My word
nothing does love/hate
quite as poetically
as a teacher reaching holiday’s end

intrinsic guilt of ‘not having done’
bound up with seeing our colleagues
loved and hated
again

and those ******, beautiful, ugly
broken-bright
impossible-everyday kids

my words

Iron in the stone bleeds a colour
against grey enamel,
bone bedrock

See ticks and tocks writ on lined faces,
craning to read flickered futures
where rock-solid certainties
and metal connectivities clash
in janky dissonance

Grasping the surety of a copper coin
in a clenched fist,
the shape as sure as love and rage,
when opened, shows
the sleight of hand and thought
sold to us all

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

To be ginger in a heatwave
is to know that a surfeit of energy
that enthrals the populace
has consequence

Like any addict with an allergy
landed on a thing they love
you learn to skirt and sample
knowing sickness follows

The uninitiated will gorge and fall
swearing off the juice for good
and withdrawing a raised voice
which is bad

Pace yourselves for the longness
of an unexpected summer
so that when winter hits
we continue to burn

Let’s think
of the sunk cost fallacy
whereby
the sweat, tears and cash
you’ve ****** into your endeavours
means you never let go
of your burning ambition
so you beg borrow steal
to stave off the immutable truth
that you’re wrong

Then let’s think
that instead of a business
or crazy high jinks
you invested in the sense that
some humans outrank others
at birth
and hidden behind the privilege
of that thought you ignored
what was often in front of your face
or at your work place
or fatally jogging through your neighbourhood
til it shone straight in your eyes

and your beg steal borrowing
does nothing
because lies and filthy ideologies
can’t stand the light of day
so grasp as you will at
the pictures and voices of shills
who defend the grotesque
and try to mess up a people,
a nation,
with fat cat, fat handed,
fat tongued oppression
your fingers *****, but empty

The lesson:

it’s ok to be wrong

it’s ok to draw lines
under ugly pasts
so futures can be brighter,
you can apologise,
learn
and make right

A swallow pair appeared
fashionably late
to legitimise the charcoal incense burned
in honour of escaping carpet
and the same ****** curtains

Other birds stuck with us through the ****
but as they are chubby, drab and common,
love’s taken for granted

The sign of these slick interlopers
with their continental drift
makes us giddy and all a-flap
at least til the bite of autumn

For a moment,
a minute maybe,
an hour,
my head went under

it wasn’t thrashing gasps
or clawing to froth the surface,
just a steady,
non-negotiable weight
that spoke to my ankles
of depths

I tried to keep my eyes up
following the lipped bubble trail
to the howling truth above
but when my head dropped
the blue belows almost soothed

finally, before lungs gave,
tired fingers relented,
worried the knots,
freed the old strokes loose

Peach lingers as sunlight falls
  and behind, has even painted
      grey clouds happier
        and I try to inhale seven,
                                exhale eleven,
      but the frantic black-wire
                        gut-froth won’t tire
                     today

Stand arboreally tall,
present a strength,
represent stability,
provide a safe place,
wide-branched sanctuary,
hold rooted principles,
speak truth to power,

til the hour you break and tumble,
your fingers thumbs
and your heart falling
numbed

senses bent, thoughts fraying,
tattered threads evasive,
the very idea of existence,
position,
self,
buckles

Far-sightedness retracts,
a fancy contra-zoom,
Hitchcockian,
eyes locked on your two feet,
tip-toes edged up
against your own precipice,
your own private void

We all feel this
sooner or later,
but its ridiculous melodrama
stills our tongues to tell,
til we’re left believing
we’re the only losers facing hell

To speak is strong,
to cry courageous,
to panic and dread next steps, next breaths,
is human

I pledge to listen, ask for the same
and beg that next time
we keep shooting the breeze
until the ledge fades

Glimmers in the hinterlands
as I begin to settle
into reaching my Old Ben days.

So rage reshapes, tempers
and can be passed
to the compassionate and energised youth

Torch will still be borne
and saber swung
but I’ll pay in aches and pains
in coming days
and likely collapse to
sage blue spirit status

My anger slowly feels
like an elegant weapon
for a more civilised age
while the streets call
for the bluntness of a blaster

I’ve mastered thinking round and round
and missed chances to parry,
but my force will be added
to the great wave of change

This empire is dead

Tell me you see ice cream,
cold British beaches, amber filtered
hanging bright buckets and spades
and pebbles and sand
tight lanes through time lost green fields
with only hedges passing judgement
tell me you see *****
(the good kind)
and flabby dad *** abs
that remember the potency of other times
tell me you see the sea
tell me you see me there

They can sadly twist naturally
even though trellis and secateurs
should train properly
a root bitterness can still linger

Most of the time a healthy growth,
both verdant and upward holds
but on dark days
or at dusk, the shoots can bolt

More so if left dense in clusters
so a monoculture prevails
when no amount of cutting back
will yield fruit

Plants get stunted, malformed
and left unchecked will stifle others.
So give time to your horticulture
for all our sakes

A little splinter today
a tiny shiv
to ***** at our resolve
to flatten the curve

buckle in and fatten up
in your locality
so beautiful days
can be unlocked again

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 ****

We coulda been anything that we wanted to be
but our unshaped dreams
saw us in smokey cinemas
or waiting for VHS rewinds
to learn songs or follow twists
as humans wrestled with being flawed,
at the dark end of the street,
facing the devil
or dodging foam in a fake speakeasy

Feel the good cheer,
like they say in the poem

I get that beef fat and butter
in this day and age are a sin
and contribute to the decline
of myself and this earth

But, my lords and ladies,
I am weak
and beholden to the
grease shined smile
on stuffed chops
as my euphemistic dad ***
becomes ever more so,
ballooning to a middle age where
there be dragons

I plead mercy,
and perhaps some ice cream

I lay and looked up today
and on the cerulean blue
a letter was written in different hands

Starlings told of the everyday
shuttling from A to B til teatime
while flits of blue *** and dunnock
hinted at local worry
maybe at the lackadaisical cat
whose frou-frou collar
ruins the hunt

In fancy script the swifts
wrote high and mighty
chasing the imperceptible,
so not so distant really

The paragraph break of the red kite
weighed in
and wings and fingers stopped
to marvel
at near perfect epistolary

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

The path ahead is unclear
the first few steps seem fine
(as fine is redefined by times)
beyond is cowled in green gloom
with definition hidden
but enticing

We pause and breathe
ask feet to tentatively tread possibilities
for surer surface

The line ascribed
by timeless river run
seems safe
and the possibility of kingfishers
is a draw indeed

But we have seen these river banks
lost to inundation
and irresistible weight

To realise this too late
would be fatal

so we collaborate in waiting
and make the call

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

Pause

For thought or effect,
the end’s the same

Played your hands in the game like always

But

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

And where did the vitriol get you,
old man?

To a better place?
Where fat white women sing your praise?

While at home your carbon copies
bust their lips
when the home team loses?

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

You waiting for something?
Applause for working a nine to five
and allowing a fraction
of your take home to be spent on living,
raising?

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

I’ll stand over you now
As you stood over me
Instead of raining blows
I’ll let the misery of your truth
Catch in your chest
and fight for the cause

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

Your sick incarceration
held against a shining will
‘til unmoored you walked

a light you couldn’t see,
that lifted others,
dimmed

each step seeming free
with inexorable gravity
drew to the woods

your last embrace
brought cold release
and all our griefs became

The fabric usually feels the same
a cloth that remains soft
similar to everyday
until, perhaps, a stain
a rip, a tear

I would love to wear the world
as was before all this
but perhaps my prior idiocy
is why we remember

Bookends with fatty livers and bad backs
squinting at instructions
for another **** fool distraction
and the laughing, thankfully

On the walk, bees, butterflies,
catkin reminders of time and loops
and irregular pooping
as constants

Thankfully, laughing
requires just enough muscles
from those that still work,
but I’ll feel it tomorrow

As nightly, screens scream,
buckle, near break
with images of blistered humanity
abroad
with normal folk caught
in quick-quick-slow anxiety,
at home
a fat clown
knights a *****

Splinter and divide,
time after time,
bluster and misdirect,
point to the workshy or foreigners,
twist the knife in vulnerable hearts
and fan the fear

We’re here because at some point past
we agreed this land should last
that it stands for goodness and right
and all heads shared the thought
so the idea
became

Our disgust and indignance
threatens a retreat
so the squeakiest wheel triumphs
through attrition

Your mission,
should you choose to accept it,
is this:

Call out the heartless, the bleak,
the self self self serving,
the thoughtless, the blinkered
the unthinkers

Every breath, every day
our grit and mettle can save us
and an idea worth saving

Dusk inside, sometimes

Sometimes out

A heart shout, above cloud thrill

Given infinite patience

Standing still, still, still

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

I’ve never ‘got’ football,
always felt like a bruise
I wasn’t sure how I’d got
or a changing room joke that involved
small ***** or arcane bullying

Perhaps my tutelage was bad
but the pattern in my head
is gammon woven
with misogyny, bigotry
and misunderstood pride

But these boys,
with unhappiness and graft built in,
with ‘other’ credibility,
broad shoulders, tough chins,
make me think that with my time again
I’d have listened

So to them, I opine:
you’ve earned a win,
and have one

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

Something is rotten,
but not in the state of Denmark
the body politic is sickening from the spread
as the virus flows and ebbs around us
but that’s not the biggest threat
to our collective, collected health

the insidious radiation that emanates
when certain men step out
from their lead-lined bunkers
is weakening our sinews,
loosening our hair and teeth
and mocking and braying at our grief

backed up as it is
by mustard gas clouds of lies
built on the bones of xenophobes and the afraid
some with excuses, or, whatever,
but most with puce, spittle-flecked faces
apoplectic at the creep-dawning realisation
of their impotent, way it’s always been ways

and like the Cnuts they clearly are
rather than retreat from the waves
and figure out more sensible ways to behave
as centuries progress
they will ‘make a stand’
thick, bitter filled pint-mug in hand
‘til the tide will see them drown

meanwhile on dry, rich land
the tin-*** Machiavellis
rub their hands and drive long away
to have their eyes tested,
divest themselves of kids,
or check on their second homes
as the bloated bodies bob out to sea
all too slowly

Stick to the tides,
know the ruses, the rise
and fall of lunar pulls and gravity

so when you sail
your keel will only graze
what rocks beneath

for if those barnacle-stain
kelp-slapped teeth bite,
no panicked oar stroke
will hide that crimson bloom

they smell blood from a quarter mile

Strange times indeed
when time itself has
adopted corporate technique
and seeks efficiencies

cutbacks in shaded
public daydreams
and an addendum added
so on the clock is replaced
by elongated shifts
in fluorescent lighted kitchens
or fuggy bedrooms

and yes, we will accept
the company line
it’s for the greater good

but your worst innovation
is to bring forward collection
of our family and friends’
souls and smiles
like you can shave some time
to make a smoother run
down the line

these things aren’t yours to take yet

The vitriol drips
entered through eyes or loose lips
take hold and make most
a little sick

At the same time
chlorophyll is tickled
and the ambient temp
clicks biological switches
and the earth does it’s thing

It won’t stop because we’re hurting,
quite the opposite,
it’ll take its chance to breathe
without us being *******

So when we’re done coughing
and it couches us again in
long grass and butterfly kisses,
let’s try not to forget

Down the line
your fat self sits content
at a life spent mostly decent

Your green cheeks absorb for now
and by ****** you grow,
occasionally showing off
to love and wince at later
on Timehop

You don’t think of roots.

Why would you?
Your wood grows supple
and strong with you
alone

But roots make you belong
and yield

Our youthful skill
of ignoring feelings
sticks with some

I rest in the quiet thoughts
that might involve tired arms
and unadorned hearts and faces

to fantasise boredom with you
is a new low/high to replace
my easy crippling everyday nowt

I currently know that
to fall asleep with you
unwashed and noisy tired
is all I think I need

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

To the average working stiff
the mouth feel of Saturday
always popped and fizzed

a day to get on with the business
of being
without being defined by your business
(shout out to all in retail and shift work
your heartache is saved for other verse)

This Saturday has come
with revised terms and conditions
that seem to have rather stunted
the former purpose
like a PC revision
gutting all the cheeky dirt
for contemporary sensibilities

Fine, but understand
that from behind closed doors
a million folk are figuring
how to **** about in a myriad
of new ways

Ye can take our pubs,
but ye cannae take
our shenanigans!

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

No one on this wet rock is self-made
they all got fat with a safety net,
foundations laid
by mothers and fathers who gave
time, lives, thought, truths
so we can do what we do

It’s this we should continue

Let those who can
burn bright and earn,
that’s fine, they’ll cope
but your concern should be
the bedrock beneath us

Your every task should be to
feed, clothe, educate and make safe.

If you want Great,
supposed lost,
fulfil your role as public servants,
right and honourable,
that’s the only real cost

Edged laughter of teachers,
bone-tired from the joy-slog weeks passed,
speaks of an adult relief,
R and R for bruised hearts and knocked heads

Coming off the front line,
hard fought thought-inches precariously gained,
we sit in living room street cafes,
flowing vin du table,
inhaling rest like Gauloise

The distant classroom thud and rumble never fully fades,
echoed in sandbags of intelligence to be pored over
deciphered, summarised in triplicate,
for later summits

But it will wait

For now, we’ll catch a show, an eye,
maybe even a lie of peace,
for one duvet-warm morning

Soon, we’ll be back to inspecting boots,
buttons, buckles, sharpened pens ready,
waiting for the whistle

The rains come heavy
often every side
and you might dance
like Instagram cushions suggest
or you might just gaze
through eighties music video panes
I ain’t missing you at all

Afterwards though
the sodden ground dilemma,
paths erased
muddied water
that flows regardless
while your boots lose home

The twang of anxiety
and rattle of adrenaline
is hard to dispel
sat facing a laptop
at a kitchen table,
making all video calls
seem like I’m an addict
jonesing for my next fix.
I got the Teams twitch.

The answer “Ok, just tired.”,
like a reflex action,
as knee-**** as the daft decisions,
naïve, fear driven, not yours,
that put you here

In that “tired”, a million branched to’s
trigger a billion possible do’s
flowing like black sand
while you run on fumes
trying to clear
just
one
space

No one wins
digging holes on the beach
while the ignorant tide comes in

I guess this is the trip
of today’s triptych,
still surrounded by
hours of life reinvented

My feet are the same
though achey from lack of use
and my tongue is still in my head,
though less flapped

Our lingua franca
is now a babble of
isolation song

It’s not often
we sing together
so let’s be loud
and love proper hard

Exhausted
kneeling so grit is driven deep
and the sneer and shove
of those robed in a fake love
harries

The smug, paid for fists
of sanctioned thuggery
inflict blows that go beyond
contusion and haematoma
deep into a world soul,
and scar

Solutions are there
if we bring a whetstone
to the keen edge of care
and weaponise kindness

Because something that has
been a mess for generation upon generation
can’t be ignored to fester more

It is time to exercise rights
and excise

This light,
amber edge of autumn,
kisses souls to forget
the once welcomed lethargic sweats of summer
and gently chides us to remember

woollen pullovers and happiness
in sharp cold breaths intaken,
exhaled as a fake sophisticate
puffing on a glamorous cigarette

As the year begins its sleep
our senses wake
to ask questions in the dark

Our feet scuffed drying ruts
along the riverbank
and we gave the land
our thanks for holding up

Alongside us, green bright head
curious,
a duck and drake kept pace

I know the quizzical eye
was a bread request
but you’re as lucky as the rest of us

Above us, swimming languid
in unbounded blue
two buzzards circled

My mind got to thinking:
what fate are they
hoping for?

Indigo shades steeping
to Indian ink blackness
******* thought
to a beautiful, terrible singularity
where words struggle
to escape gravity
but on we fly

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

Like, you float
and welcome the buoyancy
But
a mooring now and then
would be loved