What fire gave me was a new light.
The music of its dancing embers
was not a phantom.
Flashes of crimson flame ascended the sky.
I just perished in them
the way ice-cream thaws.
The tarry storm abated
& the glowing flies started licking the ice-cream.
 What fire gave me was a tickling sensation—
an urgent itch
 to destroy remnants of the black threads
that had baited me,
& to skim for lanterns
in the abysmal darkness.
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I looked in and saw the machine behind your eyes,
Scanning, whirring and churning out
Black after black after black after black:
Horrible globules of thought coagulated by hate
Punching and piercing my gut,
Leaving a metallic bloodlike taste in my mouth.
            I looked in again.
The machine was coughing out horrible granite grey smog,
Polluting the Garden Of Delights.
I wanted to jump in and thwart the foul
But the stern cornea was hard and impenetrable,
The once wild iris ruled by Eris
Is now frozen and cold;
But fear not, there is hope:
The icy steel monolith may be dissolved,
But only by the mighty power of dissolution.
Reality lies in the eye of the beholder
And no one can look for you.

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An irruption of feathers
Spumes from our pillows
Like clouds
Against our heads
Thudding
From the hooves of mares
That were once sheep.
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What’s between the black land
of broken hearts where you breathe
and my bright, bubbly body?
An ocean of barracudas?
I have written your unfair past
in a perfect circle around my navel.
I’m made of eternal iron,
and think of you as a second mother.
Why can’t we love as the green
sea making love to the slushy sand?
Are you scared?
I have written your short name
down my long, virgin spine.
I’ve taught my merry heart
to jog on and on, through the
thorny paths of this odd friendship.
A patient explorer may go all
the way while a too passionate
fox tires after half a half mile.
What’s there between my lingering
kiss and your sweet lips?
O beautiful shepherdess of my heart,
I have written something on my tongue
that makes me speak your urban,
yet simple language.
It’s written that one day
I’ll be the shepherd of your beauties and
I’ll give up grazing, to gaze at your
silver eyes, turning so thin,
so thin that the
gallant wind will
blow me
into your silky,
warm arms.
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Give me not the crescent moon
that belongs to primitive people.
Give me a rusty sickle.

Give me not the bold sun
once worshipped in ancient Egypt.
Give me cheap candles.

Give me not overloaded papyri
that praise glorious days.
Give me empty pages.

Give me not sacrosanct rivers
that are mythic reminders of truth.
Rather give me salty saliva.

Make me your diligent hoe
and dig fertile furrows in the earth
of my crumbling destiny.

Let the waves of your poetic
hair burble down like noodles
of sincerity into the broken temple,

the blasphemed, blackened church,
the fading mosque
found inside my crying heart.

Give me not the crescent moon
that belongs to primitive people.
Rather, give me empty pages.
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1)
Wrap yourself up in a duvet
and bounce off the walls while listening
to 90's trance at full blast.

2)
Add honey to everything you eat or drink.

3)
Paddle. Go barefoot.
Let your feet feel something that isn't sweat.

4)
Go to the cinema and then
have an awesome drunken conversation
with a mate for the next five hours
about every detail of the film.

5)
Pepper sauce and salty chips.
Let the dog lick some off the end of your fingers.
Blow on a big chip to cool it down
and then hand it to the baby and watch him
work on it for the next quarter of an hour.
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I’m getting ready to leave Westway.
Standing in the hall, holding a bag of brown
lemonade, ham and some photographs of us.
The smell is still the same; so are the dinner plates.
Mum, always getting smaller, just like the house.

Somewhere not too far away, it’s summer.
The sound of my sister’s tennis ball, bouncing
endlessly against the wall. There is sight and colour
in the street, with fathers proudly washing cars
that they can just about afford.

The smell of bacon and sound of a vacuum
confirm it is Saturday today. ‘Where you going, Dad?’
I have to do a message, son.’ ‘Can I come?’ ‘No,
you stay here and play’. He pats my head, turns and
walks away.

Mum says, ‘Don’t you stay in all day.’
She’s holding my rubber sheets. I climb up
unto the sofa and think I might lie here, for a while.
The wrestling is on soon; I don’t care much for
Grandstand but I do like Doctor Who.

There is a smell, of cigarettes, cigars and drink.
It travels up the stairs like an angel.
Its wings made of music, laughter and dance,
Lying in the camp bad, wondering how great
it seems to be grown up.

Donna is handing me Animal Farm: she tells me
books are like magic, a place where you can hide.
Lying in the box room, Lynne has got married
and moved away. Listening to the sound of
the footsteps she told me about:

The ones that simply stop, outside in the street.

‘It’s all horrible now,’ Mum says, sitting on the sofa.
Amelie is running up and down the hall with
a pram that is older than me. ‘Martha has no mind
left.’ ‘Etta is riddled with cancer.’ ‘Your friend Ian
has gone insane.’

I’m getting ready to leave Westway. But it will never
go away. These forever moving pictures are burnt
unto a screen; a soul lost in the brickwork of childhood
memory. My footsteps now? A ghost in the street.
Heard by a child, before they go to sleep.
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Just, just, just stop talking for a moment
Stop sharing links on facebook, stop talking about football,
Stop spouting motivational quotes at me
Shhh
Just stop talking that talk where you say so littke
And talk to me in that talk
Where you say wonderful vulnerable things
And bring me back to our other world and
Make me believe that I and you and we can be
Anything and everything because
When you talk to me when it's just you and me
You don't have to hardly say hardly anything
To me at all, and that my dear
Is when you say the most
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Globalization  

Those who can
participate.
Those who can't
languish in poverty,
forced to rely
on crime or drugs
for subsistence.
Others must accept
a reduced lifestyle,
which reveals the failure
of the promised dream
that inspired millions,
now left behind
because they can't adapt
to the Information Age.


Diagnosis  

Dangerous symptoms
are quickly discovered
in apprehensive examinations
that painfully reveal
clogging arteries
that when healthy
should allow
the flow of oil
to the industrial body,
but are being blocked
by convenient laws
of supply and demand
that make some rich,
make others suffer.


Shadows  

Tomorrow rushes
at a breakneck pace
hastening us daily
to isolation,
despite the promise
of the internet
for connectivity.
Our expectations
will fade into darkness
when we lose power.
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Tender toes cramped together
Gathering a mound of silt muck speckled with bits of shell.
Slurred and vanished beneath the sea's layered tongue
That gurgled back
Groaning from the feast

Baffled
Suddenly ankle deep in stirring earth
He waivers
Hurls back his fists
And spanks against the shore
With sand coated trunks
Bouncing up a shriek of startled delight
Taunts indignantly with his chin
To send it back at him
And scoop around a soupy arch
That glops between his fingers
And dribbles down his chest
Huffs a breath of salty spray and halts in stoned reflection.
Fire loops in flecks and twirls
Blissfully greeting
Mirroring the sun
Sun to son
Or other sun
Shrill elation
Shrugs and spatters bolting tracks

To catch the ever lapping margins of sea and earth.
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