I am the scurvy knave
You are the angel who can't behave
I swear you'd turn a church picnic into a rave
With you I'm either languishing in a dark cave
Or riding high on the crest of a wave
Still I believe you are the one to save
Me from an early grave
But I know it will be a very close shave.

The unravelled tapestry
The song sung unaccompanied
The unfinished symphony
The valley wasted
On the artist
The dreamer too tired
To sleep
The writer picking only
Last will and testament
From a lifetime
Of words
All have joined
The ranks
Though they will find
Neither death nor
Glory here,
For this is the time
To put our backs
Into it,
To put clothes
On our backs
And food on
The table,
And we are all
The poorer for that.

It's out there
Or maybe it's in here already
Waiting on a door handle
In a hello
In the air I breathe
I breathe
That is my right
I will breathe if I want to.
Except it doesn't know patience
It doesn't know anything
It doesn't have anything
But the need to exist
And if it kills me
Or itself, it will just shrug.
The worst kind of enemy.
So I take it back to a room
With curtains and a bed
I am allowed that much
And bread and water
Left by someone ouside my door
I hear their feet hurrying away
The world is moving away from me.
And all night and the next day
For as long as it takes
My hands will be around its throat
And its around mine
As we stare into each others' bulging eyes
Me, remembering life
It, trying to imagine survival
And suddenly it does know something
That I am all it's got.
And in the morning
Shapes file quietly into the room
And I start to recognize faces.
They prise my fingers away
From around the rotting corpse's neck
Then kick it under the bed
You did it, they say.
You won.
This time.

Rain is very mischievous.
It really wants us to forget
Our coats and umbrellas
So it can send down
It's ambassadors,
Mysterious dark shapes,
Swirling inner worlds
For it's followers,
Who usually have small feet
With frogs eyes painted
On to green Wellingtons,
To dance in,
While serious people are left
To sit all morning
In wet socks.

I never applied for a poetic licence
But as a non poet
The last poem I ever wrote
Was my best.
I deleted it
Or threw it away, as they used to say
Along with my poet's curtains
And my poet's pyjamas
And my poet's slippers
And my poet's pen and notebook.
I knew it  had a couple of good lines,
I didn't need to show them to anybody,
And I knew I couldn't do any better than that.
It was enough for me then.

Quiet winter evenings
Spent by the fireside with you.
Gentle moments of love
With the loudness of the day
Suddenly somewhere beneath us
And the coldness of the rain
Far above.

And when the moaning wind
Became caught in the curtains
Blew the candle across the room
I would sit in the corner
Writing long letters
To not so old friends,
Wondering what they were doing
If they meant the love
Their letter sends.

Peaceful nights
By the fireside with you
Feeling love, all the warmth I used to
Yet a strange emptiness
Waiting for that sad glow,
Only recalled by whispering ...
Memories.

The cotton wool clouds
Glued at random
In a giant blue
Colouring book
Are real
And cause me to breathe
Deeply for the first
Time today.
The greenwood
With it's shadows
That question the rights
Of leaves to answer
And flowers, freshly
Painted this morning
By the supreme artist
Who begs us to, who
Dares us not to
Notice them
And the seed,
Airborne at last
Parachuting into
My hand
Are all real,
But I am not.

I think I was the boy
Who chased off the ******
And retrieved your sweets and toys
From the gutter.

I'm sure it was me
Who took you to the pictures
After your boyfriend cut you down a size,
Then walked you home
When the last bus failed to materialize.

Anyway, we gradually moved
Whole towns and cities then universes away
And though we tried to keep in touch
Messages and responses became confused and crackly
When the transmitter I made
Proved not up to much.

So I Morse code this hope, if ever
I should come to your planet
I might be allowed a walk down the street
And perhaps somewhere in the middle
We could exchange odd glances
Half remembering a friend and a lover
And recognizing ourselves in each other

No more shall we talk of the passion
That swells the tides, fills the sails
And turns us into explorers,
They say it is overrated anyway.
Give us a cosy room
And tucked up safely in bed
Some hot chocolate and a good book instead.
An adventure with lashings of romance
Would be perfect.

The apprentice has lost the master key again
And the shops will not be opening today.
In truth they couldn't anyway
Because we have bought everything,
There is no more and may never be again.
And while we fretted about the climate,
Scoured the sky for rogue meteorites
Panic buying crept up on us like a new plague.

Little wonder then we marvel at a pair of slippers
Are eternally grateful for handkerchiefs or a new shirt.
And then there's the child's wonder, the magic
Of that first remembered Christmas
When the world slipped out of orbit
And edged a fraction closer to heaven.

It is up to us tonight, we who are alone.
We are the children again, too weary to walk another step
And asking our Father to carry us a little way.
And if this is the prayer God hears
He may yet decide to give us all another year.

When I saw you in the playground
I thought you looked pretty,
I thought I bet she's fun to be with,
I bet she's a good kisser,
I thought, I bet our children grow up
Strong and healthy like I hope I do,
And I work hard and always love
And protect her.
When I saw you in the playground
I thought I bet she makes
A man of me.

We are the blotting paper
Soaking up all the bad news
From our leaking fountain pen.
But here from tomorrow
We have the Rule of 6 -
No more than six people
In one gathering
Or everyone has to go out
And make five new friends,
One of those.

If true love doesn't
Come true there
I don't want to go.
If there are no football
Or hockey pitches
Or golf courses
Or open spaces
Where you can
Jump and run
Or mountains you can
Climb right to the top
Or if there is nowhere
To picnic
Then fall asleep in the sun,
And if there are no tennis courts
In heaven
I definitely don't want to go,
I may as well stay here
In my wheelchair.

God gives me this space and says fill it
He gives me this dream and says will it
He gives me this love and says
Don't spill it.

What kind of seed
So tentatively planted
And needing neither
Water nor light
Only the dark secret
Warmth of you?
How I spark,
How I come to life
In you.

The face of my angel
Is lost in shadow
Her coat still drips
With last night's rain
But I know she is quite young
When she tells me her name.

She kneels at my bedside
Feeding me oranges and grapes
Telling me stories
How the warrior killed the snakes.

And her smile makes me feel
I am worth saving
I can leave behind this mess
That very soon now
She will take me away
Nurse me back to happiness.

The rainbows in hell are incredible.
If you saw one you wouldn't forget it in a hurry.
You've got this black sky,
And there it is.
The colours are not as clearly defined as I remember them
The edges seem to blur, think of the
First painting of one you did as a child
Then imagine that in almost total darkness.
I asked someone of it was to remind us
Not to give up hope,
That there is a way out of this place.
He asked me what hope was.
You know, hope you can find your love again.
He asked me what love is.
It's when you care about someone so much
You would gladly lay down your life for them.

How many ways are there to say I love you? A few. How many ways are there to show it? Thousands. If you get a chance to.

What would you do
If all your dreams came true?
Not a small one
Not one of them,
All of them.
What if you could
Do no wrong?
If everything you did
Turned to whatever
You wanted it to?
How would you feel,
What would you think
How would you live,
What changes would you make?
Don't ask me
I'm a million miles
From that.

In the clearing
Away from prying eyes
A man has dallied too long
And missed the best of the light.
He has strung that bow
Ten thousand times or more
But see how his hand shakes
The effort almost beyond him.
Where once his aim
Was true and straight
To the heart of a target,
Another knows
Now he pulls back
Too aware of the tension,
Cannot wait
Does not care where his last arrow goes.

Went to bed at 6am
So I've ruined the day
Made myself feel ill
Unsettled, a bit panicky.
Will I never learn
That sleep is for sleeping
Waking is for waking,
How can I confuse the two?
It's just that lately
With the days so uncertain
Sometimes I like to make the nights
Last as long as I can.

Stumbled across this,
Second hand but you wouldn't know it,
See it's hardly worn
Still in it's original wrapping
Try it on, it suits you better,
You can turn that up
Take that in
A few small adjustments that's all
It's for a good cause anyway,
At that price it's almost worth
Making it fit
And it feels good to know
We did our bit
To remember when love was new.

A flurry of birds
Greets the eerie silence;
****** canvas and a stiller you.
The heralding snow
Changes all my plans
For the road is lost
And we must make our way, gingerly
Down the old footpath.

So bring in the lambs
And shut up the shop
But not before we have bought the last loaf;
Wrestling with oversize coats
And from beneath floppy hats
We stumble on with sheepish grins,
And look, there's our neighbour.

Always too late for Christmas
But never for the children
This is the day they have waited for,
So just for once
The tax man can wait
For his ill gotten gains;
Let the snowball fight commence!

First light around the hard
Edges of the curtains
It's a soft play day
Rolling in a ball of sunrise
To bounce to you
And to you.
It's easy to catch it,
It's not a test
And when you do
Squeeze it gently
Make a wish
Before you pass it on
Nothing heavy
Keep it light
Keep it sunlight
And we can keep playing
Until the moonlight
Calls it a day
For children know how
To beat the doom and gloom
The grown ups have made
For themselves.

Those bright clear happy moments
Are the best
Before we fall
Into each other's arms
And our only problems
Are the clothes we shed
And place together
On the chair
In the dark room.

The soldier waits ...
With rifle unaimed
With bullets unfired
With bayonet unfixed
With uniform unknown
With boots untrodden
With rations uneaten
With canteen unrepleneshed,
With words unspoken
With letter unread
With locket unopened
With face unseen
With dreams undreamt
With life unlived
With love undiminished,
For a grave to be dug.

Of course our souls go on,
Of course they do
Don't they?
But what of these bodies
That learn to love
And die so easily?
Maybe they retain
Something of our lives.
We are just dust
In the wind.
There is so much love
In the wind.

Started something big today
Something miraculous,
The acorn I planted
In a little tub on the windowsill.
And the bigger the tree gets
The smaller I get
The older it gets
The younger I become.
Until the day
It's as big as a house
And I scramble up it,
Not even noticing my scuffed knees,
Only the million leaves,
Feeling so safe,
Not really lost at all,
I only have to keep going down
And down
To find the ground again,
If I ever wanted to.
And I will sleep easy amongst the stars
Happy I started a forest,
Did my bit to save us all,
Until the day
I can no longer reach
For branches and clouds
And I slip gently
From the encompassing arms,
To lie forever in the shelter and shade.

Sorry if I appear distant sometimes
It's because from up here
Where I am spinning too high
It isn't always easy to find somewhere safe
To crash land, close to you.

I try to be a good person
But probably I've let you down
And upset you countless times
Not to mention
The one I will feel most guilty about,
Dying.

Can't seem to get warm tonight
Darkness is a cold blanket
Her arm around my shoulder
Chills my bones.
She pretends to be my friend
To hide me from myself
But she brings her own night
And I am wide awake with my fears.
And she loves it that I can see things
That are not there
And that I can feel her icy touch
On this midsummer afternoon.

The bridge on the Severn
Stands still, hushed
Dutifully guarding
What tries to be a holiday.
Swans, congregating
Delicately preening
Unconcerned by the longboat
Making deliberate progress
It's passengers all wearing
A Captains hat,
Heads turned towards
The Cathedral
And just for them
Nine bells announce the hour.
Ladies, brightly dressed
Carrying large cake boxes
Lead a gentle procession
To the fete.
Bikes, two at a time
Unhurried pedalling,
Weaving their way
Around promenade trees
And grandparents with children
Always stopping to hurl
Stale bread at unsuspecting ducks.
But imperceptibly
Insidiously, remorslessly
The unholy din of traffic
Gathers strength
Drowning out all who dare
To shout out against it ...
And normality returns.

True to life
True to form
We find ourselves on the stage
Of our own making.
No extras here
No stand ins
No one shouting cut,
No chance of faking
Forgotten lines
Loveless words
Spoken in haste.

I may as well be in love
With a ghost
With a body chalked out
On the kitchen floor.
Are you the delicate draught
On my cheek
When the window is closed?
Is it you skimming the cups and plates
Across the room?
Are you the sound of rustling leaves
When there is no tree in sight?
Do you slam a door
In the middle of the night
When I know they are all locked?
Are you moving that single cloud
Across the sky
Or is it doing it
All by itself?

In the palm of my hand
Perfection
The stone I stole
From your beach
Forgiving me
For taking it away
From the sand
That cradled it, the sun
That warmed it
The waves that washed
Over it
For thousands of years,
The sublime smoothness
Of its soul,
Not striving to be
A moon or stars
It just IS
Already part of
The grand order
Complete in the universe
In the oneness I yearn for.

A group of elderly people
Have congregated in the doorway
To comb their hair and ask each other
If they had smiled at the right time.
Then they wait for their photographs
To be developed
For their passports to heaven.

Like a giant woken from a deep sleep
He will visit us with his dream
His anger will blacken the sky
Cause branches to lash windows
And rain to pound door and slate.
There will be no time to finish songs
Or shelter in familiar places
And all the world will look up
Praying for a break in the clouds.
Then just as quickly as it came
The storm passes,
You turn away from the window
And there is love in your eyes.

It's all about settling
For less,
The cake tin and juice box are
empty
So we make do
With a biscuit
And water,
And now you have
Brought him on for me
I too have to make
Some substitutions.
The rustling leaves
Will now wake me
And not your touch,
The first rays of the sun,
Giving me false hope
In the grey bleakness,
Will be the smile
I will never trace again
With my fingers.
Later, if I'm lucky,
I can take a cloudless blue sky
Instead of your beauty
And the soft evening rain on
My face and lips
Will be your whispers.
The stars of course
Will remind me of
How far away you are,
I'll settle for that.

Here I am again with my secrets
My lame excuses,
My unfinished prayers
My bits of the day
That fly uncontrollably
Around the room.
Say hush one more time
Soothe a stranger's
Troubled brow
These aching limbs.
Kiss my eyelids tight shut
So that I may never peek again
And wake me
When you have done.

I haven't made the anthologies and journals,
My novel won't be in
The book stores any time soon,
My songs didn't get me a recording deal,
The screenplays never graced the big screen,
And I expect if I write you a last love note
It will suffer a similar fate.
And to think I had all the same letters
As everyone else
All I had to do was jiggle them around a bit,
Arrange  them in such a way
That they might mean something
To somebody.

In an age of twilight
You lie outstretched before me
The line of your shore,
Your naked beauty
Clothed at last
In my reverence.

For I am powerless to move
Away from the rapids
On to the quiet platform
Where my soul
Longs to rest,
Until your tears
Too long bitter
And salty
Become a stream,
A river
An ocean of love.

A single thought
Tires of stumbling about
In stale darkness,
Sees through
His own skeleton future,
Makes it out
Into the light of day,
Shouts for joy,
Changes the world.

If it had been a full moon
We might have made it
Would have been easier
To stay on the path
Easier to avoid the clouds
Trying to sweep us up.
Wind and rain don't help
The horses are tired
Jittery too
I tell them they are only
Eyes in the trees
They can't hurt you.
The old barn is as good
A place as any,
I'm sorry I can't get you home before morning,
You tell me I haven't let you down
Sometimes all that is left to do
Is to take shelter.

Enough already!
We need less poems
At this time
And more prayers,
Or are they
The same thing?

On the road that never slept
And never stopped
Trespassing through the ancient ways
The badger took his last breath.
And when the sun appeared
It was a thin cold gauze
Not nearly strong enough
To warm his back
Let alone
Stir a life's blood
As if it accepted
His death
Was inevitable.

Dark already; I walk purposively
As if I am meeting you
And you are the new season,
While winter crouches in a doorway
Ready to hit me over the head
And steal the last of my summer.

All is blue, tinged with blue
The sky and sea that is,
And here he is, riding boldly
Across the beach
Into their lives
On to the half finished canvas
The tumbling, shimmering waves
That would have gone on past the horizon.
He makes delicate fingers tremble
Paint things how they could have been,
He causes the sun to skip
The wind to turn,
Leaves them in no doubt
And us holding the reins.

Serious faces laughing

Happy faces crying

We are the human race.

A small boy was flying his kite
With his parents.
I watched the simple family
Moments which make up
A childhood
Then left to wander
Around the park.
On my way back
I noticed them looking up,
Helplessly I thought
As the kite must have
Broken it's string
And was probably
Disappearing from sight
Forever. But no,
It was only lodged
Like a memory,
In a tree.

Beneath a dead
Red sky
I climb to the hilltop
To a place of still memories,
And there you are
Defiant and calm
Waiting to be rebuilt
For one last crusade.
Gone now the pageantry
Of armour gleaming
Of banners unfurled,
People laughing and cheering
And young girls screaming.
A merry dance
You led me then
So let me linger awhile
In the ruins.