I'm an ounce of honesty waiting in the night
Council houses, broken bricks
Muddy boots and tight ribbons
So tight, so far out here,

I'm a kind of filth that reads
And looks you dead in the eye
Beatings, belts, rooms with no air
My, my my creation, perfect
Muddy rooms in broken council houses

I'm a rocking chair
Seizing up
Tying you in blue ribbon
Seeing if you know what's coming,
Broken
Beaten
Council houses

Roll like a stone
Alone in the stream
Find you're alone
Alone you can't scream

Meet someone's eye
Smile and they say
'Now you won't die,
For with me you'll stay.'

Wait 'til the end
It's over you know
But you can't contend
The way all can grow.

Don't trust trains
They take you places, shuffling
Across steel paths cut for them
And take you for the pleasure of places
With  no thought of the coming back,
Not of home

Don't trust trains
They sprinkle your sense of home
Across a wilderness of bright faces
With a sense of shallow humour, dark as
You'll never meet them again, like all
Upon rare returns all has changed, trains have swept all on, flash
Don't trust trains

Don't step to the pedastal, platform
Lest you've been warned a thousand times and
Disregarded every word
For the churning of wheels, you
Have laughed with a wheeze at the choke of belonging
And wished for more, I
Wish not to see you on the train

For just one time, if you are ready
To love and lose me
I'm here, bitterly tossed
At your sweet lap to take some hours of each other
Sprinkled on our lips like momentary dew
Until we evaporate and leave only the salt of loss
Adding what we can to life, no
Unless you really are ready for that
Never trust trains

I feel it still
That cold, beckoning wind
In the shutters of the leaves and
The spiral ice of puddles

The yellowing leaves
Ochre metal pots to Autumn
Shallowly answer me
Reluctant forms of wishes.

My hopes defy corners
Spring upped from mountain earth
Bristles of naked grass
Iron grey like the wreaths of the North

What I longed to feel attached to
The winds buried
And broke into a million pieces
To call my name in the morning glitter

It is a strange tide now that takes me,
Blank and floating like so much sea foam,
And all I can be is quite scary
A drop in the seas that make up this grey dome

And walking away is so hard
Feet don't find water but land and deep space.
It's not worth it to keep up your guard
When you trip between gaps poorly patched in their place

I don't want to sink or be broken,
I'm happy to float and feel sea and the sky,
For both have their gifts and their tokens,
But both too are cold and their glory a lie

For now I'll just be on my back here,
There are no waves all is still and replete,
But the storm's not too far, nor are you dear.
We are the clay and the storm is the heat.

If I twist my form I'll be safer.
The light will not reach what the water may take,
But the depths are no place for adventure,
Though the storm clouds are dark they are dark for my sake.

My poem's salt comes from the sea
Awash with flailing kelp
And absorbed light, hidden and sweet
Like me.

It rakes the gravel with its fingers
Cooly rushing over its skin
Absorbed and intended back again
When the sun blushes ruby red.

Little seals dot the waves
Mirroring the clouds
Chuckling through their whiskers, beckoning
At the dogs on shore, faithful cousins
To these rotund sprites.

The dried up fields are far away
They gasp for the rain that's closing in
With the prettiest grey clouds
Crickets jump from the Terra Cotta
And spill the Summer air, little breaths.

While ores seep into the mass of blue
Rather than be claimed, and turn the bottom muddy
In pinks and oranges dulled by the jealous green.
The fish enriched begin to talk
And their blessings pip pop upwards.

I think it's beautiful that air goes down down deep
and finds the things that need to breathe.
If only I could follow it
And be consumed by some crease
And become the ocean too.

I found a pool, small
Of tepid waters, shallow
Left imprinted by the things
That long since grew big, climbed and,
Sought the ocean

I know the pool, I grew tall in it,
Know it for what it was, once
It seemed deep as the seas, wide as the horizon
Brimmed with life a thousand-led
By all the verdure of many beasts

Each began as tadpoles, swam from their sacs and
Knew magnitude, kept to the shallows
Looked on at the lurching fish with,
Fear. Met a generation in those
Huddled beside them, scared.

Growing, their arms and legs,
Uniform in formlessness, ill-defined but
Excited. Each learned to swim and laughed at
Each other. Spiralling, gangling, twisting games
Were played on shallow borders.

Our bellies touched the silt, our eyes turned out
And we flicked our feet to find the open air, and
It wasn't so scary, terrible not, look at me! Look
At me! I can go see those dark holes, hiding
Nothing, I'm sure. Let's go.

As we lost ourselves in the growing dark, we
Lost sight of the other tadpoles, and
Grew faces, eyes, mouths, antennae, or
Unsure, we grew and each became streamline, in
a thousand different ways, we swam to the centre of the pool.

And met each other, as if for the first time, but
Saw no similarity, saw only our differences, we
Smiled and looked about, and each, in our own way,
Discovered the light. We did not stop growing, did not think to,
Knew no fear, saw no dark corners, scalps touched the open air.

And we went, each found the same certainty at the same time.
We must leave, a fish, a salamander, a boatman, a snake.
Shed the oily waters and explored the fresh air. Some,
Found they could not breathe, some found themselves prey to
Unknown evils. None stayed, none I knew.

I am back now, face weathered by winds I knew not were
Out there, hands pricked by something called thorns, the
Waters so small, tepid, stagnant, shallow from all the
Absence, those things that now walk, or lie, or fly, I
Know not why I came back, or why I look now into the puddle

I see only frogs. I hear only croaks. Old things living in a drying world.
Leathery, cold blooded, oily,
Speaking only of the times when they were tadpoles,
Thinking only of the time when they were new. I
walk away, and shed the thoughts that link my path to them.

I face the wind, I face the thorns. I feel my neck and
Hold closed my gills with thumb and forefinger
Forgetting...

Croak.

Sitting in bony wood
A seat to watch the prickly world stand still
Poised.
Reservations in iron clashing
Gong waves that drown

I can sit here silently
Smooth and clear as the varnish beneath me
This room has white walls
With ***** streaks like vapour trails
Across it, instead of human faces
In little square coffins
Nicely decorated, by, shaking, hands.

Questions don't need answers, I reckon
If my silence gives grey thoughts their place
Neat little rubix cubes make
Cult parodies
Of me, ironically bad.
Hee hee.

What a curious question
Whether instinct wants what is useful
And to trust it
Or shut up and simper
With the strength of women long jobless by
Liberty

In all things
Agency's just a mask
Worn by actors whose plays
Use up the muscles

My words can be recycled before me
Repurposed, simplified to fit new slots
Hard, to be a useless orifice
That wins nothing scarlet when it is ******.