“Why the bare chest Mr Putin?” Behind us, salmon bounce the falls sideways, backwards, upside down, flipping as if the rocks were sizzling. He’s giving me that whipped dog look. “You must feel the sun upon your heart. It is Russian sun so it makes you strong like a bear or a city or a […]
Recent Posts
Elderflowers
You showed us how to prove love was true even in wintertime by holding a snow drop to your wrist so it would glow like a pearl. The bloom now lies just under your skin, roots tapped into losses and shared mercies, budding violet and petalled under the eye, a rash of rose and fuschia […]
Elvis Everywhere
My first Elvis was Chinese, Jade Palace, Old Kent Road. He made a hen party of us all, his joylucky thrusting, sideburning the joint in a white hot jump suit. Only a microphone kept him alive above the faraway tide of “Are you lonesome tonight?” as hollow as a fortune cookie. Welsh Elvis was the […]
7 Days
It’s snowing David Bowie one humdrum Sunday later. Slow ashen clown drops unsettling everywhere over South London. Death’s the kabuki next door with its masks and mime, its dark carpet demanding you scatter more stars so the end makes sense which it will if you’re there standing by the wall.
The Division of Labour in Pin Manufacturing
I would have advised him against the ghost grey suit. Camouflaging yourself as a dead person is not the look. A male job hunter must appear spry and spear-worthy. The tie is a sword-penis, the briefcase a box of miracles. But he’s lap-topped himself off for the day in a local café. He’s even using […]
The Rain in Kettering
This sky is a professional on loan from East Anglia or some other official region with its own BBC News and school of landscape art. All afternoon it has sucked the shadows from under our feet up into its black yawn, suspending us in air so thick it might contain the grindings of another non-league […]
Ex.
She waited for the eclipse to dump him. It felt right with her light so hidden for so long by so changeable a man. She slipped orbit outside Caffè Nero on the Victoria Station concourse after buying him a full fat mocha. Soon the solar shadow closed over them. Southern Rail pigeons drifted widdershins in […]
The Great Days of Tumbling
You were a barrel of myths rolling down Glastonbury Tor jangling up Fata Morgana and Jagger. Lime leaves flickered quick as grass snakes slipping through the dawn Mendips where the sun yolked the sky like a great fried breakfast. Pickled Merlins haunted every pub, tawny pints as wise as owls perched in their grip. […]
The man who turned into a water feature
His body had become a wild garden. With every year it brambled over As if Age was composting itself Into a warm and squelchy mulch To fertilise nerve roots and stem cells. Starting in the rich pits underarm, A gentle heathering extended Over his chest like a Scottish glen. Deep within abandoned nose shafts Ash […]
Spaceboy
A wedge of black hair between the blind and window, he waits for mum to come back with the shopping bags joining with the others in the kingdom under his bed. He names the cats patrolling the bins after his teachers, before they slide greased with night beyond teasing to become a blip on his […]
