Poem: Leap Year

In the hours of a day that normally
Doesn’t exist

We walk the minutes giving normality
A twist,

In a carnival caused by the
Curve of our trajectory,

Our movement turning slowly at
High speed through space.

We take the opportunity to turn
The direction of our story,

Challenge our selves, our
Circumstances, our place:

Discover this fiction that we have kissed.

29 February 2012

Poem: Princes Street Gardens

The park of lovers

In green gold sunlight,
Then clouded over,
Then green gold sunlight.

The eyes of others
Their eyes on others,

The park of lovers,
The home of lovers.

The city’s centre,
The city’s sunlight,
Then clouded over.

We move together,
Alone together,
The blades of pleasure.

15 September 2007

Poem: Suddenly

Suddenly deceit will stride into history,
Suddenly strangers will discard their mystery,

Suddenly bodies will sweat with a sweet consent,
Suddenly prophets will read the New Testament,

Suddenly killers will kiss in their prison cells,
Suddenly markets will see that it’s truth that sells,

Suddenly science will unlock another layer,
Suddenly colour will be but a fact of air,

And a billion small heroes pushing at walls,
The millions tip-toeing down forbidden halls,
Will not be around when the edifice falls,
Will die in the silence of their still-silenced calls,

So when suddenly comes let us suddenly stop
And remember the planting that led to the crop.

6 September 2011

Poem: Chain

Water and wine.
Wine and time.
Time and time alone.
Alone and alive.
Alive and awake.
Awake and aghast.
Aghast and relaxed.
Relaxed and restrained.
Restrained and open.
Open and listening.
Listening and speaking.
Speaking and sleeping.
Sleeping and pausing.
Pausing and continuing.
Continuing and ending.
Ending and laughing.
Laughing and glass.
Glass and stone.
Stone and water.

29 March 1997

Poem: Closing The Cage (After Edwin Morgan)

Not only do I have nothing to say
Tonight,
I have no intention of saying it.

                                             Oh.

31 October 2000

Poem: Luck

I never run out of air

To run on.  The cartoon cliffs
I run off

Retreat behind me and I run on.
When I’m lost in an openness of sky,
Suddenly I feel

Sudden earth beneath my feet
And I run on.

When I’m lost and lonely,
With no clear eyes to hold me,
And the valley far below me
Stretches hands out for my feet,

The air between my toes
Solidifies
And I
I’m still running – I am still alive.

25 September 2003

Poem: For Laura’s Birthday

This year
Dare to write poems:
   Words that wander, struggle, or
          Snigger across the page
   Or
   Words that suddenly splinter a
         thought into a shiver;
     It doesn’t matter:
Words are their own pleasure

And you have earned that pleasure
For daring to write the poem
    That you write by living life.

19 November 1997

Poem: Old

Nothing is old;
Every day dawned fresh and new.

History
Eats mornings, eats evenings,
Chews on fragments, statistics:
Sources.

The past is as alive as the future,
The present is a pause,
A resting place.

Current cultures
Are arbitrary, conditional, constructed
From current prejudices,
Passing circumstances.

Shrapnel, love, survival;
Nothing is new.
Everything is old.

We run through city streets,
Stumble across hillsides,

Seeing our world
From forgotten points of view.

22 February 2012

Poem: About You

I feel like I’m walking
In fresh water –
Am I going to swim
Or am I going to drown
In you?

I feel like I’m dancing
On low water –
Am I going to swoon
Or am I going to drop
For you?

I feel like I’m drowning
And simultaneously breathing
Through you.

Through you I might find
And through you I might fall,
And through and through
I might be renewed
Or just confused, but

I hope I’m true about you.

8 June 2003

Poem: Soul

In the chamber of the sacred heart
Sobriety is but a memory.
Tiered and teared, rows of pews
Retreat from the altar to the door

And behind the door the world
Crouches below the rows of stone steps
And a rose that rises forth
Climbing to the sun

Is worn in the hair,
The dark blue glowing hair of the world;
A soul singer,
Girlish by the barstool microphone

Breathing spirit onto the coil,
Amplifying the Word.
Her drinks are caught in her throat;
Their taste speaks her tongue.

19 April 1997

Poem: Response To Puritans

Jesus loved pleasure for pleasure’s sake;
He ate for eating’s sake:

Even after He was dead
He asked his friends for fried fish.

8 November 2000

Poem: To Helen

Helen, heaven crowned,
What do you know of this Earth?

You move in silence through
Each day with its dawn, each day with its dusk,

And you think
- I suppose you think -
You’re just another human.

I know that you’re not.

Helen you might not be
Meant for me
But leave that all aside and allow:

Whatever happens in your life –

You are a goddess, as a goddess wrecked Troy.

24 April 2005

Poem: Driving The Pilings

Driving the pilings into the ground,
The summer collapses like an absence of sound.

Rainmakers gather and grind up their glass,
Dropping their smiles into cauldrons of gas.

Widows rewind their wooden cassettes,
Rebuild the winter with walls and regrets.

A soldier unbuttons his camouflage shirt
And smears his heart with a bucket of dirt.

Shimmerings are doused with a gout of damp smoke;
Along comes the digger with his rusted steel cloak

The old structure rises from its hole in the earth;
Children piss on the hopes of rebirth.

Death reconnoitres, weighed down by a spade.
June ice encumbers the heat of the glade.

A bright mind retreats to a nocturnal cave,
Driving the pilings into the grave.

13 May 2003

Poem: Child Playing Football At Midnight

There is a child playing football at Midnight
In the park
In the dark.

The beat of the ball bouncing
Back and forth
Echoes round the empty square.

Each resonant thump
Thumps the surrounding flats:
Residents turn in their beds,
Mutter curses,
Think of morning and work.

But there is a child playing football at Midnight
There in the park;
He
Or she is lonely, oh so lonely
That they cannot sleep.

27 June 2011

Poem: I Heard Voices

As I lazed in a laburnum sun,
Watering what was left of my soul,
Embracing what exhaustion I had hoarded,
Counting what droplets of God I still had in my
Pockets and

Enjoying a scratch of the itch you had
Inserted in my heart,
I heard voices.

As cars climbing hard up rain-hedged
Motorways yell with halogen,
These voices twisted with melancholy
And joy.

Twisted like a diagram of DNA;
Like a woman in a scarlet dress:

The sight of the blind;

Motorways and trees.

11 October 2002

Poem: Valentine’s Day

The night was filled with ambulances:
Rain and blue light.
I was up with red wine.

Police cars hithered past smashed
                                              glass;

It was a dark night.

14 February 1992

Poem: State

Even poets have their secrets,
Although my feelings for you are no secret;

I step outside to smoke a cigarette.

The world around and above me
Is reeling with love,
Or reeling with life –

And perhaps love and life are the same,
Mutual metaphors,
Attempted explanations
For the state we find ourselves in.

This is our state:
Let us declare ourselves citizens;

Wherever our nation shall go
We will embrace it, and suddenly grow.

4 December 2007

Poem: Carved

Carved like broken bricks in a landscape
Of grey nettles and rusting wood,

Some of these transgressions have marked my heart
And set up settlements in
Certain circuitries of my mind;

But I’ve heard a rumour
That someone like summer

Is waiting in the night of my soul,

Waiting to ignite these cold bones.

16 July 2003

Poem: Revisiting Holy Island

Travel is temporal over physical:

Both move in quantum directions
And bear no repetition,

And so returning is as open as
Forwarding and thus
I walk back to be here once again
Before.

It is still here.  Today was there then.

You can’t step in the same river twice,
But of course every day people do.

A river is a place as well as a flow;
All times are this place at this time;
I was here today and I will be then:

Various boys and men gather
Around this square
With various varying friends,
And are
Separate in their very sameness:

Different veins and different brains
And different strains of self.

Self is a side effect of
These physical shapes placed
Temporarily on a temporal plane
In a place
That is a square
That is a flow.

New cells are born but remember.
Revisiting is both
Physical and temporal.

14 September 2002

Poem: Slow Dance

How many years can a slow dance last?

Well, as long as it takes
To take a long slow circle of the floor
Describing all the floor holds
And all that touches the edges of
The floor.

The slower the dance the harder it is
To see the steps,
The pattern we’re following,

So we don’t know where we’re going.
But somehow we know that we are dancing,

And so I’m glad to stay in this swaying
Close and distant movement
Because I want to find out where we’re going

And also because I love to dance.

14 September 2002

Poem: Conversion

I’ve heard rumours now
That when darkness falls
The fallen stay asleep,

And the implements
That supported me
No longer seem much use,

So I’ve analysed
All my alibis
To find the lies within.

I see shadows now
And I hunt alone;
I never feel quite safe.

But I’m glad to find
I can almost breathe:
I have a mouthful of time.

4 May 2006

Poem: Gambler

I will bet on all those horses with faith
If – as it will – it will
Bring your arms to mine.

Fate has a line laid out for us,
Whatever fate stands in for,

And you may be another you from the
You I expect you to be,

But I will keep on placing my money
Under the glass,
Across the counter;

I’ll try not to squint too hopefully
At the corner-mounted TV,

And since there is pleasure in the gamble,
I won’t mind too much
If your arms never pay out.

22 October 2002

Poem: New Muse

It’s like running along a tightrope,
Like having a threesome with despair and with hope.

It’s like crossing a busy intersection,
Ignoring the lights, lost in introspection.

It’s like an eternally burning short fuse,
Being a poet terrified of his muse.

It’s like a blessing, it’s like a curse,
It’s both the best thing and the worst.

It’s like true love, it’s like a crush;
The finest literature and sentimental mush:

Thank you for giving me such scope.

4 December 2007

Poem: Oblique

You gave me drugs,
You gave me wine,
You gave me a plate
Of microwaved chips.

We laid on your bed.
The sun scorched through the window.

You laid your favourite books
Out on the bed,
The books I had to read:

You explained why I had to read them.

I read them on the bus
On the way into work
And on the way back.

I loved them.

21 January 2008

Poem: Cello Song (For Andrew Mullarkey)

The breeze of leaves
In the wood of trees
And the bow across the textured strings:

The body of the cello
Through the body of the world
Changes my body –

The sound renews the DNA
And resonates
And resonates
In weightless gold across the sky.

The words of wood are open words,
Where the cello’s voice
Takes note of all and echoes on
Deep and deeper in the blood;

The blood that flows
In the veins of trees;
The blood that breathes in me.

7 June 2003

Poem: Methods Of Coping

Run to welcome this bleakness below hills.

Covet this staleness and kiss this blank rage.

Envelope yourself in staring at grey rain.

Celebrate the pocket knife of Monday nights.

Savour the bitterness of black wine.

Refute the memory of rose-silver lips.

Beat nails into the songs of hope.

Read hurt into the hours that heal.

Refuse the suggestion of a single perfect day.

Sleep well beneath the skeletal sheets.

21 April 2003

Poem: Teenage Girls In The Park

“I just about had it out with her in Art,

I’m telling you, Kelly had to stop me.”

“It’s true,” says Kelly, slugging,
Green plastic bottle,
“She was going fucking mental.”

           And the charged sunlight
           Dapples the green-yellow and the
           Earth-brown of the trees they smoke beneath;

           Droplets of awe carve thoughts on their brows.

“Them cows. Give me a kiss Angie.
And I’m telling you
You look good in lycra

And they won’t grind me down.”

10 May 2003

Poem: Hurting

Hurting’s a part of it
Like the needle piercing skin to pull
Its nerve through and over and
Under and so secure
Our skin against our self.

Hurt is not a break from life
For a breach brings forward healing
And the days that drag on forward
Toward death
Drag us deeper into life.

Time heals by tearing,
Hurt provides a hold, hot metal lances,
The needle secures,

Hurt provides a hold; hurting helps us
To be held,
Hurting leads us to hold.

Time (sometimes in slow motion)
Hurtles us through breaches and
Bruisings to
Help the heart hold firm through hurt.

23 September 2002

Poem: Water Song

The colour of water is the colour of love;
The sound of water
Trinketing over rocks:
The sound of water’s thunder in a
Waterfall.

The colour of water’s glancing colours
Off a waterfall’s fall

Is the sound of water, is the song
Of love,

And the volume of the volume of a
Waterfall,

And the tiny cascade of the small
Volume of a stream,

Are the volume of love,

And the hearts of water are the hearts
Of love,

And love has rivers and oceans,
Droughts and spates:

Love is the love of water’s light.

18 September 2002