I laughed in places
   Where Laughter was not asked for,
     In granite market towns
       Beneath refugee palm trees shivering.
                                    

Running from giant hands
That were covered in car wash fluids,
   The back of children's heads imprinted
     On their palms.

I laughed during disciplinary procedures,
  Before authority figures
    With cornflakes in their red beards
       And my laughter crept over the edges of their flowerbeds
         And the grass laughed with me.

I laughed at funerals,
The sounds of horses beyond the churchyard
   And a messenger ran down the aisle
    panting and exhausted,
     He had a message for my laughter
      ' Quick you must come at once'.

I laughed during marital feuds,
Laughter rising out of its own body
  above broken guitars and dried up bonsai,
   Above all the things I said
    That contradict me now.

I laughed during serious films,
The tulips drooping on top of the T.V.
   The sun slumped against the door,
     Behind heavy curtains
        I mistook for pigs on hooks.

I laughed over exercise books,
Above algebra and history
  Behind impossible bra straps
    That appeared out of acne and ink flicked backs.

I laughed at the swimming pool
Hiding birthmarks like stains,
  Drowning above the water saying
   'I am a fish I must get back in!'.

I laughed in surgeries among migraines
and told my mother that robots were taking over,
  in the same rooms where they removed my brothers' verucas
   And I saw the doctors small blade
     escape through the window.

I laughed during friends confessions,
In between the silences of repeated songs
  While pantomime dames walked past windows
     make-up running in black and yellow rain.

I'm laughing while making coffee in a campervan,
I'm laughing because its a monday morning,
  Because everyone else is busy,
   Because we have an oil lamp from a pound-shop
    Burning beneath the sound of rain on the roof,
     Because the radio's silent…..

And because sausages are best done slowly.

ugly men on the way back from work

watch the summer dress and the small body within

walk with the breeze down the steps,

down from the station while

the trains pull away,

their carriages carrying the sea and the low-tide estuaries'

breath within them

and they watch the dress and the body and the breeze

cross the road into

the sun swallowed supermarkets

and the ugly men walk home

beneath retired balconies

and the slow

beginnings of evenings.

I
Put my
Coin into the

Slot
And watch the
Plastic horses
Galloping away.

Now my ears sing
And I lead straight lines to circles,
Into symbols for the eye inside the glass ball,
Its blinking is its calling.
I carry it,
Cables dripping from my sleeves
Stumbling out of
And from
The oceans favour,
Back to my own arms.

Feeding back the seagulls to the breeze.

The thunder feeds my compass
To a sun lost in a forest.

Thrown into boxes with carpeted walls;

I find myself playing

Heavy metal.

who lights fires
who's smoke fills the slow ticking house
resting on its grass stained elbow
gnawing at the apples branches in the can't be ****** orchards
once I burned in a yellow room of vases
and dreamt of naked canaries with curtains pulled away from tug of war ocean
It was too much to conceal
and I fell into the secrets of bridges, the sacrifices of
hedges that are ghostly in carparks, that are the moons dandelions
that are nothing to everyone
that pulled speakers from ribbed cages and trampled on the curves
of their ***-doll music, flattened their supermarket haze into
the bickering cages of their stabbed backed rooms
I flowered beneath the sickest of suns, became strong and unrecognisable for awhile
but I recognised myself in the final chapters of these just begun pages
and suddenly I could speak again
I was no longer nervous
I carried you through the coldest of places
we threw the stars back to their homes.

tonight I'm going to
sleep with the curtains open

and if in the morning
I don't wake

let these sheets become flags

hang them so they  appear
as swans on top of
telegraph poles

hang them where the grass is blown across
the midriff of the girl I saw on the platform today

hang them above the fields
where potatoes grow into
the shapes of sympathetic ears

hang them where they may
unravel as bandages from dancing limbs

let my scent cling to them and let the ones
who loved me bury their heads in the wind

hang them on the hero's shoulders
let them be the cloak that transforms him

hang them out to sing in the pines full of woodsmoke

hang them where the sun warms the seagulls belly
where babies commit clotheslines to memory

hang them alongside the underwear you decided not to
wear today

let them hang like actors performing
daring rituals in tropical hotels

hang them on the cucumber held by the checkout girl

hang them on the chins of strutting statues
riding concrete horses

hang them over the endless heads of anxious eyes so
children may play with driftwood
their sea encrusted hair untamed
unwashed  

hang them over the conspiracy of clocks

but don't let them hang around too long
don't let them hang down sad and greasy
shrugging shoulders at the parties end.
muttering 'nothing left, time to go'

pull them down mid-dance
sporting a bulging
salt-breeze paunch

hanging just long enough

for them to know

I have eaten well.

i could write about...
          coke cans & purple sin

but you could just look out of your window
and make up your own mind about that

   ….instead i'm gonna tell you about
an immense tremor that might be
beneath us right now
about how this calm street
might be flushed like a ****
to somewhere a little closer
to the

centre

of the earth


o.k you've probably already thought about that

      anyway i don't want to be morbid            

and      i hope we're here tomorrow

(you, me & the street)

then again there's a part thats curious
the drive by and stare at the
accident part


the first finger

in the last
                
flame

part


the part i put in you.

this evening

as i look out of my window

i say;


10,000 people could be 1 person,

a flock could be a single bird,

one breath left could be a lot of living,

the parked car could be going too fast,


and all your shouting

could never make

a song.