frying plantains in Tanzania
with rice - so much rice
ageing postmen with bus passes and metal knees
carrying keisters of it
a thousand different ways

slow walkers
married, always
frittering away chances or just
connected,
with the mortal coils of the market?

big coat on in the Kalahari

your scorpions absent from the guest list,
exiled.
the brown bears caged, but should things have
really.
come to this?

fierce heat.
fizzing geysers rumpled by grey fluorescent lights and
plagued,
by the speeding steam trains of their past that took them to
SO MANY GREAT PLACES but they only recall the
endings.
the crashing off the tracks,
the unexpected landslides

revolve
navigate the ridge and don’t funk from looking down.
it is better this way.

stamp the scorpions in.
£5 on the door.

take the free round and dance around their nimbus because even though you WILL NEVER
know them,
you would NOT
BE HERE.
without them.

your corner patch
a feral patch given over to woodworms and weeds
but a patch without chains,
shaded by roses suffering a kind of pressure you will never understand.

the naan breads arrived 40 minutes early and ruined your bath but
WHAT
A
PRIZE.

to exist in a rainforest where naan breads are possible.
and ferns unfurl,
then hang,
and rise again.

frying plantains in Tanzania
slow married women bearing grain

carry your cactuses out into the sun.
feed them.
watch them.

be naked with your scorpions and really feel the
football finals
the canal gates
the shooting stars, zooming by
through the windows of the train.

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.

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.

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.

6 sirens snoozed to the wind and a petrified banana
burrowing down in the slow lane
billowing blue smoke
like white horses over a bombora

accelerator airflow regulator out on his own
zonked
lopping around like a white flag stuck at half mast
3 weeks after the funeral

smug green peppers and salt hung rabbits that have travelled and
have seen things and
know exactly,
what you have done

spray painted bees, howling
window cleaner 10 jobs in and still using the same water
Bill Clinton,
£4 a week

Yamata Yamata, no jacket
Spanish ceramic pots that I told you are sensitive and
**** THEMSELVES
in the dishwasher

ritual
like sunday prayers or Chinese mushroom powder in the morning
4 of your 5 a day sounds impressive but when you start the day on
MINUS 10
you spend the rest of it buying back lives

duck soup Danish

milkman’s left the bottle behind the bin where you will NEVER FIND IT

tonight — blue moon
last night — no moon
wednesday — moon doing bad things in a capsized kayak at a
full moon party on Zanzibar

coat hanger for an aerial
rocket launch to the ursa minor

£3.49
bottom shelf
all the answers you need for less than the price of a day-rider

and then tomorrow
bombay lentils
bombay lentils
bombay lentils, everywhere.

The Bear's Paw
standing at the bottom of the hill
guarded by psychedelic sandbags
filling in the cracks opened by the daily pilgrimages of sheepdogs 

King Kong cries
his battery acid caught with it's guard down on the wrong side of town
bearded vultures, pecking his ears in the rain
and his chin setting down a towel on a **** beach while people touch each other,
everywhere

Pol ***
reeeeeeeeeeling.

hundreds of millions of tiny microscopic parasites
dancing in gaggles while a 140 year old dog lies dying,
slowly steering his magic carpet through a stratus
of lightly spiced sausages

The Popo,
all the gear but beached like blue whales on the wrong end of a tsunami 
lions have played backgammon for a thousand years around this watering hole so tell me why
after so many famous moves
would they get bored now?

old man, with tobacco eyes and a homemade pool cue
his dancing demons his own and his chin working from home
you can't win them all but if you hit the ball with conviction 
you might just catch onto the coat tails of an incredible journey

King Kong has been divorced 3 times and has never met his kids
Daddy Kong packed a swimming pool with watermelon's when King Kong was merely a glint in the milkman's eye and told him that he would DANCE
WITH PINK DOLPHINS
because he was the fruit of the pangolins 
and that's what pangolins were born with the right to do

tobacco eyes eyes the black
the parasites swipe right, go on dinner dates, then give birth to 10 baby parasites in under a minute.
the baby parasites grow hair,
learn to ride bikes,
travel the world,
then settle down.
sand-pit. wax roots. cheat.

before you've even squinted to see the next train,
thousands of great great grand-baby parasites are getting dressed up for their first day of school
all in the time it takes
for a pint of Guinness,
to finish ******* ITSELF.

LOVE, in every stain on the carpet
a lifetime of 10/10 potatoes
shirts, tucked in - just like it says on the rota
stories of adventure and death traded in phone boxes with infinite shelves and shipping containers loaded with questions

answers always the same - 
same ****, mate
different day, mate.

The Bear's Paw
standing at the bottom of the hill
old wooden door wide open
love stained carpets buttered to the edge with the marmalade of the free

no King Kong's, 
no pangolins,
no PINK DOLPHINS.

just microscopic parasites
and loyal sheepdogs
who have travelled across a thousand fields 
sat waiting to bewitch you with their tales

a two tonne viking frying taco shells thinking he’s Louis Zamperini

a cracked slate roof leaking acid rain onto photo books of artists who have
dark minds and
black eyes and
lips made of pewter and are
brilliant,
because they are
troubled.

tiny Mexican rabbits
******* on fresh bedding and
snowboarding with packs of salted butter on the new
screed
floor.

The Spider.
mushrooming her web around every crack on your hands
spitting marmite
drinking bitter bitter tea and ******* on The Vikings’ **** like it were a
Tarocco
orange.

bank loans
RSJ’s
a plague of aphids and
diesel, so much diesel but
jellied.
no glow.

the lime between the bricks bearing this system are
oppressed,
and mouldering.

the foundations are screaming, yet RIGHT THERE
at ground zero
The Bonsai Tomato.
tunnelling.

a green Yuri Gagarin set out before the final frost and
robbed,
of his wings.
stripped and proffered scuzz by a society run on
injustice and
pelf.

yet, somehow. still sure.
surrounded by the web but not tangled in it
haunted at night by the blood orange but not jaundiced by it

sea salt from a yellow grit bin.

another Oxfam jacket for a funeral.

six million blackouts painted by builders but The Bonsai Tomato is
STILL.
THERE.

eyes set on the next bend.
unshakeable.
holding his own.

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.

Tunguska smacks cold shoulders in the shower
a turbine bunged with ducks
clogged, docked

a shaved chicken smashing through ice and his
armbands
at home, in the cabin

labour without fruit is no labour at all and at the end
an invader
a hot sock by the fire dressed up as The Gestapo
teasing along the trapeze with wild eyes on your
flies

a web within a web
or Home, as you once called it.
Dancing.

at the heart of your engine management system Krakatoa is exploding
but you don't have to understand it
to survive it

rise and fall
rise and fall
control.

Wim Hof climed Mount Everest in shorts.

the web glistens with the light of the dawn
exist for the labour for the rights of the fruits we shall
never.
own.

live for sea tornadoes
for water buffalo
for great white thunderstorms

be open, always
and know that no shaved chicken will ever be alone.

a two tonne viking frying taco shells thinking he's Louis Zamperini

a cracked slate roof leaking acid rain onto photo books of artists who have
dark minds and
black eyes and
lips made of pewter and are
brilliant,
because they are
troubled.

tiny Mexican rabbits
******* on fresh bedding and
snowboarding with packs of salted butter on the new
screed
floor.

The Spider.
mushrooming her web around every crack on your hands
spitting marmite
drinking bitter bitter tea and ******* on The Vikings' **** like it were a
Tarocco
orange.

bank loans
RSJ's
a plague of aphids and 
diesel, so much diesel but
jellied.
no glow.

the lime between the bricks bearing this system are 
oppressed,
and mouldering.

the foundations are screaming, yet RIGHT THERE
at ground zero
The Bonsai Tomato.
tunnelling.

a green Yuri Gargarin set out before the final frost and
robbed,
of his wings.
stripped and proffered scuzz by a society run on 
injustice and 
pelf.

yet, somehow. still sure.

surrounded by the web but not tangled in it
haunted at night by the blood orange but not jaundiced by it

sea salt from a yellow grit bin.

another Oxfam jacket for a funeral.

six million blackouts painted by builders but The Bonsai Tomato is
STILL.
THERE.

eyes set on the next bend.
unshakeable.
holding his own.

before the beginning
a rogue preface

an unwanted introduction throwing voodoo pins at a line drawing of your nervous system

Yellowstone
Etna
Maybe a cargo train with square wheels

but after,
deliverance in presence…

through the chess game of rocks
the ambition of ferns
the patience of streams

Ghandi
Brett from the allotment
a stone wall leaning on the ropes of the ring

open you're eyes, and you will see

there
through the mist
beyond the pine trees
over the sea

casting for mackerel off the ken

a thousand miles away but alive and growing in confidence

starships. chances.

a kind of light that you are content to not understand.