Category: Poetry

Hair simmered on my forearms.
My cuffs shrank and drank sweat.
The sun scaled the wall,
Claimed the courtyard,
Beat the brows of wedding guests.
Rafters were lively with swallows.
Rooftops were empty of cranes.
Two stood before the congregation,
Stood together, and were changed.

I watch bugs and am alive
When the dog checks —
With a novel in my lap,
With strings set low on radio,
With cutlery storming in the hands
Of my elusive neighbour.
They eat salad, I suppose,
For it’s a day for beetroot,
For it’s a day for fixing bikes
And sipping beer from Japan.
What else shall we jaw on? Art?
Who has the darkest, blackest blacks?
Friend, the fact is writ in law.
Anish Kapoor exposed the void and
At the Hayward Gallery I saw it
Stare like a dog (mine)
Settled in hot shadow (mine also).
Life, uh, uh, finds a way
Despite being the leading cause of death.
Life begets life begets… well, the stuff
That oozes in my back garden
Beneath Uluru, my seat of power.
Thank you, finished novel in my lap.
Thank you, bell about to chime.

I am in need of an editor.
I am a nerve stretched taut
And plucked.
Play your tune;
I’ll turn out pockets:
Lost notes, dog-eared and
Scrunched.
Each line is yours to untangle,
The work is reverberating soft.
My brains,
These rocks,
Your schema.
The newborn
Slithers off.

I come to you sap-stained.
I come to you river-cooled
And bramble-tagged —
Sun-touched.

I come to you under cloud
And through water
And churchyards
And over brush.

I arrive at your feet.
I cradle your legs,
I cautiously untangle your mane.
I’ll do it again before Sunday.

On Sunday, I’ll do the same.

Let slip my mind to hills, which cry out, ‘Country!’
At Swanley, plastic bottles flood the verge.
Ferns curl — copper shavings shroud detritus;
Detritus which is swept and then ignored.

The train leaps a road and on that bridge I’m dying.
My flesh and blood diverges from the whole,
Caught by tunnels, pinioned by dour darkness.
In distant hills, my mind begins to roam.

Brown bodies smudge the furrowed land.
They are of it, clustering the brow.
The sight deceives: makes one believe in
A nervated earth.

An author I like describes writing as child’s play, meaning:
Stories he wove in the creche are worth real money, meaning:
His hallucinations are printed and bound.

An author I like has a wife who helps out occasionally.
He composed a dedication to her sanguinity.
It’s sweeter than I can stand.

‘Comparison is the slow immersion of the soul in acid,’ I muster.
A cartoon villain cackles in my throat.
I slide my pen to the margins, where

Doodles distract from my assignment; I must describe the summer pause.
I am six, sun-baked, flash-frozen. The paper before me is tundra,
So blank, my print would spoil it. How I hate my hieroglyphs.

‘What did you do?’ the teacher coaxes.
‘Fishing in the Wansbeck,’ I’ve rehearsed.
But not, ‘My net sank in hollows. It filled with darts.’

Nor, ‘Herding shadows, collecting commas.’
Nor, ‘Don’t make me salt my catch as letterforms.’
The page. Stays. Empty.

Unless instead of writing, you’d take thinking —
Unless instead of thinking, you’d take seeing —
Unless instead of seeing, you’d take being

Under a yellow bridge,
Fish winging my heels,
Then I’d conjure you verse.

Snowdrops speckle the yard.
Lambs scatter. Sun slants.
Together, they whiten
The whispering green.
These prophets of life
Alight on the earth. You blink,
Overawed at the scene.

Palm me,
As you would a coin.
Let me slide behind your wrist,
All hush and quiet —

Covered,
While the Assembly Room roars:
‘Where are those ragged bones,
Lazy and lousy?’

‘Gone. All gone,’
Is my retort —
Alive with secret,
Self-satisfied thought.

Gone to ground…
Gone under cloth…
Gone against the grain
Of her body…

Skin like Sunday morning
Risen again;
Gold as a bell
Stopped early.

Imagine the way
The dog darkened
Slipping beneath the static
Of night-time wood.
Oxleas Wood, past-nine,
Fuzz-flooded. Formless.
Imagine
Arriving home, my sister
Stoking a voice on speakerphone.
‘I saw your dog… Mistaken… Sure.
Moonlight soaked the rug.’