Shingle shook,
these bookish handles
cove your head in herringbone,

It's sewn into
our standard-issue,

dangled under spinnaker

Here,
you and I
will come to terms
the terms of our endearment


a curvature of earthliness,
in miniature exemplified

the surfeit of our inadvertent
vertebrae declined
toward

the wave

Lost leaves ago, before
the bark- clad savage
ruled with iron lung,
when  laurels of
a one- room den, grew
sleek with wet- lid plunder
my sauntering in tousles of
a quick and crease-less happiness
percieved the gifted wish of secret birds.

birds that combed the milking beech
in lemon centred madrigals
to cove their Egypt orison
from dragon banks of slippered fern
Who threw their mooted sermons on
a shivering uncertainty that bubbled
through my vernal rut of optimistic blood


Such useless pleasure, I was told
That I was not a Father's son
yet bore his term an absolute.
As all my nimble colours ran, I
wore his pungent bitterness
Became the thing that he preferred

Before the dungeon keys had turned
basket weaving weeks of youth

I took the gifted wish
of secret birds.

The time of the shining of
Wind-summered grasses, has passed,
-To the lark-breast mottle-
The harvested skin of the
Senescent land

The candle-****** gutter of
Hurrying wing sees
The last of the coin
That was minted in thatches
Of deepwood
Of latticing bramble
Of crumbling eve.

The mourn of the Moorland
Has  feathered a will
With the clot of the Ash,
Where a heather of cinnabar
Freckles the splash of
a simmering tarn

As gravelling Easterlies
Peel the cling of
The verdigris fades,
Some twilight of sepia
Musters the pastel
of Wintering calm.

ah-ha,
my itty harbinger,
of all-means-green,
All hail!

(a voice not heard
since Woodcock fell
on cusps of wet November)

Your two-note declaration
comes with umpteen possibilities

emaciated yesterdays
disintegrate in sound...

We'll tell the Keepers
of the gates
that guard our varied heavens

-we weren't engaged in cruel crusades-

we just supplied the weapons-

Snap back
in the orange 70s
classic catch of
school- wall monkeys,
Kodak kids invincible
With everything to play for

Me, big- head and stick limbed
you, a bowl-cut- cuddle- incarnate

They say cheeky
wasn't half of it,

  But, naughty?...

..They knew nothing...

Then
This was us, as
Thick as fir- trees
scab- kneed muckers
of the womble- burrow
pockets full of “borrowed”
biscuits,

mischief
to be made....

I smile
because I
know what waits..

What fate befalls
the all of us..

our endings
growing closer
even now..


So, should I
then attend my
deeds, embroiled
in abject misery.....


or smile?

Becoming
husks of things
hollowed out and sickening
for nourishment

mystically redundant

raised to graze on empty calories,

spineless fluids puking
endless effluent
of chosen pronouns

Influence biology

Identity a bracelet taken
on and off at will, by
Pop-up preachers,
screeching out
their digital misogyny,

Narcissistic troglodytes,
who, prancing in their
echo-chambers,
jettison the Suffragette

there's no such noun as Woman,
Helen Reddy-or not,

Forgotten sacrifice of troops
has stooped to this..

Time to decontaminate

shall I tell you
of the Snowdrops
that are showing,
by the garden gate?

Shouldered cold
bent deep in grims of collar
turns to maddened hash
of blustered sleet

the walk to wear
is work itself,

A solemn
adamantine morning, pleads
me to ignore the well of failing
human kindness,

by this hand I try
to see

predicaments of alder
whip lacuna from the
mindless face

that beauty
is but symmetry

thus ,crudely overrated

and then again
there's Winter Jasmine,

understated, famined stem
emblazoned with the gemstones
of its flower

now the winter sour, sweetens
cracks the lip a timid noise

pouring forth,
some golden ratio,

sulphur trill of banished voice

How low lies the line, the thin
Separation of Earth and Sky, far, far,
Beyond the bending ambles, the
Solitary gables, where descending pylons,
Unroll their cables, deep into the womb
Of distant cities.

Bellicose clouds in league with
The sea wind, wrest samphire fragments
From a sentinel peace, while folding
The hamlet in pitying glamours
Of harridan water on slate.

In Spartan gardens, Bu-gloss leans
Bruised petals hard, by rusted stanchions,
as bind-**** , knots the flaking perch
Of tumbled gantries, in a throttled
Slew of searching.

Melancholy anthems, quiver and hail
In the breeze-plucked tune of loose
Slung wire. Pleas of long gone mariners
Mutter and choir through salted gorse,..
..
Hurry inland to rattle at doors of
Norman churches, as if seeking
Some last sanctuary.

Still

And
Strangely so
It seems

As if
the splendid
Earth lay wait

Inert
in barefoot,
open-door
propensity
suspended


Then to
this end abide
by quiet rules

Take mind to ****
the unintended
word that turns
through all of this

But know

I miss you

Still

Her innocence has depth

She is misinformation,
beyond her station
on the wrong train.

He is leaning to solitude
confused by the multitude
upset by the attitude
that someone's to blame.

          -------

In the transit of thinking
he takes her hand.
In the composite calm
she takes his confusion.

To commandeer
the common ground,
allusions to a moment found,
that stayed the course,
with hands still curled,

static in this spinning world

They paint their new horizon.

You
are somewhere close
yet dislocated, sheltered
in your centered peace
adrift beside all certainty.

We
turn as apron-ed satellites
in matinee of gentle speak,
our mundane, London-Saturday
the soundscape to your stasis.

Surrendered
to this bastion  of valiant
machinery. Your pillars
in this paradise of waiting.

With
all those
Russian tanks
advancing

why are boys at
Lockheed Martin
popping corks
and dancing

like there's
greenbacks to
be gained...?

We
were once
the Spring

Easter voices climbing
from a namesake lane

Early risers,
Windmill limbed and finding
out our simple selves

Nimble, skinny
twitten skippers, wile-aways,
unburdened, burning, spotless
in our pheasant- feather gold.

One decade undecayed
brought all the stories ever needed

One decade undecayed
before the innocent
were sold

Was told
they wheeled
your bed toward
the window for
your passing- that
evening when the
circled closed an
end on your beginning.
Now, we shall have no more
of all this talk of getting older

Return to something beautiful
to cure the fear of flying.

Watched
you in white.
How you crossed your
sceptered body, glazing
ludicrous contortions

Supple-legged exaggerations
***-shod, patent platforms
towered, figure-hugged
and cut to high indecency...

Ah, the slow-cooked
incandescence, that you
struggle to contain....

though pay no mind
to likes of me,
a letching scrag
who yearns to see you

set yourself on fire....

So far,
the voices rally
from the vortice
of an underpass.
Endorsed by cavilled
penury, more yesterday
than newspaper.

but nothing here, can
change the course
of rivers.

Bent-double
in their algorithm
fixed within their fiction,
though, a sheathing of
their tar-skimmed blade
played life in minds
of old unplenty..

Winter-kin
they were,
come carapaced,
lenticular

Sat where
the startled couple char
that narcoleptic zinfandel,

untrammelled, in their
moon-trashed subterranea.

There is an art to letting-go,
A craft, I hurt to master

I've asked the four-winds
what they know

But haven't heard
their answer

The kirlian singe
of a kingfisher
wins me round ,

slaps me from
my prole malaise

his cobalt-button, blazing buckshot,
nervous surge of gaudy purpose,
willow- hurdled Catherine wheel
whirring ...

is something of the infinite
disposed in our positioning

both impish lairds of nook and fen
don hedge-smoke caps
of leafy tan

by coveting his oxygen,
I'm coming up
for air too quickly

bursting round
the cockling brook
of rain-sung river bends

All I've seen
are legs

of the bloke
upstairs

believe me,
they are snappable

I've knocked
his door

he doesn't
answer

loots
my calm
with his
bass enhancer

Look,

I'm an affable
kind of guy,
but ..

this ******
is testing my
patience

I want him
to die

Not so he rots
in a puddle of snot

-I still claim a frisson of feeling-

plus I don't want the hell
of that festering smell
or the pain of repainting
the ceiling...

I don't try
to be mean,
to stir-up a scene
but the grinning is
hard to pretend,

so I'll sit on my hands
and mutter those plans
for that thin *******
to end.

The trick is
to break the fall,

prepare soft landings

roll forward with
some standing joke,

calling-in the softball laughter

drawing on that coruscating
excellence of company

the fool congeniality
we coaxed in all conditions

We'll repeat this to ourselves
as we go about our
business....



Time will take the evidence,
possessions from the locker

but nothing is forgotten

as you're always
with The Boys..

A gunshot
splits the air

resounding
whip-like across
the back of morning,

milling rooks
erupt in flight
exploding out
the tall, thin, tree

assurance
has been tangled with,

a rabbit scarpers
for the warren ,
breaking, frantic
to evade
those hands
that shatter peace.

Those nameless
hands that claim the day
that rob the complex
of its store,

Those heartless
eyes that aim out life
that blackened eye
that flames the roar

What vow
knows iron twinned
with flesh,

what conscience
has this beast.

adept
in deprivation are

The hands
that shatter peace

A brackish lance of squandered resin,
Hurdles from the beacon shale, soldiered
To a least of blinding dwindles.

In epitaphs of silhouette
The spindle miradors retire
Earthbound castles martyred to
The coming of the rain

Saw you descending from Alpha Centauri
Coming in weightless on Geminid halos
an ice bow of swan cry, indelicate nova,
a meandering circus of flame .

Your numinous vision run glossy with travel
surrendering spells of chaotic design
to palace the valiant
light years with presence,
your brigantine embers return.

The form
the flux,
the constant
becomings

the duty,
distraction,
the running
of motors,

the quotas,
the breadline,
the rising
and shining

the hiding
a stupefied look
in your eyes

"How you loved me once",
he whispered, to those who
gathered around his bed...

"You gave me strength
through your convictions
upon my mystery you fed
and I in turn, would comfort those,
who -while in suffering- chose to
turn to me....

Conceived through need
of explanation, my kind
in many guises mastered
******* Lords of all creation
"Eternal Minds"-or so you thought

From grotto walls to burning growth
the ineffable, osmosing oaths
the cultured banners of excuse
the mansioned rulers
void of proof......

...........for "Us" you fought

As ages altered my kin expired
want mutated, as you flowered
knowledge spread as awe retreated
unseated were the ways of Old..

Now stricken by the minds
that made me,my immortality
has left me...
...and with few to fan the embers of
my reason- I grow cold.

So I ask of you to turn and leave
It was never I that penned your creeds
It is you who brought idolitary
to justify your every deed

Now all is empty on those
pages- nothing breathes
upon the air, as the lines
upon my fading face are
features of your disrepair


But as I pass, I leave you this:
That is, you know not more but less.
for all the gifts that you were given
so treasured under hope of Heaven-
mean nothing...

Drenched in oil, rising seas,
pollution, avarice, war, disease

Your present...

Not a vision.

"The rule of thumb,
is to cup the apple
gently in the palm,
then lift and twist
in one easy movement,
This avoids finger pressure,
which causes bruising.

Also, take the greatest
of care when transffering
your bucket to the bin..
Get as low to the base
as you possibly can
then release your straps,
slowly- not letting- go
so as to ease the crop
onto the wood...

Dropping the lot is
no good for anyone...

Your work
will be inspected,
daily. If there's more
than a 5% flaw in your yield
then we'll be saying
goodbye.

How d' ya like
them apples?"
he grinned..


He was alright,
was John.

Taste the fruit
of light and rain
admire its cured endurance
bite down upon the tender
skin, release the inner promise,
partake of all prosperity
completed by the seasons,
Such elemental lending thanked
for what this moment gains. Then
kiss the months goodbye once more,
for fairness has no reason
to stay among these changing tracts
while duty calls it South.
In an afterglow where shadows fall
as leaves, i know the parting,
So the taste of what i loved again
fades slowly from my mouth.

There is a place
In  evergreen wiles
A permanent perfect                  
of boundless dimension,
I tarry untrying in idles of hours
Lost in the halls of this subtle domain


Walk with me there
To where willows thirst
On the banks by the bridge
Where cowslip with meadowsweet
Polka the pasture to pepper
The evening with notes of the rain



Gather me in-

-There,hold me in harvests
Of memory loved,- as when
  You turned your face

To the lights on the water

and smiled the glory of day into shame.

It is difficult to define
With no black dog to lead
this pressure dropped familiar.
No symbol/ fetish/ effigy
to incorporate a misery that drains
the joy from all that I hold dear.
.
How does one trace the contours
of an abstract exhalation?

Somewhere near
a pendulum is stilled.

That which I loved one minute past,
that filled this hole of borrowed time
is laid apart her spent electric
body washed in turpentine
Her outline drawn.

Estranged.

                        .........

I follow where the way grows small
Where disembodied voices pull in
strange degrees of separation
I flow toward their thin remains
shape, ill-defined, subliminal
An acquiescent aftermath of
calculus unknown.

I am pressed italic, hither sent
to comb the sear of cloying strand
for relics of the days worn down
by nothing in particular.
There is no anthem or lament
no ornamental sentiment to wrest
the quickened lacks that sand
the shores of Anhedonia.

It's the start of the Summer

So she will
not be needing
her coat anymore...

I will tidy her bedroom
there is unfinished
homework and washing
to do...

The plate on the floor
with the half-eaten sandwich
was yesterday's tea..
I was all she could manage,
being far too excited to eat..

Her first concert!

It's the start of the Summer

So she will
not be needing
her coat

anymore.

Evening cleats The Bay,

As cavalcades of passive argon, sulphur on
the ogham slicks,
to treacle ways toward the seeding
cooling of the hours,...

The sleights of crimson, fringe
the bruising cower of the West, to
brightly die behind the leathered hill.

From a wrist of tallowed amethyst,
a Tiercel purls a last ellipse, and in
his sinking helix ships, the Sommes
of curdled estuaries, to brood
the closing Mill....

'Tis a tyrannous
horology that haunts
the lighthouse keeper's watch,
the turning beam he mans alone
splits night for but a single beat.
His thoughts are nothing more than mist
a slow condensing of the airs
that form about his rising chair
and chill his idle feet .

Threw the pebble
into the sea,

a billion years
in to a billion years...

a stoop, a grab,
a swing of the arm...

thought nothing
of it...

Tempers edge the need
for your anvil head to break.

The way back from work saw
Lowry people scrape the pavement.
Dog-leg drags of shuffle, of make-up slide,
mixing flea-skin sweat with pollen rub
into a tincture of stench.

This is image that I do not want

I have
half a mind to **** but I
cannot be bothered, the other ,a
a monologue of delirious ramblings
some" French kings versus
squadron mottos" thing...
and , in truth, I am not sure what
it's going on about.

I am indoors, windows open, curtains closed
naked from the waist down, feeding the freedom
of sprawl- but this is mistake of gargantuan order
a cosmic, foolish, schoolboy- error of judgement.

The sofa is leather.

My scar tangled manners are reports of my standing
an amateur tanners spewed stew of expletives.
In a half-arsed way it seems  
I am to remain

part of the furniture

I search for shorts.. long shorts, short longs, whatever,
my legs and **** seek the solace of cloth.

On the canal a coot needs oiling
what feels like 20 minutes of incessant jar is
tapping with my rationale
Testing my love for all things feathered.

Something needs to give.

I am a Gobi taste of sandal straps and
in dire need of irrigation/ rehydration
I have waited way too long for liquid...
Don't get me wrong, this isn't some test
of deprivation- this is heat swung laziness
that is all it is..nothing more
nothing less..

And so..

We will get it tonight
You cannot pull isobars this far apart to
not have them break..
And that ogrish flat-top is thugging
the harbour side rents..

Ah yes...

"Après moi le deluge"

Seems to make sense, now

Ah,

You've pressed
me to confess,
so, yes,
I guess,
I want
my ****
served shaved,
dished up wet
and open, splayed
on beds of platform heels.

Got
love-to-feel
that sweet-meat dribble,
glazed and gasping,
leaking gruel, impatient
jellied-tremble bursting
spittle-clustered
clitoratti.

Feed
this greed
for lacquered nuzzle
lusting parted, finger drummers
busy down your gutted muzzle
animal intensity.

Gone
horrid-hot to
hit the sweet spot
lap that fatted crown besotted,
crush me to your sobbing lips,
when eeling on beyond minora..

Call your
gorgeous tensions in,
indulge this flagrant avarice,
unbuckle on this stubbled rim
of gorging suppled suckle..

Come!

Soak me
in your gabbled tantrum,
lather me in mosh-pit froth,
berate my deepened questioning
with everything you have...

Go!, ride
this wreck
of chinstrap madness,
****, this mess of upturned
tongue and grab this gin-trap
rapture with both hands..



All glory
be the dying kind,
who speak to creatures,
long denied, expand
the breadth of human
mind, with epic liberations...

I have
not forgotten

-you-

purring, from
the parching tree

Your unassuming
crooning wooed
the willows
of an older
England

earth-smoke

fumitory..

summer songs
of Solomon

A single sweet monotonony
dependable as harvest store

came summoning the daysleep
word delectable.

There are flowers
on the railings

guess the place is
coming up for rent,

one wonders
where the love goes,
once the locks are changed
the doors repainted...

no locus
for the laughter
over Sunday tea
and homemade cake..

they scrape away
the old base coats
and blow the flecks
into the past

I
kept
dead flowers
in a vase

they
reminded me
of you

Might as well
go one more round,

it wont be long
before they find
our deck of
haggard rafters,

all laid out
like body-bags
and facing in
the same direction.

Work it through
in pencil, in the margins
of a notepad.

They'll see
in tree rings,
years from now,
us , squeezed into
the sixth extinction,
fungal-spore
anomalies
in ice-core.



So, we
might as well
go one more round

got little left
to lose,

Come sand me down
those dancing shoes
again.

I have
elemental
emblems,
tattooed
on my knuckles...

there are
days she loves
to feel the forces
stirring deep within...

Have
come to quiet
the voices
to wrap them in
sea-fret,  to set
them aside for a while.
Rest ankles in campion barrows,
to search for the wonder
we lost in the chase for tomorrow.
To smile with the guise of a child,
if the moment be woken,

And, should it arise
from my somber entwines,

exalt in the pleasure of being,
supine in the seconds
of mystical present. Alive
in the genuine time
of my life.

Have
come to quiet
the voices
To wrap them in
sea- fret  to set
Them aside for a while.

Give me
the darkened doorway
the cause behind
the bricked up window.
Indigo shipwrecks
of tatty saloons
on ill lit streets of moody repute,
where the glorious truth of
of all imperfection
is welcomed,
accepted,

made beautiful.

Here I am among my people.

Give me the handshake
of needle on vinyl,
the tannin stained chapters
of Gideon bibles to burn
in the grate of
a derelict crib.

There is nothing as wry
as the smile
of children, in thrall
to the cancerous faiths
they were given
who grieve for the loss
of a parent still living
in legends.

Those
hereditary tenants of sediment means
examining tea- leaves in tardy
canteens off a tenement floor, while
studying fates in a library of faces,
one eye to the weather.

So waltz with the dealing
Phoenician itinerants, clevered
in scandal of travellers tattle,
to bring out
the stories of war.

I embrace Undesire

Come
tambourine laughter
of river Bohemia redeemed
with the nurturing sapphire of gin,
that I take as a galloping flame
to a dry August heath.



We are
all of us ever
but one step from ******,

All of us ever
one breath from release.

A bartered dark
of full shone armours
gallowed brooks in
shins of alder
trod the clays of stilted copse
that crest the low slung chestnut rides

To inglenooks of scuttled hamlets
strung in river- maiden's hair ,
a haven for the last ascendant
flinted from the steeping turf.

A subtle art of arcane movement
starboard cupped
in stone- pocked pewter

sparks the grailed pain
of foxes harrowed
in that sudden wood.

Here
she had been
put to music,
candles lit to memory,
the room now empty
lifeless quarters,
dull, ghost-less periphery


Some greater part
of learning wondered,
if each unites
or all unties,

what riches but old rags
were plundered,
if nothing lived

before her eyes

too soon
they are in everything
both in and in between
the knowing.

treasuries of episode,
the elegies of reparation,
somehow, going, lightly,
when a calibrated wind
vows warm

gone
grateful to this
small of mercy,
swore, there to be thankful
where a poorly driven splinter
can not take the best
of all they gave...

this saviour
comes, circadian
to set these fraught
emotions down.
an apogee of
deep-green-sleep
that pays the ghost
to rest.....