War Stories
The mental battle over Sunday roast: mum, my brother and myself trying our best to look interested, so he wouldn’t be wounded.
Poems
Thursday
Thursday
The Drowners
They have done this before, the two lovers, each believing the other is drowning – parting their lips as the salt water covers they smile at the precision of their timing. There is a simplicity in the bound hands: the skin’s shudder, the bubbles on blue lips which rise like tiny unheard songs, the strands
Thursday
The Property of Michael Gray, If Found
A sample of things people should know about, or have heard of, whether they’re 12 or not: George Washington, George Gershwin, George Eliot, Henry Ford, Charlie Chaplin, Elvis Presley, Jane Austen, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, Roger Federer, Queen Victoria, Snow White, Bing Crosby, Saint Paul, Emily Bronte,
Thursday
Wingless Words
Let us praise poets who are not afraid of Therefore – or of other wingless words that do what they are told, and nothing more. The shiny words fly in with their ideas scattering light, and settle on the hand of these old neighbours, friends from Lexicon Street: their wooden arms hold up such procreant
Thursday
The Scarf
I saw Christine Lagarde outside The Wellcome Trust with a trolley case. She was wearing my scarf — the scarf I had when I was thirty two: a scarf with white dots on royal blue, or should I say French navy? — the very essence of what a scarf should be, which, in red, would
Thursday
Why Some People Read Poetry
(After W.S. Merwin) Because you know already if you didn’t you would have to make that appointment which means you would have to spend a lot of time talking, not to mention money you do not have, to someone who will not be listening or listening without hearing, maybe hearing without understanding, and what good
Thursday
The Unborn
mooch about and waste time starting things they’ll never finish. The next world is nothing to them but shadows, some don’t have patience for any of that crap at all – What, grass, they say, waving their wobbly arms, You mean you actually believe in grass?