Skimming and scanning
the grammar of the riverbank’s
brown leaf, new shoot syntax
a bold type wren,
like the old bouncing ball of singalongs,
led my eye to read the waterline
and yet I still couldn’t discern
if smiles or tears were written
while the branch tips still scribed

My free stumbling foot
disturbed your treetop dining
and you took flight,
vivid yellow talons
gripping a glut-plump
summer rat
in best of health if not for
inches of claw
****** through chest

I see that carrion
is not your only meal
as I’d believed,
discounting your size
as faux majesty
by a flamboyant opportunist

But now I see you better
and in proving to pick your battles,
know you more

Remind me again
of the where and when of it,
it’s slipping through my finger memories
and my heart slows

Tell me of the Technicolor past,
even with the scratched film stock
I need to see it again
to affirm the mummers truth
and rest easy

I know you tire of the words,
of me,
sorry, sorry me

But the third reel is fixed
and the epilogue’s flickered approach
rattles near

Before the credits roll
narrate me a last flashback
to suspend our disbelief in

Sometimes hearts
break in specific ways,
we will apply bandages
but the scars will form vivid,
worn by us all as memory
that the best burn bright
but brief

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

Cook for me,
put things in the ***
that make my tongue go
Hello Dolly!

Rock ‘n’ roll flavours
savoury sweet and acid hot
so lips smack and I get lost

It’s not the quantity that counts
just the beguiling intensity
of spice blends, herbs
and the nerve to let the metal smoke

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.

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

Next to me was this one
and her feet were never still
she twirled and span through contretemps
and likely always will

That one had intensity
but never said a word
from blackened fingered canvases
his voice could still be heard

These two stood in spotlights
and held everyone in thrall
performing other’s stories,
their own a quieted call

And the group raised up their voices
which entwined and fit so well
and the chorus spoke of everything
they’d never usually tell

These memories, these children,
who moved, who drew, who showed,
who sang unguarded clarity
while the emptiness bellowed

Used to have us allies
used to have us care,
now, become statistics
now, are never there

Into the long grass,
the long, long ponder
lost to breath and tears
lost to wonder
lost to the clear and present
or the hereafter
but there in the past
a cancer tumour twisted
all the slow growth
til the now,
this rotten gutted now

A slow skull, but steady
as four pull by in unison,
the river readies me for another day
with current confidences
quietly spoken

In comparison, the busy chat
of small brown birds seems rude,
but cheek and charm
forgive a lot
if not all

It’s to the bees I’ll look
for industry this Sunday,
though if their lead will be followed
is yet to be decided

I walked in grey today
intent on letting the scale
of the problem spiral

I sat on an illicit log
and allowed the panic and sorrow in
to grip my throat
fold me inwards
and paint the worst case scenario

but the day wouldn’t let me sink,
my river companion lazily waved,
sinuous fish flowing through,
two green blurs of woodpeckers
tickled me to lift my head again

The crowning azure flash
of the kingfisher
shocked a grin,
unfolded
and I was back to the dizzying
ups and downs of everything

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

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

These dry bones
once fit together strong
while time flowed one way:
on

That current held surprise
that knocked joints off guard
and a lied about collapse
occurred

Their ham fist could grip limbs
and clunk them together
in a fruitless pulse,
for what?

The trunk and branch
of what’s to come
must be reseeded
mulched and nurtured,
maintained root to crown
in different growth
or the same clown gardeners
will bring us down

As local as shoe leather,
though laced a little differently
I still feel the pull of aul boody,
aul boy,
a voice of ancient things

this impossible centre of England
with the flow of Plantagenet
of Watling
of Nene and Welland
where nothing happens
but everything has

rich in silver willow
and tannery stink
still giving cause to think,
to feel Clare’s fears
as the inexorable tarmac is laid
and each day passed
as the hedged wren and dunnock
begin to explain
green and pleasant pains

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

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

The sounds of your voices
work with me,
the resonance of your mirth,
your anger, your vexation,
your empathy, your soul,
is orchestral in our everyday scrum
to keep me humming along

Air with sinuous folds
flows fluid around me
thick with spring ebullience

each footstep more like
arm stroke
swimming languid
in spring itself

the expected hiss-splash
replaced by irrepressible birdsong
and a thrum of insect wings

A moment catches:
scent thrills a heart,
grabs memory in a vice
that denies gut overhang
and aching bones,
never a thing before

are is good
were is heaven

We’re waiting for you, little pearl,
not that we need you to rush
take your time as the arms to catch you
will cwtch forever

Your mama has laid layer and layer
of love on you,
egg-shell cautious love

So be rambunctious on arrival
and we’ll mostly forgive sleepless nights

Just come little pearl
come in little girl

our world awaits x

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.

I had a ghost, too polite to scare,
haunting took the form of kind notes,
a fridge periodically restocked,
socks paired and put in drawers

Eschewing rattled chains and wails
it chose to put the radio on,
only ever easy listening,
Sunday mourning

No ectoplasm,
no unexplained temperature drops
no arcanely spelled clues
to the tragedy of a restless soul

In time, it exorcised itself
and my communion was lost,
with a tidied kitchen,
all brass fittings shone

And I was left with everyday fear

Remember the sandwich of youth?

On a drizzly beach with actual sand,
the grit crunch making things somehow better
for the supermarket cheddar
and margarine on sliced white

Let the memories come

The loved ones flinging frisbees,
or playing impossible cricket matches,
grand unplanned architecture,
studded with dead shells,
monuments to a hopeful utopia,
collapsed by the heavy-heeled truths of vengeful siblings
or everyday tides

Sea air makes you hungry and tired,
content,
like life and years try

Mary Beard’s on TV
discussing which art
could be suppressed,
never seen and placed
in secretum

The brash *******,
raw ****** ******,
Roman Charity
and priapic rampancy
does, I suppose, provoke thought.

My submission:
anything etched
by class 9Y,  Period 5 on a Friday

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

Mainly blue, but colours shift
as the nape of your neck smell might appeal
or the mole on your cheek
that will stubbornly never be Marilyn

This love, like bright sunlight in shallows
will dapple and confuse greens and golds
as our souls ossify in cool weeds

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

I can stay and die
or I can try to go where angry folk don’t want me

Death, or raging pink faces
is a choice of sorts,
but still no place, no home

So, beheading, or maybe hanging,
lynched by dragging,
or if lucky, shot alone,

versus locking up in a green walled facility,
****** as it may be,
until someone takes a moment to judge me safe,
is luxury

Or maybe I’ll be deported,
doomed,
I struggle to see your view against me

As a young brown man I know I’m done,
I might have a degree in medicine
or years of fixing cars or houses, horses,
understand trade or charity

It won’t matter
when my photofit
reminds you of another brown man
who blew himself up or lashed out with a knife,
for a misread life and afterlife

A few white lives will always tip the scale
where hundreds,
thousands,
millions of ours,
despite your fears
will not prevail

Us as cracked pots,
with a possibility to be fixed
as fine and flawed

The geology of our clay:
dirt will behave as dirt,
rare earth as rare earth

With time it transmutes
to something new,
shot with old veins when fired

The new *** fragile,
prone to drops and knocks,
desperate to hold known water

Thoughts gather and pool
and the weight of wet clothing
sits heavier

a moment slowed,
where falling rain
mutes some senses,
nudges others

catching melancholic glances
puddled and ponded
can spark reflection,
but not at depth

set a course back home
to hang leaden jackets
and wait

Can you fault us for thinking
this blue above is vaulted,
strung in bolts, in reams
of ichor,
of material suggested and believed
instead of stubborn physics?

Stereoscopic vision is great
for seeing the ants walk close
and the rehabilitated bees
on local blooms

It can’t see, properly,
that the azure ceiling is a lie
of just refraction,
that’s always there
as long as our clouds allow

Today’s slow cooked ragu
has a lot of familiar ingredients
but spun a little different

The devil in the pork grease
gave me such a wink
I lost my place in the recipe

Liberal with salt, chili flakes,
zest and anything,
this quixotic cook’s hand
throws much freer than weekdays

I only lack the fat slack
of pappardelle for this,
as they were out at the supermarket

Penne will have to do

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

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

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

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

The limited palette of the January riverbank,
#nomakeup #nofilter
just the burst capillaries and thread veins
bare

A tired earthy visage,
still allures the blackbird and wren
who never truly got the hang
of saying when
and feast past decency

The idea is to recuperate
and re-emerge fresh and green
but truth seems more like this molasses mud
that hold boots firm

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

Get that window open!
Go on, do it!

Feel the fat rotation of the planet
throwing a little spring our way
to poke our amygdala
and rattle our dormancy

and sure, we know at the back of minds
a bare faced bait and switch is in play
which means our twitching fingers
will seek to put the big coats in the loft
only with dismay to find the grey frost
return to bite our ***** mid-March

but we can dream and show some ankle
can’t we?

We hold out for this spring
harder than a man who’s lost nine digits
to frostbite
so we can point to where it hurts,
be heard,
aware that we’re linked,
a swarm of warmer hands
that need to hold, to cling, to brace
against this lingering, malingering pain

We’re ready to emerge,
but only together
and while inclement, duplicitous weather
still rages
we’re better, sadly,
caved

To crawl, the impossible crawl
to swear, the most swearable curse
to bear all the ******* they throw us
and not, leave the place in a hearse

To nod, when you just want to punch
to eat, every snack that you see
to cry, when you misplace a pencil
or meltdown when you can’t find your keys

This is our quest!
To get to the end!
Without killing a colleague,
or upsetting our friends

To still teach fractious kids
without question or pause
to stride strong into period 5
without breaking some laws

And I know that the end is in sight
so I’ll bite my lip
late July will be peaceful and calm
with a big gin to sip

And the future will not be so bad
to our heart and skills we affirm
September we’ll all start again
but for now we consign to the past
the unteachable term

This morning
bird song
like black tar ******
incapacitates

dizzies senses
slight numbed
by minor isolation

all too brief
a moment of reverie holds

before returning to
web spun garage
and forgotten loft

to make busy

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.

As with the wind’s cold reminder,
as with the new leaf’s shock,
we remember when we are

This grey overcoat holds sway
but in its way, familiar
and fitting

The technicolour
glitz of balmy days
failed to keep us captive

Rattle on your prison bars today
and swing low
for unsure tomorrows

Toward the end of it all
my knackered earth beds
sit dishevelled
like a mother’s rushed haircut

tufts of the next growth
brace for another brown-grey winter
while the last redcurrants hide,
blood dark rubies
tucked in dying leaves of neighbour bushes

in the middle, the supermarket spruce
of three years ago
waits its turn
growing done in the throng of all
while the sun played favourites

soon, in the cat pad darks
the ground will be given back to rule,
cold, empty and silent

This is for us
who work with those
we love or tolerate
(hate seems a bit strong
for them we’re forced among,
it’s not like we’re a picnic either...)

You are mainly wonderful,
sometimes misguided,
but we’ll hide grumps
in flippant huffs
because we know the pull
is mostly in the same direction

But know we miss the scrum,
the ****** staff room air,
hurried tea and coffee
and meaningful cake

Daily, we take time to thank you
as we grapple this stupidity
that dwarfs all sense

The dinner table desk
is a lonely place

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

Take to the streets
and beat them with kindness,
club them with your decency,
ram home an ideology
to show that looking after our weakest
saves us all

hobble them with thumps
that scream
a little love goes a long way

that those that aren’t the same as you
in hue or shape or song,
if hearts are good,
belong in your world

cut them to the quick
with cameraderie
support and tolerance
destroy their unjust fears
and crush their tribalism

In cracking hard heads
the only death we’ll see
is a diseased past
which, unlike other countries
races or creeds,
needs to be lost and forgotten

Holding on to painful glories
costs more than the oxidised bronze
of an old man’s statue

I spent fifteen minutes of the lesson
chasing a roll of Polo mints and a pound coin
out of a small hole in the working class lining of his pointless blazer, to stop him taking scissors to it,
even though mum said it was OK

At the same time, my child bosses
decided to cut my subject
from the formerly rich platter available
to our blasted, gorgeous youth
because, reasons
which I suppose are financial and deeply,
numerically,
justifiable

Meanwhile, the next kid in junior school
silently loses the opportunity
to be anything other
than a state certified failure

So, cheers