To Chris




I know a boy called Chris,

Whose very hard to dis,

He never takes anything a miss,

And always gets the jist.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Bird God




“ There is no test,

Only flight and rest.”

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
From The Ferry




The sun shines on the sea,

Like a taught skin,

On the back

Of an ancient animal.



Large, it undulates,

Like a conversation between,

Two massive banks,

Lost in a continual horizon.



Peaks of white foam,

On cross hatched waves.

Lit wrinkles of a wise old lady,

Contrast in moods of blue.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Following




The gulls follow the ferry,

With brains like dolphins,

Hearts like lions

And wings of their own.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Night Tear




A medicinal tear,

In the nocturnal night,

Runs like an orange,

Off the page of the sky,

Into the depth of a grey cloud.

Swallowed by the wind.

Autumnal




Autumn spits out cars,

Bucketed in leaves.



Newly born to the night,

Parked like seasonal brains,

At the side of the road.



Empty inside.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Void




Give it all to a night walk.

The cold evening breeze is passing through,

Am I a solid object?

Or

Are all the wheels of the universe

Turning into and out of me

Like a hole,

Endless?



Where I am but an aperture,

Without substance.



Meeting the world.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A Birds Free Will




In a cushioned sky,

Is the relief of a seagull,

It glides above me,

And hovers.



A shadow,

So big and invisible,

Is cast,

Cool in the sun.



I know I am being watched,

It does me good.

I am passive,

Our relationship is a mile high.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Dark Nudge




A flick-book of scratches blows out

The working man’s candle.

The unkempt pen marks out

Crosses instead of kisses.



Our mistakes can never be re-lit.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mindful




The split tree continues

To grow in the mind,

A stone lies in its shadow.

The seed always interrupts the knife.

A New Currency in Fruit




Behind the eyes,

In the brain,

Is the tearing of tears,

He knows he was young once.



He stands behind me,

I whisper into his winged ear,

He puts his hands through my arms,

Playing melancholy.



Cutting my head with the sun,

Where all the trees are hiding,

Making them appear,

They bare fruit.



Gone,

He reminds me with the absence of memories,

The price of happiness and wonder,

Is forgetting that he was there.



Under the clear sky,

Under the cherry tree,

I sit picking bright blue diamonds,

Amongst the laden branches.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Lines





The ideal height,

The ideal shoe size,

The ideal footprint.



Is the world really ending?



Outside my flat there is a snow softened tree,

Its marble branches reaching up into the empty night.



It is so beautiful.



 
 
 
 
 
 

South-End

It is quiet today,

The train empties out its soul,

Silence is barely pinched

By the funfair.

Gulls form random complications,

A single pattern,

Suspended as an object

And we leave like the first time

Out of a cinema.

Action Against Awe

With one big hand

I grasped the twinkling aeroplanes

From the stars.

They blinked at me,

Scrunching them up like paper balls,

I put them into my smaller hand.

There should never be too many lights in the sky.

It is inappropriate. 

The Crow

Is it all you wanted?

A spattering of snow

Against the cold ground.

Were you happy how you ended?

Any deeper

No-one would know you were there.

Do your black iced wings remember white morning skies?

The changing moon,

The yo-yoing sun.

Now a breathless puppet,

Once a vessel for air,

Reduced to a kick-thing for the inquisitive child.

Outside the playground.

One Hundred on the Horizon


As I fell I saw the black hills against the night’s dark sky and one hundred on the horizon.

It was pretty and impressive, with every hour it came closer, reaching me at dawn, each part breaking, covering me in a thousand pieces of the sun, dressing me in red golden light and I was happy to have stumbled to see the beginning in this way.

Like a friend the day picked me up with a firm and approving hand.

All I had to do was live in it.

Kind Cows


The ravens combed over the grey clouds in an old blue sky,

Battered like a tin milk bucket by airplanes and their trails.



While drops fell off leafs,

Like cow tears on the hoofs of snow white calves,

Bowing to the roots of trees.



There they eat the fallen apples,

Guarding them for all the worlds sins,

To digest twice over,

So man will not make another mistake.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
To Ben



You are the sweet young man,

Who turned me onto beards,

You make me want to draw,

Something I haven’t done in years.



If I had the wit of Stevie Smith,

Or the courage of David Hockney,

I’d draw you from the top window,

Looking down on me.





 
 
 
 
 
 
The Model Ship



The model ship was being submerged by a model sea and I jumped down the stairs in two’s in turn with a young girl, I was young too, our legs tied together by our ankles going down the tower of stairs, level by level to save the children on the real boat.

Lullaby

Flesh of my father,
Flesh of my mother,
See what you have made.

A starry eyed babe,
A bag full of organs,
Yet to  be played.

Waiting for the orchestra,
For a conductor with his baton,
For a form to create.





Open Mouth of the Sea

The sea roars,
Not like a lion,
It is too blue for that,
The seagulls fly into its mouth
Too eagerly.

Taking everything out,
Without a spoken word,
The sea mist answers,
In respect we walk inland.






The Cow Fairy

She flew out from the  glasss of milk,
Like a cow fairy,
That had been sitting in the teat
Of an udder,
Shaking the cream
Off her hair and wings.

Parading around the room,
Like an angelic cat,
To busy posing
To notice a single mirror.

When her callers eyes
Had towelled her off,
She slowly climbed into the glass,
Drunk by her advertisement,
Hiding in its opaque emptiness.

Waiting.







The Golden Bell

The boy was given a golden bell,
The size of a mans fist,
With a heavy handle,
Without explanation.

He held it in both hands,
Knowing the bell was not to be played,
But rang in emergencies
Gathering those like him
Who he had not yet met,
Sounded as an alarm.

Once only.






Your Hand

The rivers current is indecisive,
As you are not mine.

It would be easier to own
An acre of indigo sky,
Farm the stars
Or claim possession over a neon sunset,

Than to hold your hand and keep it
By my side.







Buried Deeds

Fingers to the lip,
Words come out to trip,
Along the tongues devilish tip,
The wings of man are mauled and clipped.

Buried deep within the ground,
Where once the wings with man stood proud,
Are now remains of deeds unbound,
Covered over by dark words, a shroud.

For ever was a fate made clear,
That ones gift of flight kept so near,
As never to let go even with fear,
A chance to fly away from tears.

The Departed

The Clouds always matched the sky,

Like the buttons on his suit,

Spreading up to the Lapel’s of the Heavens,

To the Sun.

Finally the Moon,

An old man looking on romantically

Spends his time in the patterns of the night.

Telling stories like age old myths,

To the one left behind.

Farewell

The doorknobs

Are wiped dry,

And the corners

Pressed in the rooms.

The light bulbs unscrewed,

For other homes,

No more reshuffling of matches,

Into a bigger box.

Someone’s dying

In all the windows,

As she goes

Bye.

The Child

Leafs weep when touched,

Trees bend as he walks by,

He is the black cats worry

And the golden dogs saviour.

He knows it all,

That is his right,

Youth does not betray his age.

He sleeps on ocean floors

And communes on mountain tops.

He is the world and all its secrets.

He is the suns keeper

And the moons gift.

A child by any other name.

The Sunlit Silence

It is a sunlit day,

But the sun is a liar,

And the moon is a whore,

Full of unkempt promises,

Peppering the night with stars.

They fall one by one,

While the sky is blue,

So the heart can suffer expediently,

Slowly and thoroughly in secrecy,

Under the guise of privacy,

In a paper bag called respect.

The Hot House Flower

The red clematis has flowered,

Spring has tricked me again.

The yellow daffodils and blue bells,

Are parading in the neighbours gardens,

But they will wilt like the magicians secret,

I will have learnt, as the season passes.

The white blossom has already fallen,

Gathering as words on grey stone parchment,

Where phonetics become ridiculously important,

Describing myself on the pavements I walk.

 

Egg Eyes

Holding two peeled hard boiled eggs, one in each hand, he presses them, staring into their shining reflection.

Softly puncturing and pushing his thumbs into their white flesh. They crumble like paper eyes that have been written on a thousand times, left to fall endlessly out of his sticky palms.

To Touch the Sun

The branches pierce the sun,

Like spears through a glowing ball,

I would like to move it above me,

Casting no shadow in the forest,

Its appearance in the lake is a false light,

Held by the nets of reflection,

Shown up by surface ripples,

I wish to wade in and grab the illusion,

But to what point,

As it disappears,

Sunk soon as I enter the water.

 

Blue to Red

The sky is flat, bright and blue,

Trees jump out from their smooth background,

The birds hold on for dear life,

Dear life shakes them off like spat out pomegranate seeds,

Turning the sky red, full, fleshy and forlorn,

Like the story of one among many.

 

The Empty Wall

The sky is a wall,

With the horizons trees pressed into it,

Blue has become two-dimensional,

The sky’s emptiness cannot tell of its depth.

 

From the Bowels of a Boat

From the bowels of a boat

On course for the shorelinne,

Alone he hid,

Hearing the machinery of the sea,

Its valves and pipes pumping out

Black water into the night.

Not knowing what

The cold foam would become of him.

 

A Sentence

Spelling mistakes reminded me

Where I have to go tomorrow,

Commas make me take

Deep breaths,

Full stops push me

Forward to the end,

Quotation marks bring me

Closer to you.

 

A Change of Record

I gave myself a ticket,

For every time it rained,

And exchanged it for a recording

That played the sound of sunshine.

The Slow Moon

The crescent moon

I walked beside

Fell back

As I turned the corner.

Now looking back,

My neck bent,

I worry

I might not see it again.

 

What goes up must come down

Black moths fall from the light bulb,

Like cotton candy into the mouths of  babes.

Words drop,

Like a sweet shadow

Over the wet feet of experience.

Grass is thrown up,

By hands idling the oncoming autumn,

Like rice pelting a misinformed September couple.

And the eyes that strain upwards,

Carry the sights of the sky,

To the ground where they can be weighed today.

 

Potential Arrows

Crows gather like graphite arrows,

Some on tree ends,

Others spread out territorially on the field,

All pointing straight ahead with jerked necks.

They stare waiting for me to drop dead,

I mean them no harm,

Yet I wait to see them drop,

I trust their motivation more than my own.

 

They

They come and go,

The ones that tell you what to do,

They are they and are in the know,

You follow them even though they are the few.

They smile through their bitter news,

Never knowing you,

Sometimes alone, sometimes in crews,

Still you have not paid your dues.

You follow their advice,

They say it will be good and you’ll feel nice,

But really you are to forget what you once were,

That is their device.

     

The Old Woman's Words of Consolation

"It must be hard having eyes like yours."
Said the old woman to the boy.
"Tell me, what is it like to see into the soul?"

The boy answered,
"I'm scared most of the time and look for as long as I am able to out of politeness.
Distraction is my friend"

The old woman gave the boy a pen full of ink
And instructed him to write on his hands
A word or two of his own.

With that he covered his eyes knowing what
Was in the darkness was of his own making.

There he could take rest and refuge from those
Baring themselves without consequence.

The Hovering Artist

Sun shine brightly on my hands,
Through clouds and trees,
For me to do your bidding,
To put your will before me.

The birds were your voice,
The people, paint on your earth caught,
Held up floating by the angels,
So fine, thread pulled taught.

No rain or storm or mildew
On my bread,
A calm and quiet
Bedstead.

So light in the sky,
I hover up above,
The pictures I create,
Are the signs of love.

Opaque

Close it all,
Close every latch and lock,
Bring it closer to me,
Inside the room closer still.

Push it out of every hole,
Out of socket and key hole,
Further out of gaps,
Under and over doors.

Cover me,
Cover all the floors,
Sheath the walls,
Mask the windows.

I do not want to see,
Out of fitted glass,
Or through the slits in the walls,
No holes in my house.