There's a tolling depth to me,
A rebounding chasm
Space a hopeful quantity
Tuned instruments ignore

Where broken column qualities
Lie naked in the unkempt stubble
Undisturbed, those civilised peaks
Mountains for heavens bored smooth by soft hands

Champing teeth abound the wind,
Old sounds of dun legs taking flight
And leaving the knotted trees
That died in the clotted soil

Be warned, beasts have left this barren
Sharp corners have been smoothed for
Once this land was deep and green
And gushed with florid indecencies

Now its depth tolls
With the charter of the wind
Scattering what few collected rocks remain
As bricks for walls built far beyond.

What's the point of the stars if they only fly to mock us
To tell of a world beyond that thick blanket of night
A moon victory above them all tells of coliseums of the cosmos
A giant in a game we were never asked to play

The sun burns itself to nothing
And we catch the ashes, plant fields with its offcuts
Never tasting banquet, never knowing super nova
Alone in the dirt beneath life

Currents blow overhead, pushing ice and rock
As balloons let adrift, finding freedom in emptiness
While our feet only know tracks and fields, grass and mud
Life with food and sleep, not soul or poetry.

Crooked grow our limbs and we think ourselves mighty
Gangly forms dancing tiny
While great domes of landscapes given face
Smile at each other and speak

Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Hades
All principles in the sky, too graceful to be understood
And not wanting our foul tentacles of knowledge
To grip them, happy to keep away from

Us oily things.
No, I don't like being human
I don't like being
greasy

The man was truly strange
Hiding cards behind his clever fingers
Cleverer than me.

He winked down my hood
And laughed
Who he was was not important

In the circus tent
Nothing held power like the cards
And he said

'I deal in cream and grey,
Put a cross in my hand and
I am what you say I am.'

And now he has a roguish smile
His feet turned up and
The bell rang

I put down the pencil
And he froze
Never to move again

He dealt in cream and grey
He delved in graphite and imprints
Nobody told him otherwise.

Someone to hold
And keep us alright
******* a thumb and
Holding blankets

She'll tell you you're special,
Though she knows you are not
To anyone, but her
Special, little boy.

And when you grow up
Someone to listen
When the whole world
Is jumping on top of you

And really
You're still that child
And she's still that perfect face
Bouncing you on her lap.

Want to know true loneliness?
Lose your mother,
But then,
Who would ever want that, really?

If I had one wish
It would be
For everyone in the world to put on their brightest clothes
To pick up their most beloved object
To leave the house as the sun leaves the night with them
And smile at someone

Any person, that's all
Then talk to them
Show them their object
And coo at their companion's own
Then invite them to eat
And smile at the servers
(because, let's face it, they have hard jobs)
And talk

Then, meet more people
And take them somewhere nice
The park is a good place to go with a full belly,
And watch the bright birds go by
And talk

Then, as the sun goes down, watch it with others
And all sing a song together,
Any song
And sigh
Because
It was a day well spent.
If I had one wish...

When I was five I learnt that wide eyes weren't wise eyes

When I was seven I learnt that tears are just wasted water

When I was nine I learnt that love is as dead as life

When I was eleven I learnt that rings can be broken

When I was thirteen I learnt that friends can only speak for themselves

When I was fifteen I learnt that death is a holiday

When I was seventeen I learnt that people can be used like tools

Now I'm 19 I realise that nobody is alive like you.

It's easy to leave dead things behind.

All these odd numbers find me loving them, out of empathy, not patterns.

But the sun shines through.

When I was four I learnt that there is no warmth like two arms around you

When I was six I learnt that laughter is mighter than the lie

When I was eight I learnt that it's easy to ignore what hurts you

When I was ten I learnt that everyone wants to smile

When I was twelve I learnt that my solitude was strength

When I was fourteen I learnt that we all will forgive

When I was sixteen I learnt the flush of lipkissed smiles

When I was eighteen I learnt that scars give words more truth
And the dawn came

The sun is beautiful

It's sad watching
Songs sing prices
Or artwork paint products
Beauty with two meanings.

I don't hate money,
I don't hate greed,
I do hate the things that I see
Being sold to me.

Magic wants to tell you
About the wonderful prices
At your supermarket.
Not that I care.

Magic to me
Was something to remind me
That life would never be dead to me
That life is not about buying.

But still, it's the best way to live,
So sell on.

The Robin called
And I looked out
From windows balmed
By a Summer January.
His little flushed chest
And my crimson vest
Went well together, so I thought.

He hopped along a twig
And dug for buds on the barren wood
Mourning that Winter long forgotten
In the cycle of death and movement.
He called out his call
And as the days fall
I try to speak to him, so I do.

The slow little bird isn't
Some prophet of the new dawn
But a straggler, slow with the weight
Of his heavy, fateful wings.
He flies to the sky
Follows my eye
To the sunlight I'm watching, so I am.

Sad to see, the true spirit of Spring
So misunderstood, so anticipated
Like the robin, Spring is not happy.
Spring is an epitaph of the lost days.
I wish he'd come back
And he will when the track
Of the year's memories lead him to me, mourning once more,
So they do.

Match the sleep up to the fire,
Words alight in bareface glow.
Take your knees and hold them tight,
Tonight's the night that Dragons fight.

By the river lives are woven;
Fabric soft and hugs the skin.
As the shadows dance about,
Throw their arms and scream and shout.

Froth at the shore - take care!
Who'll hold you back from the tale?
Don't lose any grief.
Each story's a thief.

I have nothing more to teach you
For you have little more to learn.
All that's left to tell you, dear
Is cotton torn to burn.

Don't fix your jump on raucous bones,
For listening is done
With eager ears and cagéd breath
Without a thought for fun,

Without a thought for interest,
Without a thought for care,
I leave you lonely, such it is
To leave you dancing there;

And though your shouts shall echo on
I shall fade like paper
And though your ink on my skin scalds
You're still all I paid for.

Remember, boy
The sherpa'd pray
Don't build your dreams
On what others say
Don't float your canoe
On the reeds of others' promises
The wolf skin gives no warmth, no
Love is a salve to its final growl.

And remember, youth
The harlot told
No love may glitter
Brighter than gold
The ivory teeth
May chatter and squeak
As much as my joints
On my wooden, bent-backward frame.

Don't forget,
She'd order
Don't forget me
I shook my head
No time to
Ask her name
I gloomed over my fireplace
And settled down to the ink-spilled night,
My own skin
Warmer than the moon, at least.

What can be harder than metal or bone?'
She asked, ivory champing on the bit
And she spoke with iron, stoking,
Poking the fire.
'Fire.'

My hearth stuttered in protest, but
By blackened, guttered tongues
I could not speak
And her belief was left untouched.

There's charcoal in my breath
My lungs clutch fiery coals
She knew, she told me so
And iron only felt the touch of my chest

She stoked the flames
And from between my cagèd ribs I coughed
She held out her hand
And the yellow licked her palm, bristling

She laughed.
'What's harder than metal or bone?' she mused
And poked my chest some more.
'Fire.'

She walks on shellbone sandals
Her back *****, like reeds that stretch to the sun
And her hair
Golden frolicks of olympus wheat hafts
Graces down, down, down
To meet it

She watches like mirrors do
Shining what we hope to see
With a pointed nose, bright
Like mirrors can be
If I smile, smile, smile
Like she makes me want to
Into her face

She moves like trees shiver
As she tosses pebbles to their roots
With a skip and a hop
She shoots amongst the flowers
And drinks the day, day, day
Like flowers do.

She leaves like evening reddens
And tires like starlings fly
But the moon, the moon
Lies silver on her summer body
While we wait, together, together, together
Till the morrow comes

Nostalgia nearly took me back
To that time when I was
Something simpler
Because there's nothing simpler
Than being dead

Rose tinted glasses
Are blood red for a reason
Never trust the past
Because you didn't know what you had
When you had it.

Look around
Love around a little
Because your 'lost child'
Is playing with you and
Marvelling at what you've become.

Don't trust red nostalgia
It's just there to make you think
That lives don't get better,
But, here's the secret,
They already have.

If you fight for them.

I burdened you, did I not?
Told you things I thought you'd hear,
In the wind, in whispers from the woods
Nobody told you, but I did.
Vaguely I burdened you.

And you were lonely, I tell you so much,
In ways I don't fathom, shallow diving me.
Weird fishes nibble bones, weird stories take your love for me,
Rumours, rumours, grow like weeds,
Weeds, weeds grow as bushes between us.

So we sit on lawns of cut relationships,
Each blade a sharp reminder,
Of friends we never made,
We grew, didn't we? Like stalks of flowers that never dreamt of being trees,
But sometimes,
I see the yellow of your kiss across the garden hedge.
We never bore such fruit apart.

So sitting, so kneeling,
So waiting till time makes us desperate enough to try again,
I move pragmatic pieces, and play games that think of you
I spell your name, in footsteps I take in the wrong direction,
But it's only wrong to you,
We're only wrong for each other,
Why should that mean we can't love?
Why does that mean we don't talk?

Not through rumours.

I love your
                   pitter
                             patter
                                        paws
On the tarred stroke of steamrollers
Wet, green-eyed, wet
The trees sigh in the shower.

I feel your floating
Your mock of pulls to nuisance
When you fly downwards
To your clouds, your puddles in the sky

What are we, I feel we
A kind of hope in others
And perhaps I said it once before,
But I'm here, here to sing with your pitter-pat

Do lady pieces dream electric dreams?
Do the men they chase cast electric shadows, while
They glance? Do they
Expect what they look into, shed longing
Like snakeskin and decide
They're not in love any more?
What's a life
When boiled down to a greeting,
And thinned out in the time spent together?
What flavour do her lips bring up?
Bitter desire? Electric dreams?

Like waves on the grey ocean
We crash into the green shores
Concrete breakers frozen in
A clash of nature's wars.

The trees look on aside us
Anxious to see the rising tide
The moon looks down above us
Afraid to let the sun decide,

For we are spreading quickly
But the trees take far more care
They tiptoe through this rooted world
While we scramble like the hare

They watch us from the greener shores
But some have gone on free
Patches of grass amongst the paving
Stones of a concrete sea.

Let's hope we mix and mix again
Until our world is grey and green
For if the land or sea invades
Our world will lose its sheen.

The green man
Sheds light on my safety
I look at him balefuly and walk through Bleary daytime headlights

Taking the leap together
We don't hold hands, but hopes
And cast hooked wishes into the paths of cars
Catching what we can

Shouts of petty promises
Rain from window panes
I pull in the folds of my jacket from their
Goodnight kisses

Left facing worries
Scratched on metal punchlines
Are no more
Like blinks facing a light long gone out

I don't find what I'm looking for
Or something close to it
But I'm hungry so
I think I'll let the search live

A friend is watching me
I showed him my life last night
I made mistakes and he knows it
I may have done things he knows now

A friend can see me
And now I know what that's like
I know what others feel like
When they know all they do is being watched

A friend knows about me
And I can't decide if that's good or bad,
Whether writing this is another rope at the willow
Pulling its supple roots from the ground

A friend has found me
Dug me up from the ground
An ugly root, but one that makes
A flower bloom quite highly

A friend has shown me the sun
Something I forgot was there
I don't know if he stands me
I wouldn't like him to say

A friend has made me see myself
What a strange thing
What a strange worry
To forget your reflection

A friend has left me in my own hands
A complete little picture
Oil paint, that's the worth I know
That's the way my mind thinks these things

A friend has left me to think
What a valuable little thing
Like gold that's something stronger
Than brittle iron, fragile big steel

A friend has seen me
And now I have to live with that
Strange tides wash my feet
Coral rocks wink at me from the shore

People tell me what I am now
And I suppose that helps me think
Friends have found me on the beach
Putting out the sun again.

I started lifting weights
Because I feared the very few I called friends
My inadequacy became my focus
My weakness became my strength.

I would have stopped a long time ago,
But for my love of the time spent
With just me and my challenges
All thought of hate and defense lifted away

I stopped thinking of exercise for my body
It was now for my mind
And it was that which gave me the confidence to
Never fear again.

I was able to look into people's eyes and
Know my mind was not timid.
Strength of the body was just
Coincidental.

So, really I suppose that it's irony
My great fear
My great inadecuacy
Led to my greatest reason to smile.

Old, you’re told before me
Like a poem on cracked wood
Your hands have stuck to palms
As a prayer to the audience

You try to cry, but your tears have gone
Shed ahead of dreams that tarry
Pride and soul flutter from you
For a moment while you hold your notes high

You become what you’ve always been

Quietly, nearly a whisper in your gritted teeth
When you don’t sing you stutter
You wail to your women, to the crowd, to me
But you’ve never sung to one but yourself

And when you shake your voice
To the people that barely care
I suddenly believe you
Adverts flash behind your stare
And I suddenly can see you

Your voice dries up as you fade so bare
But it never could feed you.

'Do you understand the incredible godliness of a straight line?!' my madman said to me.
'Not quite,' I said, 'But I am not beyond hope to instruction."

'We cannot see a straight line in our world,' he said, 'But we thought of one nonetheless. Something came from nothing, ex nhilo, ex nhilo.' he said.

I watched his logic at work from my place at his right hand.

'Have you ever tried to draw? Straight lines are hard, try drawing a sunset. Try to draw your hand.'

I did, though I'm not sure it was his intention.
It came out wrong.

'Look! LOOK. You see? The heart of the world is but a skewed imprint when we draw it. You cannot see the world, but the lines and shadows of the world are there, and it would take a lifetime to truly draw them.'

My madman took the pen and drew a perfect sunset, with my hand clasped around it, as one would grip something so fragile, so quick to vanish.

'There are sketch lines in all we see, the world is creating a drawing in every microsecond, every heartbeat creates universes.'

His hand shook and the pen fell, ink at his feet and his hands. He looked upon them.

He rubbed the ink on his palms.

'The world is the greatest artist... And we?'
He lay his hands on the page before him, and the truest image of a hand he could ever draw was in front of me. I saw many sunsets in his fingerprints.
'We are the imitators.'

I smiled, and my madman smiled back.
Or at least as close as he could come.

A boy turned to me in class and said
'I'm going to be an astronaut!'
But he thought not of rocketships
So I ignored him.

A girl turned to me and said
'I'm going to be a good person.'
And she smiled so
I believed her.

The adult turned to us and said
'I'm going to be your teacher!'
But she thought not of our minds so
I ignored her.

I turned to their backs and said
'I'm going to be something.'
And they saw nothing in my eyes so
They laughed.

I don't know where they are now, but
Many are not on their set roads, for
I would have seen them and
Walked with them hand in hand.

I once drew a woman
Destined to be strange
Her eyebrows flipped over
Her lips in her brain

An ear on her nose
And one on her chin
It's strange to think, but for all my effort
Her strangeness came out more beautiful than all my other drawings.

So I kept drawing her,
Years on when I couldn't stop
Addicted to seeing her on the pages
Addicted to her simple strange ways.

She became my muse
And I thought of her in all my work
Every word written down
Was a new name I gave to her

Every picture I carved out of ink and paper
Was another strange change of her face
She took me over and
She's the kind of girl who can't leave me.

That strange make believe girl.

The hum
Of the engine
Steals my music
And forms a beat
Swirling in my mind
Like coffee, I am awake
But the hum makes me sleep.
Huuuuuummmmmmmmmmm

I slept in the forest and the willow watched over me.
Her roots ran deep, heavy in their drink
So that not her strength nor watchful eye should falter
And her stem hair should fall nonetheless.

I slept in the forest 'neath the willow.
Her fair arms outstretched so all would see
Poplar, Yew and Oak would see she protected me
And I slept well, yes I did.

The cold night air bit not when it saw whom I kept as company.
The damp earth kept its spittle away
For 'neath my tree I slept peacefully
Until the good morn' blessed us both.

The pretty feeling
Of lip shaped saliva on your hot-plate cheek
The heavy scent
Of her hanging off your arm
The floating flight
When she swings, swings
From your thoughts.

Nobody
Knew her
Nobody
Spoke her name
Because
She only lived así
In my head.

Outside
She shifted
And blew with the wind
All I had to charge me
Were the memories
Listed above
And the bare resemblance
Of her beautiful face.

It didn't have to end
But for the cliffs between us
She looked down from the rocky top
And waved
Never again
Staying in my head as she was

I'm actually anxious
Because she told me to tell her all
When I felt
Shoots of spring grow between my fingers
Curling in the pleasure of finding her.

What can we grow into, together?
What would you take me to, if I asked you truths and forgot a lie?
I haven't had to tell you any yet
But I fear, no
I'm anxious.

Will I forget
The twists I went through to meet you
Some months spent in misery
Some hours spent in the pain
Under your knowing, wondrous stare?
Maybe tomorrow I'll find how
We should be apart, but
Now I have it all in me.

We
Or us
Whatever can be...
I like you,
And that's that.

I chanced upon a crow
Abandoned in a hedge
He did not move before me, lo
Left aside by roadway dredge

I knelt before his plume
And saw his eyes were took
I asked him, Crow, what is our doom?
He told me with a look

It is the sky and so the sea
To the spirits of the deep
It is the pillow to the free
Eyes weary for their sleep

It is the moment when the herd
Won't notice that you're gone
For I may be a dying bird
But it's the world that's wrong.

I took his pain off with a knife
And he said with his free breath
Grateful I am for my life
But I live much more with death

Sorry said the merry man, adjacent on his way,

I've gone and ticked you off while I've been out tramping today

And in my careless frolic I seem to have stole your heart

What brutal lust you blow towards me, gushing like a ****


But I'm not la-da-dee-da-dee, a manly bearded sprite

Jingle though my stirrups do like dormice held too tight

I'm a serious enterprise, a man deeply invested

In stacking stocks and picking prices, if you're interested?


She danced reluctantly to him, unnatured to the rhythm

But with a wink she start'd to slink and jim-jam along with him

The two then picked their sandals up and shuffled down the street

And drank and laughed amerrily at all they chanced to meet


To the bank they wandered, legislating they did go

In government, in finance, in high station to and fro

Each day they yawned and gargled on a fresh new tonic smell

And went on down the street to make a fresh mismanaged hell


Soon agiggling and adultering they fell down in a mess

Holes and tears ashaming his and her once modest dress

There they lay and blocked the road till bobby picked them up

And once they'd laughed their fill of him they bribed the greasy pup


He took them to the city square and let them borrow his hat

They gave out fines and sentences for being thin or fat

They stood on boxes, had ideas for rent for half a pence

And sat gracefully cross-eyed on the splintering picket fence


Then donned a mitre, did a dance, their pageantry displayed,

They became gods, just for a laugh, the vicarage dismayed

When down from heaven lightning bolts, shot with a holy hum

Came buzzing like a hornets' nest and shocked them on the ***


A **** of smoke, a whiff of cheese, the townsfolk breathed release

Gone at last those terrors past, they could return to peace

Then up from high a saintly sigh two angels billowed down

Golden halos greasy and no pants beneath their gown


The townsfolk wept and cried aloud, their stomachs plopped and churned

To see the pair of villains there, so gracefully returned

Blessed be the kingmakers the two of them agreed

Until next weekend, Duw my dear, and until then, God's speed.

'I don't know if you've ever heard
Of the Great Charge.'
Said one to me.
I smiled
And thought of those
Shouted onwards by He on the Hill.

I had heard of it,
I had heard they bled
When they were shot while they were led.
Who'd have thought?
I frowned.
And thought of those
Shouted onwards by He on the Hill.

'Funny.' he said
'His Hill was so much higher
Than all the cannon fire, but
They say he still cried out
With each muzzle's shout.'
I nodded.
And thought of those
Let down by He on the Hill.

'Yes.' I said
'In fact they all cried
Together when they died
And realised what they're worth, that
His Hill was only earth
And they were only bones.'
I walked away
And thought of those
Made to realise they were nothing
By me on the hill.

What a lucky man I am
For once I saw a group
Of prophets of the godly song
Before them in my stoop.

The man he played a string or two
And everybody shook
I saw him sing and dance along
With the crowds caught in his look

I watched a young girl, dark of hair
Rise and dance, her years were few
Like all those women, good of heart
I'd seen dance while they greatly grew.

Fascinating, the song's effect on
Two lovely young women too
Old as I, yet perhaps more drunk
They danced, I fell, it's true

The adults watched, sadly tired
And I too, though I'm young
Because nothing I could do could make
Me rise and beat the drum

The dance of ages brought about
By the song of years gone by
Organic music, grown from soil
Rich with thought and sly.

And now I play the strings as well
Desperate to see it again
That primal dance in beauty and me
Perhaps I'll know it when

I go back there, that thoughtful square
Where I saw those girls adance
I'll tell them then, I'll tell them there
They broke me from life's ghostly trance.