A new family starts with the dreams of holding a baby in an empty room. Listening to its heart beat with a sleepless smile.
A new home starts with freshwater taps, a gas oven and a chrome sink.
A retired mother stands on pristine lino a wine glass in hand. She's admiring the cabinets, thinking of yesterdays and remembering tomorrow.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Ring pull granny.
Red poker shades.
Wrinkly knees drawn up on the sun lounger.
A pair of shorts riding up old thighs.
Her thin, ratty locks pulled back in a ponytail.
Between her fliplopped feet is a can spraying a fountain of coke.
The granny puts her face in the steady stream and smiles.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Streets lined with over priced second hand clobber.
Low two stories.
Uneven cobbles.
Slow bank holidayers working up to a spend.
Cafes, record shops and books.
Rail after rail of tshirts and hats.
How is this exciting?
A Laker's vest for a tot aimed at busty teens.
A public school boy's purple and pink blazer brought for tuppence sold for a ton.
Broad skies.
A pavilion meant for an Indian princess.
With porridge coloured minerets.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Vodka martinis with a twist.
Are liable to floor a horse.
Five vodka martinis and a bowl of garlic stuffed olives in a vaulted room ensconced in gold.
Floored this horse.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Each and everytime.
Over and over.
Again and again.
Round and round.
It goes.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

The lift

A 70's block.
Ahead of its time
Once upon a time
A place where men in suits and their secretaries felt proud
Ahead of the game
Now a smoke dazed shell
With a rickety lift.
And toilets with chipped lino and greasy tiles.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Rats
Black barrel belly
Split by a misplaced stiletto
Velvet guts spilled
A short, dirty life.
Spent in the bowels of a busy city.
Yellow eyes a twinkle in every alley.
Behind every bin.
Watchful owners.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Pigeon party
Head bopping
Over fluffed
Hard core pecking
A proper pest popping
Press pulling
Once in a dirty pavement
Stopping time.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Pigeon party
Head bopping
Over fluffed
Hard core pecking
A proper pest popping
Press pulling
Once in a dirty pavement
Stopping time.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

There was a time where waking up
Would be sun pushing through pink curtains
And a shout up the stairs.
It would be blurry eyed waking from a deep sleep.
And stumbling to the bath my brother and sister had just had.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

It is an easy day to cry
In Abyei
22 years is long enough.
But still the fight goes on.
20,000 people flee.
Leaving behind their homes.
They walk somewhere they won't need to leave.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Born again.

Needle sharp.
Cold water like a thousand frozen barbs.
The rush.
Cold settles in.
Shocked senses sigh.
Token strokes.
A dip not a swim.
A dip in one and out another.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Bike as light as a feather.
Clever metal.
Hair as blonde as the sun.
Beautiful people.
Thoroughbred.
It's a glorious Friday morning in Springtime.
The bike leans against the hall wall.
Tyres skinny and pumped.
Grey with yesterday's ride and a layer of house hold dust.
She lithely limbs down the sand blasted stairs.
Tight leather jacket skimming the top of well cut jeans.
Privately educated with the edge and sense of a girl who's not too protected.
A real blast.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

They call me pimples.
Before I was 14 they called me Eric.
My face is an adolescent nightmare.
Every inch marked by black heads, fully fledged moles hills or dry scabs.
Even when the yellow pus filled spots burst there are still the pock marks that look like craters.
I can't even remember them being spots.
I am a face underneath a disgrace.
If they went I am not sure what I'd hate next.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

There is nothing good or bad that thinking makes it so.
There is nothing good or bad that is not made by thinking.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Walking in another man's shoes.
Hosting holidaying hues.
Seeing a smile.
Watching words take on form.
Another man talking.
Makes for this kind of walking.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Stoney faces.
Void eyes.
Black as their iris.
Bleak as untouched snow peaks.
Blank as the pages of a burnt book.
A single spark.
Starts
A flurry of lifelike arcs.
One flung like a buoy to a drowning man.
Another handed like bread to a starving man.
Grasped and cradled for the hope that one can.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Peas in a pod.
40 and 4 months.
Same sparse strawberry blond hair.
Same round face.
Blue-sky blue eyes.
And cute girly nose.
Like father like son.
It's how genes go.
Genes discount the years.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

All she can hear is the rush of wind in her hair.
The tink tink tink of her silver earrings.
And the crunch of swallowed saliva.
The swell of traffic farts and bleats.
But over this roars the heart's a beat.
She pedals furiously.
Her thighs possessed.
Her top teeth chew her bottom lip.
Her eyes are slits against the sun and fumes.
Black and smiling under crafted brow arcs.
And she feels free.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Miss. Smiley is Smiley.
Opaque like a canadian lake.
Fresh like spring settled trees.
As ready as warm wet soil.
Open as horizons after rain.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Ten years ago she died.
Collapsed forward on her knees.
Bare legs and a stripy dress.
Her hands curled in.
Dark hair in a pony tail.
Skin make up free.
Ten is a round number.
Friendly like.
In ten years countries have formed.
Wars have been fought and ended.
Whole times have passed and all she is is unknown.
If she'd lived she'd be sat in a comfy armchair.
Watching her children play under an upright piano.
The sun would be warming.
And the sounds of the day low.
She'd be thinking through how to make her asparagus grow.
And how pleased she is with the sunflowers all in a row.
I wonder what she'd make of me.
Ten years on if she were here thinking of me it'd be different.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Rubbing myself against the lamp.
Pulling the follicles of fur one way then the next.
Pulling out the tensions and shifting skin cells.
Is as satisfying as sniffing cat nip.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

A land of white beaches,
Traced by low slung palms.
And graceful waves.
Silent except for the gentle tap of nature's hand.
A land where terror stole ten years.
Where fear choked, drug blind soldiers cut soft throats.
A land where pain paled with the sun seared bones.
A land where time is written in handless arms, nervous twitches and mothers' eyes on ten year olds.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Slow as the man playing blues in the sun.
His molten voice lifts on a breeze.
Toes sifting in the sand.
Fingers flicking a guitar.
His eyes linger on the whiskey beside him.
His soul mixed with a musical fix.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Iron rich spinach.
Black green.
Butter yellow yolks.
From hens the fox left.
And pictures of a girl.
Her childhood preserved in a trophy filled haven.
Holiday pictures of golden brown limbs.
And boys.
Lots of boys.
Her sheets fresh white.
Her bath a deep enamel.
An expensive brand of make up.
Achievements cheerfully won.
Notched up in totems of remembrance.
Her life a Western girl's romance.
Her path chartered in social waters.
Heart as good as god's.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

I took a risk.
And I liked it.
Thought what it might mean months from this.
And went for it.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Pop and sandy sandwiches
Boys in sunglasses and shorts
Bottles of beers and sandwiches
Clasped in two pairs of dirty hands
On the way to a park
Outside the Italian
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Coloured plastic beakers
Against worn wood
Blue tarpaulin
Flapping in a dry wind
A bright red t-shirt
Stretched over scarred, grey knees.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Near red chestnut sheen of a sweating horse.
His boy's legs hang like saddlebags on his heaving sides.
He's not thinking about riding.
His head is cocked to nursery thoughts of tart and custard.
His father put him there.
In the frostbitten stable
It's a test run.
Fitting the horse to size.
No saddle or stirrups.
Just a boy with smartly parted hair on a horse.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Bride of Frankenstein.
A blood relation.
Healthy in her mind and urge for procreation.
Rounded and robust.
A fresh-cheeked flower decimated by Frankenstein's perverted must.

Pure.
As the need to love.
And life's rich and unrewarding trust.

The monster's romantic creation.
A dripping, seaweedy abomination.
Lashed together by strange science, an unearthly alliance.
Slashed to fleshy ribbons.
Leaving the monster all alone.
Master and monster married at last.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device