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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Little fingers picked
at cheap cardboard corners
and although the stories
never quite hit home,
there was wonder
in the tiny watercolour shepherds

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Three AM awake, aching with lateness
wrestling alone
even if a significant other is next to you
or little breaths flutter in next rooms

Shadow boxing ridiculous odds
in a world and heart full
of treacle thick worries
weighting your punches ineffectual
just like in the fear-fever dreams
that woke you

You skirt the maw below
resting place of your almighty failures
as the sick orange glow
breaches curtains and makes
familiar shapes judgmental
tut tut tutting at your uselessness

Here, you are defenceless

Here, the black thoughts insinuate,
find cracks to prise and plant suggestions
of a better world without you in it:
the limit of you

Dig deep, my human kin
quietly get up,
make a cup of tea,
write a message or two
to yourself, or for others later

Bide and wait
for the mute loved heaviness of sleep to return
or the welcome thinness of morning light
to wash the darkness back

In the new day, reach out,
with steady voice or bubble-snot,
be heard and seen
by friends or strangers
and try to heal again

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

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

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

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 ****.

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

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

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

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

You’ll look close for all its feints,
its lies of needing you
being lost without
while the fingers on your windpipe tighten
and those tears come in place of shouting

loud, steady, drip-drip mention
of blissed futures,
dispatched, ***** pasts,
the present full
of passive aggression
where passivity is too nuanced

you’ll still be there with open arms
and a heart dark with hope,
but that tickle-whisper in your skull
is not just the concussion
not just

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

Heat goes away
and we remember our austerity
with turned up collars and rotten ideas,
grey respite seems to like us,
invites us to thrive in a familiar taste,
but real or imagined,
passion fruit and mango
stubbornly linger

I broke a commandment
and sat in the garden mid-afternoon,
so technically on the clock

every other life around me
lived
had a purposed buzz
and flap-winged damns to give
while mine were elsewhere,
somewhere

not gone, I guess
just hidden in emails
and dumb-watching other people’s
screen creations
from the follow/subscribe sidelines

and the industry of beasts
leaves me in a shade-corner
shamed by a simplicity
that my chosen complications obfuscate
poorly

A sum total of immediate family gathered
at a seaside Italian cafe
half loving getting time together
half dreading the weight of the urn

taking turns to tickle flippancy
in an honoured tradition of laughing
in the face of the massive horrors of life,
scales on the crusty familial armadillo

It’s time

Each step beyond the coffee steam
feels further into foreign territory
where defences weaken
even though the climb is sweet

we walk up a hill to reveal a familiar vista
that youth ignored huffily, heartily
and adulthood yearns for,
where memories pepper current steps

The humour shield holds until the ash is cast
when my throat clutches to swallow
knowing that my reasoning can’t break this,
even though you’d wipe it away

You aren’t allowed to soothe these tears,
they serve for the years and years,
pay pennies into arcade machines
and buy novelty rock never eaten

The bedrock and foundation of us
stands on this sometimes sunny head
holding hard to the ropes and lines
until the next handover

Millionaires down on our luck
that’s the story, isn’t it?

With one lucky chance or a gold watch
found in a yard sale
to propel us to the heights
of hob-nobbery,
this time next year, yeah?

Another item on the unwritten list
known by those that were born to know
is that luck is a commodity
like any other
bought and sold by ‘families’
who hoard it,
a surfeit
beyond any lifetime’s need,
releasing just enough
so we all see it
and believe it to be in reach

Unless the stars aligned
when you were born
chances are you won't be on
the List
and you can make a good fist of work
and burn your very soul
in an effort to reach that goal

yet when you burst your heart for the win
the posts have shifted
and you’ll lie spent
looking at expensive leather shoes
or highly polished boots
as they step over you

Work and noise are not enough
when the system itself serves
the few

work and noise are not enough
for things to get better
for all
and unshackle luck

no justice, no peace

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

Walking
like the hardest game
of hide and seek
I’ve ever played

On the whole,
I love my fellow man
but the walk was the thing
away
that kept the humours balanced

So if I know you
and our paths cross out
don’t be offended if I doff
and move on

Unless you are a bumblebee
or the trill of a spring visitor
you aren’t what I’m looking for,
for now

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

A restrained ahem
echoes into the night
without even the edge of an eyebrow raised

the tentative gesture
fails to interrupt business
as usual
no mass exposed
to the fat con and filial misdirection

while on the stage
the hamfisted prestidigitator
sweats so profusely
that the greasepaint nearly shifts

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

Pinched fingers
on the tape ribbon
of this reel to reel life
have caused time to dilate,
elongating sounds drawn out
til no high pitched shrieks
or panicked squeals remain

an ****** stupor settles on us
and our slackened jaws
pass treacle speech
as another day peaks and troughs

unexpectedly we return
to analogue
with little in the way of
selection or control,
forgotten scratches and skips
audible once more,
to be ignored or heard

Gies a wee sookie
a wee swatch an aw

member a was braw,
pure braw

an a luv ye an aw

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

Friday:
faux finish line it may be,
but colour me happy
as my knackered toe to tip
crosses it

No pressure to be up today,
blessed or cursed, hold on

the hands in yours may be tiny,
of passion, steady, familiar,
frail or memorial

they touch the same
and need you here x

1.
I’m climbing hills today
in one, effete poet’s way
they could be metaphors
for all sorts of ‘big life things’
but in another, my belly
is about to give my knees
some trouble

2.
The sepia on this one’s different
there was sometimes bitterness
in steps made here
as the lure of the theme park rides
sat so near
but the years have done a lot
to replace the roller coaster thrill
with the heart weight of hills,
dales and rivers with tales to tell

3.
You remember I mentioned
the metaphor?
And the belly troubling the knees?
Well these things came to pass
as I hauled my carcass up the hill
turning the air blue

The metaphor? Decisions
that once were natural,
easy like breathing
now can feel laboured, burdened
when a step is placed
how can I be sure the ground will hold?

Even at the peak, where I once
could exhale at the majesty of a job well done
I’m now fraught with the thought
of the journey down

4.
This river is different
at home the stream accompanies me
on local walks, showing me the known
and keeping my chin up

Here, the bold broadness of the river
hides secrets and speaks in a deeper tongue
coarse fish, familiar to me
are replaced by those that anglers prize

I am both lost and a little more alive

5.
Looking into the faces
of teenagers dressed for town centres,
either striding ahead
or shambling behind
parents intent on extolling
the virtues of fresh air and nature
while feeling strangely out of breath at the climb

closer in, the adolescent eyes show
a plethora of emotion
contempt, depression, longing
utter conviction that life is happening
somewhere, anywhere else

but if I may offer some advice: relent
as in a few blurred years
you’ll succumb to the same fossilisation
and will need some routes to remember

Friends cause ructions,
paroxysms,
liminal and otherwise

but the constancy of those
who count neither shaven off
nor with fingers on the scale
are the whole of my heart

We don’t often visit
the pit of our stomachs
but when we do
things just aren’t good

1.
I’m heading to the sea
in a slot not big enough to fit a holiday
so I’ll day
trip

I think I’m packed:
a mind still rattled by life and lockdowns?
check
a palpable desire for vistas unknown?
check
a rucksack of memories, of sand, of wafer cones,
of wasps, of crystalline, sweet wrapper lights on mad, unsafe beach rides, on windbreaks, on digging, on seaweed and brown British waves?
check

Let’s start this engine, then

2.
Should’ve gone before we left
the irony’s not lost on me
even though I’m now the boss of me
I’ve still had to stop in local circles
cos someone needs a ***

I’ll blame the coffee

3.
Frightening fast the local roads fade
the five and ten mile loops of life
are gone
and the roots we commute and commune on
rest bone rigid, obscured

Passing Crowland
impossibly flat plains
thoughts turn to darkness
and misunderstood witches lost here
until the smirk of Cowbit assuages

Only the Welland, alongside
still talks of home
til even she changes
speaks in wider verbs
tidal verbs of ebb and flow
showing thick mud beneath

These long, straight roads are deceptive
leaving meanders to river and mind
while hiding accidents in plain sight

4.
The road sentence ended
and after chewing a space to park
shoes changed to something wholly uncool
but fitting me well
first steps on the unsure grammar of sand
reminding that syntax here takes much more effort

a dune cleft gives a known view
I’ve never seen before
and then I’m through

sky and horizon blast me

for frozen moments I’m lost,
these common seas I shrug off in my head
smirk at
as nothing against turquoise
or rock raged waves
still bring tears
against my smile

I listen at the language in the shallows,
the rush and hustle,
and feel a glimmer of foreignness as I can’t make out the message
but I get the gist

5.
To honour holidays of old
I sat a spell in Wolla Bank car park
though inauthentically the rain didn’t fall

I was forced to imagine the windscreen steamed
and had no fish paste on white
as I’d paid full price to eat at a cafe
unheard of back in the day

I did read the car park info sign
about the clay pits around
where historical sea defences were mined
and that did the job of taking my mind back

and the closing thought of petrified trees
beneath the waves til very low tide
did its best to haunt

6.
Heading home
wistful I suppose,
though I’m not sure where I got all the wist

the sea is a keeper of memories
a chewer and cogitator
so when they return to the shore
and are spoken again
what you thought you knew back then
may have changed
deepened, softened
and hopefully your youthful idiocy
is allowed to be forgotten

if you came for the ride
thanks, as ever, for joining me x

No sooner through the door
than spider-legged anxiety
scurries back haphazard
like a frenemy whose cactus skin hug
begins in September and ends in July

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

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

Away, not home,
this continental heat.

The air pretends
this North Atlantic rock
is worldly

The smiles of the natives
lean manic
as we clutch at multipack lager
and disposable charcoal,
grasp at the living myth
of a cloudless sky
and give ourselves to these gods

Our worship sees us sacrifice
meat and skin,
both burnt to early hours regret
and delicate, bathroom sorrows

A sporadic bacchanal
whose scarcity ensures
that be it working week,
weekend or holiday,
feverish
we’ll pay the tithe

Sunstroke and/or hangover
prove penance for our lapse
from the frigid, three bar
Protestant norm,

but these exotic gods will beguile again
even as the blistered skin still peels