I chanced upon an old letter
That had clearly sailed legless on seas
Crumpled, damp but inside the envelope:

Intelligible writing by sight
But by comprehension I was lost
Disorientated and sea-sick.

Sometimes you come across
an object, and in no way
can you explain its origin,
it’s purpose, or the frame of
mind of the person who last
encountered it,

The letter was dry and slightly
smudged but the envelope (and stamp)
could not be made out at all

I could not send it back
If I could I would be lost for
words, as it seems they were in ways:


...and I have little leaves, I love you and I miss you so much.
When he finished the day in the ocean waiting for you to choose from Aserahosov read our son and apricot. My shirtsleeves damp in your memory. Our subject is expected later to the rest of the flight path of the earth ready to kiss a little faster on the planet.
I broke a strong bird while I like the cakes, I break the strong current. Love my *** I strongly flow. It has been Pecan pie is to say...

My understanding of romance is minimal
But to have leaves seems morbid
Even more so than the breaking of
the bird...
Why should a bird get hurt in this
gross courtship?
and a strong one too,
what act of love can break
anything but a heart?

I like the cakes, I break the strong currents

Perhaps the words of someone rushing
Across oceans in the name of love
Slicing through the chunky waves
But the cake is a bit out of place
Surely no one would rush across oceans
Wide and rough and restless
For a cake that was simply ‘liked’
This must all be a prank...

This one then—

Love my *** off I strongly flow…

Now, I hope the flowing is another
Nautical reference, it would tie in nicely
With the breaking of currents-
I cannot comment on what precedes it
There is much I cannot discuss
In this disgusting letter, I wish
I had not been given it.
****.




*—If I were a seahorse, I know that just being a seahorse would be enough...

Sunset is one time, one thing I dare to love
Different to sunrise, but not so much in light
It’s how fishermen hold so tightly to their line

In evening, my countenance feels pleasantly light
I move through cool air, a smooth-flowing line
Intersecting invisible ties, each person and each they love

I wait for some odd thing in a long ordered line
Calmed by the blending of sun and sea that must be love,
Serenely, I disappoint those in need of cigarette light

The sun bade farewell to the sea, and fell below the horizon line




*—Urchins are hedgehogs of the sea, I was called an urchin by my mother, which I loved. The nicknames only got worse from that point

A Cornish sunrise
is spoiled by bleating tourists;
I enjoy the sunrise
with all but my eyes.

As sure as God is sifting out the chaff
and with mathematical certainty...
my listlessness is becoming an issue.
A fist is shaking at me again,
but I’ve stopped looking at faces.

I reach for a book, not to read,
but to straighten my posture,
by opening it in my lap.
I hear sailing boats
always, living here, the constant
boom swing and rattling of cheaply
made metal clips and whipping ropes.
I hear the negligence of novice sailors
and their secret wishes to accidentally
lose their family on the rocks.

I hear the sound of life jackets
hanging on their pegs whilst
skinny kids think that
the sea is just a big blue
bouncy castle.

I have observed how things
can go very wrong;
I was a lifeguard and then coast
guard working for the RNLI.

Now I try and enjoy the sunrise each
morning but the noisiest of tourists are
walking around in groups of
foghorn and sheep’s wool
and warning us of nothing
— so loudly.

They’ve closed the lighthouse
and the docks, ship don’t
come here anymore.

Just these novice sailors
who, with unerring instinct,
sink for the weight of their
masculinity
or lose a crew member
or be pinched painfully by a crab.
Their kids ask: How do boats float?
They ask that as their life jackets
swing on the peg

— the seas are not calm today.

‘OLD AGE is a SHIPWRECK’
Charles de Gaulle

Some boats sink themselves slightly in order to
sleep—they awake with grog hangovers, leaning against

rocks, tillers askew as sea is softened by golden dawn.
The boom swung, tipsily; when the drowsy sail

was hoisted it groaned: *auxiliary! Poking its prow
through the greybeards, the cutter then gathered pace,

parting plungers and apologetic waves as it cast off,
taking leave of the harbour in a cloud of spindrift.

The sail was slumped dizzily on the once-strong
shoulders of the mast—it sighs for its sorry spar and

state, remembering arduous journeys on seas of glass,
but no one dares say how conifer bark rains down in

flakes when it sleeps. The signal lamp, once brilliantly
bright, fraternising with the stars each night, is now

outshone by the eyes of abyssal creatures; see it
wrapped up in a pea jacket, perched on the yardarm.

On the weatherdeck mop and bucket are talking
scuttlebutt and canonising shipwreckless legends of the

past—when the laughter stops, and the deployment of
nets, perhaps they stop to think why, and sloppy work

and holystone and, sky…



Kittee-wa-aaake, kitte-wa-aaake—looking for a
school of fish whilst, in their numbers, orbiting the

vessel in an ellipsis; suspicious eyes on our walty
cutter and its measly midday catch. Tragic wrecks of

birds and ships alike, who is to say—to draw the lines
and make divisions of sea and bird and wood? Birds in

their collective strength move like waves, how they
could carry ships! This one is anchored fast, riding it

out as if a storm. But this collective strength, these
birds with villainous intent nip at the weather-worn

fishing nets and lines and a few ***** are lifted. The
barnacles sleep, nightmare visions of keelhauling—who

knew they had such wounds to heal?—forgotten
underneath in the darkness, they are plucked from their

shells by beaks regardless.

Back at the harbour the boat and its weary flanks and
planks and parts and hollow and hull are comfortably

submerged and sleep. The sun is sinking too it seems,
melting on the tongue of the sea. The broken-backed

vessel, dead doors shut, sail folded, mast
unencumbered. The signal lamp, intimidated and

outnumbered by the many who are brighter in the sky
with light years in their eyes, it decides to sleep out

and keep check for the night for the crows in their
murders covet nesting spots on board.


Splinters and vibrating minutes and the bitter end,
perturbed by the day of eddies and unseen internal

waves, nipped by the endless Kittiwake, they are
consulting compasses for the correct hour—

but no response, just the obviousness of the moon,
even from fathoms down and not a whisper.


As in every dark night here there is no silence for the
utterance of water and rustling of stars. You can hear

Sargasso **** dreaming, after hundreds of years afloat
without making root, dreaming of something better or

at last nothing at all. And in every creak of wood there
is a year of bad weather. And within the strength of

every bird is an empty stomach and a restlessness of
wings. In every decomposing fishing net there’s an

echo of vengeance, heard beneath the ringing of a bell
on the harbour. And in every compass there is a needle

tirelessly at work, endlessly referring to the stars—

The red-tipped needle in its binnacle tower
—confused it still spins and swirls

and in every skiff, freshly built or sea-worn and sore,
there is always a desire it will never speak of:


   to
   dive
   for
   pearls


                                     on the ocean floor.

this poem is a note on the fridge,
written in a passive aggressive language,
and it is valid humour when reading out the note
once more in social situations
to read it as if you have a grape in your throat

this poem is usually a rash decision
the typewriter can’t be…but it looks *******—
writing should be easier than this
I should have visions to draw from
and an imagination to explore

something like sand should be forming words
in my written hand like it did before,
when restraint was what was so badly called for


this poem is a girl I have met and
I bet she has conquered my sorry mind
with battleship magnificence and I, surrendering
at the very first instance of an instant

my pacifist stance has always been
consistent with my fragile optimism
I have a fondness, I have come to learn,
for chance encounters that grow
into the holding of hands
and the mounting of tension

there are mountains,
I’ve mentioned their beauty
in poems revisited since,
but now they blush and ask
who is this you have brought
to our seat in the skies?
observing the intensity
of her avalanche eyes,
and her craggy wisdom,
she was wearing a sort of deerstalker hat...

we visited the library together and read
in reading chairs side by side
this poem is a lamplight conversation and an apology
to Edgar Allen, for we laughed at his prose,
and I pretended to agree in seeing no value
do you see how I simply must be smitten?
(also because this is the worst poem I’ve ever written)

this is, as a poem, a miss/failure, about
a Miss, or perhaps Ms. I met, I miss her
I want to sit with her and her ridiculous portrait of Nietzsche
in a location [insert one here later] with potential for romance

I would relocate a knuckle,
dislocate my awkward self
and let’s drown in the quiet of the lake,
or almost drown, or almost fall in love
and almost climb to the very top of a tree

and almost spend every hour
in the comfort of what you believe


this poem is a kiss on the bridge and all
symbolic meaning that can be drawn from
bridges does not apply, we kissed on a
drawbridge when the drawbridge went up
and we zipped through the city in paper aeroplanes
kept warm by paper coats
and we have floated on lakes in paper boats

we crash landed and were shipwrecked
in the strangest and most unfamiliar places

once, mapless, beautifully hapless, we wandered
lost for hours straight,
when she recognised Community Square,
the sleeping butterfly
I keep in my heart—

    shifted its
     weight...

Who on earth would stack books like sticks?

Who would sit turning white-paper-pages
With blackened fingertips?

You should know that awaiting fire is nothing of a joke
Have you not heard of witches
on fiery trial, spitting curses
That just tightened the rope

And did you know
That the pages
Of every history book ever written
Once went up
In ancient whispers of smoke?

Every manuscript
Chronicling man’s unscripted
Fighting progression
It was
reduced to ash?

So we wrote it all again…
The Romans, messy, careless
And surely barbarians
We’ll adopt them as our
Ancient parents
Invaders of course,
Progressions must not
Be stifled by sentiment or remorse
The druids and their hoods
They left them among the leaves
In the woods
Before that
Well
No one can prove us wrong
We’ll say that humans
Hunted similar races
That were
Uglier but strong
Defeat, even eating them
Of course
That which stands before you
In physical form
Surely it cannot be wrong
Our history,
As far as we know
Is a tale of endless glory,
Since they tell of victory
In every song

So we’d made a start
The scholars are desperate
To start memorising the dates
Of all the events
That we are still
Required to create
Keep the candles burning
This could go on rather late

The bridges of London
We’ll say were built by English men
And when some malevolent
Invaders burnt them down
We built them up again
We’re resolute by nature
Bordered on two sides
Our land it does not shrink
We have intimidation in our eyes

Well we have all these haunted castles
Shakespeare used them in his plays
Let’s say we were conquered
By Normans
Hand-fought battles went on for days

We should be modest and believable
So let’s say they conquered us, so what?
If our past shapes our future let’s show
The things we are and what we’re not

We’re are a thing that empires covet
Some have tried many times
Our ships with crews that never sleep
Their cannonball
trajectory does not fall
They fly in a straight line

A book that chronicled a fire great
Reducing our capital to a raven’s nest
Sadly it was lost, Pepys wrote so well,
So we’ve told Dickens to try his best

We recreate from memories of books
The pictures help as well
Medieval times were all heads on sticks
It resembled what we’ll call hell

Heaven, that’s where the noble live
Those that were so gallant and brave
falling in their tons on the battlefield
Winged skeletons rising from their remains

The bible, as you know, survived the fire
It continues to teach us and guide
Reminds us of the elasticity of time
And encourages a most conscientious mind

We made adjustments, here and there,
Lazarus rising for example, readers in mind
We couldn’t let that tragic scene end
Without him delivering his warning on time

We think of the greater good you see
For the good of you, and the good of me

The plague, bubonic, spreading like fire
Is a fiction covering something dark and twisted
I can’t begin to describe how as the death toll rose
Our king fled for Belgium as the demons persisted

The history of London is actually unknown!
Well you would moan, but what did you think?
The Thames is a man-made canal they froze themselves
when ice skate sales were on the brink

And bodies that fall in, still alive or dead
They scoop them up, make wigs and cut textiles
The ones still breathing are given the job of
Gathering the bones of the executed neatly arranging them in piles

Jack the Ripper, Member of Parliament I should say
Was in charge of cleaning up east London crime
His method was questionable, objections from
Speakers in parliament, but murders in a year went from 38 to 9

Henry, yes he was large, rotund, had his fun with women,
But each of his wives was ensnared by courtiers in cloaks
They were promised recompense, rewards that never materialised
When they killed him, each time, they picked a lookalike from the village folk

And I’m no historian, but why assume
That soldiers marched all the way from Rome
To what was of little value,
Cold, wet, a far cry from home

No evidence of course,
They just put themselves about
And there’s a good chance,
The Vikings came, you could see bridges,
Burning in their eyes, they arm-wrestled
Journeying on longboats of considerable size

King Charles II had an imagination alright,
Kept the wine flowing alright,
Enquiring minds and lips
Were busied gulping it all down
And kissing women who span madly around
Their cheeks
The colour of rose hips...

Who are these men that hold books under their arm
In such a way as a woman clutches a purse?

They arrive in endless streams conversing in their
Small groups, absent mindedly
Opening and closing books that are in
Different languages,

My turn to take five, look after this place,
I’ll be just out back, chewing my wife’s sandwiches.

I eavesdrop a little, a vice of mine,
Hear them talking about their jobs
On the factory line
Men and machines, men as machines
Or machines made by men, machines
That dream in factory nights,
Locked away and out of sight,
Quietest place you’ll find

But they’re restless,
I’ve seen the machines sigh
I’ve seen the steam that shoots out
As the whistle blows calling time,
They are restless machines and

—The whistle blows and
The machines are wandering home after
Getting blind drunk,
Dreaming…

In a few hours they will be woken
By a jangling set of keys that
Starts them up an hour or two early
So that they are fully operational
When the hungover workers arrive
Beating their chests and
Stretching their lever-pulling arms,
The machines grind their gears in protest,
Become confrontational,
Grinding the axe for a while now,
They’re all worked up, high pressure,
And yet no one takes notice
The steam flowing as promised
The men are ready in wait
A little release of steam
Machine’s are functioning well today


Factories like these run themselves
With their routine set in stone,
you can whine and moan and they will,
Mostly to their wives on the phone
During their allotted break,
You can come back early, but never late,

Echoing a cuckoo-clock world
Of perpetual motion, the machines
Dream of a life outside, they have heard
So much about irons and their boards,
And baths with plugs on a chain,
Manhole covers, oven doors and drains,

The machines do what they were made to do,
Workers too, this job chose them
For their durability, stocky build, the confusion and
absence of revolution in their eyes,
Life’s lustre hides in Friday’s pies,
Yawning men find it in the coffee
*** as it boils on Monday morning,
On Tuesday it will taste like soil again,

And on rare occasions, you’ll see it
When the sun comes through the
Highest window, and eventually,
On the right day, the right time,
it reflects and refracts,
The whole factory is scattered
With light artefacts, as if glass was
Raining down from the sky,
They take five, in celebration of
Their planet’s undiminished charms,
And though a bit longer to enjoy them
Wouldn’t do any harm
They are ordered to resume order
Belts and levers and rivets and arms
Must pull, a few more hours of life
Set to whistles and alarms

Creak! *There’s another dodgy floorboard!
How quaint, we’ve gone back in time,
I can’t reach the books...
*Shall we walk past the pond
On our way to the tailors?
A fine suit, perhaps we’ll
Also need a coat and a pair of shoes

The audience, silent, took a breath in unison
Included in the orchestra was every instrument imaginable
Banhus and Gadulkas played folk and polkas
The brutish brass, bodyguards and protectors of stringed melodies

Included in the orchestra was every instrument imaginable
A concert harp, plucked by fingers long, smooth and sharp
The brutish brass, bodyguards and protectors of the woodwind class
Saxophones provided a melancholy lilt, the timp was traditionally built

A concert harp, stroked by running fingers, smooth and sharp
Every sharp and flat note was passed through the throaty reeds of oboes
Saxophones reminiscent of ‘jive’, the timp in its size had nowhere to hide
This exhibition of musical traditions played late into evening with no intermissions

Every sharp and flat note accounted for, motifs carried whispers of folklore
Banhus and Gadulkas, swapped stories with bassoons and bagpipes
The exhibition had finished, piano keys rested, every note has its operatic death

The audience, silent, took a breath in unison