I know which fat bells are tolling
with “Pupils come first” on lips
like a benediction spoke by those
whose fingers dip the collection box

But it can wait.

Piles of marking like ancient pillars
meant for Samson to do his thing
remain upright

Because a little tight in this metaphor,
Samson is for cooking a roast
playing video games
and watching the last gasp of TV,
anyone with me?

A metal nosed thought
wished for bark dreams
and grass forgetfulness

No age
no age at all
never a justification
a reason to placate us
just an implacable, non-negotiable theft
of love, histories and too much still to be

the solace, a skinflint’s compensation,
is that for a short while you had them
and they had you
and that was life

but that’s as much as you get
to try to make it through

I know this stuff
is gloomy sad at times,
but hiding the fact there are few rhymes
and I laugh at poops and farts
most of all
is part of my poet’s call x

You fed the words to me
slowly at first
easily digested syllables
that helped me navigate
a knee-high world

as a gift,
it’s not immediately apparent
how unlocking sounds
that name the nameless
saves us

but with time,
joy and adversity
the truth of our voice
shines through

to abandon words
is to lose one more grip
so
where you can

keep talking

It’s true that sometime
bare limb and sprig can be beautiful,
that dun lands can show stark heart,
but for this diurnal chimp
the cough of leaves remembered,
a view engorged,
is deeply needed

We grew in this yard
in between the broken glass and dog ****
vine inches
minutes by hours by days
roots crept in an inconsistent soil
and growing despite

To arrive now with weekend garden centre eyes
you may see weakness in some leaves
that belies the truth of a fragile fruit
long nurtured from blood
and uncompromising viticulture

And if you try to claim the bouquet
or the legs on that glass
or the complexity of hard fought tannins
and subtle warmth
and lasting aftertaste

Then you will see us spit

In the case of
minor poet versus hangover
I find in favour of hangover

minor poet shall cover costs
with ill thought words
and petty half rhymes
and pay a fine of couplets
and regular metre
like proper poems

may god have mercy on your headache

A cello’s open C
nearly derailed me.
Cerys snuck it in,
slow Sundaying,
nearly made me stop the car
and howl
as the bow drew on my guts
like blissful punishment,
the sullen throb
calling human

Twang of iron behind teeth
picking yourself up again, again
from a self-penned melodrama
(one with a snot-sobbing end)

Clouds part, lending a single beam
striking your heart, and you know

Dragging the back of your hand
across fat lips that creep up
for the first time since constant bowls of cereal
and giggling, cartoon mornings

Collecting everything that’s yours
in one hand, a little blood
the doorway shines and you’re gone

A hand cast the jigsaw pieces
of my redemption wide
and I walk to find them

Gapped puzzle patches showing
a veneer beneath, of reasonable quality,
are nonetheless an irritant

The late game phase
I assumed would be easier
has not especially yielded fruit

Still reliant on chanced epiphanies
this approach lacks the efficiency
my bald head and white whiskers
belie

The world doesn’t know it needs setting right
but we do it anyway
against bucolic backgrounds,
corners of this sceptered isle
known only to types who like to ramble

point to point meticulously planned
by his draughtsman’s hand
our mouths and minds driving us more than legs
words to square away despair at the world
or delight in some magical new tech
to save it

these are footsteps I’ve always followed
always will
despite a mardy heel drag  in my teenage years
the muscle memory - one foot, then the other -
cannot be unwritten
even as knees now complain otherwise

Blossom caressed
fat leafed
unabashed
exhibitionist spring
get out and let it couch you
to forget
and remember

The wan light might be tired
but it tries to shine

In this kind of darkness,
this is fine

loose moral blossom
flaunting for all comers
throbbingly defying
pigeon-holes
to let life thrum

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

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

Caulk these broken bows, please
whether salt or fresh water,
it has weight, presence
and if allowed to pour in
it will sink me

Trying not to think too much
won’t work
as the only perpetual motion found
in this empirical life
is in our anxious minds
so as life jackets go
it’s a no no

To ask for a shipwright is unfair
but to have you there,
tar brush in hand
is enough

My absent minded eye,
turned inwards on issues
of land and place,
did not at first see your dilemma

As the bully bird towered over
you hopped in looping rolls to flee

My eye caught up
and my fat presence unnerved the bird
who flew
and though I presented a different challenge
you bounded hedgeway
pausing in front of me momentarily

Our eyes met,
your black polished buttons
spelled your youth
and redundantly I greeted you

I stepped aside
to better let you escape
to tangle green safety
and I was alone again,
grasping at thoughts

The rest of my walk was elevated:
a wind struck tree,
dry guts splintered,
said something

A lithe muntjac
rose panic in me as it sought to pass,
it’s leaping form unusual,
but there and gone
before I knew

Green woodpecker laughed
at an unknown gag
and my brow furrowed

Toward the end
the complicated wren song,
a grammar babble way beyond,
underscored my lack of comprehension
all the way home

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

Like silk threads, I watched my life today
stretch taught but hold,
colleagues and friends weighted,
reaffirming their bedrock
as again plates shifted

Our watered shoots
stood bewildered but steady,
as future wounds reached them
despite our insistent gauze

Looking through windows,
we grown, choked
as other faces told our pasts again

And we fought not to feel
though we knew that we had to

Because every day’s a school day

It threatens to shatter,
as the impossibly dark weight pushes on your
jerry-rigged defences,
propped up by the seventeen muscles
straining in your forced smile

but know that inches from your fingertips
and at the end of your sentences
we’re there waiting,
safety nets woven from former grief
which over time has tempered
to be strong enough to lend a hold
to those that need
to you

Gee officer Krupke
my memories hold nunya well
dug the early grave and stood above

my soul still holds tunes and counter melodies
and my heart bleeds
it bleeds ooblee-oo
ooblee-oo it bleeds

pools like knives
belts and rocks
still bleeds buenos
noches

This is where the wet will be
when my wellies come out of hibernation
(though, technically, it’s aestivation,
every day’s a school day)

when someday soon, this loop,
this recuperative walk
will weigh heavy on my feet
with the mud of thought
and of the mud of actual mud

til then I’ll wend, mostly light footed
with the rattle of mowers
and threat-cackle of magpies
to score me
and though not Oscar worthy
the kite-screech soundtrack serves

Barbiturate sunshine afternoons
obscure the niggling work pile
and with fat heat, cool anger,
opening evenings to virtuous
leaf based dinners
only slightly ruined
by too much beer and ice cream

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

We were woollen
as the coach pulled up
alongside the C of E school

our swimming provided free
and municipal
so the stung eyes and barked, sodden ideas
were mitigated

at least if we fell
into the rank brown swells nearby
our inevitable drowning
could be offset:

the boy could swim
and was a king at buying the 5p
Highland Toffee from the machine

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

With fat-winged thrash and clatter
you endeavour to nest build
in the most precarious of places
cat prowled and mown by me
(if a little infrequently)

You’ll have my admiration,
protection
and whatever feed I can find
as I keep in mind
it’s you who show us the
old normal
amidst the new

word worrier
word wanderer
caught impossible
thought entirely
lexicographer extraordinaire
except for those I’m dumb on
like Floccinaucinihilipilification
which could mean
anythang x

We can’t blame words
for showing us truths
that make us cry
or selling us lies
that make us fall in love so hard
the north wind knocks from us

We can’t praise words
for revealing paradise
allowing us to stroll there
quiet, some days,
and know better

We can only intone the syllables,
wrestle syntax to some semblance
of meaning
for the clicks, croons and chatter
we utter, or fix in lines
for others to know us

Sometimes tears
don’t come from grief
or sudden pain,
from moments moved
by others’ stories
real or sharply imagined

Sometimes it’s just the steady
incessant
tap tap tap
of life that just won’t pause
for any cause or reason
for any chance of respite

We’ll often deny those tears
as weak
but listen as they speak
or they will never, ever stop

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

I have a small patch of land
with some grass, a little pond,
flower beds full of plants
the world chose
in the key of chaos

I can sit in it
while madness swirls
and clamps down
and can find
a jot of peace

But I know others can’t,
so I will hold my knee from jerking
while we all figure out
a better way to be

The absolute ******* grind of it,
each inch upholstered rough,
sandpaper cushions and *******,
this is school my loves:
best days of your life,
except the frequent crying
and wishing for an end,

but then
the dazzle blather
of someone excited by your subject,
your patient, pent up words
heard
and your bitten cynicism scuffs enough
to see your old electric truths beneath

Once around the block and done.

No extra-time or after parties,
just a head-spinning rattle
from itching frustration
to breathless incredulity
at the pace of it all

So please, by all means
saunter, dance, crawl, or wriggle
as the situation demands,
although sometimes you’ll still kvetch
at slow walking goons in the supermarket
and want to crack the back of their heads
and educate them about trolley etiquette
and getting the heck out of your
important way

Try to love pastoral pauses,
either in your mind’s green eye
or if lucky, in a glade
as real as bark and river pebbles
where cousins, lovers, friends,
pendulum on rope swings
to an abandoned splash

However hard,
hearts don’t beat well solo

Sometimes
Sundays suit fewer words
so thoughts can bed in

Even more so
with a gin and tonic
and a film
that plucks at memories

Hey
You
Yeah you
How you doing?
Getting on with stuff
In this rough of roughest times?
Or wobbling a bit?
Sit in your jimjams all day. It’s cool.
Anyone with anything worth saying
Loves you
Be annoyed a lot
And try to smile
But don’t fret if it takes a while
The ups and downs are real. Feel em.
If you have a hug to hand, use it.
If not, accept the alternative
Through screens
We mean it

What does Eunice bring
on these blustered, raging winds?

Busted fences put up in haste,
a forlorn balloon cut loose,
with a smiley face harking back to those
asymmetric aceeeed days
when polarity was frowned upon:
what’s your name where you from what you done?

A man cut from rich serge
can be employed to gaslight
blackened eyes to white,
but the **** in Kent’s hedges
don’t lie

The bitterness of five
square spaced letters
gladiatorial, etymological,
born of thought,
a daily word hurdle
just to **** with friends

Have a care,
they said
if the wind changes you’ll stay like that

and I think I missed the breeze
that fixed me in place
in among the hurricane days,

but the aches and pains
don’t shift no more,
just there
to be muted
by whatever suits
and ties