The decaying mansions of English language
Rot and recede
into teenage grasses
with each unspoken year

The hired help have left their hair unmown and surrendered their uniform dress
Content with the neglect of nature
taking its timely course

When the architects and master masons of linguistics
Survey their forgotten plans in the heaven of English literature
They are not dismayed
but patiently sit and sit

The pristine edifices of the classics
Once grand and clad in deferential brick
Stand scaffolded and unread
The doors unlocked, ajar and hopelessly inviting
Into the library of the English canon
The dusty cloak on the carpets of grammar
Sheets thrown over the disused armchairs of archaic words
Echoing the plink of the out-of-tune pianoforte of the perfectly crafted short story
Bathrooms of formal poetry
With the rusty plumbing of metre and rhyme

Whereas the temporary outhouses,
hastily arranged huts of slang and idiom
are adorned by the living grasses of new forms,
creepers  of half remembered dreams
mulching leaves of half formed thoughts
forests of half forgotten loves
writhing in living incompleteness
Which will in turn harden and fossilize

And we can then rue the passing of our once organic lingo

I am ill

I am drained like a mud-baked reservoir in
The longest of hot summers

I am driven like a dentist's drill

My heart pounds like a migraine

And I burn like a bonfire of books

I am shaken like a Martini
I'm in that poem
This line
I can't concentrate like...
I cant concentrate.

I want inside you like an open-heart surgeon
Engulf you like a newly flooded plain
Homesteaded like the first settlers at the frontier
To dance so hard I burst in flames
Be a bright burning peacock
For your delight
I'm on fire
And want to blaze

When he tells you
That you see through the eyes of a poet,
When you see the evening traffic
Like a string of glistening pearls in the sparkling cold of a wintry night,
When you hear the steel letterbox snap like a mousetrap
And the mail flop behind your door like a dead rat,
When your finger traces the days’ old dust on your coffee table
And your eyes trail in the wake of a churning steamboat ,
When you say you accept chaos and it’s underlying order
And vice versa,
When he brings you coffee and you say “Thanks”
He tells you
That you see through the eyes of a poet
And what he is saying is...
You Are Mad.

And  you realise why you see him as blank verse -

Prose pretending to be poetry.

Another heady day blooms and gathers pace
Spring dawns at 5 a.m. with a gargle and spit in the dark

Big rain drops and falls
Soft blood red wet cherry stones of bath salts
Splayed across my ageing face
Autumn showers then walks

The spiderweb of ragged birdsong feathers and
Threads through the branches
Of just November trees
Autumnal hymnal
Singing through the dying darkness, whispering
Don’t capture the light

And walking jogs thought
Factoring rebuke as Information unwanted  
Proof then reproof
The tarmac fields of youth
Tilled by broken hands with
Broken men mending pipes and wires
Time leaves a presage- a butterfly mark
Autumn leaves their signals sending winter’s mark
Beauty colours death

And-
Comes between youme.

ConnectorAndBridge,
Unobtrusively.
A wall, a barrier to me.

And-
Sneaking in heartsoul.

And-
Ready to rockroll.

And-
There to remind us,
What separates binds us.

The four corners of the first line.
The blank thick walls of horizontal  verbs,
Squat squashed and dumped
In forced familiarity;
Layer upon airless layer.
A grim determined construction
In my neglected back yard of a page
This concrete shed of a poem

Unkissed, these lips keep speaking soft your name

In whispers, falling faintly from my tongue.

So soft I thought unheard, I calling came

Concordant to my kiss, your heart unsprung.

Weary from the wanting and the wooing

And seeking out a seat to sit as guests,

They sat around the source of my undoing        

And suckled on the love beneath your breast.

Yet ‘twere that love to offer up its heart,

Surrender to the kiss and not desist,

No longer would I need impart this Art,

No reason for this Sonnet to exist.

Stay the pen: reward me for my patience-

All my hopes and breathless aspirations.