I give you this knackered heart
and hold yours in return
as we bumble from supermarket to sofa
and all sweet pointlessnesses in between

the odd flashes of glamour
we submit to, bemused
fuel the common love
of early nights, remote controls
and daft chatter

A spell of bone cold
to remind us that a magic
rules all
our knotted muscles contract
as the frigid air kisses
with wool and other matters
we try to defend

Sun sets behind, same as always
stretching my still unshapen shadow forward

My foot on the pedal presses,
maybe not as hard as before,
but always

The comic line perspective
forced to fit the frame, constricts
but at the same time comforts

Synapses that once crackled, fizzle
and with a little sadness,
still smile

I think about you often,
elusive, the memory is,
a shape-shifter,
when I think it familiar,
amorphous it changes

Other times unbidden
it will rest fully formed on a quiet lap,
a gentle weight of warmth,
until distraction calls
and you’re gone

Remember the need for navigation?
when you rolled your silly guts
outside of this?

I shoulda guessed there’d be
a sorta dumbening
that comes with dark times
sitting in a sofa groove
that coulda been made by Adam

but then whadda I know?
I voted for this,
huh

There was snow and ice before,
a window, pause
of sharp prettiness passing
that petty poets could read a lot into

or just realise that once it’s gone
the garden looks like ****

This simplest trick
this majesty of dropping a degree
or two
and changing water into happiness,
nostalgia,
frozen fingers, cheeks like beacons
mittens heavy with sodden, laughing weight,
your daily haunts

transformed

and yes, the brown sludge days
will come, as always,
but for now the National Lampoon
sledge run past Tumnus
and the boxed delights
can have our hearts and minds

Geese fly by in a V
watched by laid back clouds
coloured flamboyant pink
by a sun that says
“See you tomorrow.”

Fat snow tickled us
and we forgot all that
for a string of heartbeats.

When I first heard the word
existential
I thought “Ooh that’s posh
perhaps I’ll pepper it in conversations,
Bosh! and figure out later
what it means.”

Twonk I was, I only slowly
saw the word existence hidden
in the cleverness of syllables
and then I thought I got it

But not until a maw
began to daily swallow
more than a thousand souls
of families and carers,
teachers, truckers, nurses,
loved
did I become aware

And I was scared.

Not just life being lost
but existence
the whole ****** swirl and fanfare
of little faffs and laughing drunken,
first chuckles, first kisses, first footsteps,
Sunday roasts, broken hearts and ecstasies

The nail-clutch of my anxiety
floored me
but underneath an ember burned
and a fire-question unfurled and grew:

How did we let this be?

It’s not a lie to bring them inside
and pretend spring

with central heating
drying sad eyes and itching skin
at least they offer a semblance
of a truth balefully missed

though the distant future
still promises such
current hands are hamfisted
in the art of wish fulfilment

I watched the woman wise beyond time
speak her poem to a nation not mine
voice carrying the weight of mountain ranges
the temperament of vast plains
the energy of impossible cities
and the grief and hope of individuals
with identities so closely bound
they’ve lost sight
from the long night she reached
and my foreign soul was lifted

The river knew you like us,
knows that the smile you gifted freely
with every inch of you
is gone from here

As it flows it keeps a memory like us
so when seas are reached
it will teach them of you
and why losing you
hurts so
and they will know you too

This guy and that guy
try to shake me down for some truths, y’know?

I says “Snow, fellas,
always follow the snow.”

and they looks at me askance
but obtuse
so I stole the tiniest chance and flew

Hoooie!

I’ll be payin’ for this one

Breathing cold vibrancy,
the earth and sun remind us
that whatever prattles on the surface
will be layered over,
fossilised,
and judged as advances
or fat, white dead ends
by the clever folk ahead

Peach lingers as sunlight falls
  and behind, has even painted
      grey clouds happier
        and I try to inhale seven,
                                exhale eleven,
      but the frantic black-wire
                        gut-froth won’t tire
                     today

A brilliant cold
pinching cheeks
like zealous relatives.

As long as you have warmth
to return to
it delivers similar bliss.

The twang of anxiety
and rattle of adrenaline
is hard to dispel
sat facing a laptop
at a kitchen table,
making all video calls
seem like I’m an addict
jonesing for my next fix.
I got the Teams twitch.

Justified and ancient thoughts,
deeper than the current media,
as daft and important as thumbing a nose
at those who claim to know better

Much can be drawn in asking
“What time is love?”
or even doctoring the TARDIS.

Makes as much sense
as licking the wind in a pandemic,
I guess

It’s one of those days where we’re polite
but we want to gather handfuls of ****
and **** it at the faces
of those who’ve known no sadness,
other than the dappy misery they’ve caused
to those, potential relations,
they told they loved.

I try to deny a bitterness
when I check every lock each night
including on my bins,
that each of us is the same
from birth
but the score of this whole game
starts on different tees.

See, we know.

Cast forward to those first days
where half clad trees
coax memories of freshness

though you’ve stepped out
wrapped still in winter blues,
insistent sun and boisterous green
beguile you to disrobe
and give skin to this

welcome discomfort
at being over-encumbered
as the new season embraces,
the shedding can begin

The wan light might be tired
but it tries to shine

In this kind of darkness,
this is fine

Good morning.
Lean into the good,
even if a hangover fug
has you in its grasp,
breathe deep.

We still have grey days
to argue with, some tears,
til greenery ensues
when lost, hidden and new truths will return.

So make the morning good,
with toast and jam
or salt, fat and shenanigans.

And for your soul,
despite the impotent bitterness
of prevailing winds,
prop open the door a little.

I’ll tread this crystal mud,
set a while to peer through veils
to make poor assumptions of what’s to come

As augury I’ve asked the birds
but shy of the same woodpecking rattle,
they stay schtum

I’ll indulge in haruspicy
in making dinner, sure
that no steak and kidney mouthful tells

Glass in hand, hepatoscopy
defines the coming year
where new is frozen

The Eve watching Flash Gordon together
through gaudy chocolate wrappers
that made no difference to the crackling lunacy

The Eve as a coiled-spring eighteen year old
tumbling hoarse from the pub, through shining cold,
to the timed warmth of home and snuck pastry

The Eve lost to tears as a young man
penniless, heartbroke, falling,
safety-net caught, in hindsight

Tomorrow there will be another trail left,
from pillowcase to clues written in wit and love
that lead to presents I still hold tight

Mustard coloured turtle necks
and haircuts that owe a lot
to the nearest mixing bowl,
the fuzz and fade of decades
in the album, closed and out of mind,
can’t dim the smiles
or hide those who are there
amongst the wrapping paper drifts

It’s about now that my brother,
like some atomic clock for childhood illness,
gets the annual razor blade throat of tonsillitis.
As much as it’s a pain for him,
has he no consideration for me?
Who’ll be better than me
at playing with my toys now?
Dad?
Pfffft.

There have been other years
when the gross ache of being apart
was caused by the spiral growth of life,
but it was ours,
easily fixed by a Boxing Day trip
or a warm January shindig.
This year’s exponential spiral
stifles all but the cold binary of a zoom call
and fans smouldered ire at the avoidable

I’ve missed this language,
this tongue in my ear of birdsong,
branch creak and rattle,
this chattered water flowing with thought
and question
immobile months have seen my soul ossify
so I’ll embrace this caked mud and heavy boot
and whistle-tread awake

At 6 A.M. the day started with an obscure
Eastern Bloc animation of sad animals
finding the spirit of the season through solidarity,
then by running fingers down the listed joys
of the Radio Times
I found it perfectly possible to navigate a day
from a hole in the sofa, subsisting on nuts,
as familiar celebrities made Christmas **** of themselves

Head resting on the cold glass,
the bus streams a show
of tired towns and spent countryside,
my oh-so-worldly heart
beats through paper thin sophistication
anticipating mum and dad
with all the missing love
that for a forgotten moment
makes the *****, vaulted ceiling
of the station resound

Morning comes with a narcotic buzz
as I eschew my uniform
for a He-Man T-Shirt and joggers.
A fraught quarter hour is spent
selecting which toy to take in
(the collective judgment can be harsh)
then off into the riotous grin
of the last day of term.

In the midst of the tinsel scrum
with most calendar doors feathered open
sometimes a melancholy still calls.
The fevered peaks of nativity plays
or the constant electric anticipation
of just what is in that box
can give way to a sudden sigh
in Christmas blue.

Never more distraught
than when parents dared
to have a night out near Christmas.
Complete desolation at their betrayal
was quickly assuaged by nana,
babysitting like a boss,
with a steady stream of treats
and staying up late to watch
Dempsey and Makepeace

Have we got enough batteries?
Because what I’m hoping for from Santa
requires at least four of the fat ones
plus four of the thin ones for the remote?
And remember last year when he forgot?
And I cried? For hours?
So, have we got enough?
Mum’s face suggests
that more than batteries are drained.

Cupboards filling up
with stuff we can’t touch
like industrial sacks of dry roasted peanuts
and biscuits for cheese, specifically.
Seems this season of excess
begins with an interminable exercise in restraint,
where even one mince pie is missed.

Dragged grumbling to go visiting
Pat and Sue’s house
(mum and dad have friends?!)
whose kids are the “same sort of age”
as if that helps.
Then finding not only do they have
a massive, four lane Scalextric,
their tree has actual chocolate on it!
Or, it did have.

A slight huff descends at today’s candy cane pic.
Those abstract blues,
lost along with childhood,
of time moving way too slowly.
Still a whole week of school to go,
stretching vast like an ice shelf,
with only a hint of impossibly brilliant things
in the far, far distance

Like silk threads, I watched my life today
stretch taught but hold,
colleagues and friends weighted,
reaffirming their bedrock
as again plates shifted

Our watered shoots
stood bewildered but steady,
as future wounds reached them
despite our insistent gauze

Looking through windows,
we grown, choked
as other faces told our pasts again

And we fought not to feel
though we knew that we had to

Because every day’s a school day

Today, the opened door  
loosed sharp memory,
someone missing from the rituals,
the glitter bright edges of the season
showed that they can catch,
draw tears,
with only long years
returning the absent love

The picture for ten mirrors my debut role:
Innkeeper.
Granted, a step up from shepherd
or heaven forbid, a cloud,
but in hindsight, lustily singing
about being an opportunistic
slum landlord
seems an artistic risk

For a time the doors are flicked open
and forgot
in a rush to dress, cram breakfast
and sing ad infinitum
(to the great delight of my brother, I’m sure)
the final rehearsals for the Christmas play
make days thrum by

The ouroboros of eight,
mouth full, speaks forever
of doors and portals cautiously opened
from times past when scared eyes
scoured woodlands for sacred evergreen
and feasted to last the dark,
through the missionary rewording of the same,
to now, the snaking trucks
of the cola company

The cursory glance at the gingerbread man,
today’s tenuous character,
only momentarily takes my mind
off the biro circles, patiently drawn
in the catalogue downstairs
since September

Sunday night
fever dreams grip
as Monday sneaks its sickness in,

The working week, an ague
of shivered sweats and broken thought
without the salve of your talk,
your medicinal tongue

Longer days hide Friday night
and recovery

With overflowing hearts
a man and a woman
younger than I am now
watch their kids’ fascination grow
opening a paper square to show a busy sleigh.
For now, they can avoid the fact
that the thing that keeps
the young girl’s hands warm in the picture
is called a ****.

There’s a jazz Christmas in my mind

that other, impossibly cool cats
seem to have,

but I have never found

Peel the door - Five go-old riiiings!
Though my dazzled, growing mind
struggled with partridges, pears and all
I loved that daily
school held teachers term-tired enough
to do singing practice for hours,
consigning maths
to the grey stretch of January

Coaxed awake through floorboards
by the kitchen radio, distracted then
from the holly behind the fourth door
by Shakin’ Stevens’ parties and celebrations.
Now, looking back nostalgic for eighties
nostalgic for fifties,
the true meaning of Christmas appears

The single figure get ups
still felt an age away from the main event
mocked by a shooting star
behind today’s door
when even school still had writing and sums
without a hint of the glitter to come

Even with identical calendars
the need to compare remained,
perhaps by some quirk
both brother and sister
had a different donkey behind door two,
but like the love that sang through the house
it was stubbornly the same