A full throated howl
as the dark returns
keening as witch or warlock
at their organised religions
their doctrines and strictures

I’ll gather the hemlock
and the red cap
to lace their tea and platitudes,
their pious attitudes
of bell ringing shame

in my mind’s eye
the rictus grin that takes them
is sweet as autumn fruit

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.”

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.

Battered bookworms
turning a familiar turn
(always left)

For those that leave:
your threads become part of the tapestry,

a picture writ with deep love, excitement, applause,
dire fears and tiredness,

here be dragons and arrows in eyes

but despite the hamfists
of some intrusive hands,

there to see forever

On the news
the language on the vehicles changed
from the ignored alphabets
to those we sort of got:
to ambulanza
then l’ambulance
to ambulance
to ambiwlans
to carbad-eiridinn
to otharcharr
to ours

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

What’s left lingers on me,
your smell on my fingers,
my hair, my chafed skin,
my well washed shirts

and I could wash
I could
I know

I never knew essential
meant impossible to be without
until the scent began to fade

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.

My blackberry love
you stain fingertips, lips and tongue
bittersweet purple
grown on a summer of promise
to end by watching the day
retreat past equinox
feels like loss
and though the longer night has virtues
there are dangers too
behind the fairy lights
and dazzled trick or treat
the immutable cold waits

What a piece of work is man,
all of our wet viscera
interconnected
like, even spleen and cheek

No more is this clear
than when your kidneys get sick
and send phantasmagoria
to your tired brain bits

All hail antibiotics

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

I currently sleep in episodes,
brief sojourns into late night sub-genres
too niche for deep sleep prime time
starring washed up dream tropes
like public ****** and teeth falling out

I still find flickers of truth
but a mind mindlessly clicking through channels
provides no water cooler moments
for the therapist and I

I think I know my breadths and depths
but the steps of these incandescent souls,
those that have given their whole
to muscle memory,
contusions, cuts and late night
doubt filled miseries
just to fight themselves,
podium or not,
teaches me that what I’ve got,
we’ve got,
is just unknown

Last dew glimmers on grass
and gives in, winking off til tomorrow:
there’s no shame yielding to this sun

Rugged boots on
hiding flesh and bone that still shakes
a little
I step forth onto schizophrenic paths
that for now are solid

Today, the verge incense sways and envelops,
intoxicating, masking the usual decay
and loss
enabling a contemplation
that holds til yappy pups cut it,
angry that no one made them bigger

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

Time ticks down as we gouge,
burn, eat and smear this planet,
all the while avoiding eye-contact
as we line our graves with cash
for a soft and pointless landing

Standing knee-deep already
on a rented doorstep
the next in line rightfully curse us
as the fat get fatter, fit to burst,
but never fit for purpose

This ground was thirsty
by god thirsty
been cracking and cursing for months
with only the vaguest hunch of a possible deluge

so these rains were drunk in abandonment
and the angry soil has yielded
soft underfoot, a sole cwtch
to be savoured, felt

the stream, so feeble last week
has remembered its fatness,
wetness, strength
recalling a bearing
thoughts are borne once again
with vigour to the constant sea

I daily commit to being negatively capable
one might even say it’s the defining spark
of a life spent loving and hating
the art and accountancy
of the modern teacher’s grins and grind

So here’s a mellowly fruitful glass raised
to comrades and fellow sufferers
who dwell in uncertainty and decreasing circles
while those, as sure as idiots
forge ahead

We drive through the dark
to her home,
radio lulling small back seat bodies,
so late that our DJs have hushed
and only the rustling burr
of an AM station remains,
in and out like consciousness
with songs of eternal love,
bread of heaven
ar hyd y nos

Catch it if you can
this ticking of seconds borrowed
from another belonging

They are slighter than most,
slipping through fingers
like pinched grape pips

But the rushed pulp
should someday make
good wine

A moment of that child’s voice
tattoos a grief
permanent without ears to hear

my fear of hating humanity
inches nearer
while my loves try not to fade

Shush brain,
let the regular, looped refrains drop,
seek a safe, blank space,
a place for quietude
and maize based snacks:
for the love of Pete
relax

There’s a jazz Christmas in my mind

that other, impossibly cool cats
seem to have,

but I have never found

I had a full head of hair and you.

When I woke I had neither,
as the grey frost light
scoured my eyes true awake
I found other lies of the subconscious
hadn’t taken as hard
as your pretend shape

no real surprise, I guess,
but that doesn’t make me hate it less

An afterglow read
in leaves fallen
as long shadows, earlier than before,
stretch tales of easy warmth
to breaking

We are here

Toe roots touching soil
that’s gathering in
at the sharp memories
of ****** frosts

Across the rec
the final shouts of bike rides
and punted ***** are heard
to defy the dry prickle of central heat
and the long, magic dark

When the tiredness came
sad eyes regarded it as nothing new
in hindsight she’d always made space for it,
an unconscious pet bed

the lack of shock
as it crept to her was almost nice
fingers on imagined fur
she felt her edges numb
retract from the screech of daily headlines
and dumb fingered scrolling
that sparked electrocutions

pacing in slow circles
around the blue pulse of her core
it settled unrequested
and pretended a defence
while forever she reached for rest

At the core of my being
I reckon there’s oil
and garlic and salt
and probably chilli flakes,
lemon or lime zest and juice,
or orange at my heart

applicable herbs, like basil
thyme, oregano,
always rosemary as it grows

stock cubes
or those new jelly ones
to amuse the palate
in each experiment  

all to hold off the meal deals
we know are coming

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

Winter nights, long
like the light is lost in thought
I sometimes think of you
and the equation of our loss/gains

even though I’m **** at maths
and numbers are for squares
the outcome on the page
is positive

Better than ****** Christmas
this six weeks that we continually justify
that stop our hands breaking,
the dying of hearts and minds

though in the middle
somewhere
when we regain our human form
sometimes storms rage a bit
and we stand, clifftop howling
at an unknown moon

on return we’ll have lost friends, loves,
yet be reborn to care, to teach,
to take the slings and arrows again
from this pauper’s fortune

Six assorted buzzards and kites
claimed this sky today,
their joyed metallic calls proclaimed above me
while I pottered slightly mournfully below
in a fecund but disappointing garden

From their strident majesty
I should take inspiration
and bend the land to match their empire

I got as far as picking some crisp packets
out of a hedge

A great deal of weakness
goes into the man I am now
indecision and a flurry of doubts
that make ways cloudy

But it’s fertile ground below,
this lack of surety
this endeavour to truly know

and if more would live here
how much better we would be

I drove a raised road
which gave a view of fields
much different to home
though mere miles away
vast, dark-rich soil potential
where words couldn’t fail to grow
but in a syntax not my own

There, the syllables of rushes stood clear
arrogant, apparent
with no lost edges or liminal blur
where I would speak my words

Heading back, a driveway sign said:
ROSES, BEANS
and now, at home
I’m lost to what that means

Correlation does not imply causation.

Solid, strong, fact.

But when the month long grey veil
that smothered our holiday is hauled back
just as we return,
sun and fat heat to grill us in our ties and blazers,
I’m inclined, for once, to thumb my nose at science:

nature abhors term time

The garden cats aren’t mine
with my pss-pss-pss
and shuffle finger
I try to entice them
but mainly, warily
they ignore in the truest
feline tradition
to leave me and my allergies
wishing

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.

I grew on after she was gone
unaware that routines of love
high days and Sundays
had woven spells

Bay leaf smell
kindnaps back
to a kitchen where windows,
steamed with riches baked and boiled,
wombed us from the outside world

Born to patience and a place at the table
each chair full, with more squeezed if needed
while more than food sustained us

If lucky, we accrue the time
that makes us me and you
it is sublime
and wholly human too

Today I thought “*******.”
You’re rude to those I love
through ignorance,
yours of course, as mine is finer tuned
though I abhor you
for your corporate judgment
in kind I’m classifying you
to post in **** encrusted pigeonholes
so future proles
will know to write you off
and your specious waffle
will forever be followed
by polite cough,
Yours Faithfully

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

It felt cold again today
as I scraped a little ice on the car
for the daily journey

my fingers ached a touch as winter spoke,
but no brine soaked my skin to crack,
no frozen gun barrel bullied my neck,
forced my unready body
to a too small boat,
crammed where fears of all ages merged,
and hope drowned

It felt cold again today

Earlier in the morning
I’d read the movements of a stalwart blackbird
flicking dead leaves on my concrete driveway,
gleaning for grubs

Later, as I unloaded the weekly food shop,
substitute, as it was, for fun,
I heard an imperious cry,

scrolling up, the fork-tailed red kites circled
in a sunshine that denied pathetic fallacy

and the screech they made meant nothing

Here’s plan B:
you gather your duplicitous *****,
dash on a bus with another
erroneous statement, like
“Competent Leaders”
and leave us

Seriously
a shot of your plinth
with a placard that read
“Just do what I wouldn’t”
couldn’t be worse than this

And every karmic drip,
from every lone last breath
or lost tear of an apartheid
volunteered for others
will be a harsh tide to wash
you stains away

With leaves fireworking
their last defiant blaze
against grey skies and the mud,
once again I forget to remember

the muted tannoy announces silence
for customers and staff
and the surreal descends
among the tins of peas and carrots

where the absence of the normal clatter
suddenly roars, catches in my throat,
the plaintive, Sally Army bugler
scoring the sadness in these aisles,
these isles

with two minutes passed,
the cacophony of the tide
of plant based diets
and too early Stollen returns
to wash over, to forget

I don’t know how
but I’d forgotten days
when rain falls forever
and in every way

so you sit and you look
and you look and you sit
and your mind asks some questions
you’d often forget
and you twiddle and bicker
and hover and thrum
and you start ten endeavours
with no solid outcome

and then night comes and rescues
as pretence can be dropped
and you put on pyjamas
and stop

Selecting the truth is easy:
pick the bits that make you seem great
and breeze them past ears
that have no time or desire to wait
for the imminent clatter of ****,
the torrent of bitter feces
that sticks
as all the parts suppressed spew forth

#politics #ukpolitics #lies #disingenuous

Counterpoint:
I love you lot.

You colleagues and loves who despise this
alongside me
so when my foot slips or knee gives
you are at my shoulder, my elbow

with a Kit-Kat or quick jab
about being old and ****
so giggles lift the misery
of ignorant, blind and fruitless bosses

while our loss seems their gain for now
I am bound to remember this refrain:
We’re not gonna take it

So, my brothers and twisted sisters
get those pitchforks ready,
sharpen in the dark,
keep being artisans

for when the time comes,
the spreadsheets won’t even be worth
the cold nothing they’re typed on
but your healing hands will

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.

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