The climbing heat of the cruellest summer
Transcended pool and wood
Feeding upon
The huddling men.

Their bodies saturated with sweat,
Foreheads brown, the fighting done,
They talked together of both home and future
In the manner of men casually strolling
Through a park or meeting
After work, drinking tea or beer.

One pointed to a wound
That swelled slowly
Popping a cigarette in his mouth
With quietly accomplished bravado.
He was a shrewd hand at dying.
He understood the drama well.

The weather grasped the defeated
Unearthing their cries.

The field was marked with blood
Flies rushing about in exhilaration at
The sudden banquet.
Last gasps, inaudible farewells, came through the silence.
A vociferous diatribe of artillery
Resonated like an enfeebled ghost
Vanishing into cloud and mist.

The field was abandoned to carrion and dogs.
There were too many to bury.
Sunset fell upon them like a worn bandage
Torn off a seeping wound,
The light distinguishing the horror in a flash.


‘A fine time we had of it,’ the old soldier said
As they bore their burdens to the next
Hurried engagement
Where the dead seemed to outnumber the grass on which they lay.

A shadow lit by flitting sunlight
A scent on the air
A dream in the difficult night
Searching for you there.
My memories provide both joy and pain,
A wandering river, disrupted by rain.

Breaking its banks, driving apart the reeds
Withdrawing in a moment
Leaving endless seeds
Its force and fury briefly spent.
Your love, then and now, a storm
That takes every form.

How can I describe our love now
Without referencing extremes?
Then, once, it was more dazzling than the above
Blue fringed with uncompromising beams
Too fierce to draw near
Too intense to see clear.

It overwhelmed and smothered me
Too bright and fragile to last!
A furious, consuming epiphany
That mangled and mingled future, present and past.
I let it go, unable to sustain my grip,
I let you go.  Into the past I let you painfully slip.

The bridge collapsed after the storm
tumbling into the raging river-
I watched in tears, adding to the deluge.

Watching the sea, fixated on waves,
Touched by its beauty
The tsunami overwhelmed the land:
Consumed me.

A deepening hue, packaging crisp and dry,

Telescoping skies, hard bitten with dust

A sly moon, scarred and half-lit.

It didn’t end with a whimper

After all,

But brightly and loudly like a celebration.

It was proud of its going.

Colour spawned from a devil’s jaw, not

A god’s dull reason. Fire everywhere,

Referencing volcanic insinuations, the afterbirth of a planet.

The last man standing

Was burnt to a crisp

A cherry tree, heavy with fruit,

Once stood at the bottom of my garden

By the small pond filled with septic water

Disagreeably still. Ignoring it, over time, its

Fruit fell and decayed.

Over time its trunk became overwhelmed

With boles, its branches snapped.

Close by the rich soil

Was suffocated with weeds.

As cold as another age, wracked with solitude,
A slow start to another beginning,
Unreliable cloud coats the sky
And the sea repetitiously roars in,
Cuffing cliffs,
Pounding rocks
With calamitous roars
Playing endless riffs across the sand.

We walked together down the beach
Troubled by the surf
Chewing on cigarette stubs, sullied by the wind
New ghosts in the half-light
Bearing years like backpacks.

Grown old in the gathering twilight
We chattered together, our footsteps picking
Wounds.  Barbed words
Like greetings, cheerfulness like an accusation.
******* a shared and interesting memory,
We cuddled together in the scouring wind
Enjoying each other’s casual warmth.

It was a time for reflection,
When love is a scab on evolving friendship,
Heartlessness the price of redemption.
The contrived book of your beauty,
The gilded ceramic of expertly rendered features
The undulating film of your gestures, coded and decoded
Through time.

Beauty is finite, crumbling to fleshless reminiscence
Fixed to canvas and celluloid
With tireless labour. In the end, signifying another thing-
Of little interest.
An artist’s casual thought, a director’s cut.
They barely remember your name,
Your laughter and wildness gone, missed by the
Senile artist’s transitory brush,
Clotted with hundred-year-old varnish.

A small house by the sea
Surrounded by flowerbeds sparkling with summer colour
Self-absorbed children, with whom we exchanged affection
And parted from, holidaying in Bangkok
With lovers of all sorts.
As the sea rolled towards us
And evening gave way to night.