Send me no more presents - my heart it has no wants.
My eyes are tired and sunken, forlorn and far away.

Pass me no more parcels - the music will not play.
My skin is worn and wrinkled, torn and cast away.

Arrange no more surprises - my jaw no longer drops.
My eyes they hold no wonder. My heart no longer stops.
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When you think of the noun, the word allotment,
what does it conjure up in your mind’s eye?

For me: I desire to have the freedom and ownership
of such a place. A place of Gardeners’ Question Time, where
the poorly constructed wire fences lead to conversations
with other allotment owners.

I think of the half-dug morality, squared down
on each spade foot-full, when slicing the malting
earth, with grapping fork or the Patterson spade.

A place where you’d find
a paint-flecked door laid down on its side, as if it were
a homeless drunk who gave up on life; andwhere you
might see a silver unclean wheelbarrow, with jaunting wheel.

The short-shed where men tinker in a woman’s universe;
dealing out seed packets, for poker sevens.
Jam jars lining the window, the buzz of a muttering radio.
Plastic pots arranged like determined soldiers
unfulfilled but yet ready for duty.

A rainwater barrel nestled outside; either plastic or rusting tin,
full to the lip with splutter water. And where the watering can
lies half sunk, spout-angled, half-out, half-within.

A place where the sheaves of carrot tops are rung clean of soil
under the pattering wind.

And where –

roughage dirt is removed on the golden potato skins before being
poured, rumbling into a well-used bucket to bring home later.

My own father happy in his allotment, as every man was
and will ever be. Too proud to show emotion but weeping,
weeping in silence, gilding his heart full of ripening truffles.
Each tear quietly plashed among the tight cabbage leaves 
stood alone, all alone in the allotment under the wing-bridled sky.

When you think of the noun, the word allotment,
do you think it is a place of beauty where you could go to gladly and die?

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Rain lashed at my skin
undoing the salve of
gloves and lotions, the
winter wind tore into
my marrow as if to rend
me into mere fragments
of silver sinew; but I
refused to be broken so
easily, I stood with my
back to the wind, lips
pursed; I would not be
destroyed like an autumn
lily, I would not be scared
nor scarred by ordinances
of the cruel old man known
as winter blowing through
me memories of old and new.
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We’re too many people with no-one to talk to,
Roaming amongst our favourite haunts,
Living our lives in front of bars
As if we were incarcerated behind them.
Where the clink of the slammers
We down in order to give ourselves a lift
Enlighten our heads,
The pressure of life keeping us locked within our cells,
A séance of strangers all gathered individually,
All wanting to be with the inn crowd,
Segregated from our souls.
Finding security in the confinement we’re compelled to hold on to.
At liberty to leave at any time but unwilling to let ourselves go.
Not haunted by the past
But by the future,
Presently afraid of what we may lose.
Haunted by life,
By the fact we have to die.
Haunted by beauty,
Knowing we cannot take it all in.
Feeling we might die at any moment.
Our lives so intense we desire release
To escape the captivity of our minds.
Shell shocked from a life lived before,
Bearing nostalgia for places we’ve never been to,
From a time we’ve never lived through.
Born on the wrong side of a generation,
With the ability to do anything we want
While finding nothing we want to do,
With everything going for us and nothing to show for it,
Persuading others to do what we fail to do.
With only our bottle to hold onto
As we embalm ourselves to preserve our guilt,
Sustaining our punishment in solemnising the irony of drinking our health
While answering our mortality by questioning it.
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The diurnal and nocturnal crowd’s cross-fade through their domains-
The orient and occident contrasting in their medium
As light becomes luculent in a blitz of neon,
Emblazoned with an inert iridescence,
With signs buzzing missing let ers,
Making silhouettes appear elongated along the pavement.

Windows seethe with scenes of inhibition,
In sensuous solitude of Hopper’s desolation
Reflected in all the drifters loitering in cafeterias;
Their brown interiors all lined up for nighthawks
On the prowl for something to satisfy their ravenous desires.
The counters peppered with salt cellars and ketchup bottles
In preparation for the ringing of singing tills to tally the rally of all-nighters
Searching for poetry in the glazed drips of sauce on the sides of bottle necks.
The steam from their second coffee racing with the smoke of their cigarettes;
From butane to flame to earning their fame,
The celluloid cool of smoking that cigarette
As if kindling regret in regard to those transistor radio moments of self-captivation.
Embracing their most hellish heavens
As they look out into the world dancing with neon radiance.

While the yellow mellow taxis swarm,
And they sit alone within the diner,
Fuming with people trying to master their days,
The streets crawling with ecdysiasts clubbing within a coterie,
Where all the beautiful daughters hang out in décolleté dress,
Wearing many guises.
Angels between whores,
Controlled by pimps,
The nightlife swimming to keep afloat from drowning in their own spectacle,
With streets baulking with blasphemy
Deprived of self-consciousness under acuteness of anxiety,
Where depression is essential
Within the entrails of boredom from long lost lonely hours.
Drowning with compliments of insincerity,
An ingrained feeling of normality in a state of indifference,
Charged in a phase of manner without morals or anatomy.
Residents of civilian analgesia bearing ammunition for the repertoire
In a bravado of mortality in pedestrian providence,
As if all creeping through the cracks of sanity from the core of madness,
The derealisation of desire in a depersonalised quagmire,
Elbows resting upon the table
As the jukebox selects a record at random.
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Standing in Tesco’s.
Looking at the cheese.
There’s a sense of being stared at.
A light draft of vision tingling at
My back.
It’s not funny at all to me,
Checking it the mirror before I leave.
In fact I think I suit it,
It makes me look cool, like
A serial killer maybe. 
Ed Gain in Tesco’s, looking at 
The lamps.
Maybe it’s not me they are looking at,
The couple, she’s six months pregnant
And he’s got good shoes.
They come here often like me.
I, being an object of their daily routine.
Clowning away like some happy
Summer Day.
I will go to a different shop tomorrow.
The checkout girl knows me now,
Not in a ‘Hello, How are you today?’
Way. But
‘Here’s that weirdo again today.’
Way.
I pack as she stares at my hat.
Now I know why Serial Killers kill,
Serial in so many to get through.
Killer as in clean their eyes away.
I’ve earned the right to wear this hat,
A magic hat, such as this.
From under it I catch fleeting glimpses
Of the world,
Peering along lines of packaged food
And people.
Beneath its fabric I listen to the sound
Of a world watching.
I pause at the moving doors.
Is there something I
forgot?


The giggles are nothing but
coins.


Dropped into an empty
fountain.

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I died last night.
My senses twisted,
And my heart stopped.
The world narrowed
To a tiny gap.
The world awoke,
But I did not.

I remember putting rigatoni into a jar,
Having a cigarette, checking the fire.
I recall no lights or cracking bang.
Only the sepia figures, waiting at my side.

If I could remember I’m sure
I’d miss
My baby’s touch, my wife’s kiss.
But there’s nothing to hold on to here.
All sides have shifted, all ladders have dropped.

Hands dug into empty sheets,
Head pushed back, no need for air.
No need. No need. No need.

 There was no time to say goodbye.
There was no life,
Flashing by.
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‘Flowers for the Dead’ she cried,
Crisp white lilies, magenta carnations, and gold-blooded chrysanthemums,
Alive and Fresh blossoms for those who have withered already.
No verse card necessary,
They shall never read it;
Send them a prayer in my name instead.
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Bad day
Take the magpies away
Kill them for me
Break their regal bodies
Bloody their pure breast
One for every tear
That seeps from my windows
And exposes my soul to the wind.  

Slit their throats
Those harbingers of doom
Silence the ill-fated
Fortunes they spill
That predict my gloom.  

Let me have false happiness
Even though it lasts
For a second, no more.
A brief smile that fades
Before the prophecies fulfilled
And we part our ways
For good.  

They tried to warn me of your mood
Tried to tell me
With their superstitious ways
The sorrow you’d bring
The weeping and wailing
We’d not do.  

Bad day
Take the magpies away
Take my broken heart too.
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Even as evening
approaches night-
dandelions shake
dust loose from their yellow-
a robin pulls
the last red worm
from the moist,
but callous
ground,
shadows fade
into fresh fall night-
small creatures
with trumpet
sounds dominant
the adjacent
woods.
A virtuoso!
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