Tuesday 29 October 2013

In the gap


There is a distance we leave between breath and word

Between breath and verse there is a distance

You pitched your tent there

Where in that distance I cooked up a book

A book you mistook for instructions

A book of maps, and curious odes

And illustrations of toads you took to be Darwin’s

Although it be know let it be known

They were mine those toads

Wrought of work, and fat of haunch

And deep did they squat, squat to be heard

In the distance

The distance between breath and word. 

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Your fire engine

I remember you 
rattling down the hall
feet raised for speed,
tiny wheels turning fast 
your subtle play 
into something more,
an archetype perhaps; 
the child delighted,
but unique here with my joy too
seeing muscles hardening, 
pushing you inexorably up to 
this lofty complicated place;
the crash site of adulthood.

The trauma of growing,
like that of being born
is too much to remember
and better left in darkness,
but once all growing's done
and children come
the scorch marks of that crash
and a slow healing wound of the heart,
start something new
built of fear and love
like a soft but heavy beaten blow.

You're a big boy now
in that urgent emergent rush
to be done with all these
playful settled things
and I suppose I am 
the vanquished land of deposed kings.

Even as I wrestle your little limbs 
into the trunks they will become
I hope when you are me,
watching tiny wheels
produce ecstatic simple squeals,
that you will feel enough to know
there's one thing only a child's love can show;
we want our headlong rush 
into the emergency of life to slow
as we watch our small ones quickly grow.

Saturday 31 August 2013

First Breath


You breathe in waves

And the waves breathe too

As the moon shows her rhythms

So do you

The lunatics are out tonight

To dance on the crackling sand

I wake you up and take you there

Gently by the hand


And the waves take the beach

As the beach takes the trees

So I take you and you take me.


Somewhere in history

Another name is written down

A shape made in water

Atoms going round. 

Tuesday 25 June 2013

Ante Post* for Annabelle


When we first saw you blink
taking in your lot 
not seeing us blink back,
only slightly less amazed, saying;
“yes, we are your lot”

And saying too;
“you drew well, we will keep your bets intact
show you the form and do our best to stack 
the odds, to help you judge the going
and to know in knowing
those rare arts of the thoroughbred,
no fence can fell you”

So when you run or jump
to take the bounds 
of every field we show you
beginning to wonder 
what’s in the next
or that one further yonder

for us, you can only win,
All Out for life now,

our bets are in.  

*betting on an event in the future




Friday 3 May 2013

The Thieves


This was a party stopped by thieves
Who smashed the records in their sleeves
And made the dancers stand in cells
Singing desperately to themselves

This was the way the party stopped
All the frenetic movement blocked
All that culture swept away
Nothing valuable left to say

The thieves look on and measure us
The height the weight the sexual tastes
Selling the chance to sell to me 
For the escalating price of free 


Tuesday 2 April 2013

Spring Months

You said April is the cruelest month
but that seems wrong to me
it neither drags nor rushes
and so it's free
of March's wornful torn out torment
holding Spring at the end of a twitching stick
and I always thought May was summer's bitch

April shows us what's to come;
days without jackets, nights without bed
garlands for garrisons sending down their dead.