Quick, come to my corner,
I’ll hold you there till the morning sighs it’s un-beguiling chime.

My old mans a dustpan, deadpan, delivered in your sweet shell as an abstract lullaby,
Then we will sleep, tucked to each other like a light and it’s shadow.

In my corner there’s this strange girl, with hair tangled over my shoulder,
Counting sheep, as she and I slide into night.

He eschewed the Spotlight until he was 83,
Then, like a craven child, he leaps,
He totters into a cold cathode pool and is centre stage.

The fledgling son of and upended bride;
Stage fright perhaps,
Trapped in a freeze frame of fear,
Till now at 83,
Clear just to be.

Centre stage his rage is vaulted across an empty house,
The words of a tired and tested former son of a bishops daughter,
The lines of his life relished in anger and vile plots now twisted to ply his crowd with tales of blame.

Yet, he who was Puck is now a king. Weak no more, vaulting from some horse, lancing the beast that has held him down,
Standing for something more than his shabby past.

He was 83, when with glee, he became his own life paradoy,
The fool becomes a king.

A girls arm slides across my back and for a moment, I’m spinning like a kid, sherbet crazed.

All I had done was listened,
Drink did the rest I guess,
Listened to her Thatcher charged rant,
Somehow, innocent, spewed though lipstick rouged cleft lip!

She a plunging sparrow,
Befuddled on tequila,
Diving at a mouse marked with Brut.    

I’m hers,
A hooded, unloved, forlorn, lonely mouse.

Folklore

Word
Of
Mouth,

For impressionable sons and daughters of time,
Children,
Tied like flies to spider web strings and mothers impossible dreams,
Wide eyed,
Lied to,
By ignorant ministers and cider soaked child choked brides.

Word
Of
God,

For Children
Forever dulled and cowed by the good book,
Heavy on this earth like rocks in sand and impervious to reality,
Wide eyed
Lied to,
By gullible Fathers and wine wrecked god bothered priests.

Hand
Me
Down,

Mothers,
Fathers, 
Priests and teachers,

Words that weigh me down to the past and to fear,
Words that chain me to home.

Hand
Me
Down,

Bilge.

A chilled tired man,

Cheated of warmth,
Hungering comfort.

Darker and heavier skies bleed the city of light,
The first specks of rain hit the tired, sun fried, foot worn pavements
And I feel summer sink into my socked ankles.

Archibald Brown, man around town, locks up his sunshade,
The wind lifts rotting fence panels like discarded betting slips
And I smell winter rising in my rattling chest.

Rain on the window, like Mercury drops on a mirror,
Through clouded milk bottle glasses I peer at grey sky and flat green trees,
And I sense Summers end.

Crying now,
Longing for Spring.

Hildegard,
High priestess of poetry,
Ordains her missives as though they were lambs.

Words her flock,
Poetry her salvation.

What am I if not a man with a heart that is weighed down with the absence of you?
I know nothing else.

What am but the man who was too tall to walk down the aisle with you?
If only I were someone else.

Your sweetest smell,
Your lingering light on hair that you stroked and caressed with henna,
Now,
You are a stranger,
Gone.

What am I but the man that won’t let go of long lost you?
I am no one else.