There were these moments when you’d remember something I’d forgotten
Or blotted from my memory
Often highly embarrassing episodes where I’d exposed my clear ineptitude
And you’d lead me back through them, laughing,
Walking in the gardens of my shame and naming all my
Clear inadequacies until you creased with tears in your eyes

And you’d think I’d hide
But it was love
and I miss you

You’d quite often leave a small amount of liquid
In every glass you drank from
So that every time I picked it up in a hurry I’d hurl it
Onto my trousers, or sofa
Or the pile of letters you’d refused to open and I’d curse and rankle
Wishing you would just tip things down the drain

And you’d think I would go insane
But it was love
and I miss you

And when you pulled the duvet round yourself to make the perfect
Bed based sausage roll and I shivered through
The night because despite the fact I’m twice your size
You had a vicelike grip that would never
Once
Slip

I’m ill-equipped to deal with the real of you being gone

I pace the places that you were and get lost a lot

But not lost like we used to when you’d tell me it was just around the corner
And I’d point to the fact that the century had provided me
With an infinite map in my pocket
And you told me “**** it, let’s just go this way and see what we see.”
And we’d end up in some seedy part of town with some ****** staring me down and you’d hide behind me laughing
And we’d have to run for it, me with these knees

And you think that I’d go mad at you
And tell you that you wind me up
And tell you that I’ve had enough and you can figure you own **** out from now on

And now you’re gone
And it was love
and I miss you

Jesus! The sweet burn of a heartbeat racing,
madly light-headed without a drop
passing lips that just
yearned
for want of a more sweaty term

inching to overdose with each reverie
while the colour drains from the now
a quick bump from a caught scent
or piqued memory

or a full on sofa session
pipe packed with young *****
(what dreams may come?)

the result’s the same:
unless you find today’s feast
you’ll atrophy on empty calories
of what was

#youhavepromptedme #flashedback #memory #nostalgia #youth

Barb says it’ll pass
and by May we’ll be done,
can get back to having fun
she says, if not before

And Angela’s had enough
and is meeting up with Amy
for a G&T,
might even protest the virus

Dave the Rave had his mates round
says it was sound AF,
as luck would have it
when the cops showed up
they’d all gone home

back to their families
cos some of them are
key workers and they
didn’t want to keep em up late,
they’re good like that

On the whole kindness equals weakness thing,
I question any ****-nettle licking bulldog
who with merry abandon will slobber, chase and
bark bark bark at tired rabbits
to hide the bare patch where real ***** should be

Glorious, true strength comes from settling into
another’s shoes and sadness
and making both a little lighter
while still achieving arbitrary, stunted targets
set by dim witted stumps getting paid way too much

The kingfisher lazily perched today
as a sorry river sloped below
fish so visible that fishing
felt like cheating

But, y’know, gift horses and such,
and a full mouth for the nest
is best for everyone
I guess

though glimmer and flash
are rarely seen without challenge
we all need a dose of easy pickings
to even the game

I came down with an absent mind
not fully fixed on seeing you
knowing that the paused world
has changed much
and the art of letting go is survival,
to avoid the pockets of hurt

So with loose hope, I stepped clumsy
to where you’d always been
when with azure shock, there you were,
half-memory, caught
in the high speed shutter of my eye
a teal and orange thrill

Gone as soon as seen
I could lean into the loss,
but I knew you’d been here
to prove this dull distemper will quit
scars that remain will fade
and I’ll see you again

The kite arrives and the others scatter:
a chatter of malignant magpies,
muscle bound gulls,
fat, idiot pigeons
and scheming, knifing jackdaws

Even together, they can’t thwart
the obsidian eye,
the span and solid beat of russet wings,
the kingpin

That tattered *******
they all fight over
is his

#redkite #forthebirds #life #living #humanity

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

If I state I’m going to do something
then don’t, as often happens,
then I’ve planted a ***** seed
that’ll grow into a choking vine,
not free, or wise

So dark January resolutions
might help Calvinists,
or masochists, or both,
but for the rest of us
comfort in our skins is better

I have no preach for you
to do this: just listen

Your own heart cries and sings
all day, every day
and you will beat yourself
far harder, over cheese and *****,
than anyone who loves you would

So go inward a while and think,
and even if your conclusions
don’t match the zeitgeist,
love you, as we do

Stuck on the actual prime meridian
where gambling and grown up shenanigans
are viewed all *****
hurting society, though I could legally go to the drain on my street
and drop a thousand twenty pees in it
nae bother
our equivalent bet
as high rollers we are surely not

I miss you Vegas
with your daft anti-reality cushions,
the strip with no history or heritage
necessarily
but with goofy drunken dreams brimming alive

and I know vice, bad, horror, addiction yadda yadda

I miss you Vegas

To heat or to eat
that will be the question
whether to shiver with a gut full
of cold, cheap beans
or to yank the belt tight against the pangs
but at least feel your fingertips,
some will die, many not sleep
apart from those happy,
******* few

Bewildered by the difference,
the vast, unknown shape of it all

Not moments before,
ensconced in familiar tangles,
routinely fed and tended by parents
who flared and chattered
at the merest prospect of a threat,
met only by bolshy robins
who scoffed at fear
and tumbles of sparrows
who hid in each other

This necessary, Hail Mary leap
sees me petrified
grounded at the foot
of an adulthood full of flight,
song and the weight of freedom

if I can just get through
these cat clawed days and nights

We sat and sounded beliefs
as the leaves chose to dance
with an almost panic
as if the chance wouldn’t come again
and the floor would be cleared

Clarity, for now, only coming
from this brittle winter light
that in high contrast picks out sad details
that murky days hide better

I will cry, I guess, tomorrow
or another day that would’ve been ours
the hours will let me know
I’m sure

Helmed by pilots
who maybe read the manual,
definitely loved the way
the hat looked in the mirror

nearer and nearer the nuclear button we inch
cheeks pinched in at random stupidity
with no desire to suspend our own flesh
over that particular fire

Is this sick feeling jealousy?

Watching those who clearly know no better
pretend otherwise and still succeed?
When they channel the brass
of someone smarter,
harder, sharper, more charming?

What do we do
with alarms that keep ringing these days,
but hit snooze?

To balance a justified arrogance
built by decades
against quixotic bosses
who pass through quicker
than a bout of diarrhoea
is tough

wrap your arms in the rigging
you intrinsically know
so when siren song sounds
or Scylla and Charybdis boil
you’ll still be on the boat
when spat back
to calm seas and good winds

October butterflies
game against blue skies,
wind that gusts indifferent

fading buddleia’s
purple sashes
give one last hurrah
to the peacock, admiral,
as the lowering sun
sees through wings that were

#autumn #fall #october #butterflies #turnturnturn

I hold your eyes through glass,
conversation stripped
of sibilants and plosives
reduced to a vowel roll
like Charlie Brown’s ma’am

I wrestle with the thought
that this might be our last contact
without contact
although as adults we were hardly
what you’d call tactile
I’d take the chance to hug
and see your smile up close
right now

Settle we must for charades
and snatches of life
as I leave you
in the care of
wonderful strangers

I had to move the leaves to see it,
verdant, strong leaves no doubt,
but in the way, all the same

The subtle, spectacular beauty:
a gesture, a colouring, a quiet profound thought
nearly lost to louder voices

Some may see a seeming protection
but deep down will know:
showing, not telling, is queen

What’s in your glass, huh?

What’s your poison
with the noise and the noise
in and out of the head?

What swirls, has legs
and kicks like a mule?

Fool juice, nana called it,

but **** me
I could use some fooling

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

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

Little feet buckled up
in scuffed Clarks,
we ambled down hill

Below, the valley
coloured toasted wheat
smelled of forever

The school hall,
everyday familiar
for singing hosannah
became exotic, foreign

Different games played
and illicit sherbet
in cardboard tubes
to be chewed to a pulp
in carefree mouths

All the term rules fell,
and stayed away
til the apple trees called time

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

Wet grass caps toes,
a long missed inconvenience,
each pace lifting
weight long loved

The dappled, leaf stopped light
tries to placate,
but you won’t stay

Like time and tide
you wipe your face clean
and disappear through trees
with no trail

The incomplete dark
of a suburban night
makes seeing the great beyond
hard

but patience, peace
and allowing the eyes to adjust
finally reveals a truth

firefly flicks burn
amongst the static majesty
of constellations
reassuring that all is
still in motion

from our frozen homes
we can gaze and hope
as surely as our kin
watched stars fall like rain

My heart’s lub-dub
pushes blood half lost.

In the lab they would no doubt see
an elegant double helix
pointing to a certain ancestry

but I see faded yellow turtle necks
and kitchen based bowl cuts
rain hammered car roofs
peering through steamed windows
at the sea

I smell lemon zest
taste cake mix
and hear the muffled,
distance thwarted hum
of Radio Wales

In amongst my GATC
you are woven unloseable,
a shepherd to my instincts

I give thanks with each breath

I seem to be a man,
it comes with ups and downs
and sometimes I don’t get my way,

but like an adult,
and broken-heartedly, a woman,
I’ll try to be OK

Before the storm, the river had all but given up,
the guttural roar of wind and deluge
rattled all souls, except her
and in the aftermath she swelled
and bore delicious weight again
and my eye-contact
with the pageantry of the green headed drake
told all the muddy truths:
to underestimate is to lose

Not lost as much as misplaced,
gone from where you should be
in bosoms of families
and conspiracies of friends
still adding your narrative arc,
your author’s hand

It is for us to ape your style,
continue your quirks and syntax
so the story, like these spring bouquets
will bloom well

*******
hear the words from my beak
please
above the chatter and click
of these other feathered *****
as they plead for wheat, sans chaff

every single one of us
the same
except the stupid branch we’ve
ended up perched on,

early or not the worms are earmarked
and the **** always falls down

The fat, the grease,
of these in between days
stills my pen a little

So even if I wrestle
with another monumental year tick,
like the crack of doom

I look at the stuff in the fridge
and shrug

The existential crisis can wait
til the brie is done
and the crackers
have gone soft

I breathed deep
as my fingers curled on the wheel
and gripped leather,

my memory clutched at vinyl

the engine was running,
number plates grinning yellow
as the utter ******* torrent of thoughts
ignored the exhaust

the exhausting

I could drive out forward or reverse
well rehearsed either way

these wheels just don’t know

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

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

The edges of summer’s
soak and throb routine
begin their curled leaf fraying
with the last fat spoons of clotted dreams
lashed haphazard

All those weights we foisted forward
to when wet autumn
would just **** us off anyway
rattle-threat at their fastenings
in the fractious post-tropical gales

Inertia makes it clear
why our transatlantic cousins call it fall,
but pre-echoes of crisp, clear frosts
do their best to placate anxieties
that appear to be calendared

Mist chose to linger a while,
though mild air belied October.

Overwhelmed by birdsong,
loud against the abstract silence
of these adolescent sentinels,
stood like arboretum trees
filled with the gravitas
of no age, no age at all.

The year passed as always
with them growing taller,
bolder, a little more aware
of wisdom’s cost
and the one they lost.

The weight of the world
as it waits for the red, red earth to move
a collective breath held
as a personal fear is shared

For a news cycle, we care
and choke a little at the tiny coffin
before clowns and sabre-rattlers
blind us from the graves behind

Autumn questions
with no immediate answers

gradually denuding
to reveal skeletal branches
penning their script against pale skies,
writing of the sharp tongued winter
lying ahead

I’m in my forties now
and if I knock my knee it aches for days
even if I can’t say
precisely when and how I did it

Vexed I am left to neck ibuprofen
and recall what I took for granted
in the fat rosiness of my twenties

But I have my own front door
and a car
and keys for both
and when things go wrong I can fix them
or at least pay a guy called Steve
to pop round and do that for me
while I watch the news and tut

I have my own front door
behind which I can hide safe
with only the news to scare me,
I put a tire iron under my bed
to feel better

Late at night I look out the window
from time to time
to see the reassuring flash
of my car’s alarm indicator
and I wonder in the dark who else can see it

The news and my social media
say things are bad and getting worse
so I’m glad of my front door
I don’t go out too much anymore
anyway

not like the past
when knocks and bumps were shrugged off
and my guts could take a hit
and I was one of the people
making drunken noises in the night
but it was just a laugh, right?

Not like now.
These folk have no respect.
I lock the door as soon as I am in,
car or house
and check the news again.
I might call Steve and see if he can set me up
some CCTV.

If you had diarrhoea
got caught short, took a ****
in that drawer where you keep all your cables
and bits tangled vociferously
then later discovered you needed
a spare micro usb,
so you had no choice
but to roll up your sleeves,
that would be this Monday

No poetry on Mondays
sorry
thems the rules
not even a half rhyme
a poignant metaphor
a little alliteration
or assonance

******

Well, ol’ boy
stood in the vista, a little lost
but feet finding the pub
nonetheless

that sun tried to make its point
which, though we acknowledged,
we tried to sidestep

clag mud added heavy boots
while loose, happy chat sat
in apotheosis

til a moussaka
and a couple of sublime fish dishes
let us sit down and rest

after miles
these muscles pretend to ache

Impossibly,
pigeons sparked against a cerulean sky
spinning like a tossed hand of loose change
in appreciation of the day’s artistry

On the bed’s edge,
trying to align and affix,
gingerly stretching muscles that used to behave,
their co-ordinated flight cast me
momentarily saddened
as each sock and trouser leg moaned on

Still,
the sun kissed us all, anyway

Sunlight on us, tempest tossed,
disheveled in the quietude

A toaster’s clunk gives cause to move,
routine plates, butter,
knives are passed

The rasp as blackened slices scrape
mocks hollow the request
to leave the dial alone

For my mother friends:
my good gosh you are amazing.

Kids in general spew and hurl,
flail utter ******* at you
and forget the next day

boys stink,
think in straight lines ‘til they don’t,
girls twist all sorts of hate
and then hug your very soul

you are the world to them
forgoing all others
to be kicked and kissed equally

which is why you have my envy x

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

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

Blackbirds backwards
and your solid foil to my boiling yawn
is remembered

I’ll always love you my dude

even though it’s mostly memory now
we travelled odd eighties early nineties
hinterlands
full of clear stupidities and hidden
immutable truths

but I’ll always hold
ridiculous dry heated cricket pitches,
run dark *** and loose joints
as what drove us

“What should we do today?”
“I dunno”

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

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