fold your arms
And purse your lips
Bow your back
To droop your ****.
Sidle eyes and make them slits.

Now tilt your head
And raise each lid
Slowly now
Do as I bid.
Raise your eyebrows
Sigh and frown
Look the creature up and down.

Fold your arms and make a barrier
This is working - she's a worrier.
How's it feel to make her cower?
How's it feeling - all that power?

Did you rise up in your chair?
Is all you want before you there?
Slam the desk, now point the finger
Hurry up. No time to linger.
You've got her now
Make her squirm
Show her what she's got to learn.

Lean back again
The lesson's over.You've made your point,
She's learned to cower.
Know your place and stay in role
Wait for this to take its toll.

how sad is the papered wall
Of a half demolished house.
Square patches of fade
Where beloved pictures were
And flapping ends
Flicking in the breeze.
Open for all to see
And cold now
In winter's winds.
Coloured paper
Stuck to crumbling brick
Like lipstick on a wrinkled mouth
Or rouge on creepy cheeks.

Why does the sweet bird's trill
So lift my heart above the petty judgements that I make
So little based on truth, but rooted
In my own self- seeking?

The song he sings finds harmony in me
And let's me soar with him.

Rising with his simple air
I too can touch the sky.
Reminding me
That flesh and sinew
Hair and bone and teeth
Have underneath
A light and weightless thing
That soars
To hear a blackbird sing.

it operates like a glass ceiling
But is more often self- constricted.
It can come in a set;
One inside the other,
Inside another.

Some people are able to move
From the smaller to the larger.
There are no hinged sides
And any movement will cause shattering of glass
And sharp edges.

Sometimes after a breakthrough others follow.
They can see the shards of glass
And avoid them.

At first the glass sides are clean and clear
But they become clouded
By those breathing the stultifying air.

Those who grow inside the box
Become distorted
By its restrictions
And find their faces flattened against its sides.

Sometimes the box is a lonely place to be.

For those who leave
There's no return.

The air outside the box is rarified
And keeps one
gasping.

Two large bubbles floating
Collide
And merge in the space they share;
A friendship.

Hands held
and eyes caught.

Holding together as the bubble bounces
Keeping the balance, knees bent, bodies arched
Changing shape to accommodate the movement
Moving together ; eye to eye.

Eyes drift,look away
Space shrinks
Bubbles separate
And drift away.

Tackle thonged
Condensed in shimmering lurex.
Flamboyance bursts from flaming wig,
From feathered lashes and from fuscia lips.

Eyes flash and teeth sparkle
In the huge face.

With Cherokee cheekbones and a Roman nose
A pantomime dame becomes a slinky Cher,
A strutting Turner and a slick Minnelli,
Before settling
Into the loose and comfortable robes of a Boy George
We hope has found peace.
We clap and sing,
'Kama, Kama, Kama, Kama , Kama chameleon,'
As this chameleon
Plays out his life story for our entertainment.
And old ladies cheer
And wish him well.

In the dying heat of a Spanish September
Wrought iron gates guard the bar's flagged patio.
Plastic flowers defy the night and sit up stiffly in their baskets on the concrete wall.
No horses tethered here among the motor scooters.

Inside
An imposing counter guards the rooms beyond.
As brightly lit as a dental surgery and amply served by whirling ceiling fans.
The chiselled features of Native American Braves look down from the faded paintings that line magnolia walls,
Their steely gaze perplexed.
No pale faces here among the white man,
Just white hair
Or burnished copper shimmering like the painted desert.
Here the white woman wears the war paint.
Piped music circa 1960 jingles just Out of earshot
And a queue for bingo forms as a quiz is finishing.
Everyone has cheated,
Mouthing answers with a mixture of pride and cameraderie
Not too much of either,
Tepid
Luke warm
Like the night outside.

'Two little Ducks'.
No answering claim
'Old Ireland;17'
'No 3. Gone for a ***.'
'House!'
Then silence.

The plain matron reading out the numbers enunciates carefully into her microphone,
'And the next house is for the jackpot.'
Silence.
The queue slowly forms again. Banal lyrics from the teenage tunes fill in the gaps in stilted conversation
Long dead warriors watch, bewildered
And the night wears on.

Zoom
In to my face.
Closer.
See the colours on my skin
The mingled hues so diverse that form the tone of my complexion
From a distance.
My complexities are neutralised by the distance from which they are viewed.
Zoom in
Closer.
See the fine pores and pale hairs
That lie on the surface of the ***** that is
Skin.
Just so today
And tomorrow
Metamorphosised by new cells that multiply and those that die.
Zoom in
Closer yet
And that surface now
Is unrecognisable
That picture now
A poster
One hundred feet in height and paper thin.
A surface with no depth.
Walk through it
To the night beyond
With all its stars
The ones you see and strain to see and those beyond
And know who
And what
We are.

My road runs parallel
To the main roadand the sea,
The railway line and the canal.
I am becalmed within the flow
In a four layered sandwich seasoned
By the sound of distant traffic and the train's roar.

The birdsong in my garden is the clearest note;
District
Unflustered by the further sounds.
The birds take centre stage and make their exits and entrances from the wings
Of my neighbours' gardens.

The drone of a holiday flight
The muted murmurings of pedestrian chat retreating,
The click of an iron gate
Complete the orchestra
And all is harmony.

Heart
A heat,
The hearth, the earth.
The beat, the throb, the pulse, the purring engine
Deep within.
The depth, the soul, the core, the strength, the sinew.
The link, the chain, the tie,
The common thread.

Buried deep and barnacled with age or pain , but pulsating still.
Or worn upon the sleeve and open to the elements.
A warm heart giving
Heat, glowing for all
To  share its glow
And swelling in the reflected light of others' glimmer.

A cold heart
Buried deep
Among layers of
Preconceptions, pride
And fear
And shivering in solitude;
Exhausted by its tremors.

A broken heart
Bruised and tender, tending itself
And fending off invaders;
Encased in plaster while the fracture heals
And beating
With a gentler rhythm while the healing
Radiates.

A common core
An essence
That recognises itself in others;
A link
A shared experience
A common aim.

Hi there!
Where're you from?
Been here long!
Lovely day!
Can't beat it hey!
Can you spare a minute of your time?

Blue sky
White paint on concrete
And purple bougainvillea.

Too stark a light
To hide
The hardness in the dilated eye.
The rapid speech born of panic, custom and chemical
Gives the game away.

Scrubbed up, slicked down
But all the signs are there.
The broken tooth,the bitten nails, the shaking hand,
The desperation
That make truth irrelevant.

Disquiet,

Not dismay. Just disquiet
Lingers like the bitter leaves in a sweetened cup.
No tea without its bitter leaves,
No coffee without its dregs.

Disquiet

Fed by a gloomy day,
Nourished by wind and rain and a drear sky
Banished by bird song
Or a streak of sunlight.

Disquiet

Lingering from a half- forgotten dream
An echo of anxiety
Or chemical reaction
In the body?

Another day
Another season
Another place
Can swamp disquiet

Or starve it

Can fertilise anger or panic

Or can
deconstruct it

Sending

It's.

     Atoms

                   Hurtling

Into
        
          Space.

A fat pigeon
Sat on my chest; solid and smug.

It's feathers grey and stunted
No flights of fancy here
It's beak sharp,peck-pecking,peck- pecking on the same spot.
It's glassy little eyes, beady and peering, short sighted and looking only down.
It's scrawny little legs scratching, stiffly stepping forward, no veering
But in a predestined groove.

It constricted my breathing
And the air that fuelled me was dark and dank.
I stalled and stuttered
And all roads led uphill through rain soaked mill towns struggling on the edges of
Barren moorland.

And then the pigeon left-
Just lifted its fat, grey body
Like a spacecraft in vertical flight
And my chest expanded
And my lungs filled with sweet air and my trapped self left the confines of my rib cage
And levitated
Into a clean and white and airy space
With windows flung full wide
And blue sky and breeze and a seagull calling
And a new day beginning.

She wore a coat of paint and thin blue line around each eye
A doll's eye
A toy for someone else's game.
Painted lids to hide her shame.
Oh what a shame!
A 'pretty woman'.
Soft mousey curls
Straight now  and brittle as her voice
And yellowed , like her finger nails,
Painted and gnawed.
Sallow pitted skin
And thin - so thin!
Cheap flimsy dress
Her hair's a mess
Her smile too ready and
Her voice too hard,too gravelly and shrill.
A cloud has covered all she is
And taken all the shine, has chilled and numbed
Our Sharon.

On the pavement, on the street in Las Americas
She offers cards to pensioners who never win
Who talk to her because she's thin
And someone's girl.