Coastal Path

Van Gogh cut his ear off
and Britney cut her hair
I’ll just walk this coastal path
and act like I don’t care.

I’ve packed some crusty sarnies,
a flask of Assam tea.
I’ll sit and have a picnic.
I won’t walk into the sea.

This coastal path reminds me
of how my life has been;
always trudging round the edges
but never plunging in.

I scream up to the seagulls
that wheel the sky above.
They don’t know what they’re seeing:
a fool lamenting foolish love.

Ha! Isn’t that a saying?
“Go tell it to the birds”?
Well, take my fucking picture.
It can speak my thousand words.

Meanwhile you play deaf-mute
somewhere beyond the sea;
your oceanic silence
which somehow calls to me.

Do I plunge in? Do I swim out?
Do you hear me? Do you care?
Or should I walk this coastal path?
I stop. I stand. I stare.

Yeah, Van Gogh cut his ear off.
His reasons are not clear.
Perhaps he wanted silence?
Me? I need to hear.

The Hole

We had a shovel each
but you sat down,
refused to dig.
You said you had a hole nearby
just deep enough.

I dug around you anyway,
burning with exertion
passionate as an oil fire.
You gave off no heat
and almost no light.
You avoided my eye
but I knew you were watching.

You crossed your legs
sharpened your pencil
as we slowly descended;
as the manhole of sky
gradually telescoped
to a pinprick
and we began to hear
the unmistakable
copulating rhythms
of the Earth

Endless Days

“And now my last and greatest trick”
The magician smiled, the crowd leaned in.
A flash-pot set them back in their seats.
The magician smiled.

“My last and greatest trick”.
His headache was getting worse.
His assistant stepped
into the spotlight
her sequins too bright.
Fucking dazzling.
Fucking incandescent.

A crackle of light, smell of cut grass.
His assistant stepped...

“My last and greatest trick”
The crowd leaned in.
Earlier they had fought about nothing.
She didn’t love him.
He had called her a cunt.
Smell of cut grass.

Her sequins were too bright.
Fucking dazzling.
With unbelievable effort,
he raised his wand,
stirred the air above him.
“Behold The Disappearing Bride!”

On that cue
her hands swept down
from head to toe
brushing reversible sequins.
The fierce red light
changed instantly to
incandescent white.

The crowd gasped and clapped.

“The Disappearing Bride!”
She never sucked him off anymore.
He blinked sweat out of his red eyes,
the wand slippery in his fingers.

She coughed,
tipped her head pointedly towards
the crowd,
her eyes flashing at him
expectantly.

“Oh yes!”, he whispered.
“My final, greatest trick”
He circled the wand,
lassoing all the magic in the air.

He had fucked her once in the
surf of a nameless island
somewhere south of Cuba.
When was that?
How many summer seasons
since that fuck?
How many times had she disappeared
since that lost tide?

She coughed again and
the silence grew louder around the cough.

A diamond boiled in his belly.
It flowed and grew outwards.
It expanded and vibrated
at the exact wavelength of her entire body.

The magician coiled down
to bring the diamond out
and around him.
A cape of pure light.

“Abracadabra”, he called and
all the lightning and the thunder
of the lost arts
sent their hammers down.

The bubble formed
and washed towards her,
its surface curving
every way
to fractal recurrence.

His wand came down
and she was gone
a puzzle piece removed
as black light pulsed,
the faintest trace of ozone
in the air.

The crowd levitated,
enraptured,
exploded in a
deafening popcorn
of applause.

The magician fell to one knee,
profoundly deaf now.
He opened his hand
to find a few sequins
and three of her teeth
beneath the skin of his palm.

Two weeks later he has
given up hope
of sleeping again.
The days are endless now.
His days are endless.
She is gone.

My Beard

I know the whole idea is rather weird:
GraceK and Baytown wanted me to write
this stupid villanelle about my beard.

I guess I let it grow because I feared
my face was looking old or some such shite.
I know the whole idea is rather weird.

My wife just shrugged, the children loudly jeered
so now I pen, more angry than contrite,
this stupid villanelle about my beard.

I shaved it off but then it reappeared.
Eventually I just gave up the fight.
I know the whole idea is rather weird.

A facial growth like mine should be revered
so ladies, learn by heart and then recite
this stupid villanelle about my beard.

A literary genre pioneered
and now abandoned at its highest height!
I know the whole idea is rather weird;
this stupid villanelle about my beard.

An Atheist’s Prayer

Dear Nothing,
take me softly.
I’ll go quietly.

Just wait until Scheherazade
finishes her stories.
Just wait until the Golden Gate
is painted.
Just wait until I reach the end
of the M25.
Failing all that, just wait until
all the Stones
are dead.

And when you take me
please redistribute me
one molecule at a time
in the following places:

Distribute me into
the glistening black
bow tie
of a James Bond
not yet born.
Let me be a hero.

Distribute me into
the snow white fur
of the cat
on the lap
of the villain
across from Bond.
Let me see both sides of the argument.

Distribute me into
the dense weave
of a perfectly imperfect
Persian rug.
Let me brighten up the joint.

Distribute me into
the celluloid
of an archival print
of The Third Man.
Let me always
feel the flicker,
hear the zither.

Distribute me into
an astronaut’s lunch
so I can be ejected
to drift in sleepy deep freeze
for sixty million years
and one day seed a distant moon.
Let me see the world.

Distribute me into
the horse hair of a violin bow
the catgut of a guitar string
the stretched skin
of a rock and roll snare.
Let me always bring the noise.

One piece of me needs special care.

Oh Nothing, your chaotic art
must pack one piece of me
alongside the molecules of
my coy mistress
within the same sweet
humming summer bumblebee
so we may buzz together
and taste the nectar of
back gardens.

Whatever’s left I’d like you
to carefully place
into the
cigarette-smoking lips
of French girls.

Sweet Nothing,
wash me in the wind
and in the water.
Lose me in the sands of time
for when I’m lost
in all these places
in all these outer and
these inner spaces,
perhaps I shall be useful.
Perhaps I shall be found.

Hand in Glove

It could be said my mother is reserved.
It could be said my father is quite weird.
A passing stranger might be quite unnerved
to learn they’ve been together fifty years.

They’d think that he’s a kook and she’s his cook,
that Stockholm Syndrome may well have set in
but I’d suggest they take another look,
to understand what’s really happening.

It is the simplest tale that humans tell:
Two people who have aged in ageless love.
Love’s not some alchemy nor magic spell.
It’s simply five decades lived hand in glove.

Two vines now grow as one enduring knot.
All anybody wants is what they’ve got.

A Top Secret Message to You

This poem is not meant for ev’ry one.
It will not make much sense to passers by.
They might find subtext if they really try
(and subtext here is really half the fun)
but only you can solve my fiendish code.
For you already know what I shall write;
illicit words which keep me up at night -
I’ve hushed them to the point of overload.
It’s sweet how you pretend you’ve no idea
that ev’ry thing I write, I write to you
while in your heart, you surely know that’s true.
Perhaps these cryptic lines will make it clear?
The passers by won’t have the faintest clue:
My super secret code is: ‘_    _ _ _ _    _ _ _ ‘

Synchronised Swimming

As we swim down into the deep
unguarded waters of our sleep,
we dive together and it seems
tonight we’ll meet at last in dreams.
We broke the vows the waking keep
and left our bed clothes in a heap
and, skinny dipping now, we reap
what we have sown at love’s extremes
as we swim down.

Then, as we swim, our shadows meet
and steal away to soundless deep
while, tightly wrapped in blue moonbeams,
we kiss, now knowing what this means;
we’re most alive when sound asleep.
So we swim down...

Subject Matter

What would I write about if I didn’t have you
to write about? I suppose I would do
what poets did a thousand years ago
and write of kings and wars and try to show
how the sword was mightier than the pen
when the opposite was true, even then.

I suppose I might look out the window
and doodle people passing down below
imagining that I could see traces
of secret sorrow in happy faces.

Perhaps I’d just write portraits of myself?
“A forty-something man in decent health”
though pretty soon I think you’d find it weird;
“Another villanelle about his beard?”

An epic meditation on a leaf?
In Autumn they could have a stanza each.
The longest nature poem ever seen
till I ran out of words to rhyme with green.

So many topics waiting for my pen
to discover them someday but, till then,
my pen only wants to write about you
so if you don’t mind, that’s what I shall do.

Songbird

Indulge me please, this once, and let me start
by telling you these lines flow from my heart.
I know you think perhaps I do not care
so it’s high time I tried to clear the air.
I’ve worked so hard to pull you close to me.
The act of pulling seems to set me free.

Meanwhile you’re cruelly yanked this way and that.
A pussy hounded by an old tomcat.
You sigh as I insist you are my muse.
You stifle accusations of abuse.
The self-regarding crowd can’t see what’s wrong;
a songbird who no longer sings her song.

To me, the outrageous sexual tension
is oil on the flames of my invention
but I’ve ignored what I could clearly see:
that you’re not lifted by this chemistry
but rather physics pulls you to the ground.
As I go sailing up, I weigh you down.

I’m posting this for all the world to see.
I wanted to say sorry publicly
and though, songbird, my heart will remain true
this is my last romantic song to you
and as I ponder what I have done wrong
I pray the world will once more hear your song.

To a True Beauty

We look into the mirror quite dismayed;
our youth annihilated, flesh betrayed.
This fresh-faced child looked long enough to see
an ageing father staring back at me.

We sigh at age, almost out of duty.
We fail a faulty measurement of beauty,
but our despair in age is surely learned.
The beauty of the young is quite unearned.

Beauty cannot be twisted, old or fat?
Then we must see with better eyes than that.
Somehow we forget as we grow older
how beauty’s in the eye of the beholder.

Lady, we must recalibrate our eyes
and learn to see the beauty of the wise.
Please know that when I stand and look at you
I’ll not see what is old but what is true.

If struggling to play the hand you’re dealt,
recall true beauty isn’t seen, but felt.
John Keats equated beauty with the truth.
Look deeply in your mirror for the proof.

Prometheus

You planted out a shrunken, pot-bound tree
and something in your whispers made it glow,
and something in your meanings made it grow.
Prometheus, you gave your fire to me
and watched as roots went snaking wildly out,
explored the yielding contours of the land
explored the landscapes laid out by your hand.
You watched and smiled and never had a doubt
that my wild roots could ever reach your heart
but my wild roots, alive as any vine,
grew into yours, to tightly intertwine
until it seems absurd that we could part.
There is no word for this strange thing we’ve found;
this unseen love that thrives beneath the ground.

The Tempest

Two young girls are playing on a slope.
Two hours ago they saw a horse bring forth a snake.
Their father saw a crowning head of hope.
Their mother saw a tempest darkening a lake.

Two young girls are playing on a slope.
One hour ago they found the husks of three young guys
burned to death, their bodies bound with rope.
The girls collected gemstones from the empty eyes.

Two young girls are playing on a slope.
They’re throwing painted pebbles in the air
Sometimes the pebbles fall, sometimes they float.
The girls do not yet know that life’s not fair.

Two young girls are playing on a slope.
One hour from now they shall finally be seen;
two microbes dancing in a microscope
by a Nevada farmboy on a high-end plasma screen.

Two young girls are playing on a slope.
Two hours from now they will not see the drone
or wormy fire balloon, kaleidoscope.
One girl will die, and one return alone;
a pebble painted, tossed to fly or fall, or float.
Two young girls are playing on a slope.

To a Girl I Hurt

On the kitchen floor
at Charlotte’s house
we had unprotected sex.

I was eighteen,
horse-fit, long-haired
wreathed in hash smoke
lit up always
with my idiot glory.

You were seventeen
a dancing light
in hippy skirts
and blue tint shades
an angular
unblemished yearling
all elbows and laughter
and kisses.

Your thighs were cold on mine
as we squirmed
on kitchen tiles
lit cigarettes
and smoked them
laughing
while I was still inside you.

Three months later
an abortion is arranged
by the mother of our friend.
Your mother must never know.

You are whisked away
and then returned
to join the game
passed a spliff and kissed.
You smile
a single hammered note
on a prepared
piano.

Just then
in the swirling air
above rooftops
something cruel is born.

Three years later
I ran into you by chance
in Sydney Street.
You wore your skin
more tightly then
a casual queen
of well-cut hair
and manicures
of snappy air kisses
and Sauvignon Blanc.

Self-possessed and absolute
you insisted I attend
a party
at your house that night.

I was nervous
expecting all your pop star friends
but on arrival
I saw at once
it was a party thrown
for only me.

You poured us chilled champagne
a bottle each
and then, once drunk,
you held my hand
and suddenly
we were far from land
waking three years before
on the sinking
doomed Titanic
of our love.

Dark spirals gleam beyond
your eyes.
You open the deepest vault
inside your bedside table
and withdraw a sheath
of unbound papers
and then
for hours, you read aloud
the letters you have written
to our unborn child
while sadly, it occurs to me
I have never once
considered it a baby.
I have never thought that way at all.

And here I sit
a quarter of a century on
ploughing through fields
en route to London.

It’s still hard to write
still hurts to recall
how hurt you had been
by it all.

Forgive me.

Desperate Booty Call

I cannot sleep with all this hurt.
I hate this house, my empty bed.
I cannot sleep. I cannot work.
I want to just destroy my head.

So darling please come to my bed
to lay down here and hold me tight.
Replace this voice inside my head.
Hate me tomorrow. Not tonight.

Wear something sexy, short and tight.
Yeah, sure I know just how that seems
but I may not live past tonight
unless you re-enact my dreams.

I’ll burst your buttons, rip your seams
and burn away all of our hurt.
I know you sometimes share these dreams
so sleep with me. We’ll make it work.

Malpractice Pieces

six notes played on a piano
six notes played on a piano
six notes played on o piano
six notes played on a piano
six nates played on a piano
six notes played on a piana

In a farther room
my son adjusts his stool
cracks his knuckles
begins again

six notes....

Ninety Nine Days [A Rondeau]

Ninety nine days without a drink.
Three months and change to have a think
about the years that came before
and what the constant booze was for
and how it took me to the brink
of madness; how the doublethink
would fill my glass, how I would sink
my doubts in gin, but not now for
ninety nine days.

Tomorrow is a candy store.
I’m standing in its open door
but I swear now, with pen and ink,
upon my life, I shall unlink
my soul from drink. I’ve done it for
ninety nine days.

Star Signs

We need some
brand new
star signs.
I am not a ram
despite the musk and horn
and you are not a scorpion
despite your fearsome sting.

My sign would be
a distant ship
tossed on the horns of waves.
You would be
a lighthouse
seeing me safely home.

Together, they would change again.
Together, our sign would be
two playful
kittens
being placed into a sack.

Mother and Daughter

A sexy teacher taught me.
Then she started to escort me.
From the start, our love was faulty.
She was sweet and I was salty.
The nice things that I bought her
made up for when I fought her
but it turned to all-out slaughter
when I tried to fuck her daughter.

She was eighteen, Mum was forty.
I was bound to have a sortie
but before I could, Mum caught me.
From that day on, she fought me.
On learning I’d been naughty
She became extremely haughty.
I exploded into laughter
Said ‘yes I tried to shaft her’
It’s your yearling that I’m after.
Not the sad old cow what calved her.”

She cried a torrent of salt water
I said, “your sexy teenage daughter
wants me to sexually assault her!
Why can’t you just support her?”
She just shouted, gave no quarter.
Said, “you’re not allowed to court her.”
But I knew that I would thwart her.
You see, her crafty little daughter
had booked us two flights to Gibraltar!

In the hotel room I kissed her
and told her how I’d missed her
Said to strip. I would assist her.
She’d be the missus to my mister.
I thought, “she won’t resist me”,
but she suddenly dismissed me!
Said, “it’s like kissing my own brother”
I screamed, “You’re just like your mother!”
With that she grabbed her passport
and with very little forethought
ran to the hotel forecourt
arranged some hasty transport
to get back to the airport.

So the moral of this story
is there really ain’t no glory
in creating a furore
by being predatory.






Next prompt: Two Playful Kittens

The Vanishing

Then just like that
you’re lost in space.
I’m left to tend
the human race.

I watch for you
but find no trace.
I know your beauty
but not your face.

Detectives won’t
take up my case.
They say you’re in
your happy place.

I mustn’t whine.
I mustn’t chase.
Dogs don’t belong
in outer space.


Next prompt: motherhood

Bindweed [A Sonnet]

The lines you wrote left scorch marks on my heart.
I bury them but soon a word will sprout
far down in lust and darkness. It will start
to curl and multiply then, reaching out,
will take its silent hold of all my thought
and turn my sunlit day to gloomy night
as ev’ry word I speak is rendered naught
and your ambitious riot steals the light.
Your bindweed words grow fast toward the sun
and leave me languishing beneath their shade.
As you explode in bloom, my days become
mere daydreams of the love we never made.
Words planted blindly kill what thrives above;
The choking, cryptic rhizome of your love.

Possession

Possession is the very soul of love;
we promise ‘I am yours’ and ‘you are mine’.
Our passions know that freedom’s not enough
and hearts beat fastest when they are confined.
I stand beneath your window calling up.
I shout and scream but you do not appear.
Are you afraid that you may fall in love
or are your walls so thick you cannot hear?
If I could own you for one holy hour
and, for that hour, could give myself in turn,
I’d rip your heart and all its raging power,
ignite our fucking hearts and let them burn
for as we burn, our sweetest selves unfurl.
I’d rather own you once than own this world.

The Moonbeam [A Tragic Villanelle]

I’m sorry that I love you but I do.
To have me ever lurking at your side?
It must be inconvenient for you.

You surely know I write for only you
and, knowing that, you must be mortified.
I’m sorry that I love you but I do.

Each written oath of love you misconstrue,
and tell me that this frenzy will subside.
It must be inconvenient for you.

None of my dreams are ever coming true.
I’ve too much passion. You have too much pride.
I’m sorry that I love you but I do.

There’s nothing I can write that will cut through
to reach the love that you have ossified.
It must be inconvenient for you.

This poem will not stand your peer review.
A moonbeam squandered on your sunlit side.
I’m sorry that I love you but I do.
It must be inconvenient for you.

The Eastbourne Herald

A man has died
after being crushed
by a falling
incident.
The air ambulance attended
and is supporting
police.

Woody the Cat is on the mend
and back at home
after a vicious attack by a
thug who had his tail
cut off and covered
in manuka honey.
“Our fur baby is home.
Thanks for all the prayers
and shares”,
said Stephanie.

A sixty one year old father
has died after taking
a lethal cocktail of
ex-girlfriends
and unintentionally pushing
people away.
The confident outgoing man
had sent this text:
“It is the end”.
There will be twenty days
of temporary traffic lights
in Priory Road.
No flowers.

Weather Warning

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
when you are much more like a winter’s night?
You are the freezing rain on my parade,
the gust that snaps the bridle of my kite.

It’s true you burn me like the summer sun
and, like a summer day, you make me sweat
but any warmth you give is hit and run.
I’m Romeo to a frigid Juliet.

I only wish that I could give to you
one kiss in hope that it might thaw your soul
but when I tried my lips kept turning blue
and numbing frost-bite spread to your South Pole.

Perhaps one spring, we may come together
to let love bloom, despite your heavy weather.

Hitchcock Blonde [A Cinematic Sonnet]

When young and innocent we would make out.
Two strangers on a train with vertigo.
I never had a shadow of a doubt
someday I’d climb in through your rear window.
For I confess I’m spellbound by the birds;
in frenzy, a notorious psycho.
To catch a thief, I wrote you pretty words,
the man who knew too much to let you go.
But when the lady vanishes tonight,
from Eastbourne she’s close by, north by northwest;
behind her torn curtain with bad stage fright
because she knows the wrong man loves her best.
A saboteur, I try to correspond;
to rope you in, my darling Hitchcock blonde.

Schrödinger’s Two Kittens

In my small box, it’s getting hot.
They tell us to enjoy our lot
now Schrödinger has picked us out
but honestly I sort of doubt
that this is some immense jackpot.

Are we in love? I quite forgot.
My healthy heart begins to rot
as you are all I think about
in my small box.

And in your box, you’re dead or not.
I’m in your mind or your blind spot
so all in hope and all in doubt
I’m trapped within and trapped without;
You love me and you love me not
in my small box.

Three Photographs

Long after he had left us,
I found three eight-by-fives.
They’d been hiding in my copy
of Catcher in the Rye.

With a clarity that only lovers know,
the electric white of
a lightning strike
lit up my drab front room.

I sat down sharply,
juggled the images in trembling
clumsy hands.

“Sunda Kelapa Harbour, Jakarta 11/04/99”

Standing on the prow
of a two-masted pinisi
he is a lithe, bronzed boy
whose narrow arms
look made to coil a rope.

Caught looking back
mid casual turn
he eyes the loving lens
well knowing
that his image
is being made.

Beyond him, in light
white summer dress
and batik pumps
two long and slender legs
relaxing;
fuck-me akimbo
on the salt-burned teak.
I forget her name.

“LA - June ‘96”
His famous blacktop run
with Andy Clark.
Two motorbikes
kick-standed on
orange dust.
A sun-bleached sign says
Running Springs
Fawnskin
Big Bear Lake.

His leather is undone,
his chest a mirror of sweat.
He salutes with middle finger
and a self-rolled cigarette.

“London 2006”

A different man by now,
his hair is not
an insult to the world.
There is already less oxygen
in every breath.

He breakfasts behind specs,
a coffee pot and grapefruits.
His pack of Marlboro Red.

Beyond him
those awful patio doors
frame my reflection.
His Leica to my face,
I’m there in unhooked jeans
barefoot and topless.
My tits at twenty six.

I cannot sit and dream all day.
Things will get away.
I hunt around
and find
my Collins Atlas of the World.
I hide the pictures deep inside
on arbitrary pages.

No tears. No tears.
No tears. No tears.
They’ve all been cried.

The Conquest

You are tensing.
I’m hilarious.

Together
I can conquer
your highest peak.

Why?
Because it’s there.

Alaphillippe

It’s a bloody long way
from that happy day
in Epernay.

Fourteen days in the maillot jaune
Then forced open on Col de L’Iseran,
and finally pipped by the infernal Bernal.

He feels and wears something wholly new.
His mood and jersey unfamiliar blue.

Cuban Love Song

Before I even saw your eyes
I saw your cowboy hats
and heard sweet whispers as you
talked in your sleep -
dreaming of catastrophes -
a few seats ahead of me
on the Viñales to Havana coach.

At a truck stop I dared to dare
and found you easy conversation,
the language barrier
having nothing to do with love.

That night we watched
cathedral waves break
over the empty Malecón,
ran wild, ate alligator,
listened to street corner
son bands and searched
in earnest
for the finest mojito on Earth.

On the roof of the Saratoga Hotel,
we skinnydipped
in the midnight pool.
I turned my back and watched
the glowing city
as you climbed out
into your towel
and drank the pool dry.

Oh Ghidorah!
It is such a pity you have three heads
and have repeatedly destroyed Tokyo.

To a Beautiful Girl

The wind does not stop blowing
if you refuse to fly your kite.
If you stay out past your bedtime
the day still turns to night.

If you only swim for moments
you don’t get slightly wet.
If you say goodbye and mean it,
it won’t mean we never met.

Go tell the waves to wait for you
but watch out for the tide.
A mask is just another face.
It’s not a place to hide.

Right now the wind is roaring
so I choose to fly my kite!
I know one day I’ll lose it
but the thrill is in the fight.

The Well

Together we looked over a rim
of broken brick.
The sound of drips
blipped up from far below;
dark stirrings, dead bird’s wings.
A memory of buckets.

The deepest hand-cut hole in town;
big news to someone sometime.
Now we’ve all got
taps and hosepipes
SMEG fridges
rainfall showers
the flush toilet
and no-one gives a twopenny
stuff about this well.
Why would they?

Together we looked over a rim
of broken brick
and threw all our love in.
The sound of drips
blipped up from far below;
a marriage, other simpler things.
A softly whispered ‘Fuck it’.

The Scarecrow [an experiment in stream of consciousness]

We had woken and we’d rambled
over heaths and stopped at tearooms.
We allowed ourselves cream slices;
the smallest of your vices
then we swam back up the stairs into your room.

We lay down like perfect strangers.
Never spoke about the strangeness
of why we never aged here in this tomb.
You gave me your warm shoulder.
I assumed it would be colder.
You called, “Baby, put a baby in my womb.”

So began a life of sorrow.
When I think about tomorrow
I just honk my horn and scream for yesterdays.
Love is such a vicious master
and hate always gets there faster.
It travels on more beautiful highways.

I want to be your broken statue
but we both know I can’t match you.
I’ll stick around if you provide the glue.
You can be my wife and mother.
I will be your little brother.
I just want to play some solitaire with you.

There you go, there you go
that’s nearly everything I know
I want to be your scarecrow
So let’s die and let the grass grow.
Unhappiness is the only
happiness I want to know.

Galleon’s Lap

We got there early, found a parking space
up at Gill’s Lap,
wandered down past The Enchanted Place,
hoping to play poohsticks on Pooh Sticks Bridge.
I watched as my boys ran wild, a madcap
chase high onto a ridge,
then down the far side, towards the water
as I felt dread about my tomboy daughter.

That day, a first: in her first summer dress,
she’d checked herself;
the first time she had chosen not to mess
around with her tameless little brothers
and though, of course, she’s now a girl of twelve,
something about that bothers
me. Perhaps it’s harder now to pretend
childhood isn’t tapering towards its end.

Close to the bridge, we heard the camera clicks,
saw Japanese
tourists throwing their armfuls of poohsticks
into the water. With that, my daughter
said, ‘Oh...it’s packed’, and skulked among the trees
as though people ought to
be kept away; all but one explorer.
The place should stay enchanted just for her.

Back at the car, I sat in the front seat
glueing a shoe.
I had bought the kids an ice cream as a treat.
The boys ran off but my daughter waited.
Not knowing for a moment what to do,
she held, hesitated,
smiled, ‘might as well’ and then I watched her run,
a spring beauty, toward the summer sun.

Skipping [senryū]

skipping a pebble
across a lake in my mind
each touchdown a rhyme

A Less Ludicrous Triolet

Sweet lady you have come to me
And whispered secrets in my ears
The heavens turn and so you see
Sweet lady you have come to me.
The shackles broke, we both are free
to voice our hopes, to share our fears
Sweet lady you have come to me
Now whisper secrets in my ears.

Final Thought [Terza Rima 01]

The last thing I remember is the kiss
you gave me as I lay in bed last night,
spoke softly as I drifted into bliss,

lay down and held me sweetly through the night.
And so I pass with pure love in my heart;
no need to flee, no call to stay and fight.

At dawn I slip away and as I part
I turn to you to take a final look,
to tell you ev’ry finish is a start.

You wrote the final pages of my book
with words of love, with words so sweet and true;
you gave yourself no matter what it took.

Please know at times when you are feeling blue
My final thought in life was ‘I love you’.

Poem for the Most Beautiful Woman in the Room

The wind does not stop blowing
if you refuse to fly your kite.
If you stay out past your bedtime
the day still turns to night.

If you only swim for moments
you don’t get slightly wet.
If you say goodbye and mean it,
it won’t mean we never met.

Go tell the waves to wait for you
but watch out for the tide.
A mask is just another face.
It’s not a place to hide.

Right now the wind is roaring
so I choose to fly my kite!
I know one day I’ll lose it
but the thrill is in the fight.

Strange Attractors

The moon’s white flag is draped upon the sea.
Sheets syncopate on aluminium masts.
Sisyphean waves roll in, endlessly
to break, draw back, and lure me to the past.

I walked here once but only knew to cast
my eye over the surface of each thing
but now the darkened surface seems a vast
shroud, obscuring the truth of everything.

I hear the sea cow songs of rusted drums;
forgotten spells that tell what lies beneath.
I still my breath until their song becomes
the sunken voice that memory can’t reach.

The water drags me down to where you are.
The brutal, frozen dark unveils a star.
A turning wind brings with it once again
The pizzicato plucking of the rain.

To the Lonely, and the Kind [A Sonnet]

At night, the drum might sound beneath your bed;
The tell-tale hearts of all your lovers past.
Those fallen stars, each one badly miscast,
are buried there, though none are truly dead.
At dawn, you hear the crying of a bell,
each toll the ringing out of some lost hope.
The clapper swings with no-one at the rope;
so many years and so few tales to tell.
By day, you are the still, small voice of calm
that others need to make sense of their days.
Your kindness helps us all in many ways.
Your wisdom true, your honesty a balm.
Then comes the night; the heavens swiftly turn.
Your kick-drum heart will dream of love, and burn.

Ode to a Sweet-Voiced Lady

We met by chance upon a ship of fools,
lost far at sea.
I boarded with no time for naval rules,
took pot shots at the stern quite merrily.
I did not care about the idle crew
nor for the sails, the sextant nor the mast,
ignored our longitude upon the chart.
Then gradually my eyes drifted to you.
Just then, you sang with beauty unsurpassed,
a tune that matched the tempo of my heart.

Magnanimous, I gave my gift of love.
You smiled at that.
I saw I took a falcon for a dove
just as this lovesick mouse is not a cat.
So vainly now, I try to sing your song.
My pitch is off but wearily I try
to let you hear the things I have in me.
I think I strike a chord. Perhaps I’m wrong
or is the lonely first of my sad cry
unmet by third or fifth in harmony?

The ship sails on and I shall stay aboard
for you alone
in hope I’ll learn the secrets of that chord
that sounds within your heart and funny bone,
that lets you take the mask from your sweet face
and look me in the eye, tender and true,
to sing a song of love just meant for me.
For then, this ship might find a berthing place
and I could sing a song just meant for you.
We’d sing them both in perfect harmony.