How many stars are in the sky
I tip the telescope and behind one there are thousands more
They're all bright
Some are closer and some are further away
They're all a mystery to me
As I reach out
Look deep into them
another pulls my gaze
and another

What's the smallest living being on earth?
a graduate of music school
First class degree won with some leeway
but that can't pay for my MOT, no way
four hundred and thirty seven quid and 26p to pay
for new suspension ball joints and wishbone, wiper blades and an emission test pass grade
and now my car has scraped a "pass with defects"
I hope someone made a wish as the old bone cracked
as they took it to the tip with the entire contents of my bank account
I wish I was back home again, scared to answer the phone again
but now every phone call I'm praying for a gig.  

For nine grand a year I wonder how well she would do in the next few tests
if she'd have a long career ahead after a short rest or if she would still be run into the ground,
one day kicking the bucket at 90 miles an hour on the M4 back to Cardiff; I recently found
she won't quite make it to one hundred.
One hundred miles an hour!
Such power, so close, but no cigars for me any more - I can't even afford to smoke rollies.
When I'm seventy I'll start again
whether I want to or not, I need that one lifetime guarantee.
If I make it to seventy.
Hopefully boredom, rejection and ******* aren't causes of early mortality.

What happened to the love stories
the strings and the piano play
the fish hook in my chest
pulls no more than a tear
I miss something I never had
thank the big screen
for the life in your head that can't exist
what I've seen
is never to be had, always missed.

My sickness is my gravity
too heavy to go up to bed
immobile, face dead
and still the strings
and the piano
play

How did I end up here?
In the sun and drinking beer
in a world of boats,
smiling in the photos taken by the host,
thinking soft as I gaze across the water
and hear people sing.

The dogs all drink from the bowl.

My goal is not to spend all my cash on drinks
but at home there's more cash and more drinks
and I'll wonder how I ended up there.
I had tasty food and squinted in the water's glare
across at the pretty girl
sitting on the other side of our drinks,
between a glass of pinot grigio and the sun
between me and the sea.
I think she likes me.
I'm sure I feel something
but I'm having too much of a nice time to care.
Stare into my eyes.
Find what you seek and do so soon.
A lot could change in the coming weeks.

Weather closes in
Flags and bunting writhe in the wind
as the water squirms below
I start to get cold
I've lost track of pints
but don't feel drunk
I think you're hot and funny and cool
but don't want to bunk up,
I just want to go home and write words on a page,
sit there alone and chase the silly pathways
down which my mind stumbles.

It took a long time to get home tonight
Both of us walking more slowly than normal
in the soft night air under yellow streetlights
Laughing and joking, a couple of times I reached around your slight body
to awkwardly hold your shoulder or your waist
and kept glancing away,
too nervous to look long at your face
Which is beautiful, by the way,

Although I found your eye shadow too much
and your hair too little
and I sometimes wished you'd hush
so I could hear the people be people.
We had a lovely time, eating
cheese and I drank beer and you drank wine
in the sun by the sea,
In a place where I can blissfully, peacefully, quietly be me.

That was the best banana of my life.
The skin was thin and brown and weak.
It peeled away, bark off a copper birch.
The flesh was white, light and fluffy
Cotton wool and candyfloss
sweet like candyfloss but I'm glad it was a banana because I don't like too much sugar in the morning

You are infinitely colourful,
Touching the ground in two places.
Sometimes more,
Sometimes less.
I welled up when I saw you
and climbed a mountain
- I couldn't see you through the grey
but I was closer
You were with me
My brothers, the sheep,
Who knows how your colour,
Your beauty,
Touched their hearts,
if it lingers as it does in mine.
Rain and hail may erode, in time,
the rainbow at the back of my mind,
but they didn't on that day and they haven't since.

Yesterday the snow!
On the ground crunching like a good apple
Pasted on the trees like moss,
Painted upon each limb, some Bob Ross
Magic, white hill, white trees,
Pure sun, makes even the breeze glow!
Trees drop snow like the leaves
of last season, little by little,
and it falls to gently settle
in the back of my mind with you.

Warmth and colour,
the miracle of my summer,
Rest and play in the back of my mind
With the perfect winter's day,
Never to melt or fade into grey.