In musky bamboo jungle, damp and tall,
a wet and humid monsoon scents the air.
The forest hears a hornbill’s gocking call
its woodland eyes are watching and aware.

There, soldiers shoot Kalashnikovs and spread
a cordite quick collateral sharp death.
She wears a Naga shawl warm, black and red,
and watchful says a prayer under her breath.

My centre’s there where tribal logdrums beat
among the soft cicadas nighttime trill
as fireflies dance their tango down the street
and brightly coloured birds sing loud and shrill.

My most important person waits for me
under a shady verdant alder tree.

A mendacious murmuration
  of black pixels dance a fractal fandango
  against the pale pink sky
telling you that all is well with the world.
A susurration of complacency–
  above the exhaust-scented streets
  of Birmingham’s melting asphalt–
whispers, “Don’t worry,
ignore the heatstroke starlings
dropping from the sky
onto viscous pitch dark bitumen”.

Miley and I walk down the street
      ignoring the cannabis scented clouds:
      she stops – sniffing every urinated message,
      occasionally leaving a reply.

My dog passes the laughing gas canisters,
    polystyrene boxes and broken glass
    searching for discarded bones, bread and tissue paper
      to eat, rip or claw.

We stroll through the park
      once yellow smiling daffodils grin brown and withered.
Squirrels multiply – fecund rats in the trees,
      Miley too slow to control the rodent population.

Despite urban desolation
      look harder:
        see the green canopy
            grass, birds,
              sometimes even a butterfly.

The world isn’t dead –
      we still have time.

We know that
Round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran
  but what secrets does that sentence slyly hide from our eyes?

Who is the ragged rascal that ran round the rugged rock?
  Ralph or Mary, Alfred or Freda?

Was the rock
  amid the sandy ozone odoured, shelly blue roaring sea shore
  or the languishing lavender scented purple pastures of Provence?

Does the rock think
  why is this ragged rascal interrupting my rest,
  pausing my Requiem in Pace with their irreverent running,
  circumnavigating the penumbra of my circumference?

Is it sand or grass that feels
  the feet of the ragged rascal running fast
  or the rugged rock, whose repose the rascal wrecked?

Why is the ragged rascal running
  perspiring to meet a perfumed maid or prurient boy
  or play some fiendish prank of trick or treat on foe or friend?

Will we ever realize our desire to perceive
  why the ragged rascal ran round the rugged rock?

And if the intensions of the ragged rascal become intelligible:
  did Peter Piper taste the peck of pickled pepper that he picked
needs investigation.

An oyster’s grit accumulating
new layers of aragonite
and calcite, contributing, plating
the growing bright translucent white
and crystalizing hard, pellucid
wan pearl – that forms within the mucid
molluscan slimy dank inside –
a creamy gem is calcified.

Diaphanous and lustrous jewel
or septic and necrotic stone
that’s like a canker which has grown
into an opulent fat spherule?
A pearl forms round a piece of grit,
my childhood at the heart of it.

When God wrote me, she didn't write a cog —
as I was knit together in the womb —
a brass serrated wheel, escarpment tooth,
or part of the machine that moves the wealth,
of poor exploited people to the rich.

She did not see a lever in the church
a fulcrum in doctrinal power play:
preside at Masses - tick; play nicely- tock;
and lead the parish council meetings- clunk;
then grow the paying congregation – thunk.

She painted me a seed, organic, whole,
to grow in a lush forest, green and tall,
a tree to crack the strong foundation stone:
I'll smash the rock and sow a Kingdom’s germ.

A dampness spreads across the duvet - plop,
the rhythm ticks away in sleepless drops
of time, until my clock bell rings out loud.
Then groping, reaching, fumbling, I find stop.

Surrounded by my polyester cloud,
its cozy white insomniac soft shroud
turns starkly freezing, waiting for the light.
Another rocky field waits to be ploughed.

Against the bed’s warm gravity, I fight
to rise and face the early, bright sunlight;
still sleepy, battle to the bedroom door
and end my long and wakeful, antsy night.

In stretching daylight hours, I fight a war
to keep the grey at bay, using my store
of energy to keep me swimming, or
exhausted drown in waking sleep once more.

His hands encompass: pulling me from dirt
my terracotta wetness coats his palms
infusing nails and joints with ochre clay.
A ball of damp adobe, thunk, I’m thrown,
the wheel begins its spin, his fingers grasp
irregular alluvium, I'm smoothed
as digits delve into my focal point
their pressure firmly moulding, shaping me
into a vase, a ***, a water jug
to be what his imagination holds.

Cracked sienna and burnt umber bark
on trees fuzzy with blue green lichen,
like the stark, leafless, winter clothes,
of Highgate’s denizens.

Hazel branches stripped bare by squirrels
a foodless frosty park,
it’s Victorian bowling green surrounded
by golden paths and benches is
wild, broken, neglected
grass and concrete.

Exposed on the grass
a hungry squirrel gnaws her nut
sees danger and runs up a tree.
A dog barks and tries to climb,
loses interest,
and sniffs the inner city's air.

The park whimpers deprivation.

The cracked and umber, cyan, lichened bark,
its wintry deprivation echoes stark
impoverishment: the denizens live their
neglected, leafless lives, in Highgate Park.

The winter icy earth’s, anaemic fare,
enough for hungry birds and squirrels, there
is insufficient food for bigger beasts,
who huddle, famished, in the frosty air.

A grassland’s faded, green, uncut, now greets
all walkers down its dwindled concrete streets,
replacement for old honeyed flags: new flaws
displacing golden pathways, lined with seats.

The squirrel, hungry in the cold still gnaws
her nuts: she holds the winter food in claws,
and quickly looks for danger, then a pause,
and runs, avoiding snapping canine jaws

I sit and rest beneath the ripening figs,
their pregnant bulges swelling on the tree;
a heavy yoke deforming laden twigs.

In nearby streets a man is walking, he
observes me without line of sight. I’m known
below those purple fruit, in Galilee.

He speaks my life, and secrets I alone
should know; the silent whispers of my heart.
He understands my very blood and bone.

The orchard's dripping fragrance, sweet and ****,
might draw me from the living words he gives.
I measure what’s the cost if I depart
for lighter yokes: reform my bending sprigs
and set out from beneath the ripening figs.

McKenzie sat, the feral cat
a ginger tom, a ***** brat,
he’s on the slab, he's at the vet,
he's innocent of the threat;
as scalpel steel –prepares to lop
his precious assets – for the chop.

He smirks and thinks of bowls of cream.
An instrument now stops his dream
while measuring his body’s heat:
a gross insult to his seat
that turns his grin into a pout
as he pushes the probe out.

This wicked cat – who seems serene,
his outward visage  looks so clean
external dirt can never stick,
but succumbing to his lick
it passes through that moggy’s gut
and out of an unblemished ****.

The player fears the game is up
he sees the proffered poisoned cup,
now he's exposed: the ***** rat.
Dies Irae for that cat –
the stoneless subject of our mirth –
as ball-less he departs the Earth.

Thrum.
Undulating across the cyan, sea scented lagoon,
  I watch Venezia condense like an artist
  sketching grey lines in the mist.
Murano: thump, a deeper varum,
  static air fills with diesel vapour,
  smelling of engine, tasting of oil.
Thrum away.
My eyes wash the roofs and domes with terracotta,
  till I step into the canvas

The grey ghoul masks, tan mummy wraps,
    black witch's hats and corpse green Frankenstein faces
    haven't hit the bottom of the bin before
mince pies jockey for a place beside the hot-cross buns.
Halloween and Christmas are squeezed together
    tighter than a coin’s width.

Tinsel boy band advent calendars
    sell 24 chocolate milestones
    on the road to obesity.
Supermarkets offer a sanitised Christmas
    religion rinsed away
    like bacteria on a chlorine washed turkey.
They trade a childless nativity like
    pies without mince;
    sultan-less fruit cake;
    plum-less pudding;
an unstuffed winter holiday roast.

People wonder where our culture has gone:
      we sold it for a midden
      of conveniently packaged banality.

In the Himalayan mountains,
bordered by the Chindwin River,
bordered by the humid jungle,
      sweaty, musky, monsoon scented,
East of hot and sultry plainlands
      climbs a cooler verdant forest
      to a green and vibrant woodland,
filled with mossy bamboo thickets,
filled with silent trees that listen
to      the Naga log drum beating;
          shrill cicadas’ night-time trilling;
          waking hornbills, evü, goking;
          and the flashing fireflys mating
              like a white-hot viper chilli
              spreads it’s burning incandescence.
There, amongst the hilltribe people
      is my centre, is my focus,
      separated by a journey,
      many days by air and roadway,
but my most important person
      from that place so far, so distant,
lives and loves with me forever,
      in my home, my hearth, my heartland.

A naked branch awaits the spring
    when vernal vigour will awake
      the cuckoos calling on the wing.
A naked branch awaits the spring
    like distant soundless whispering
      around the icy listening lake.
A naked branch awaits the spring,
  when vernal vigour will awake.

Caught in our wild sweaty wickedness,
he hastily withdrew,
left me like meat:
dragged, debased,
exposed and butchered
on ***** ochre soil.
Old men’s lewd burning eyes
******* transgression
spiced with rectitude.
Young men sniff my adultery
and swell like figs
succulent with stricture.
Women boil the oil of resentment
and anoint my skin
with blistering imagination.

Ringed by scorn,
I kneel before a judge
who bends down and
draws in the dirt.

Guilt lusts for sacrifice, but
no one is worthy
to light the refining pyre,
except the one who draws
in the drab yellow dust.
Impotent and muttering
my accusers sulk into the sand.

His cool clear gaze
looks at my filthy bitterness
without grimace.
His living words
whittle my trespasses away
sculpting a cleansing change.

Steaming chocolate scents the room
    coaxing me to sink into
          a soft warm woollen russet blanket
    with the promise of
            spicy sienna cinnamon biscuits.
Outside the trees prepare to hibernate
  discarding yellow ochre leaves
        onto the brown damp forest floor.
Crackles from a fire-pit
    penetrate the window
        and remind me of the autumn cold.
The finest part of a wet, chilly fall day
        is watching through double glazing.

The black man – like a pretzel on the grass –
is sitting vilified because of race,
and option less, he has to let it pass;
pretending not to sense he's out of place.

Another couple point, and laugh, and stare:
fair skin and hair proclaim their easy life.
A honeyed world means they don’t have to care:
their actions cut him like an arctic knife.

Behind, the sacred stone and glass stands for
a fruitful tree of life that’s meant for all,
but cherries are too costly for the poor.
Sweet learning for the rich, though they are dull.

It’s up to you and I to fight against
all orchards that we think unfairly fenced.

Soot darkened ***** drizzled damp sandstone
    grey like depression.
Dull ochre leaves squelch wetly under foot
    rotting and foetid.

Scaffolding covers faded elegance
    dims its fame.
Water trickles down umbrellas, hats and
    drenched clothes

Cars spraying water over the pavement
    saturates pedestrians:
soaked blue jeans stick to frozen legs,
    soggy like a graveside.

Greasy spoon tipsy waitress swerves
    spilled tea;
cracked cups, saucers and sweet generic cake
    disappoints.

Stove radiates a red smoky welcome
    like a warmed bed.
Crafted draught pints served foamy and savoured
    sparkling and bitter.

Locals drink, eat, play board games and throw darts,
    laugh at the rain.
I read poetry books to my girlfriend
    by the snug fire.

Buxton will bloom, golden again
      when summer comes,
its octagonal pavilion teem
    with street bustling life.

Deep
    liquid rock seethes
          pressure builds
                molten fingers *****
                        probing
                              searching
                        pressed down
                        resisted
                        suppressed.

                        Incandescent lava
                            finds weak points
                                  pushes
                                      forces
                                      the mountain bends, buckles, swells
                                      strains, contains
                                      furious fire

                                      until

                                at supersonic speed
                      pyroclastic ash
                  rushes
            burns
        clears.

Quiet
    death has passed                                                          
          black cinder slopes
              and
                  a flower
                      blooms.

He is like a god to me
    alpha of my pack, my rescuer and my rock:
his breath like beef’s bouquet
    his words like brittle bones breaking in my mouth.

Our touch like summer
    as I rest my head on his strong thigh:
gazing adoration
    staring petition.

I stalk him
    for the crumb that falls from his plate:
and wait patiently
    for scraps of skin from his repast.

When indecision strikes
      to eat or not to eat:
He nobly leads me to the door
      and tethered takes me out.

He leads me through
    musky canine
          saffron sage
              scented pastures:
and corrects me when
    squirrels like sins
          tempt me to stray.

We romp through rugs
    of red and russet
          fallen fronds:
foraging for
    foully fragrant food
          delight of doggy dentes.

I am his humble hound:
he my mighty man.

Spent silverfish, massed on black
whippets at        the end of the track
cracked nut shells, lying
inflated balloons, dying.

Steel mosquitos that    tattoo poppies
shot up cartridges by    the school gate
in new mown grass    that stinks      the street.

A dead baby
  is a baby that's died
      in anyone's language.

Sitting at a stained desk
superfluous space for ink wells,
groove to place my pencil
I dream of rockets, submarines and spells
as the sixties swing by
                                  out of sight.

In the lowest English sets,
there’s no dyslexia
only dumb slackness, scribbling misspelt words;
scrapped, I scarcely scrape a pass.

What bare faced side I display
attempting to write a poem
when the system says
You ****.

Field of overnight oats
so full of hippy goodness
I might live forever.

Underneath the thorn
  stinking, **** suppurates.

It throbs–
pulling the splinter–
  pressing out the ****–
      squeezing until the green sepsis runs ******.

The thorn's scar
      is permanent
            biding time,
                  waiting for bacteria.

Rubble and dust
spinning in swirling disks
around the fire
until one place
of greater attraction
draws debris to itself
and coalesces into an incandescent planet.
Earth and sky begin
full of promise.

No one saw the hooded man
in the grain of the wood:
every night I slept face down
so I didn't have to look at him.

I'm grown up:
there are no figures
on wardrobe doors,
but some people make me hide
under the bed sheets.

One place, pressure, temperature,
The Triple Point,
aqueous molecules skip between
solid, liquid and gas
the salsa between states - identical.

No growth of  ice
water does not accumulate
nor vapour pressure rise
because the waltz, one to another, is equal.

So the three coexist suggesting stasis
while constantly exchanging substance;
a symmetry of balanced dancing stability.

cobalt blue, lime green and
lemon yellow warp
stretches on a loom

the shuttle dances
back and forth
weaving my crimson weft
into the pattern of the universe

my pilgrimage zigzags
beneath the comb
as time winds the warp
which begins and ends
beyond my scarlet thread

It's not easy to wash feet
    in Messulumi.
Water fetched
    fire lit
          kettle boiled
              warm water poured
                    soap rubbed
rough towel dried.
Such care
                is needed.

I was called to walk on the water,
but I ****** in the lake instead,
polluted the whole of creation,
until all its creatures were dead.

I was called to heal all the people
with hands that are gentle and kind
but I couldn’t turn round a profit
so I shat on the lame and the blind.

I was called to bring peace to creation
but found it better to sell,
weapons of mass destruction,
and condemn all the nations to hell.

And if I complain that the world,
is *******, unfair and unkind,
it’s because I ****** in the water
and left all my refuse behind.

The drab
brown butterfly
sits on a white blossom
incautiously drinking honeyed
poison.

As the solution cools
the molecules slow their stochastic dance
and the liquid is less able
to keep the substance dissolved.

As a threshold is crossed
the power of solution fails
and atom by atom
molecule by molecule
the substance crystallizes
plane by plane
layer by layer
the form of the substance
gives rise to a growing crystal
revealing in its structure
the nature of itself.

Abandoned, Still, Silent,
only the dust is moving
dancing a noiseless perpetual waltz.
Here and there a mote
intersects the silent sun,
(that slips in through broken glass)
picking out the rainbow rays.
Just the quick perception
of mouse and bird
to observe the shafts of coloured light
that they do not comprehend.

Above the pulpit
marble eyes look out,
and stone lips
caught in the act
cry out
"Why have you forsaken Me?"
Immobile hands are pinned
out wide,
to receive the world.
They cannot open the door
but wait
for someone to come.

.                                                  Inch by inch,
                                            cruel word,
                                      indecision,
         ­                       pressure,
                        spin an avalanche
                    around my grubby life,
              cocooned, cold
          my sight
        goes
      black.
A crack, amber light bleeds
into my shrouding chrysalis.
      I struggle,
        tearing silk,
            escaping
                to smell the sun
                      taste its nectar
                            and
                          ­        see
                                        I am
                                              a
              ­                                      butterfly.

Pale pink petals dipped in blood
surround my yellow crown
  and painstakingly painted stigmata.
A  fragile, fragrant DNA poem
  perfectly expressed.
An immaculate lily – not a failed rose.

The fly,
drawn by its addiction
to sweetness,
enters the pitcher plant.
Tired and drugged,
slipping on downward
pointing hairs
it falls into
the digestive juices
that dissolve its goodness
leaving only
its hard
chitin
skeleton.