there is a wolf
waiting outside
the door for you
it has an eye tooth snarl
ready to muzzle you
and everything is on fire
but you

dusk falls
between the trees
as nightjars and moths
trace lines of angular momentum
and the sky recedes
to an aspect of light and shade

a 4am fox
inspects the night's carcass
under the sodium delete of street light
and to the sound of my wife's gentle snoring

awake in the margin
where sleep
is just out of reach
and my thoughts
pass through
like night trains

you are the spider
and I am the space
in between

daring me on
with whiskey and cigar
to the pack camaraderie
of manhood

A white poem
A pure poem
A poem that reaches the dirt
underneath your fingernails.

my body turns
against my self
in cathode shadow
and a bone deep
multiplication of cells

it’s hard to know
how long the soul might linger on
in slow decay, caught between
this blur of sweat and skin
and that urge to stray

a lupine prayer
to bear and bull
cry wolf
cry wolf
cry wolf
now look into his eyes
until you think like I do
and then take a desperate man
for his last penny
(finance options available)
go long on a cheeky Nando's
followed by
no
inflation
constant
expansion
short the small print
and profit from the fight
against pollution by
investing in the future
but as returns don't come cheap
diversify and purify the self
the Ganges is so polluted
it has gall bladder cancer
the main economic indicators
are telling us that
inflation is set to jump, while
British statisticians are optimistic
that the housing ladder
will continue to defy gravity
as it is an export barometer
with a blue eyed quant inside
crying wolf
crying wolf
cry wolf

time is the thief
that keeps the future
just out of reach
so my biggest mistake
was to think I knew
what mattered
when I saw it

'1. List of things that I can no longer be:
A Viking
A Sorceror
True

2. List of things that no longer taste as good:
Angel delight
Dip dab
You

3. List of things I still might do:
Stay
Leave
Get a tattoo

4. List of things I no longer build:
Rockets
Carts
Bridges

5. List of things I will no longer do:
Marry
Light fires
Tie shoelaces

6. List of things I will always know:
The scent of your sleeping
The lengths of our bodies
You and I, touching

there is no map for forgiveness
just a maze of bone deep navigation
through static
and the unknown frequencies of love

snow is falling
silently waiting
for the scrunch of a story
then watching indifferently
as a fox disappears
down an alley

“What makes a star?” he asks

knowing that everybody has a plan

until they get punched in the face.

So hit me again,

ruin my body for

the pleasure of others.

Knock me unconscious with

a sucker punch I won’t

remember having thrown

…and then come round

in a yellowing delete and

the close-eyed,

bruised acceptance

that the kid I once knew

who was up for the fight,

is now composing himself,

broken knuckled,

ready to be captured

by the camera’s empty promise.

The body I once owned

giving itself up to the star

I thought it might become.

small hour memories
of childhood corridors
from witches in the rafters
to lovers, spied in keyholes,
full of grief and laughter

out in the tundra
there is never
the gentle end
you long for
just eye teeth
that pursue you
for a glint of sky
deep in the bone

these rustling leaves come alive
binding earth to words, running wild in woods
the ghosts of trees in books

a vibration in the air
and a hare tears off
fields flying up to a door, ajar
and the music nobody listened to
when God was in the detail

a lupine prayer
to bear and bull
cry wolf
cry wolf
cry wolf

lunching on kimchi
spilt it on poetry
doubt that
simic is happy

between anxiety
and boredom, I’m
collecting dust

there is a fire
that will burn
at our eyes
and our mouths
we will join hands
and we will be
in darkness
with no words
as the fire burns

ach, leave the city to grown-ups
give me the fields that rush up and fly
into the scuffs and ****** noses
of piley-on and bulldogs

wolf, sworn silent
indifferent, but listening
through a slant in the shadow
where language is nothing
but an attention to scent

day after day
always the same words
while the mystery of things
remains unresolved
and grammar dissolves
into birdsong

renting a love song
to number my regrets
renting a love song
to get you into bed

we bury the dead
as bone deep ghosts to ourselves
relying instead
on the earth
to return us uprooted
as something pagan and pure

an early Sunday mist of rain
fuzzes the air
a starling flies overhead

between the
weakness in my
wandering eye
that wavers,
and lovers
for the first time
who kissed
without a care

no one survives the hunt
or the transformation
between a juddering ****
that resembles desire
and the notch of recognition

strangers kiss
their lips full
of panic and desire

Axe handles
hew wood
to a seasoning stack.

Yet a hunting horn
still chases me relentlessly.

How old
- how cold I got
so quickly.

chasing an endless sunset
out into the west
above a warping yaw of despair

a sucker punch
and a tooth
casually discarded

the space between
waking and forgetting
where the mind is the
siren call voice of another
as, next to me, you whisper
really, I’m...

the daily mapping
the never looking close enough
always surrounded by
uncertainty and rumour

singing the songs
i once thought would last forever
but now gently slip
to the heart of my lover
to empty it
with barely a shudder

in bed, aware
that nothing outside
this moment
is real

next to me, you lie
with your hand on my chest

childhood grief
the sun lingers on
and the house smells
of someone walking home
I reach for my mother’s arms
in sorrow and safekeeping

night fades to early light
with nothing to explain
the silence gathering between us
but the better man I meant to be

****** of Southwark,
lay down your Book of Hours
and rise, uprooted,
like trees!

commuting
thinking about
the electric current
sparking overhead
I push to get on
but the words
wait for the train
arriving
two minutes later
instead

there is a dead fox
on the side of the road
daring me to touch it
not that it thinks I'm brave
just alert to the scent
of the infinite

winter liturgy
the falling snow sworn silent
when you understand yourself alone
and all is forfeit
to the promise of a song

you had a fever
rambling hot then cold
"just crying wolf", you'd say
before hallucinating again
in the dark
at something coming to swallow you whole

left buried under rotten bark
leaf mould and shadow flit
for an everafter of birds flying south
for the winter

when I love you
all I know is that I want you
to live forever

measure me the weight
of a bone deep poem
as atoms smash
in determined succession
deeper underground

This has happened before

He knows the ribbon of it,

the fluttering murmur of

her final breath that mouths

on earth is no abiding stay

all men must pass away.

and the refraction of its sin

when he says

Did I whiten you again?

allowing the ripple of his grief

to frame its recollection.

And now remembered

it seems so ancient an event,

that for one long echo

time might stop;

and recommence

in the forgetting

of pitch and sprocket,

or at least hold still long enough

that he can splice

and better understand it.

The dead’s final gift to the living,

this swoop of sorrow,

the violence that Spring wraps tight.