I don't have any regrets.
What is done is done.
The only regrets I have are the things that were never done.
But:
I wish I had met you years ago.
I wish I had known you when your hair was sun burnt blonde.
I wish I had been on that beach with you watching the rising and setting of the sun.
I wish I had slept with you in sandy sheets.
And woken to the sound of your heart beat.
I wish I had been beside you when you didn't know which way to go.
I wish I had met you years ago.
I wish I'd known then what was to come.
None of which can be undone.

Fields full of poppy heads
Bobbing in a hot breeze.
Full of tiny dark seeds.
Her fine dark brow.
Her empty eyes.
Full of poppy smoke.
A shroud of sweet smoke,
In a red room.
Her servant stroked her limp white hand.
In a room of full sweet poppy smoke
Heavy dark curls,
Blanche her face.
Aching slips to an opiate peace.
Poppy sweet peace.

New Spring.
Promise of.
Cloudless sun.
Glinting in day-old blossom on skinny trees,
purple crocuses and new leaves.

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Kings Cross Dream

There was noise on the street.
A commotion.
Loud, excited voices staccato'd.
Carrying four floors up to a city sanctuary.
Where an open fire burnt in a grate bigger than the bed.
The landlord had hung new wall paper and an odd assembly of paintings.
The landlord's wife had paid an unwelcomed visit in the morning.
And disappeared down the stairs.
Her back full of a shrug for the girl who'd flapped her away.
A wild-haired, wide-eyed slightly hooky girl.
As the clamour rose the girl looked down from her window.
It was kids.
In street clothes and big black cars.
They'd kidnapped a young boy, a gang member.
They had him in the back of a car and punched him over and over.
The moons of their boxer short bums crescented over their low slung jeans.
No faith.
Girls looked on from the fringe.
Addled eyes rheumy and wide.
The noise stopped with the girl.
She picked up the phone.
Pressed 999.
Looking on at the anal raping scene.
They soon arrived blue twinkles and sirens.
By then it was all over for her and him.

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The march of time.
Is a human rhyme.
Minutes are moments.
Measured in action and emotion.
Marched from time to time.

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Peb's Poem

Baby love is the biggest love of them all.
Like it'd always been there.
The newborn.
Head lolling...
Mouthing nipple-shaped air.
Every waking minute
Between sleep and feed.
A stolen dream.
Love of all loves.
She sees it.
Hears it now.
Loud and clear.
Touches it.
Smells it.
Thinks it.
It's neither sight nor sound.
It has no heat or heart.
A spiritual surround.
A human crown.
It's heaving.
Inside her.
Core-blown.
Softly spoken.
Mother love.
 

Quiet as fog bound night.
Hugging ice locked earth
In a freezing embrace.
Limbs brittle, break and burn.
Under Wintery weights.
Human breath melts the window pane.
A finger traces its owner's name.
Looking in at the fug of glinting glass, low lights, fires and faces.
A stranger watches lives they should have, could have had.
But for Wintery weights.
Them within look out at the stranger.
They swallow in the dim din.
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Over 200 eyes are set.
Some of the crowd are waiting.
A few for the speech they have come to hear.
Murmering burbles.
A woman repeatedly brushes invisible lint from her knee.
Accoutrements heavily marked.
It took time to come here today.
Hairspray spiked do flops on a face made up with artistic care.
Her bald companion mimics serene inattention.
His glassy eyes set as though utterly absorbed in the unfolding scene.
Centre stage is prepped.
The mike's are revved.
Ears are pricked for the first word.
The speakers thoughts pick up pace
And an adrenaline alertness takes place.
There is a speech - finely crafted over days.
The result of books poured through a pupil and his pen to a page.
He knows what he has to say.
He's practiced and practiced taking centre stage.
Envisioned his impact.
Measured his tone.
Performed for friends or alone.
It just seems to flow.
Excited energy has its own edge.
And an imagined moment becomes a moment.
And a distant memory.
Puppet and puppet master.
Without him they'd be no show.
Through him it flows.
He forgets to read from the page.
Adds flourishes and arguments he'd not written in the quiet lamplit library.

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Pip

Runaway strays from worried cuff frays.
Gnarled trees against a fog thick black night.
Scarf tight round his thin neck.
His legs rattled inside his trousers like twigs.
Gangly as Bambi he streaked through a moonlit strip.
Empty landscape stretched as far as a shipless sea.
Low rolling clouds curled over marsh and supturating boglands.

Face sweated with fear and running.
The mast of the convict ship clinking in another land felt terrifyingly closer to hand.
He was afraid, as afraid as Pip.
But his heart was bigger.
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Will someone shut that bloody door?
It bangs bangs bangs
Bang bang bang
It's doing my head in
I am holding my ears shut
The noise keeps squeezing through
Bang bang bang
It hits the frame smack after thwack
The vibrations
Lift papers
Scare pictures on the shivering wall
The ground shrinks in it's thrall
Loudest, most present of them all.

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From New York to Sierra Leone
First stop New York.
The plane's arch passes through bright sun spiked day to cloudless liquid night.
The Broadway star's mind maps scenes like points on a school room globe.
Carries with him the scenes of today and tomorrow.
1000s of miles apart are next door.
Frenetic high rise metropolis.
Where birds soar from tower to tower in idling smog ballooned sky.
Streets stretch from World class to third world.
Next stop Sierra Leone.
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A double decker
Top heavy and cumbersome
Careened down the night time street.
A luminous blue well with yellow seats.
All empty bar one.
A wozzy blonde head
Frizzed pile packed under huge headphones.
Pumped full of head candy.
Nodding in his silent seat.
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Leggy dregs stretch the fresh blood of this fine wine.
Viscous curves slip and tickle.
Fullsome red moans a heady lullaby.
Tongue lappings loosen locked hearts.
Widen stuffed throats.
Hearten cold hearts.
The mouth moistens.
Tongue and palette anticipate an oaky weight.
Soul's tincture.
Party clincher.
Poured to the core.

One day
All day
Is about love
One day
All day
Is about love
Today
Unlike all other days
Is all about
Love
All day
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Languid loose lipped Venus,
looks on her lust-lost lover,
Next door the timeless battle for Romano roars soundless in green and gold.
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I see it.
Hear it now.
Loud and clear.
I can touch it.
Smell it.
Think it.
It's neither sight nor sound.
It has no heat or heart.
A spiritual surround.
A human crown.
It's heaving.
Inside me.
Core-blown.
Softly spoken.
Angel-fire.
Heaven infernal.
A blissful quaqmire.

He was a middling to better than achiever.
And a dedicated giver.
With a receding hair line.
Over working and using too much mind.
Tiny strawberry blonde curls.
A baby's scalp complete with cradle cap.
Youth crib napped.
By the new deal.
And a desire to succeed.
Pulling the sleeves of his lime green sweater over his hands.
He looked more boy than man.
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Cold as a dirty bed.
With the shape of bodies left.
Sweat strewn.
Pinstripe sheets.
Dreaming of a fantasy slide show.

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World matter.
The unseeing yet believing eye.
Terra firma.
Built on negative terra nova.
And the arch of a rising star.
Moon shadow on the physicist's mind.
Theories drawn by hand.
Navigating space and land.
One day the world looked like this.
Here, here and here.
And this is what the text book said.
And now it looks like that.
And this is what the text book says.
Part of a master plan.
But they didn't know that the stars had their own light bulbs see.

There comes a time in every girl's life
When she has to leave girlish dreams
To the perky bunnies and their fluffy tails.
A time when she must grasp, in two strong hands,
the finer detail.
It's the time when she has learnt what it is to fail.
To be alone and wail.
To feel she's turning stale.
No longer can she stick her head in the sand.
And pretend it's OK not to have a plan.
The time, my friends, is now.
Step up. Rise up.
Before you go beyond the pale.

In one Welsh world there's cartoons playing on TV
And a three year old smeared in marmite.
His little sister lies on her back like a baby beetle.
In another world there's a line of people waiting
Waiting
Waiting
Waiting
In one bored line
Of lifewasting time.
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Worming womb
Blood spots on white sheets
Notes from the body
For the doctor to see.
Then the waiting game.
For a dreaded biopsy.
Life on hold.
Until you're told.
'It's the all clear.'
Or 'you must come back my dear.'
They'll clear you out.
And see you in a year.

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Winter wraps newspapers round lampposts
And an icy vice round creaking pipes.
Winter drags us from our beds.
It forces birds to flee.
Waters to freeze.
Winter winds are wicked.
Its rains apocalyptic.
In the midst of all this cold
Is Summer's warmth.
A sophoriphic.

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Bright lights
In an electric city.
From and from.
Thrums.
One girl's head lolls and her eyeballs roll as the sick pool dries at her feet.
A homeless lady with a spotted yellow track suit trousered bum shines with layers of sweaty dirt. Her white hair slicked across a perplexed forehead.
She seat-shifts her sloppy joe cracked leather handbag hanging at her neck.
A fat drunk man with cheap muck plastered mock plastic shoes fights with the security guards.
He wheels off on an unsteady turn and seconds later reels back to rile at the black jersey quietly violent men.
In a and e.
The nurse's thin as a needle in overalls.
Hospital blue.
Round her neck she has a string with surgical tape.
It's quiet.
Pre Friday night drunks.
Quiet she says now that's asking for it.
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The sea and sky are halved.
One side is a glittering blue crowned by a hot, high sun.
The other, rolling black clouds and lightening bolts.
Seemingly from two different days.
The two skies meet in grey.

A tiny square of paper.
A nub of filter.
The tangy smell of moist tobacco.
It's a risk.
One worth taking.
Teasing out the earthy tangle.
Rolling packed ridges against fingertips.
Licking and sticking.
Flicking the flint.
A blare of light and a blaze of ash.
Plumes into beautiful blue murl whorls.
The anticipation is 90% appreciation.

A weight.
Bulbous.
Huge.
And demanding.
Robbing breath.
And stealing sense.
It bangs in the chest.
Makes eyes bulge.
Feet tap,
Heart’s break.