A life played on taut strings,
high-pitched and staccato
to breathlessness,
a break-necked tempo
that often feigns chest pains
and the vice hand we 3AM anticipate

Find a way to twist the machine head,
hear the cartoon sound effect
of boinging down
so your strum sounds loose,
slow, forgotten,
truth

The lies that autumn tells
it hides in these leaves,
like a sleight of branch
you’ll be misdirected
from the dun, dying land
as you revel in amber and gold
falsehoods

The brief needle in my arm
and onwards
the dog with the slobbered tennis ball
the boys braving bare feet in the stream
and onwards
soft wind still with a sharp edge
the brief needle in my arm
the tumble song of the ice cream van
and onwards

The wan light might be tired
but it tries to shine

In this kind of darkness,
this is fine

Hawthorn breaks a smile in the hedgerow,
whispers a truth
that, easily forgotten, delights again
and the indoor pain is lifted a little

The green is almost angry
demanding attention like a fat toddler
or peacocking buffoon
that somehow still wins hearts

I cried yesterday
despite spring’s giving relief as backdrop
anticipating a warmth
that still evades my fingertips

Hedge sparrows drink the sun
as it wanes
and the draining year passes

they still glean a family happiness
in spite of the closing dark,
a spite richly deserved

listen to their lead and chatter,
ruffle and preen together, apart
as hearts and feathers wait

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

Champagne corks pop
a cow parsley flourish
on your life’s roadside
after driving alone a while
someone to fiddle with the A/C
and monopolise the aux
with unrepentant cheese
is a welcome change
as the prevailing breeze
shifts

This is where the wet will be
when my wellies come out of hibernation
(though, technically, it’s aestivation,
every day’s a school day)

when someday soon, this loop,
this recuperative walk
will weigh heavy on my feet
with the mud of thought
and of the mud of actual mud

til then I’ll wend, mostly light footed
with the rattle of mowers
and threat-cackle of magpies
to score me
and though not Oscar worthy
the kite-screech soundtrack serves

As a perennial here
I’ve grown and died
with reasonably quiet roots
learnt colloquial voices
that let me pass in these beds

But frothing coasts,
shattered hand held heights,
cool plains of forever
and cobbled nooks
magnetise more with life

So bring me the horizon,
you wild world
and release me of my soil
commitments
so I can continue

In this view, I know the name
of that village on the hill
but I forget the next and the next

Most of these birds, this song,
were here before
but the heft and pin-black eye
of the red kite are new,
not known

And though the sharp-scrape panic
as the pheasant protests
has sounded a thousand times past,
these days it’s heard different

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

Christmas past
is always framed
with melancholic gilt
though its broad strokes show
no love held is ever truly lost

Christmas present
as the Polaroid is shook
takes time to reveal itself
best when pressed in the pages
of the whole story

Christmas future’s binary
seems pixel cold, clinical,
bed-ridden fears looming
but, my dears, don’t fret:
we’ll get what we deserve

The absolute ******* grind of it,
each inch upholstered rough,
sandpaper cushions and *******,
this is school my loves:
best days of your life,
except the frequent crying
and wishing for an end,

but then
the dazzle blather
of someone excited by your subject,
your patient, pent up words
heard
and your bitten cynicism scuffs enough
to see your old electric truths beneath

Aghast in the AM
as my friend from youth ago
reminded me of what I know,
and know I’d forgotten

my impulse is to call all:
ragtag and happy,
still on the
line

them good girls gonna go bad
hey Jonny?

snug tired is enough for now

Summer’s not done
but the oven plinks anyway
and the sizzle of potatoes
in too much fat rattles on
regardless

Walking with the sun behind
eyes fixed on my worn boots
as they try to find the old stride
each time they lift, this still winter light
flicks ahead under them, easy as,
like nothing’s changed
but when they fall, this light cuts,
mud grips and boots go blind

Eyes snap like Polaroid:
that memory is captured
flat
so superficially it holds truths

but look more carefully at those colours
and the tunes they sing,
they make you think
something

something close to fingertips
on glossed pages
where other people's lives live
and mean little

but this is yours, ours,
and I’m holding the hours
holding on and shaking

For every craven decision
undecided, so chums can slide,
callous in pursuit of cash,
kings of the UK trash pile

Borders discussed through arrogant huffs
on last minute deadlines that always die
rolling from meeting to meeting
indicated by all that foreign wine and cheese:
such is the country, such is the disease

September heat to melt the
sealing wax, closing off summer
as grasses, golden as they die
still whisper with insect thought

the trees reply in kind
though the greying of their temples
can’t be hidden
reminding of the irresistible slide
to winter’s wide silences

Intent on the final bell ring
declaring spring for reals
as we feel every inch
a bag of hammered turds

You will have heard the crack
in every colleague’s voice this term,
felt the glut of panics
that the journey home may be in a hearse

Still, it could be worse,
and when the rear view
shows a dwindling, darkening school,
we’ll spend two weeks pondering how,
exactly

Sunday morning
sluggish streets blink
and whisper to themselves
that there was sun, yesterday

the jagged methadone
of a bad night’s sleep
giving all the weight
none of the peace

technicolour memories
seem to be made false
by this overcast sky
so happiness lies

in the old days
a cigarette and a cup of coffee
would smooth edges,
in the good old days

Today I began to hem,
rein in the threads that grow free
when left unstitched

I ticked a set of books
and, though I love my charges,
my heart hurt

My language is another,
my experience of this globe
unutterably different,
though geographically the same

And I want to help them play the game, I do,
but I don’t trust those
telling me how to

My instincts,
honed by humans I trust, unless
I’m lost in my own Truman Show,
show me the right way to go,
divergent  from this current shitshow

The pedagogy of care
is somewhere way, way
over there

I know the autumn is waiting,
pensive to embrace the loss of heat,
sweats moving on to other climes
where they’re understood

I hold til the skeleton of winter
can be seen and read
by my fingers on the sorry bones
that please me, alone

Aspiration? A tricky call.
I’m more than willing to give you a leg up,
but I can’t define where you’ll climb,
or I’ll be the *** who assumes

your *** might become an astronaut,
an assassin for hire,
or just gain enough cash to survive,
or be proudly working class,
or to clash with the establishment
and bring them crashing down
your *** might want to work
hard and fast
or be happy to rock up comfortably last
the amount of possibilities are vast
and equally valid and yours

I’ll lend a mind, some thoughts, some words to help
but for each self to realise themselves,
I’ll not assume,
we know what that would make us

A bold density of memory anchors,
scattered across a past
where colour saturates
like someone sat on the remote control,
holy hand grenades on loose afternoons
with the slap and bicker of passing the joypad
in blithe ignorance of washing piles
deadlines and empty pockets

Drifting in the now, helium light,
well-heeled but drab,
absent fingers trace the slight links
on the line around arthritic ankles
as they gently, surely give

Oh, my tired sisters and brothers
I know.
Each and every step and gesture
has hidden lead weights attached
and everything lifted now hurts

You are allowed the involuntary grunt
or voluntary tear as you stand,
all eyes and ears are itchy with
tired

There is still a smile allowed
as long as we keep an end in sight

Remember every now and then
to redress the balance and acknowledge
that there are hedgehogs,
cooked breakfasts,
stomach aches from laughing
and the dumb comfort of an afternoon snooze

A cello’s open C
nearly derailed me.
Cerys snuck it in,
slow Sundaying,
nearly made me stop the car
and howl
as the bow drew on my guts
like blissful punishment,
the sullen throb
calling human

Azure, it tried to be,
a pure blue, more than *****,
more than daily truths

Like a sky undecided
as if it was supposed to be vaulting
but its hem got caught

And the stumble was the same as always,
teeth clenched really tight
til the dark goes

Barbiturate sunshine afternoons
obscure the niggling work pile
and with fat heat, cool anger,
opening evenings to virtuous
leaf based dinners
only slightly ruined
by too much beer and ice cream

Commute recommenced,
the verges rekindled their
annual morning conversations,
heard twenty times

As my muscle memory drove,
I sought the last red comments
of poppy heads cheering,
but the long, dry grasses
sounded familiar tired whispers
that threatened to drown

I could allow them to dictate the script
of another season,
clichés so often spoken
as to be silence

but I can still hear
the poppy red
I hear the poppy red

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 ****

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

word worrier
word wanderer
caught impossible
thought entirely
lexicographer extraordinaire
except for those I’m dumb on
like Floccinaucinihilipilification
which could mean
anythang x

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

I think
I think in buds
that root
and sometimes
blossom with you

but don’t get cute about it

As a kid, I know I saw air shows
although none specific stand out,
I know there were skies that
buzzed and thundered
the sound of determined direction

at each one I know there would be pilots
who threw small planes in tight loops

everyday, pulling back on the stick,
taunting gravity to notice and push,
barrelling to a zenith
of impossible weightlessness, momentary,
before the nauseous crush returned,
over and over in front of an audience

and I know I watched and thought
“That’ll be me one day.”

This hikikomori soul
seeking to curl up
in silent conversation with a duvet
and two fat pillows
as the petulant winds blow
arguments

Hearts are funny things
I feel mine rise and fall, jarred
like captured summer fruit
fat in syrup
some days
others, pickled sharp
and tucked away in acetic darkness

Buckle-eared, sitting,
the ditch giving shelter
against a trying spring,
a hare with no immediate worry

just the usual stuff:
fox, buzzard, kestrel even,
the background mix of dread,
while to the left
snowdrops shine

and behind, carefree daffodils
begin a brief, incandescent grin
to draw life from

leverets will appear,
new-normally
on sugar paper cards,
if through our hurt grip
the ditch will hold

Sleight of hand combined with misdirection
so you miss the moth eaten crushed velvet
of my finest stage jacket,
the flop sweat beneath the powder
I gesture to the monument of worries
towering behind me

With flamboyant flare
Presto!
The monolith of my life’s troubles
is no longer there!

You are right to give slack jawed applause
and question my technique,
just don’t peek behind the curtain
beyond the mirrors where it
all still teeters

Until the lights go out, I’m cured

We can’t blame words
for showing us truths
that make us cry
or selling us lies
that make us fall in love so hard
the north wind knocks from us

We can’t praise words
for revealing paradise
allowing us to stroll there
quiet, some days,
and know better

We can only intone the syllables,
wrestle syntax to some semblance
of meaning
for the clicks, croons and chatter
we utter, or fix in lines
for others to know us

Just resting my eyes
as the lights in the tree dance
and some well trodden narrative
of Christmas redemption plays
in gloss on TV

the grey pull of January
is at bay for now
held off by cellophane wrappers
and the smells of a decadent kitchen

though not a Christian
I’ll be thankful anyway,
aware of the drop either side

I’ll let my usual pissy niggles rest
til next year

Look at us perched again,
anxious dreams set in long gone buildings
where the kids won’t do a thing we ask
and for some reason we’re naked
(except for a mask)

And as my old man says,
the conveyor belt hasn’t so much as slowed
so our wish for a cautious toe to get set
will be whipped from starter to panicked plenary
before we hear the gun crack

Know this, comrades:
the holes in our practice we think show clear
are lost to the fizz and bubble of our charges.
When Monday comes they’ll listen (mostly)
as we carry on regardless.

We were once well acquainted
with the wee small hours
adept at navigating neon jungles
and the deeps of kitchen philosophies
entwined with kebabs and illicit frissons,  
in vino veritas conspiracies
that took weeks to unpick and apologise for
but passed

Now, if seen, those hours hold different snags,
surrounding plants are far less exotic
but familiar brambles cut deep,
immutable truths roar
when the ***** doesn’t do the talking
and morning burrs not so easily dislodged
by a full English and a million teas

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?

To love when other people
feel happy in themselves
is the best bit of human

seeing other’s smiles
and feeling their confidence,
resilience, bliss or comfort rise
makes being alive make sense

The claws of jealousy,
covered in fibre-glass bristles,
can make you believe
that their gain is your loss
which is utter toss

Switch to embracing their joy
and you’ll employ your own

Aaaaah!
Understand that every thought you had
about adults knowing what they’re doing
rapidly disappears when you become one

So even the plush ******
sat at the Romanesque desk
preaching complex reasons and threats
…because?
is hideously full of ****

When the best toy is being threatened
in kindergarten, the fattest egos flex
and either with aggression
or diseased crocodile tears
will appeal or impel.

Well. Here we are.
Men get old, even me.
But unlike cheese or wine,
it is not fine, virile,
or true.

We can talk about suicide
we can
no one will ever want to
but its hands wander wider than you’d think

Each tear you blink on the back of it
is wrought with confusion:
was it?
is it?
can it?
how do I?
what do I?
what should I?

But the truth is lost
like in 7.8 billion
a healthy unhealthy percentage of which
have had enough
and you know some of ‘em

So ask them, yeah?
ask them a lot
repeatedly like an annoying clock

Ask them