tickling the rocks
dancing around woodworms
drinking tequila with dandelions
the floor is 
no place
for a young fern with ambition

beanstalk
said the big unfurling fern to the little unfurling fern
beanstalk all the way to the ozonosphere
if you endure
and you harvest the best sunbeams
and nitrogens
and you cheat at quizzes
you'll climb as high as that great rose
and you'll be happy and
strong
and powerful

but I am happy
said the little unfurling fern to the big unfurling fern
and I don't wish to be strong and powerful
and that great rose I've heard is a real
pig
and he doesn't share his Easter eggs
and he has no pride in his hedges
and he plays bad music really loud on
buses

this floor is the floor but it is
my world
and I like the woodworms
and the two leafed clovers who don't know their
androecium's from their
gynoecium's
and the dandelion - well
he drinks too much tequila but he has a 
strong heart
and if the world was on fire and everything was lost he'd share his
last
mini eggs
with all of us.

it is true - that I am small
but in my scrubby wisdom I know I know
that it is better
to stay down low
among cheap friends
and dance with ugly woodworms
and tell stories to bluebells
and play flute with the clovers
than it is
to grow tall
and handsome
and have only the spiteful rose for a friend
and have to listen
all day
to *******
Morrissey.

now there's a lad
said the big unfurling fern to the little unfurling fern
as the dandelion racked up the tequilas.

massacring a lindt bunny into pieces with a rolling pin 
and passing
him
around

frying black peppercorns - laura's cooking
and embers
still glowing 
in the morning

grandparents, grandchildren
buckets and buckets and buckets of tadpoles and 
cold, cold
pillows

all actors in my saga of 
drunken webs and 
400 year old
trees

like an unfurling fern taking heed of its surroundings

guarded but bold
a cracking egg
an old person driving a mobility scooter on a 
busy road

settling into ways
slowly growing wings

each hour of each day and each day of 
each week

i'm
inching. 
forward.

creeping,
grasping,
reaching,
towar­d that new beginning

for i am convinced
that in this here and now

there is

NO 
place.

for the end.

ear to the tracks
the throb of another ghost train
an answer

screaming
hissing

a pantomime snake
slithering along a trapeze
in a costume of the question

Sophia Loren

an invasion closing in with an army of
drowned sardines

it may go around
or its cargo could be small and not that
dangerous

but that risk is for the passing of a comet
a great injunction
or the birth of a new universe with more empty seats on its
buses

call it back
back to the canneries

tomorrow is a new day with moon beams and ships
bouncing with chances

but today is
today

and the snake has started drinking.

burpees forge burps
owls paint the ceiling
beavers **** your throat with
trinkets
and masked orange piths

what plagues you about death is not death itself
but the cracks in the glasses
and the insides of the duck soup
at The
Sea
View

here it comes

open and closed
mushrooming right out from the polestar of the lions’ lair
Krakatoa

a thousand potted minks let loose in a chicken den without a single
working
cash point

and from over the hill
all your ghosts connected

marching
louder
closer

banging
banging
banging

banging on their drums.

more whispers from behind the screen

only now
bigger than whispers

clammed up sentences
big moves
pigs in giant eiderdowns
an arm and a leg lease that laughs in the face of
ice

louder
louder
tap tap tap tap tap

how can you not hear?
there’s a 16 stone **** outside waxing roots to bring your
house down

you CAN hear it
if it were two mute planktons going ******* in the middle of the pacific you’d
still
hear it

feed a dead moth to the wolf

do malnourished spiders stay and shrink or do they find
more uplifting dvd’s?

rise at 5am
door frozen closed by the night
glow plugs get their 20 seconds on the stage

and then another 20
and another 20

ease out
open up
lend a light to the wind and harvest
the fire

the foundations of your house are very expensive and there’s
bills
to pay.

there are many bad webs and this
was
the worst

god rays from the sun
she sits and waits
such class
the hottest of them all

a trap
unshakeable by the wind
unbroken by grace
a demon on the top

no way out
a sock in the throat
whispers behind a screen
a trap for them all

and then
a mistake
or was it
no reason to care
walk free

move forward
look ahead
slide down
another web

god rays from the sun
it shimmers
a new day

I walk straight into the web.