In bulb-beds in the public park, daffodils lie headlong, scythed by Spring storms. The rate of attrition is high: one in ten felled beyond saving, fodder for slugs. I triage the casualties, their snapped stems, bruised blooms spattered with mud. These I bring home, and a vase of water will be their hospice: a tattered
I can detect a new feelingfrom shoulders to fingertips.My handwriting returns. Or is it an old feeling?Ironing, folding, combing hair —habits flaunt themselves in the face of recent history.What can I do with myself?Skiing, karaoke, roller blading… I’m ready for anything.I want to rush out and tell everyone,I’m back and mean business. I want to
Craned onto the site from a truck the ten-by-ten corrugated steel cube, our paint shop. Nothing for sale but a magnet for kids: bricked, scorched, clambered upon, adorned Stoke, Vale, obscenities from spray cans. Inside the door, an Alsatian’s head in sagging red gloss welcomes you to a throat-seizing reek of turps, linseed and
Sometimes in bed you turn your back on me and I on you, and a lazy game of footsie is the product of those two negatives, a slow dancing cheek to cheek. I like the tangle and the tightness of a hug, the snug asymmetry of spooning. But when our heads diverge, reflecting each on
At the front of second-hand books,reminders of ones I’ve writtenor received myself. Dead-end cluesto lives that might have changed or stopped,birthdays or anniversaries,dates that exhausted all meaningsand slipped back into calendars. In a dingy, ramshackle shop,I stand in the aisle and read them,imagine their faces and plots.It’s time to take them home with meand give
The first, essential task: repudiate your parents. Reject their values and advice. Make clear they have no right to legislate. There will be rows, of course, but that’s the price. The later task: reject the youthful you. Remove the smirk from that conceited face. It may take tens of years to see this through.
and where yesterday I lay broiling in the vat of my bedroom today a sneaky little breeze tickles my soles — Coo-ee! Only me! shifty at first but soon breeze picks up speed with What — did you think I was gone for good? That me and my three ‘e’s had danced our final conga
in his Clouseau-era. I want to get home knowing at any minute I might karate chop Burt Kwouk as he comes flying round the corner or trap his trouser-tie in the fridge door or flip up the fold-down bed on his head — basically I want to triumph frequently by freakish misadventure. And I want
Drake, the clot, missed it by a mile. That hook of rock failed to snag his sails into the only gap for a thousand miles and the Ohlone breathed easy in their skins unaware of the Great Inevitable whilst the dew on the antelope’s nose lay undisturbed. Salmon knew the river would not deepen. The
In her, oily tongued Hughie found his perfect foil: a cockney sparrow, whose pixie cut and skinny frame won the hearts of millions in the age of monochrome. Her money more than doubling as she made the ratings soar, bringing with it a rags-to-riches change. The sky seemed the limit, yet something in her ached
I skate because the streets are made of ice, because I have to learn, I skate because the river’s hard and green, because the birds are crows or magpies but could be vultures overhead and in the trees, I skate because the men are home from hunting with just one fox across a shoulder, because
Our liege Of jewelled gravity Set free Has roped the breeze And saddled him To ride through winter’s mind, Inconstant spring, All summer’s Fabergé, To find a season Greenest green, Demesne Past altering.
A restaurant paper placemat is the best place to compose a poem. There’s nothing venerable about the surface, slightly rough, perhaps a stain of sauce or tea. You can try yourself out on a paper placemat, not take things so seriously. Thoughts fill the squares and dimples while a meal fills the stomach. The pen
I’m convinced he would like a quiet wife. One who would sit on her chair and eat granola and sip carrot juice wearing a ring on only her wedding finger. How peaceful to be concerned by nothing more than juice, dried fruits and nuts, and natural yoghurt! The mind like a quiet seed in
We all need to someone to watch our back, says the man on TV. Yours hunches at the wheel as we sail through vineyards dense with straining vines. Our cases bulge and scrape as we lift them from the boot. You’ve drawn the short straw – the orange one with a dodgy wheel, a
Half through his third bottle of red, he took the keys to the gun cabinet, unlocked it, loaded a rifle, stepped out into the garden, wet grass beneath his feet, breath cloud- plumed in cold air, scanned the organic darkness above, sighted a target, fired, then swung his gun around the night sky, aimed again,
I waited and I saw a bird go winging slow across the sky how slow it flew I couldn’t know how slow because it was so high the sky more pointless than the sea where there are rocks and there is land through which a being flying slow as far as I
under the arch of the Shiraz Palace round to the kitchen tradesman’s entrance young girl walks in her long loose trousers early perhaps for the evening rota does a little shimmy in her long loose body nobody near her nobody watching
for A.J. and N.C. An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar… cheap joke, how it began one ancient evening on the lash in Leeds. Three likely lads, fresh from writing degrees, thinking they knew it all and next to nowt at once, as if the margins of hope and doubt
Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change… Down there the fathom worker Cleans a universe of sand, Whitening bones, blurring wood With weed and merhair strands Our assiduous, unfailing tide Washing the island away And flooding Prospero’s cove. Now all who were shore-born Will leave in their boats. ‘Good sea’