cruelly April
hands me flowers
so cruel April
the legendary bowers of Babylon that we once enjoyed
in dreams and fantasies,
dreaming like children, dreams are toys
to play with on rainy afternoons
when there’s nothing to do
and when nothing wants something of you
makes a point and laughs at
how so much can become
so little,
and life is reduced to
meaningless eulogies

and memories are also toys
except when you see something for the first time
in that way
before it was different
now it is flat
my hometown buildings now flatten my memories
they flatten my dreams, deflate, deflating,
and now April brings me flowers
but all the vases are broken
and the clocks don’t mention hours
just tick away and say
time will heal, paint will peel,
rubble will cough dryly, something squeaks
the radio is still on I hear?
“this is the six o’clock news”
let’s turn it off
we’re standing in the broken news,
top story, relocation and displacement
some were conveniently buried in an instant
and the flowers from April, thank you,
will do just fine,
we all wish to die at home

there’s nothing left for me now here I feel
or for anyone else on our street
but they all just hang around
dragging their feet
and kicking the rocks
coughing and remembering what the four walls looked like
how we take things for granted even during a war!
is that a rat moving down there?

I decided I was finished with it all
it had finished with me
I needed to remind myself what a solid structure
looked like

and colour
and how flowers smelt when the dust doesn’t mask your senses
and get into your ears.
War comes from ignorance, soldiers are ignorant,
if there’s one thing I want to rid myself of
it is ignorance, and my badges that weigh me down,
I’ll drop them amongst the destruction,
two little bombs, two little ripples in the lake,
my reflection is clear enough,
I know that he is going to need some work
not quite mass cleanup
just a clean flannel
and something delicate to remind me,
something delicate to remind me,
something delicate to remind me why
I cried so hard at 18
and why it felt like it was the end of the world
now it looks like the end of the world,
but it’s not, just visions of Dresden or Hamburg
and with all this,
with all this going on I suddenly
remember the last honest, real feeling I had was when I was 18
when mum played the piano
straight from the sheet
the mechanics of her hand
I remember how odd it looked
the span of her delicate hands
now the piano which was overstrung
and framed in cast-iron, built in 1911,
is in pieces.
There are still rings of condensation
on the wooden panels from dad’s beers
and I wonder where human life fits into all this
where iron strength collapses in on itself
and yet a ghostly ring remains,
it could leave any second
but hangs around as if something is unresolved

I go out of Coventry
take a train
end up in a country pub
just outside Gloucester
no soldiers
no 6 o’clock news
no flowers covered in chalk
no voices calling out as you walk
no glum faces dying to talk
just a pint of bitter
and Dylan Thomas

my new life has no nationality
my history belonged to my country
and now my future belongs to me
me and the mouse in my pocket

“Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war,
death after life does greatly please.”
—Edmund Spense

|PART ONE|
CUL DE SAC
Courtesy is informing
The gardener he shall not
Be needed next week
As sometime before then
You will fall suddenly dead


Like a blanket...
Yes, like a blanket
Or a shawl if you’ll have it—
A sheet that whispers a weight
Upon your shoulders that rise and fall
And rise and roll and once more rise
And collapse inevitable as relapse or vice,
We arrived as the sun is
Saying its final goodnights

Life spends some empty
Second inside your lungs
And continues on its way, moving on
Perhaps to resuscitate a
Fading gunshot victim
Or shake the hand of a minute

As time ticks furiously by,
A dog licks its teeth
A few sorry times, tastes a residual piece
Of something tasty he earned
In his attempts to learn fully
To roll over,
He rolls over now and then for fun,
In the disapproving face of the sun

But it’s a different thing to roll
Over at the command of your Master—
He who is looking disapprovingly at the world,
Disapproves of all of it
But through a very small window
He had not seen before
About the size of an envelope
It must have sneaked up on him

Most of all he is bored,
With packets of cigarettes,
Lighting themselves each night in
Spectacular repeats bright and brilliant
Pyrotechnics of white-hot potential,
You must shield your eyes, Master,
Heed the warnings of the doctor when he says
You are doing yourself no favours,
Tempting yourself by leaving them
Laying around in plain sight

And...now and then, just now, and
Just then he finished a whole one,
Packet of twenty, and his reflection,
Unshaven and puffy-faced in the
Deep ocean of the bathroom mirror,
Can’t look at him until morning,
And morning is a long time away

Meanwhile time is
Blackening the dog’s sorry gums,
It painted such dark spots on his Master's lungs                                              
That he now coughs impatiently,
The paint grips like superglue to
The walls and though a full exhale could
Betray their function for one,
Deform their shape for two,
Lungs so rarely tenderly embrace
And now his face goes blue,
And blue with many shades of blue,
And a touch of the colour of the just-rising moon


Nothing comes up...
His diaphragm, taut, it stalls,
Struck, retching,
Everything slows
Everything

slows

— stretches of sounds
And moans echoing
The sinister intent of
Turpentine visions.
Each bloodless
Indecision


You can see him doubled over
By the window, even from here,
And you’d think this bird will
Succeed in catching his worm,
Each slowed in turn, nothing changed,
Bird was swooping long before the slowness came,
Whatever happens, whatever happens...
The dog sleeps whilst his ticking legs kick,
But slower —  

A fly is caught between
The unaffected forefinger and
Opportunist thumb
Of a young girl who is well known,
(She once squeezed a cat
So tight that its insides
Got all twisted and burst),
She would not hurt a fly though
Especially not this one
It’s so lethargic, she thinks,

How she blinks at normal speed—
Immune somehow

Other kids are told to keep away from her
By their respective mothers
Who’ve no respect for others
you’ll see them goose-stepping down
streets in stop-motion synchronicity
These mums communicate by phone
Hogging the lines and spitting malicious
Rumours into the telephone wires,
Such poison is said to excite cables
Causing electrical fires and the
Firemen here have been called out
several times to find the same boy
Of about ten, crying *“Help! Pariah Dog!”
He’s shouting it now, calling the emergency
Services on a credit card phone
And his pennies won’t take
—So slow it’s hard to watch

The bow that fastens the little
Girl’s hair keeps falling down,
She kicks it down the sleepy evening streets,
Rumours cruelly spread of shadows
Calling her to where the street sweepers are known
Not ever to sweep

Everything is slow, as before but
Slightly more so,
The Master’s contractions
In such slow motion rhythm,
You couldn’t recognise patterns or
Repetitions with short-term memory
but they’re rhythms of threes and fours
but also nine over eight and
Four-four straight, the
Tempo is so slow it doesn’t register...
Listen closely for a while though:
Jazz is on the radio!

The dog’s legs still kick as it sleeps
As it dreams of jumping the garden gate,
Even slower now,
And life is longer now,
In ways
Of course we do not notice
But the little girl,
Returning home just before dark
How will this affect her future?
Time’s arrow
The tragedy of its trajectory
Leaves us in a state
That is not worse off,
But there is no help in this!
Positivity does not come
From the things which are simply
Not negative

And the worm
In a slow motion crawl,
Indignant, as the bird’s wings
Cast long finger-like shadows
That are shifting, flickering,
Twitching near crisis point,
Those last hundred-yards of the race
Where lactic-acid-spasms
Makes a mess of the atoms
And slow-twitch fibres made of
Matter once constituting
A percentage of the mass
Of a sabre-toothed tiger,
Cowering in the cold,
Feeling the pull of extinction
Weighted eyelids,
Mischievous hands tugging
On the ears
And polishing the fangs in museums
It was ashamed, the atoms told us this
But refused to declare a name for itself
Or the beast

Slinking and curling like a
Shoe sole that bunches up
The shoehorn is no good,
Not a help, but to borrow
Just one word of that line
And introduce the trumpet,
In its considerations of brass
And blues
It blows lipless fanfares for the
Invertebrate class

The worm, with frantic intent,
In search of his hole in the ground,
Profound effort,
See the slinky worm speeding
Across the lawn at the speed of a gravestone,
The bird getting closer,
In it’s time,
It’s a fizz of radio waves
With a fuzzy static outline,
Popping grains and throbbing like
Power surging through the telephone line,
Where voices can be heard warning of high pressure
With a fatalist sigh, and poor weather,
A voice with a regional accent
Sounding authoritative and wise
Intensity in the eyes somehow I imagine,
How we paint pictures of faces and people,
The voices are so telling at times,
You can hear whiskey-burns in the throat
Saying things of the colour
Of a nose, and sweet childlike lisps
Suggest dungarees and freckles,
And a gap between the front teeth,
Why these? What prejudices
Have slipped out weedily from
An imagination that is surely
Out-valued by its frame
Of gold with wooden panels

*“PARIAH DOG!”.....

|PART TWO|
D’YOU KNOW
THAT FEATHER
TOOK 23 ½ DAYS
TO LAND
Courtesy is not making fuss
Swallowing the disatisfaction
That grows as you
Realise this is the end
Quickly think up some wise words
To sign off with



ENTERING NOW, like
A man marching in honey:
A birdwatcher with a foot-long prime
on his single-reflex camera,
Also, enter with pages stuffed in your pockets,
On which are shown pictures of birds to identify,
Explaining where they nest and
The altitude at which they fly with
A detailed history of their forest-call-cry

He left in a rush,
A cup of tea (milk, no sugar, weak, hard water)
Was left untouched cooling,
But not at the speed that he sped down the road,
Spotting a thrush and releasing the wheel,
Fumbling for binoculars with excited hands,
Faith until death or heaven!

Even when he’s identified the bird, still
No one is steering his burgundy rover, still,
His hands are busied
By the focus wheel,
Won’t look away,
In focus, out again,
In once more,
Look at him! Show off!

His shutter snaps shut and alarm spreads
Amongst the birds and they dart away in groups
Fast as watercolour, laboured
And blurring in mid-flight

It takes a second or two for the echoe to die
Echoes find places to rest
Amongst the blades of grass
Humming in wait of a second coming

A matchstick structure, sublime
In its intricacy and *******
Of classical architectural traditions
Starts to collapse, later,
In good time, wait, and see
The matchsticks hit the surface,
Almost in reverse, it rattles
The table with fine-rain
Levels of cymbal crashes and violence,
If an ear was to listen
It would register the tinnitus that
We hear in our denial of pure silence.

Our denial of mortality
In its entirety, we laugh at those who
See ghosts on the west country coasts,
Those who dare catch a glimpse
Of long-departed lovers
On the boats that return from
Here or there,
Or solemnly sink
With conviction, miles from land
And there will be those who will
Want to understand

This woman we now see,
Was once married to a captain of ships
That sailed in the formation
Of an arrow, long and narrow,
He sank them all, bequeathed
His fleet to the icy grips of
That body of water famous
For having strong arms and
Snatching hands. She will never
Know if it was part of his plan.

He wrote her once to explain,
But the postman was caught
In the rain of springtime,
That time which is known to be
The season of showers,
And, attached to the grim mornings
Are the cruellest of hours
That postmen share with no one else,
But the letters, have so much life sealed inside,
Sealed by a human tongue
With traces of every kiss

In his pride, the postman did not give the
Soggy letter to the captain’s bride,
It ended up floating from here to there
Unintelligible for sure, the ink
Ran carelessly into puddles and drains,
When the ships all sank
They said nothing remained
The envelope was sealed by a kiss
By now it has found its way back to the sea
By way of rivers, tributaries,
Carried by wind and leaves,
On the feet of hikers that rest
On their backs under a canopy of trees,
It ran down the hills and salted
Ever so slightly more the sea
Where her captain’s body is found
And if he opens his eyes he’ll
See how his letter was returned.

If he opens his eyes.


She is running towards the house
Love, restless as the wind that determinedly
Keeps us all awake, it makes dull noises in its
Late night reflections on an unfulfilled existence,
It rubs its snout on rocks and stretches
Itself around their base to release frustrated energy,
They start to come loose and tumble into the sea,
Splashing the coastline with the tears of
Shipwreck tragedies,
The fallout of her uncertainty
In the ways of love,
Feeling so high up above her captain and unable to touch
His memories
That in fact never set foot on land

Her skirt is up above her knees,
Both feet off the ground,
The jangling sound of her keys are
Like thunder in this slowed down world
Where the worm is still journeying
To his hole and the bird
Is like a badly tuned channel
Where you can’t make out a single word

She runs towards the front door
Her moist eyes, familiar with
These skies that describe ominous clouds
And rain that hammers the floor
Again and once more and soon
She feels she will be buried in ice
With both of her husbands,
She sees him doubled over by the window
Panic in slow motion is like
A ship slowly upturning
In the drama of desolate sea stretches
That have swallowed so many
She moves, fast as a fastened shadow
Stretching.

Like life, reflected on the back of a spoon,
And the sun, finally, swallowed the moon

|PART THREE|
THE EMPTY SECOND
BECOMES AN
EMPTY SPACE
When it’s all over
forget about courtesy,
grab hold off a shooting star
and ride it all the way
until the photons say the
last word with a pulse of light


The man is no longer doubled over and
Observable from the window
As a result of his fifty-eight years
the equation of his life
All comes to zero
Whilst the mocking ticking and tocking
Of an old clock knocking minutes like
Nails into the wall—

He disappeared in a puff of smoke,
The ice in his glass melted and the woman picked it up,
Drinking it in a single gulp, the glass comes down as if
Magnetically drawn to the floor, the floor,
Where she lies silently and stretches her body
To get some release, she rubs her face against
The carpet, nothing matters except the next second,
Eyes, behind a blink or two, dart to another part of the empty room
She couldn’t think any further ahead than a second at all

And the zodiac crashed open
the ram sent stars flying
the crab snipped the string that suspended the stars
mars took some flak
and finally the sun was burst
by the horned goat
and aquarius held it
like the final fluid sphere

Stars, burning across the sky like the striking of a match
Those wishing on shooting stars
couldn’t decide what they wanted
many of them flying as there were

As well-known monsters
Weighed down by human hope,
clear out our night sky,
Leaving not a freckle to observe
Telescopes now point into bedroom windows
Shadows portray a sort of life,
Shadow puppets depict death through
Tragedy and lapses in timekeeping and
Obsessions with vanity

Life spends some empty second
Inside your lungs,
Continues on it’s way
To resuscitate a slowly fading knife attack victim
Or shake the hand of a minute,
Time is ticking laboriously by

The light, motherless and lost,
Spat out at as the sun was burst,
It looks up to see
the unveiling of the universe,
Finally,

the oyster swallowed the sea.




*—I didn’t want to be a poet by any means. After what happened working on the lifeboats I couldn’t go near the sea, so in a way I chose which parts of it I wanted and wrote about them. It terrifies me and fascinates me at the same time. I fully believe I will return to it only as ash...

Your bow is all elbow,
a flank of forearm that is
supporting and simply cradling
my imagination
where a dozen or so
lifeboats hang off starboard
in case things get too much

I, captained by your sturdy arms,
nip up to the crow’s nest
for a sip of spiced ***
for a bit of warmth and
perhaps more—

a full beard that reminds
me so much of Darwin
I feel certain I am on the Beagle
and hungry to shoot some
lame birds one by one!

Your shoulder
where I can sleep forever—
come sharks and eat my catch
while I whisper poetry,
summon ghosts and
******* Hemingway,
whose macho act was betrayed
by his pain-filled eyes
and sensitively painted
one-word skies

You, my aching hull
in human form,
rocking gently as the sea
slows our progress
knowing we are
wishing away time too often

the working of the gyro
prevents my seasick blushes
we do not yet know each other
that well but all is fine as I see it,
your arms really are made of
shipworthy wood and
beneath deck, where I will sleep
tonight above Atlantis’s cesspit,
we just bounce off each wave,
getting closer and closer to the moon
but not yet arrived,
has sleep come too soon for me tonight?

I’ll rest and stretch and groan
like weary ****** do
once Surya helps me turn out the light




*—Yes, once my ship did start to sink. I called until my throat was gone and ended up swimming a good distance until crucially a boat came by and pulled me out of the sea. I remember thinking: I should feel more grateful to be alive. I went back to where it sank and retrieved a few personal items, then I sat on the beach a wept as if the whole thing had just hit me.

a series of quatrains*

Anchor’s bound for hell as it falls
Sadly I watch the fast rope slip
It is gone, I need a strong sip
From a sailor’s bottle, land calls

In a boat, earth and moon move you
these deceptive cargo ships hide
the stash of smugglers, I choose
To rock back and forth with the tide

Such fearless ships save lives at night
and daytime too but not for thanks
for it also ferries heartbreak
when lovers part on boarding planks

A message in a bottle lost
was found on a cold Cornish coast
The message read “darling please
know my love will swim across seas”

I daren’t live by sea much longer
Oh! what I’ve seen, fear gets stronger
with every lapping slurp I hear:
the drowned whispering in my ear

Once I fished in this bay of shells
My line was frayed from reeling sharks
A blue whale fought me three miles out
In his bowel I awoke at last

Boat or ship? For now ‘ships’ they fly
A rocking chair, without duty
They float, enchant, sink but don’t cry
shipwrecks are a thing of beauty

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 by sea-sick phrases

Somewhere a long way from our
shore a man or woman, very desperate
to find their way on board a ship
going in the right direction

When those who could speak
a second or even third language
were called forward
this person’s mind reached far,
back to french lessons at school,
every country visited and greeting noted
and piped up: I speak very good French!

But French speakers were common
Try harder! shouted a polite man
I can speak Zulu!? silence...
Pashto is very useful…
Ah! my mother tongue,
I dream in that language
Yes I am still in touch with my mother
with whom I speak, of course,
in Pashto

Setting sail on the lonely sea
There is nowhere to hide
besides the engine room,
And in there you will be used as fuel
Put to good use




*—Well I did think once that I was being summoned to an underwater land but in fact it was a ruse, a trick to rob me of wallet

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

I’ve come to realise
That I find Lake Klinwel boring;
Ignoring the skies,
The flight of birds
And their curving dives.
This lake, drowned by eyes,
Instead choosing to reflect static towers
That are monuments to Machiavelli,
Where the financially ambitious
And their crisp paper voices spend
Their days, evenings.
Money in the bank for tomorrow
Plan ahead, plan ahead,
That what the lake said
When I visited.

What freedom
Such a wonder of nature
Has to manipulate and
Reinterpret the harshness
In lines that ascend until they
Scrape the sky,
That tears, simple as tissue.

And all the while,
Cigarette butts,
In an abstract delinquency,
Revise community buildings and council offices
Where surely they dream of hole punch
And green lights and confirmation and deadline for appeal
Whilst bureaucrats administer more paper cuts to the teal-blooded sky and Risk Assessments have given a score to death—
Awarding it a number five.

The lake can surely stay awake
Just long enough to show me ripples
And normality when I drop in a stone,
Just a sound that
Confirms this mind is still my own,
That the waking world is known to me,
Dreams are dreams alone,
They are the ripples reaching the sea
From my daring stone.
To be beside a lake, lyrically alone,
Brings a pain that is most obvious and physical
And so I ask once more for the
Most minute of tides for my sore, tired eyes—
Just a ripple of two to the other side
Where I see a figure,
Where I see blue eyes,
Where I see extravagant dress and
Hair so shapely they say and yet
I couldn't care less.
It could be a wig
But the wind tells me it is not,
And her nose sits among a gang of features,
Knowing surely it turns heads—
Growing heavier with each turned.

The lake spat on my shoe and continued
To reflect the tall commercial towers
Whilst this green space is vast,
Boasting bowers where I sit with a pencil
And I see the birds of paradise
Impressively dancing and dancing impressively.
Sublime in fact!
But I think they are trespassers
We should kindly send them back
Their hearts are excessively small
And no longer in paradise,
Not close to it at all.

I’m done with you, lake!
Lake Klinwell, lazy deceptive mirror!
Are you depressed?
Disenchanted?
Do I notice how you are growing ever thinner?

I heard news that our
Town is crumpling in certain corners,
It’s folding in two like a map closing.
People are dreaming with recurring themes
And the flowers bow their heads
Just in case.

Oh, you are a soft, sensitive lake,
Let me dip my feet.
Do not fear for the town we share,
Do not quake, dear lake,
And enjoy your daylit hours
In the company of the trees and flowers.

I beg you though:
One day,
When I need it most,
Reflect for me a memory:

Diana and I on the corrugated coast,
Careless on the rocks,
I failed to enjoy it at the time through fear
but she leapt, crossed a gap to get to me.
She landed with a kiss.

And if you could add a sunset,
The weather was terrible.

The weathervane slept high above with a lolling head.
Clouds were holidaying excessively in Spain.
Sun was lost in a haze after chain smoking cooling towers.
A lethargic wind, moseying low with cat-like whiskers,
I hear it complain “I’m tired” in child-like whispers.

My hands are sweat-sore with callouses
And salty enough to summon the call of gulls in numbers;
I find shade, imagining myself as a cartoon Huck Finn.
When I put dry grass between cracked lips and think of dustbowls
In a zoetrope of sun-stroke, I vanish through my buttonholes.

This is now where one would rise, wake or come to.
Nothing I recognise, else the world is enveloped in storms.
I strain my sight, blink repeatedly to force myself awake,
The angels are listening, I hear wheezing, see fingers in my dreams
Gripping tightly to milk thistle stars, bursting at the seams.

Amongst the angels, whispering too! Did the stars imprison you?
Free-spirit like mother, but I slept our childhood through
Sustained by knowledge gleaned from canteen floors—
My eyes feel somehow sharp, heavy, like spears more than eyes;
I thought I saw the weathervane spinning madly, unraveling the skies!

Nobody talks about the weather.
There is a good chance of wrought nerves.
This is a time of stillness and dwelling on doorsteps,
In doorways where death sits among us, resting his eyes,
An end to the ration that was harmless reminiscence
As memories go up in the heat like celluloid;
Now the stars are a steely prison
Heaven’s lustre is lost, missing.
Through the angels I have seen that this is a time of living -
Through our dreams I have seen that this is a time of living -
Outside the confinement of the Holocene.




*—I have dreamt of drowning...often. I always seem to wake up out and breath and feel I can taste the salt in my mouth but fear does not play any part in these dreams.