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.