the south east London way.
A night out planned at New Cross
she held no fear
educationally detached
raw emotions like nicotine cravings

Those travails crack and then congeal,
as our obligatory tea making shows
the weathered storms exposing our late Autumn.
Our relationship shows  we are demeritorious
your sunken eyes betray the welling
and as comical as we stand
our emotions are replete with decay
as though we waded through a muddy field.

I was around when someone shouted "Judas"
to Dylan for going electric.
I was the ink in Paul Simons North of England sound of silence.
I was the muse for David's  "Space Oddity"  all those pink  moons ago.

"Oh no its not you again",
the spider combing through my hair,
acting like you couldn't care
turning my blonde hair
into  strands of straw,
so you could see me
cry and crumble


Only this morning when I had
my hot compress over my eyes.
I imagined a half formed image
of a Roman's eye socket.
I was frightened and could only
think that 1961 Photography annual
was to blame.
Catacombs of Rome
turned through and through,
oh black and white images
can be so visceral

Rapidly I opened my eyes
trying to regain some semblance

It's the same monstrosity
Like briar wood on display
Mother Anne disciplines her kids
It's always like the first day of her personal crusade
Like being drawn under the ocean floor
Escapades are the order of the day
But it's the present that is the crow

You entered a career  and grow with success.
You've become somebody
well respected,
carrying a banner of pride
your hobbies identified you,
never thinking this is borrowed time.
Your trust in yourself was impervious,
despite an event that had been building
lititle by little
like lit matchsticks slipping out of your hand,
onto a inflammable floor.
It's called an anxiety attack.
like a cat scratch it didn't amount too much when it noxiously came
but when you avoid the third train to work
panting like an out of breath player,
forcing yourself to stand amongst a group of yelling school kids
you already sense the nothingness
you've underplayed in your mind.
Arriving at the station
you want to double back
take to a station bench, admitting something wrong.
Forcing yourself to work
uttering the famous words
I cannot do this.
I'm heading for a breakdown.

you are the poet
the mirror to my soul
you're  like a beacon
that lights up my life
your words are a gift from Heaven

By the border
they drink cactus  wine
breathless
outdoing   each other cussing their own Mothers
they tell poignant  stories  for a few guineas
on their first and only  loves
before they became tramps of sorts
profusely  coughing  up
nobody wants them mow

If we blank out today
and picture post 1974
we walk with a careless air
just wondering about
the new neighbours
We mix tape the second rate
Rock bands
whilst still knowing David Essex was an adonis
and contemplate  learning French
long before hearing french kissing in the USA

I wish I had a vista of the past
and could still hear the squawking hens
in their Kibbutz hatches
under some 1982 azure sky

I wish I were a hippie
and could permanently hear acetate music from 1967
dressed in kaftan
smoking Moroccan ***
forever  young

If I were to be a poet
id  gap in the missing years
and candy floss the  past
between youngster hood and my  near 60 years

Maybe another story  can furnish the mood
let fate wave a sensation
the passage between you and I,
its tantamount  to a  binding ;
fortuitously a  lit spark
will shorn your  withholding  the truth,
a silent  yearning reached,
long set as a promise.

The leaves turned amber
like an eclipse,
as the girl celebrated her 13th birthday
The music lessons grew tired
She would rather play
with the other children
The teacher became vexed at this turnaround
Trackless Children flourish on nothingness
as Autumn watches the merry-go-round.

A new leaf is like an epiphany
Surge bright and strong.
For tomorrow is an awakening,
and tonight tempus fugit.

I listen to the ebbs of the day
it never stops.
Under orange sky
I force a smile,
the coarse roots of the earth
rolls into one,
stepping forth, testing .
I fall to my knees
peace evades me.
I bench by parched broken trees,
breathing in a forest of leaves
am I my own law?

The Soldiers return to their  home coming
at the same time
as the last M42 lenses were being sold
at  the down towns thrift shop.
There lay the rub
the old gun ** world was facing down
the commercial necessities of the Wild West.
The people had forgot their National pride
finding reasons to be embarrassed
for the hedonism sweeping the land
Their ostrich feathers
fluttered amongst abundance:
whose navel gazing allowed narcissism
to flourish.

Can we find a central meeting place?
How's Reg, bet the doctor's haven't told him his got the big C,
leastways with the fog he won't  find his tumour when lost.
A pint of mild and bitter mate
down Portland Steeet.
Heard Adriennes black dress is a stunner.
Ask her out to the flicks, maybe Doctor in Love?
"Not if it gives her any  ideas
Walking down the aisle is too like the
black out, remember".

Brandishing a wand of  memories,
whose images held magical meanings
where for the first time you yearned
for knowledge as special as your
day dreams
that you still recall  today.

I squeeze the last of the toothpaste,
well within my rights to be confounded
where does the time go ?
Only last night my paracetamols
where within a month of expiry.
The crux of the matter
office space is a premium
the lastest snag is hot desking,
early starts for the morning-
tired, tired so unnaturally.
I never seem to get the shopping properly done,
too preoccupied winding down for bed,
a cycle is emerging
my long life milk needs replacing.

The horse has bolted
Day is night
Memories flight to County Carlow
whilst he lives in London SE27
A hard rain is about to fall
when he calls me John
and forgets to feed his cats

London should be a no go zone
it should be boarded up
feed it to the Zombies,
the final act of a virology department,
Don't ever start again
plug up the Thames
turn the whole place into a desert
allow the foxes to be unfazed
attack attack feral humans

The note said
loves a nest,
there's this incessant need,
rising in your dreams,
the art of listening
to your heart,
crying in your depths
Pigeon man,
garnish your love,
and then he vanished,
like a stone
into the world
torching the night.

The girl's  going  to  Michigan
staying with her family.
Please  no Hershey bars
we're quaintly  English,
an island race
of  fascinating climes,
so  no Atlantic  conversions
to the new axioms.,
Learn to  love tea again
persist with under statement
and  long live  queues

Vanity supplanted the setting sun,
moonlight trails then called our finer points
we only had to have foresight
to cast our truer selves.
Walking with the assuredness
to unblink the rays of self assurance.

In this void I question serenity
gazes are treated as lances,
even freckles are friendless
such is the self;
a bouquet of inward reverence.
Ashen is  this dayglow world
the past is pictured fairer
yet surely are we culpable
to be led so astray.

Children I have some news for you
"The Jews and Arabs are at war this Saturday"
Passing words for youngsters,
who were such small cogs in the wheel
not quite comprending the enormity.
Our world was too precise
we were being processed into an unflinching class regime
At thirteen it was a new school for the boarders,
and if you hadn't made Prefect then
the rub of  decesion had passed you by.

Do you still hope for your school days
when a smoke was just for laughs
and sweet heart  pledges were written in chalk
and picket fences kept the sheep
away from the cabbage patch the teachers carefully planted

I didn't have anything against Rupert Bear
his colouring book beat pixels way before their time
Who wouldn't  later do their home work
when we could play our mix tapes -
The Motors and XTC
and in the middle period
if I  ever got stuck
depend on ones sisters to spruce a playground scruff

In empty fields I strawl
And hear the blackbird speak
The dormice haunt in fives
Whilst the constellations are ajar
Then to a proud pond that maybe a lake
And to a star that tows to town
and speaks volumes
of the silence of the night