Your creeping tendrils reek of toil and stress,
They've taken root beneath my bed,
Your nourishment is the nightly sweat,
That drip drip drips off my forehead;
You lap it up greedily.
Every drop intensifying your desire to confuse me,
To consume me with self-doubt,
Slowly but inevitably,
Turning my mind against itself.

An unwilling host for your dark massy form,
I carry you silently dusk to dawn.
You grow fatter day-by-day,
Becoming ever more greedy night-by-night,
Taking joy in supping on my liquid fear:
Like the perfect storm at sea,
You are too big to weather.
You are a ferocious dog let slip his lead.

You have blocked all escape routes,
Your shifting, insiduous form did that stealthily,
My mind, turned-in, paralyzes me:
A mental and physical double-lock,
Confining me to my king-size prison,
Meaning you can gorge upon my misery,
Until you leave nothing but an empty shell,
Then friends and family will all agree, 
"at least now he is free of his living Hell"

I had forgotten that such silence existed
one that lets me hear so much
over distances my senses cannot gauge...
the bark of a dog doing its job
the clanging of trailers and gates...somewhere.
Birdsong, of course, is a constant
But I leave them to it...no need to disturb.

Not a socket in the house is on by the way
a sudden Sun generates comfort enough.
No Telly, no phone, no radio required
instinct tells me to hear the quiet...
better to receive than broadcast.
A bright orange book lies beside me:
It confessed all to me this morning.

I'll remember this silence always.

Star jump
Slide to a bump
Mini Jeep driving
Forever striving
To win a race
Tie your shoelace
Stay on your feet
You won't be beat
Determination
No hesitation
Single-minded
Laser-guided
You won't conform
Not one for Unicorns
Find your voice
Beat the boys
You'll sprint through life
Overcome strife
Become resilient
Just be brilliant.
But, just for now,
No need to wow
I realise
I idealise
So go wild
Be a child
You know you oughta
My darling daughter ;-)

Just as a frog cannot relate to a tadpole,
He could not recognise his younger self.
No retrospective map of life had he,
No string-tied bundles of diaries
Or heavy-hearted Journals
To reunite him with the naïf
Who floated along life's river
Unaware of being navigated by others,
Others who rowed but did not instruct
And abandoned ship on the stroke of his eighteenth
Leaving him overawed and falling overboard,
To eventually flounder upon the shores of independence
Until he was forced to stand on his own two feet of clay,
Like some evolving amphibian
Waddling into life,
Stomping and stumbling in the quagmire of society.
A faux pas here, a faux pas there,
Slow and painful lessons
That built resilience and self-reliance
Resulting in a proudly self-made man,
Now unaccustomed to failure
And whose memories of humiliating failure
Have sunk to the bottom of the river of his life.

A day off to do nothing
Is got to be worth something.
A morning of sleeping in...
Dreaming, finally relaxing...
...HOLY CRAP IT'S 3PM!

I miss those days when I could turn heads,
And woke up each morning in other people's beds.

Pigeon in my loft
Shelter turned into a cage
Hence this sad high coo.

Santa's house has many rooms:
One for every Elf.
They have sprays for farty fumes
And dusters for every shelf,
There are bins by every door,
And brand new hoovers for each and every floor!

Now all the Elves know their chores,
They've got them in their heads.
But tidying up is such a bore,
They'd rather go to bed!
Still, every room is clean and neat,
Because everybody knows Santa's always on the beat!

You see, Elves know they're super lucky...
They work each day for Ol' Saint Nick!
But if their rooms are ever mucky,
They'll be in for lots of stick.
For all that Santa asks of an Elf,
Is that their room is good for their health!

So every December night,
Ask yourself a simple question...
Would my room give Santa a fright?
If the answer's "yes" then hear the lesson...

An Elf's room is never messy,
Because they want a great big prezzy!

I had forgotten this silence existed.
One that lets me hear so much
Over distances my senses cannot gauge...
The bark of the dog doing its job
The clanging of trailers and gates...somewhere.
Birdsong, of course, is a constant
But I leave them to it, no need to disturb.

Not a socket in the house is on, by the way
Spring's sudden Sun generates comfort enough.
No Telly, no phone, no radio required,
Instinct tells me to hear the quiet
To receive not broadcast.
A bright orange book lies beside me:
It confessed all to me this morning.

I'll remember this silence always.

Passing, always passing:
People I wish I'd met,
Met long before their passing.

I take a crash course in their existence,
Personal history, wishes and outcomes
Scribbled for a rudimentary assessment.

They are but scrappy souvenirs,
Notes that barely scratch the surface
Of lives that cannot be summarised.

Passing, always passing:
People I wish I'd met,
Met long before their passing.

Scuffed brown shoes
With laces as long as your arms
Skip and scrape upon the cobbles
Skimming over tiny puddles
Reflecting a hundred suns
Dipping in and out of a thousand clouds.

The Narcissist's roof caves-in as delusions collapse into reality.

When has this man-child ever had to face reality before?

I love the smell of inevitability in the morning.

That mask of beauty
Unchipped flawless marble
Sculpted by aged chemistry
Intimidates but seduces me
Chokes thoughts, obstructs words
A simple mind disconcerted by
That mask of beauty.

A cackle of Crows in her craw

The walk I wasn't on
Was, by all accounts, a good one,
I wish I'd been there
Because you were there,
But I bet you had nothing to say,
Probably distracted by nature's display,
Studying the forest's floor
Daring to be the bore
Looking up, occasionally
At the forest's canopy.

Irrelevant years of existence
Vast drowned numbers
Swimming with the fishes
Your blue-hypnotic drowns my eyes
Offering nothing

I dive into your cold embrace.

I hung tantalisingly in the night sky
For a billion and more years,
Your coy companion,
Your one-faced little twin sister
Left barren by our mutual creation.
Glad was I then
- as an Aunt to your four billion children -
That you sent twelve to visit me in my dotage.
I do hope you visit in peace again soon.
Yours faithfully,
The Moon.

Ink dried quick
Art's potential energy
Music = MC²

Art can bide its time
Protected by the brave
Until primed

To explode off the page
Out of speakers into minds
As a weapon of mass attention

My friend is a very good man,
Nothing to hide
No terrorist ties
But still,
He really looks like Carlos the Jackal.

The further away I get from you
The more I can see into your past.
Time and space offer a grander view
Of how we made it last.

When we were joined at the hip
And our love was new,
All your faults were totally eclipsed
By my romantic idealised view of you.

What Was The Point Of Life Before Children?
And other self-important working titles, like...
What If I Wasn't Developing Life Saving Medicine?

He has so much poetry within him,
But it's all based ON him;
Full of false modesty
And self-conscious irony,
He never deviates from the theme
Of HIM.
BORING!

The Barista did warn me,
But my home brewed hubris
Really blew up in my face
When my boiling hot porridge
Eruptively boiled all over the place.

I have placed my childhood bibles (that aren't Bibles) on your bookshelf; hidden them in plain sight. A cheap subliminal trick I know, but one meant as an investment in time and knowledge: to peck away at your curiosity like the Woodpeckers I hope you'll read about in that Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds, which to you, right now, is just a jumbo colouring book too heavy for your restless hands.

Like so much Beer Money
Jingling merrily in a pocket
The oafish group jostled,
Clanging and clinking
Calling and cursing
Up the unfamiliar boarded-up street
As, unbeknownst to them,
Their collective bird brains
Homed in on the nearest pub.

Funny
Honey
Money
Bunny
Sunny
Dummy
Chummy
Mummy
Crummy
Orange
..­.****.

As she talked of her past
So too she talked of her future
For fate ricochets endlessly
Through the tunnel of her narrative:
A sorry tale told of a trapped soul
Yearning in vain for an escape
As elusive as it is seductive.

Bwrw fama, arol dy' Sadwrn braf,
Penwythnos dwytha union r'un fath.

Toulouse or not Toulouse...
That was not the question:
We had already won.
We could not lose:
Not an attitude borne of arrogance,
But of having already succeeded,
Before a ball was kicked.
This was my peak as a football fan;
We had qualified.
Any further progress would surely bring about delerium.

My own journey to a win in Toulouse
Was a fantasy I'd never dared to dream.
It transcended celebration of sublime football,
It was about chest-bursting pride.
Our small, oft-forgotten nation,
Whose language was the oldest of all the competing nations,
Was centre stage, ready for it's ninety minutes of fame.

It is a rare thing in football;
That fans do not ask much,
That their team want to provide a bigger answer to the question posed,
Rarer still for fans and players to bond in such a way,
So that winning is secondary to pride,
So that the national anthem is always a sweeter sound than a victorious final whistle,
So that the players sing with the fans after a game:
Gorau Chwarae Cyd-Chwarae.

Failure had ritually followed failure.
"It's the hope that kills you":
An adage fully understood and seemingly apt...
Until football was shocked into reality,
By the sudden death of a double hero,
A death that left an ember of hope,
An ember nurtured with reverential patience,
Until it sparked and became Dragon's breath,
Fuelling a campaign that allowed long-harboured hopes to set sail,
Charting a course:
Cymru to Lyon via Bordeaux, Lens, Toulouse and Lille.

Our all new house
Is a 'House For Life':
It's a bit of a sty but has:
Toilets downstairs
Toilets upstairs
Wide access doorways
And low level light switches.
Trouble is,
It's made entirely of straw.
Worse still,
Our neighbour is a ****** wolf.

On the breath of twilight's yawn
Rose the star of dawn
Tireless in its cycle.

Your secret stands tip-toe on my shoulder,
It leans in to whisper in my ear,
The teller, the story, the revelation
Intoxicate me,
Spin me dizzy,
Turn my thoughts fizzy.
Your messenger tells me you love me:
This was most unexpected!

I'd like to pepper my poems
With referenes to Greek mythology
Or sprinkle a little Norse legend
Throughout my stanzas.
But, alas, it will never be:
For, you see,
I utterly failed my Literature GCSE.