Your dead maps
Cannot match the ways
The shifting earth
Will lie.

Lines that you once
Thought straight,
Will never now
Be true.

On each cracked page,
A fearless canyon.
Each fold can hide
A crooked spire.

My north is lost,
So lost beneath,
A careless dry
Pressed flower.

I am in an unfamiliar city,
Feeling lost inside a familiar hotel.
I am, plate in hand, skirting
Round the breakfast buffet.

Each dish is neatly labelled;
Scrambled eggs.
Breakfast sausage.
Local cheese (soft)!

Another man is standing
Motionless. Is he praying?
We shuffle around each other,
Replacing lids, laying spoons,

Filling our plates with all types of
Exotic treats. A whispered song to
Breaking bread. Just two strangers
Orbiting the food we eat.

Underneath the slanted parasol
Eyes half closed against the sky
All sound is mixed
With sun and spray
The mama
Her indignant child
A distant beat
Beyond the crowds
The lapsing rhythm
Every wave
Too soon I slip into the depths
The sweat and suncream
Milk upon my skin
Did Cleopatra swim?

Shout it with a friendly bark
Or sing it in a football chant
I'll have no sorry frowns today
Oh, give me love that's simple

A variation in a minor key
Is nothing like the melody
If notes are always black or white
Then I'll have love that's simple

If sadness has your duvet pulled
Above your ears to muffle out
All sounds of dogs and crowds
You won't hear love that's simple

So ask me why it is that I
Would still believe a patent lie
I'll tell you when we win the league
Oh, give me love that's simple

Where is equality in distance
between Time and Space?
Ten years to one mile
seems about right.

Thirty years ago we were in Kilburn,
three miles west of here,
acting out our early twenties
with hedonistic disdain.
Clubs and bars would *****
us out into the night air
and we would scamper off
like single ants, unsure where
we might refind the scent.
All those roads are still blurred.

Perhaps I will make
sliding box puzzles
from obsolete copies
of the London A to Z.

I read that the majority of car crashes
happen within three miles of
where the driver lives.
Isn't that self-evident?
Aren't most journeys
journeys to or from home?

Somewhere in amongst the grass,
There lies a piece of meteorite.
A silver shard from outer space,
Resting in this blackest night.
An owl hoots. Branches sway.
Did they see the final flash
As cosmic dust laid down to rest?
Or did this piece of Icarus deserve
No fanfare from the rest of us?
For the fragment this is one brief stop,
Across the ever winding Universe.

My future, sealed by a cross,
I must forever stumble.
I'm carried in a silent wave;
its dampened roar, quite lost
within a labyrinth of cul-de-sacs.
Further forward, over rocks, carved
smooth by endless years of swell.
I reach out just to try to touch,
but touching is beyond my reach.
Would you join me on this ride?
Together, when our bodies crash,
we'll know it took some other force,
to overpower the both of us.
I'd rather leave my tiller free;
let my rudder make no odds to me.