A new old friend.
Walks in. Sits straight.
A brown bald head sits in front. Proud dome pulsing next to a lady with a lazy eye.
Weekend wastrels milling in a windowless, wordfull hall.
Eminent wordsmiths; two awardwinning women and two noteworthy men.
A perspex podium tightly lit on a dark stage. Microphones on an electric coil.
Words wander through quietening minds.
Minds welling with lyrical wishes; wrought with words written by a poet's pen.
Worlds loosened and drawn. Images impressed and punchy. Rhythms riotous and smooth. Tease out the tension replacing it with bigger things, like war and peace.
Words that want to change the world only dent the page with the inks they're written in.
Flung together by chance and poetry.
New worlds where Japanese girls die in car crashes and alzeihmer patients plummet from bridges, human stones clothed in gold.
Where people believe poetry can bring peace.
And that peace is possible.
Dark auditoriums full of people smelling of Sunday lunches, sniffling with the winter cold.
Where the jaws of pessimism are circumnavigated by lungs full of hope.
Where the horizon is sun stung and clouds are red ribbons of gold. Where war is real and not some far off thing fought by men in combat but by all the citizens of all the countries that sign a declaration. Where the man at the check out is as complicit as the man manning the check point.
In all of this there's a person who hears all of this and wants to talk.
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Halloween

Leaning on a lamp post.
Spiky features sharpened by impatience.
Waiting by the traffic on Saturday night.
Night hawkers filed by:
Girls in ripped tights and powdered wigs.
Boys with bloody gashes smeared on bare chests.
An awkward little set up.
They'd known each other for ten years.
Always known they bored each other to tears.
Wincing at an over loud laugh
looking anywhere but in
He wondered why she dressed like a drag Queen.
Ten minutes went by then half an hour.
It wasn't getting anymore exciting.
He and she bailed on a night's accidental burning.

It wasn't getting easier

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Prairie chic.
Soho cliques.
Quoffing the latest cocktail.
Spinning drunkenly to old tunes.
Stumbling in aubergine loos for a leak.
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The massage room

In London's belly
Where the underground rumbles
Subterranean sepulchres mellow.

Buried prizes for an iron age king provide pillows for Roman rubble.
Conquerors' coins provide a bed
For a pilgrim's staff and fossilised banana peel from a Victorian kitchen.

Carving a space among the clamour of ages is a massage room.

Below winking neon, away from the noise, panelled in cheap imitation teak. Exposed water pipes hiss under caked emulsion.
Tired towels cover a bed of cheap wood and rashly stitched stuffing.
Classical windpipe tunes crackle from a CD player.

Someone's shoes sit together under a cabinet. In the cabinet is someone's makeup bag and an address book. On the cabinet are three shades of red nail polish, baby oil in a handy dispenser and Elizabeth Arden perfume.

The lamps are fringed in pink tissue paper and a Chinese calender hangs on the wall. Counting years in animals until two thousand and twenty three.
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Coldly beholding
Cooped-up
Tunneler
Of a caged affair.
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Ode to the Gym Instructor

Thrashing limbs thumping out gym hymns.
Machine's flash count heart rates, miles and calories.
Sweat chorused blood courses through straining veins.
A gym instructor long past 40.
Living in a studio flat with a couple of exercise balls.
Not fighting a war anymore just a slipped six pack.
Strip lighting bouncing off the smooth pate.
He used to be in his prime.
A soldier.
Now he can't leave the biscuits in the drawer.
He expertly teaches younger men how to pack iron.
Always with a smile.
Troubled lads love him.
He's in his prime again.

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The solar plexus

The solar plexus is a stretch of skin that covers the soul.
It sits below the heart and above the belly.
Lean back in the yellow, bucket -bottomed plastic chair below the arbour of violet, frost-paled wisteria.
And let the sun in.
The elderly horses tail-whisk in the back field.
Dogs bark at horse-flies and passing cars.
The cat warms its arse by the arga's steady fire.
Smell the heady hops and cut crops.
Watch the soft red of your eye lids.
Feather-flashing, rainbow chickens chatter in the corn, sifting with split claws.
The kiln grumbles, its belly-full of fire and skilfully shaped, silken clay.
Chipped soap-sud, grey, aristocratic crockery balances on the side of the sink. Cracked, rose ringed and dusted with crumbs of lemon sponge.
Beside the expanse of white embroidered bed sits a cut glass perfume bottle. Daps of oily sweet amber for the night only.
Sit back and let the sun in.
Lift your top.
And stroke your belly with clay roughened hands.
The blanching weight of light and heat is the wealth of natural health you are taking in.
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The solar plexus

The solar plexus is in the very centre of your being.
Below the heart and above the belly.
It is a stretch of skin that covers the soul.
When the sun's out remember to let it in.
Sit in a yellow, bucket-bottomed plastic chair below an arbour of violet, frost-burnt wisteria.
The chickens are chattering in corn husks. Scratching with split claws. They're rainbowed feathers flashing above the dust.
Elderly horses tail-whisk in the back field.
Aristocratic crockery balances on the sink. Chipped soap suds greying white and marked by the potter's signature, ringed with cottage roses.
The arga's flames warm the cat's arse.
Beside the embroidered white of the plump bed sits the jar of perfume. Worn at night.
The dog's barking at horse flies and passing cars.
The kiln's grumbling, it's belly full of fire and skillfully sculpted silken clay.
Smell the end of malty hops and the cut crops.
Pull your long top up and let the sun in.
Rest your head back shut your eyes and watch soft red.
Moving projections float and fade.
Lift your mind to the blanch of weighted light.
Rub your belly with busy hands.
Harvest it.
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City Park

The sun was out,
The air was cold and bright.
Neat black clouds sat on the fringes.
Mud seeped over our shoes.
And burnt out fireworks sat in the grass.
Rain began to fall but the sun still shone.
There were two rainbows.
One pale the other strong.
We played in the kids park, laughing until we cried.
On the way home.
We saw the end of the rainbow.
It bowed over the rooves and bent down to a tree.
It was the end of the rainbow.
We thought it impossible.
But there it was the very end of a real rainbow.

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Yes to go

The switch gets flicked.
Flips from calm to commotion.
What tricks it inflicts that synaptical slip.
Contentment's glow flows as quick as it goes.
Light's that burn suddenly dim and lose all vim.
It's the mind playing tricks, the human it's living in.
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Well heeled,
Glossy and clean.

Down trodden,
Dirty and lean.

The cards fortune dealt.
Spun out jokers to aces.
Fools in the same pack.
Face down they could be twins.

People from different sides of the same track.
Tower block slam doors.
And mansion block lions.

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Avocado creamed to buttery green
Smoothed onto warm bread.

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Won and still to win

It's only time.
Time is passing shadows,
Passing shadows in time.
Leaves turning to dust.
And dust to leaves.
Painted hands on a painted clock.
It's only time.
And lives lived in a time-frame.
Time is the second long gone.
And the hours yet to come.
Time is racing; races won and races still to run.
Each it's own.
Time's making time.
Not the same.
Autumn, Spring, Summer and Winter.
Night and day.
Year on year each one past; new as the last. And always a first.

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Cousins in time

Set apart in Savoy splendour.
Making quiet an art.
Art deco trims
And a mouldy chintz carpet.
Old school calm and charm.
No heating and over stuffed leather chairs.
Ladies that nibble and suits that drink.
Brassy blondes with coloured lips and shy cockscrewing school girls twisting in the throes of a family trip.
A waiter that sniffs in the cold and the barman who's been around for at least 5 years, a long time in the quicksilver city.
Salmon on soda bread and red Bordeux.
With the whiff of roast beef from downstair's steak grill.

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'I am the one.'
She shouted.
Her shapely head fearlessly clear.
Straight backed, regal as a dawn swept alpine ridge.
The same clear air and awesomeness.
Elegantly flanked in expensive clothes.
Choice designs selected with a unimpeachable sense of style.
Daubed in luxurious creams.
Sparingly exacted in just the right amounts and places.
Married to a brain.
Speaking of inner circles, fashionable projects and family ties.
Just the right balance of grounded yet fabulously connected.
Mistress of her world.
Owning space between her and here.
Never shy, modest or mistaken.
Her eye on her end game.
Little Miss Perfect.
Perfect in everyway.
Skin deep and empty as a starving stomach.
Through which beats her human heart.
Fear's in her dark eyes.
Ruffles on a studied surface.
I wouldn't trust her, not as far as I could throw her.



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Secrets and Lines

A poet must be a secret agent.
Loitering on the corners of the mind.
Developing snapshots in verbal solutions.
Folding and unfolding analysis and counter-analysis.
Teasing out the crux of the matter from endless chatter.
Seated in the corner he will face the open door, recording non-events as events.
Lost in the shadows invisible to the ones he must watch.
Long neck spiked by a turned up collar, head bowed in a deft trilby.
Faceless and grey his eyes will race.
His fingers spindling across the human race.
Spinning world wide webs.
Breathing in the dizzy fumes of 100percent living proof.
Tweaking lines he'll animate poetry from puppets.
He should know and feel the roots of phenomena.
He should know the cause and effect.
He will decide what is clear and present.
And remember all that fades away.

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I grew up on the downs.
The only son in a family of four.
My mum didn't understand boys.
When I was a boy she took me to Harley St,
The doctor said ' this boy just needs to be allowed to get dirty in the fresh air '
That was the start of the freedom to be out with the animals.
I'd always loved animals but after that I was allowed to go out with the horses.
I had 13 now I have 6.
I used to leave the house in the morning with my wellies on.
My mum said if they were wet when I got back then she wouldn't let me out again.
So I'd dry them on the hand dryers in the pub toilets.
Now I am 60 my son's a pilot the other coaches football in Spain.
And I have my own stables on the downs.
On a morning like this I get up and go out in the sun shot frost and ride.
Now I am going to Southend to buy a car. In my suitcase is a hundred odds and ends for fixing electronics. Bits of circuitry, screwdrivers, batteries, torches and wires. It's a security firework display in airports til they see the card.
I am an electrical engineer and I developed simulator software for the shipping industry. Simulators for exporters of treat- with- care materials. It's an industry that's needed everywhere.
After I touched the darkness I learnt not to listen to the stories I told myself and now I am happy.
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Cliff to rock to pebble to sand
to brick to wall to house to rubble to dust to land.
Seed to shoot to root to trees to wood to paper to letter to land.
Seed to egg to boy to man to father to land.
Air to breathe to air to breathe to air to breathe.
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Boys chase each other:
Skinny feet, sinewy and brown in flip-flops, slap the street.
Below the trees.
They flash between blue railings.
Within shouting distance of their tenements.
Heads yanked back on blood thumped necks,
They dip and flick just out of the catcher's grip,
Curving their backs, bowed like dancers, away from finger tips.
Their laughter snatches in the trees.
They are kids out of time or place.
They've escaped.
100 or 1000 years ago.
100 or 1000 miles away.
Playing the same game.

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It's life you know.

The rolling green ball.
Star tattoo under wet pink nylon.
Twins in black.
And a boy getting towel whipped.

Hoarding them up,
Squirraling them away.
For a bit of sweet time,
Gently simmered.
Slow cooked.
And not a bit half baked.
Lined up glimmers of living dreams.

Unwrapping the box.
Testing its weight and shape.
Puzzling out the final reveal.
Teasing the ribbon.
Pulling it free.
Letting them fall.

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Homeless on the Tube

It's the Northern Line.
The deep one.
It's winter.
The tube's toasty.
It's a platform,
Soot-dark and dirty.
Track mice skit and nick in filth and crumbs.
Stale air funnelled through the tunnels becomes a hot wind,
A crisp packet titters.
Blankets stir and a bearded bundle watches the bustling feet.
One open eye, a dewy disc twitching in the rush.
A blind-man waking to heaven.
He's praying.
It's the cathedral of the mind, it's homeless stain-glass - the colours of the underground.
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Red wine and confidence.
Old East streets pale with new neon faces.
Hot chilli soup
In city chic.
Red lips and big leaves on wallpaper.
Greed and conversation nash through soup and noodles.
A short walk home past oligarchs and galleries.

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Castle City

Crack-forked paving dusted a grey yellow,
Concrete moat to the kids' castle.

Wild castle garden overrun with dry grass and imagination.

Bikers skid across the forecourt chasing dragons in the hedge.
Dumping their steeds at the drawbridge they demand entry from a sleepy thumbsucking sentry.

Little legs pumping up stairs of pale peeled blue,
They rattle around the rooms poking at powdery masonry and steel threads.

Cobwebs and empty rooms hang in mid air.
Wall-less walls look over the street ahead.
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People waited for the bus;
People in blue and grey,
standing in the sun or sitting on the bus shelter's red bench - legs outstretched, carrier bags at their knees.
Impatiently fingering their belongings beside Sunday's traffic.
People dotted out in one's and two's from the red door behind which lies a buddhist temple with three gold buddhas.
One as tall as the ceiling.
People sat with wet hair from swimming.
Drinking coffee and nibbling flaky pastries.
A person struggled with her angry child.
A big woman with a short black, badly cut bob and a black suit jacket too big for her.
She held the child tight by her thin arm.
And shouted as the girl screamed.
Her straggles of blonde hair bouncing in the sun in rhythm with her yelling tongue.
An old woman, crinkled and wearing nylon blue, sat with her plastic bag and smoked a cigerette as the cafe man cut her bacon sandwich into bite sized pieces.
People sat and ate their lunch in the hot October sun.
A cheese sandwich, a halloumi salad and pork chops and chips.
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How you holding up?
I know what it's like out there.
Are you having fun?

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Yellowed lunar face,
Smiling crescent shaped,
In the black heart of space.
Mottled in diluting clouds,
White with a sunny gaze.
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Family Health Guide continued...
T is for telly and tests
U is for united and urine
V is for vital and vaccines
W is for whole and warts
X is for Xmas and x-rays
Y is for yelling and Y chromosomes
And Z is for zenith and zygotes.
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The Family Health Guide:

A is for agreement and appendicitis
B is for battles, bliss and bandages
C is for cooperation and colds
D is for delicacy and diagnosis
E is for eating and ear ache
F is for friends and fractures
G is for gossip and germs
H is for heart and heart
I is for ideals and itching
J is joking and joints
K is for keeps and kidneys
L is for love and lice
M is for manners and maladies
N is for North and nutrition
O is for origin and ovaries
P is for puberty and pubes
Q is for questions and quick-relief
R is for rest and recuperation
S is for safety and skin-irritation

............

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Youth Advisory Board

Huddled assassins,
Tracksuit bottoms and hidden weapons.
Eyes heavy with dope and aggression.
Hands thick and tense.
Heads bent in conspiracy.
They move aside and open the doors.
They let me push in.
Respectful, giving safe space to the small form next to them.
They look down at their trainers,
Loosen their limbs.
He's big.
Tall and handsome.
Young eyes hung with tiredness.
Face pensive and apprehensive.
His friend wears his hair like the local mullah, Nike trainers and canvas chinos rolled at the ankles.
Street style.
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Metamorphosis,
Emphasis shifts.
From A to B.
B in a way A,
a B and a part of C.
And C is all 3 as well as D.

Catalyst crushing oyster grit.
Making pearls.

It took 2 weeks,
For the shell to grow a pearl.
Polished, perfect oyster grit.
She turned,
For her second coming.
Another pearl, this time bigger.

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A drop of time.
Sneaked from the hour glass.
A place to rest a while.
Time to grow old.
Time to think about the stories told.
Time to work out the narrative.
The beginning, middle and end.
Sweet and heavy.
Time to sit inside the soul.
Listening to blood filled veins.
The beat of the heart's drum.
The human hum.
To often lost in the daily thrum.
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Excellence.
For sale.
The writer lights a cigarette and leaves it to rest, gutting in the ashtray.
Wreaths of blue murl smoke curl toward the ceiling.
The window is fuggy.
The room - lamp lit.
Beyond the hedge damp sheep nibble at grass.
He's gripped and shaken by the whispers flooding by.
Link to link bringing meaning to the very brink.
In the blink of a reader's eye.
Papering the gaps.
Setting fire to the world.
He frantically scribbles down these reflections.
Making the blind see.
Meaning for sale.

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Postcards of pictures hanging in galleries in the Western world:
Vienna,
Washington,
London,
Rome,
Boston and
New York.
Portraits of an artist's world
A dark, red brick alley full of gossamer thin urban fairies and logo'd rubbish,
A girl in a brown trilby and a cream dress stepping down stone steps,
Caravaggio's Mary Magadalene's tear slips down her cheek to her chest.
Her billowing dress crumples around her heart-breaking subjegation.
Her pearl necklace twenty glowing moons around her white neck.
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