Memories of My First Trip to the Sea (from 'Remember, Me?')

The contrary wind
toboggans through my coat hood
and dries the old man’s face.
The fishmonger grins
his teeth scarred
like the surface of the seabed.

Babble and murmur
strobe in and out of my hearing.
The fishmonger twinkles
his ageing, fish scale eyes
and like water
raked over the shingle,
his salty breath carries
seaweed words
into my shallow, rock-pool mind.

Clueless and surprised,
my mother's purchase
mouths a silent gasp for oxygen.
Soupspoon reflections
in a silver eye,
distorted and obscene.
I see myself,
I'm trapped inside
a tiny submarine.

Things to Make and Do

Just before nine
on a cold wet Monday morning
little Pontius Pilate,
with his head full of games and plans,
wandered into the schoolyard
looking for things to make and do.
By lunch time
he’d learned to wash his hands.

My Cartoon World

I fumble for a light.
My hand trembles as the match flares,
settles, and so,

I saw you at once
the contours of your face harsh outlines
in the glow

and then it was gone
that single frame phosphorus flash
of cartoon show.

Junk Mail

I drew a straight line
right through the theme parks
and trade marks,
it came to an end at my door.
It’s kind of funny how
the postman knows exactly where I live.

I live by the pub with the fading sign
so I drew a straight line,
he must have followed it
right up my garden path,
past the buried bones
and Styrofoam.

I rode a big bus to the big city
to look for something I needed to buy.
I drew a straight line
from the station to the cross,
the one that marks the spot,
he must have stalked me.

I took off my shoes
and ran through the park,
it was very nearly dark
so I drew a straight line,
to a tree, which I climbed
and sure enough, there he was.

I called my mum
and got her answer phone.
I told her I wasn’t safe anymore,
she never replied,
so I drew a straight line
and nailed it to the door.

I heard the postman this morning
whistling like a dented kettle.
He visits every house
except mine
because I've unscrewed the numbers
and drawn a straight line.

Memories of a Summer Festival (from 'Remember, Me?')

The final notes ring round the harbour,
softened by the metronome lapping
of the monochrome sea against a boat.
I tread as lightly as tired legs allow,
through the stamped grass,
irrigated with piss and stale beer.
I survey a crop of plastic pint cups.
spent husks of a summer festival
far from home.

You came to me
told me tales of the sea
and returned my gift,
gave me music so I could dance.
Your laughter followed
the lights around the bay
each paired with shimmering twin,
each less luminous in the pull of dawn.
Soon it will be time to leave,
and we will take one shared moment
from the net we cast
and pass into ordinary life.
I look back across the sand
and smile for the hand
that found me there,
alone,
on the beach,
far from home.

Pearl Among the Swine (from Talk of the Town)

Another night off the substitute’s bench,
the lads are all reeking of the same deep stench,
the acrid burn of pine-fresh flush
and aftershave.
Anyone seen Dave?

Down among the spew stains and cigarette butts,
pigskin jacket and pigskin snacks,
fat men joking with the girl out back,
but that’s ok,
she’s game.

See, she’s smiling.

Down the 'Bully' (from Talk of the Town)

She steadied her hand
and put the pencil to her eye,
the sadness she spent so long
ignoring, underlined.
She knew a good thing
when she saw one,
believed the words
of Rufus and Chaka Khan.

Through the cigarette haze
she searched for her feelings,
fumbled round her handbag
for lip-gloss and meaning.
Sipping instant coffee
alone in a strange kitchen,
she smiled at the ‘funny’ mug
and considered her position.

It’d been a good night
down the ‘Bully’,
she thought to herself
taking her coat from the hall.
Closing the unfamiliar door
she walked into the cold,
an independent woman
in charge of when she lost control.

Once was Poet

Limed and caked on fluted brow,
psoriasis of flaking trust
a failing crust
of raw,
mistrust.

I close the door
and take my step,
I stare through the horizon.
The blood soaked bandages
of twilight
wrap the cobalt sky.
a flaw in my rose tinted lens
or a lash in my minds eye?

Swimming in a liquid sky,
I dissolve without a sound,
words lost in the rainfall
come crashing to the ground.

The Girl and The Loom

The narrow dirt road
walks you through
the tight morning light
where the moon sulks in puddles
and stars pout in a petulant sky.
Wet, red mud cushions your bare feet,
split and gilled at the heel.

The old couple at the crossroads
babble and exchange onyx smiles.
Playing card houses
rattle gently in the wind
as you slip by,
in your big soft slippers.

Nights damp mat hangs out to dry
on distant trees.
An explosion of birds,
a firework in negative
sparkles against the purple dawn.

A lazy breeze
sets whispers among the grass that
ripple far out in front of you.
You try to catch them and fail,
mud slippers flung
to the four corners of the world.
Your belly full of laughter
that shakes the sleep out of the sky.

The soft road, now hard and dry,
compacted by thousands
of considered footfalls
and a million others.
Journeys made to make ends meet,
connecting villages to towns,
arteries
providing oxygen for dignity
and veins
taking away pride.

You drop to your loom, tendons stretched
to slide under easily.
You put your fingers to the work
and you are gone,
lost in the weave.
The actors you watch in the giggling glow
dance off walls and into your heart.
A small way to fill long hours.

In a remote supermarket
there’s fifty percent off soft furnishings,
outside the pavement is worn
by a thousand
considered footsteps,
and a million others.

Honey Glow

Smack me with your voltage lips
burn my days, decay my sleep.
Wrench me from the numbing calm,
leave me shattered, spent, disarmed.

I’m never hungry
in my honey glow,
pinned to my chair
watch me grow.

Slash me with your sense of grief,
make me cry in disbelief.
Cut me with integrity,
peel my eyes and damp my skin.

I’m never thirsty
in my honey glow,
thrown in the deep,
sync in slo-mo.

Bound within
or die without
your cathode nipple
to my mouth.
Push me,
jack me,
jam me,
feel me.
Pull me,
wreck me,
slam me,
heal me.

Familiar

Faithful is buried here
on the big round hill
forever staring out into the vale.

His name,
once beloved,
once carved into the earth.

Flocks of years faded his words
until all that remained
were furrow and tale.

The sun burns holes
through the tissue paper dawn
and warms the stones around his feet.

Feet that once caressed the ground
and told more of its fortune
with each step.

When eternity comes to find you
it will find you bound to the earth
on the big round hill.

Homopolis

There is my house.
If we stand
on the great dark whale tongue
of tonight’s horizon
and watch it sift the krill of streetlamps
and shop fronts
through its twilight baleen
and if we tiptoe
you can just see it,
over there,
due south of the great bear.

This is my street.
It’s kind of seedy
but believe me
the neighbours are really good.
Their moth wing curtains
flickering Morse,
keeping us informed
of the latest developments at
number forty-four.

This is my estate.
A web of mortar
divided into family sized boxes
and supermarkets.
Land of the buy-one-get-one-free,
home of the shop-and-save.
A jungle of traffic signs
and telephone lines
that throb in time
with the rhythm of the night.

This is my city.
Its flaking municipal skin,
and rash of homes.
The scarring of business-parks
and urine scented subways,
like hypodermic holes
leaving track marks
across its ravaged body.
This is my Homopolis,
my living, breathing,
poems, poetry, homehome.

Panther

Prey,
my little one,
my fickle one.
Sweet incense of violence,
glissando of silence.
Your complex sanity,
the vaunted vanity.
Prey,
my little one,
prey.

Alzheimer’s Garden

Was that you I saw
standing on a distant hill?
Canute like,
trying to stop the tide of night
from washing today
off the breaker-less beach
and into the long-shore drift
of yesterday.
Climb down
from your Godly perch,
walk with me a while
and stop to smell the flowers,
while you can.

View from a Paris Window

Warmth strikes the building opposite
filling windows with bloodshot blooms.
The air, thickened up for the summer
with street scented stock,
moves through my room,
the osmotic creep of seasons.

Out across the rooftop desert
clinging to the cacti aerials,
the muted, damp tones of winter
dry to full brilliance
beneath the the orange-agar sun,
petri-dish perfect
in the swollen bosom of the sky.

Worn shutters, locked in ‘glide’
waiting for the greasy fast food thermals,
riding the isobars of awe
from self-satisfied tourists,
grey against the life
etched into the face of my friend.
His stained face,
like an old wedding cake
left in the sun too long.

Dear friend of many years
with your sad pierrot face,
your cement teeth grind
irritated by the chunks of neon
stuck in your gums.
You weep the pain of years,
and stain your face with ivy tears.
We have seen too much,
you and I,
tomorrow we will see more.

A Thief in an Empty House

Adjusting to the years
that passed by
before I noticed them gone.
I look through photographs,
search for lost moments
in negatives that absorb time.

Smiling eyes,
two dots I struggle to join.
Your laughter fills
far off rooms
while I look for treasure,
like a thief in an empty house.

Tales From The River Bank (from 'Ballade Noire')

I stood and watched the dark water
gurgle and slap,
a great black tongue
sucking at the skyline overbite.
The poultice dock
was strapped to the torn bank
drawing every festering
drug addict, hustler and pimp
into a coagulating mass
that somehow stopped the City
from bleeding to death.
‘Scabs’ the cops called them,
made sense.

Every few minutes
the solitary sound of a single shot
reminded the wharf rats
how dangerous it was
to be too low down the food chain.
Across the moonlit slick
penthouse lights flickered
as those lucky enough
to be born with pretty faces
dipped into millionaire pockets
and passed out between the sheets.

That’s how it was on the river,
two kinds of people,
those with everything
and those with nothing.
Everybody else had a rabbit hutch
in the suburbs.
Too afraid to make a break
for the North bank
in case they messed up
and ended up on the South.
Whatever way you looked at it
it took guts to live in the city.

Then there was me,
hovering in the spaces
between the floors.
There was something predictable
about human behavior,
nobody took the stairs
unless there was a fire.
There were plenty of ways
a guy in my line of work
could slip in and out unnoticed.

I checked my watch,
any moment now
it would be over for a pretty face
who tried to make the jump.
The trouble with blackmail
is it’s only ever half a plan.
You make your move
and collect the cash,
but its over quicker than
a fast-food cardiac.
Life is cheap but revenge is expensive
and I got kids to feed.

The Ballad of Tokyo Jo (from 'Ballade Noire')

I lit a cigarette
and stared through the blinds.
I watched as the rain ran stitches
across a wounded dusk.
The day had tried to heal itself
but had succumbed
and festered into bruise-black night.
I hated the rain,
it made me think
of gloomy childhood outings
to dead seaside towns.

I took my hat and my gun
from the desk
and slipped out the back way
under a canopy of fire escapes
and vents with small metal hats
that steamed and wheezed bronchially
into the dimly lit alley.

I flanked the city centre
with its gawkers, stalkers,
talkers and hawkers
in their shades of deadly-night.
Acting out their low-slung
parody of b-movies
and cheap novels.
Angelic in their bleached
fluorescent faces.

I ducked across
the sweat stained streets
and melted into the neon blaze
of the ‘Sushi House’.
There you were,
across the bar
sipping Beaujolais
in cartoon silhouette,
animated by a river of flashing tail-lights.
Your long shadow
in soft tones of tobacco aged wood,
floated in a river of mercury.

I took a seat across the bar,
poised, in a deadly poker game
I paused
then played my hand.
Frame by frame the bullets
ripped into the picture
and I shuddered
as thunder tore through my body.
There was a pause
for realisation
then pain struck
in great blinding forks
arcing across my mind.

The last thing I heard
was not the voice of God
or my mother
but my own.
White noise,
word upon word until
all I could hear was deafening static.
Then someone turned the volume off.

The Solid Car (from 'Ballade Noire')

The solid car rolled silently by,
smooth tin wheels
and grey tin shell.
Windows tinted with nicotine
from half-smoked cigarettes.
She tapped the fuel gauge glass
and flicked ash
into the smoky tray
beneath the out-of-season fir tree,
pine fresh fragrance
to flush the stale reek of insecurity.

She balanced on stiletto point
and slipped the car
into a less ostentatious gear.
The rolling mass sulked to a stop,
shuddered in the chilly drizzle
and came to rest outside a bar.
The neon greeting, badly looped
like her first handwriting lesson,
feigned an unconvincing welcome
then stuttered a sibilant sigh of defeat.

Salome rolled down her window
and breathed in good clear diesel fumes,
the scent of childhood
and strange machines
purring softly through the night
in the old barn.
The smell of long ago,
the dizzying musk of memory.
She cried for a simpler time,
small tears which ripened
into fat juicy fruit and fell in harvests
round her gritty knees
and washed them clean.
She opened Pandora’s box
and stepped out.

She pulled her short jacket round her
tight, like a second skin,
and braved ten steps.
In three,
she had caught the eye,
in five,
she had the rhythm of your heart,
in seven,
the rhythm took control,
in ten,
systolic shock, your heart broke
as the door closed behind her.

Salome walked into the bar and left her
leathery likeness hanging in the
damp cloak room.
She ordered two shots,
One to keep the chill out,
one to keep it in.
She scanned the booths and stools for her man,
he clung to split vinyl
as her glare tore through
the amber light of the room.
She smelt him near,
noted his brand of beer,
and stalked into the gloom.
Salome slid sideways into the seat
and stared into the eyes of the next few hours.
He reeked of sweat, blended whiskey,
and cheap hotels.
She slid her hand under the table
and produced a book,
she opened it’s gossamer pages
and sang her song.
The heavy man folded his lips in a greasy smile
as gravy ran from his chin
onto a silver platter.

The Satellites are out Tonight

Through smoking gums
and lava teeth,
my tongue of flame
whispered crackled consonance
into your damp ear.
You drowned
on the belly swell of ocean rock.
We sifted your ashes
from the pile
and planted this tree
out here in the desert.
The dustbowl sun
etching tall stories
to scrape the sky.
We rested in your oasis cool,
watched your
petrochemical arms grow,
reaching into all corners of Eden,
shooting up steel,
smoking glass,
shimmering in the heat haze
of your runways.
Your concrete hair,
set in ‘high-rise’ style,
was matted
with chewing-gum loop motorways
that navigated your skin,
the carriers of your sin.
For here and there
you were naked
in your poverty and famine.
A contradiction
of population sores,
patches on your skin.
rock, sand and stone,
glass, steel and chrome,
plastic, fantastic.
A symphony
of mobile phones
prefab homes,
traffic cones,
garden gnomes.
Colours that faded,
grey as bones
in their dusty tombs.
The desert would move,
here one day
gone the next,
exchanging sand for pixels
as the smallest currency.
Flat-screen twinkle,
wide-screen stare,
full sensory support.

In the last days
a star shall fall from the sky.
There is a meltdown in Eden,
and the satellites are out tonight.

Big Dumb Desert

You stand
with your hands,
like a cowboy's,
hidden deep in your pockets.
Canyons of thought form
across your clumsy sandstone face,
arid like a big dumb desert.

Warriors and squaws,
all bare and baby backed,
fire tiny arrows of reason
that cannot penetrate
your thick buffalo-hide.
Tumbleweed
scours the main street
of your ghost town mind.

A fault cracks the crusty ground,
the Rio Grande.
A smile washes across your face
and you laugh like rain,
in a big dumb desert.

Obfuscation (Suburban Tales Part 2)

This morning
I passed you on the landing.
You stalked my thoughts,
puffed-up in your purulent pride,
all tan tights and scorn.
Can you not see
the embers of my dreams
still glowing with possibility?

Can you hear me
when I tell you stories you once loved?
Frayed and thinner now
from years of brick resistance.
Do you feel me wither
from your blistering touch?
Acid queen of sharp words,
drowning me
with talk of vinegar and Volvos.

Frozen in your aspic world,
you wear a string of bleak hours
like a rosary
around your neck.
Can you see me
through that glazed,
glass hurricane eye?
Will you dream easily
in the arrogant calm,
my martyr to sufferance?
Dream up ways
to fill ten thousand stale days.

Tin Man (Suburban Tales Pt 1)

This morning
I passed you on the landing,
you seemed distant and small.
You smiled, absent minded,
lost in your world of fast money
and days of grey,
lit by the dying suns
you count among your own.

I listened
to sofa-box speeches.
Watched the blood
drain from your face
as big wins paled
into small victories.
Felt your stone skin shrink
when small victories
became keeping your head
above water.

You stalk your den. A lion caged
and toothless from gnawing
on the brittle bones of regret.
You wear the nature of your tragedy
in rainbow coloured ribbons,
a diffraction of hope
pinned to your breast.

You open your heart
and share the emptiness,
unselfishly.
My hollow messiah,
breaking the crust
of ten thousand stale moments,
to feed your hungry fears.

A Day-Trip to You

I take your hand
and step lightly into the boat,
ripples break at the shore
corruption of that perfect line,
tiny shock waves
dashed on the pebbles.

The gravel whispers warnings
under the boat.
We drift into a slipstream
of grinning lanterns,
deaths teeth in dark water.

The cannon of your song
thunders round cavern walls
and pounds my body,
a sound so dense
it gives weight to lies,
I realise.

Tears roll down
your pearly cheeks
and pepper-dot
the water’s skin
as it sinks in.
I close my eyes
and swallow fear,
I know how deep
the water’s here.

A Poet Exposed (from 'Remember, Me?')

I am nothing
but a cage of bone and blood,
a pernicious persistence of life,
rhyme and unreason.
I carry the weight of the words
on my shoulders.

Winter in Bohemia

Thick winter makes
phantom landscapes.
Not the cloying kiss of death
but the ice-dry scorch
of those long gone,
when rich ruby lips
fade to dusty bone.

Has the well run dry
is this the last goodbye?
Your wooden frame
powdery and soft,
bends in the rain.
Home to fleshy fungi,
lesions on the skin
of this way of life.

My heart is filled
with the scent of mother
drifting through
the kitchen window.
My well is refilled
with shiny pitchforks
and wheelbarrow wheels.
Small thought that once
there was life here.

Take me gently
down fresh paths
carved through
phantom landscapes
to the far field
with a brand new sickle.
When the last
harvest’s in
it will be time
to kiss mother goodnight
and let go her onyx hand.
Tomorrow
will be a warmer day.