Jumble

The harvest fields are
nothing more than empty sweeps of
stubble and sweet desolation
to trouble the mind of a smooth cheeked boy.
Tall trees standing to attention as we pass,
and we can go no faster than this,
the hammer of horseshoes beating out the ground,
the wind a torrent in our hair.
We are lightning, two movements
four heartbeats,
splitting the earth in two
with the thunder of our passage,
and we can go no further than this.
The sound of hoof beats echoes
in empty stables now.
This is but a stolen moment
and we can only hope
that when the past returns to claim it,
that it will leave some other part of itself behind.
In the wreckage of this recollection,
the years stolen from my lips,
I am left to wander
through jumble sales and market stalls, piled high
with other forgotten scraps of history.

Windsurfing Nation

The keening cries of seagulls circling
and wheeling in the crystal blue air
is a soundtrack for a movie ending
The plastic palm trees swaying
in an artificial breeze
Skin soaked in honey,
these picture perfect people
just trying to be real,
existing for this one moment
in colour
before returning,
like toy soldiers
when playtime is over
The keening cry of seagulls
is a loop tape
playing over
and over
and over
with each repetition
fading
into the cold of
radio static

Palm Sunday

The vaulted arches
of palm trees
breaking through the canopy,

this is my church,
the fountain is a crucifix,
an alter, under
a stained glass sky.

My priest is robed in the splendour
of sunlight and splashing water.
These stone benches
encircling the plaza

are the pews, at which we sit and,
head bowed, pen to paper,
I pray.

Self Portrait

Endlessly reflected, these infinite selves
stare back at me, stare through my eyes
paintbrush in hand
The canvas is a mirror, an eye, opening
onto an emptiness, that I can no longer name
They are boundless, beyond number,
these wild places within
and I can only stumble upon them
the rough ground opening underfoot
like a rabbit hole, for a child to tumble down

Landscape With Classical Ruins

A single tree drifts in the breeze
and a marshy stream curves
gently round into the spread of endless fields.
People, in the distance.
A fog blinded lake rises up,
to shape a hill on the horizon.
The foregrounds draws in upon
an ancient arch of stone,
it's pillared sides gnawed away by time.
But look closer, see here,
that the arch is not stone, but formed
from a notepad, two pens,
and a stack of old CDs.

100,000 Lights

The flowers have opened tonight,
all along the streets of Brindisi,
a sky like black satin falling.
Folds of cloud tracing the wingtips.
Leaning in to take a breath,
the scent is overpowering.
Watching through the window
oil fires and light houses,
flickering across the bay
as we land. The city is a shape
cut from the darkness
by a hundred thousand lights.

Little Bird

See how she stands on tiptoes,
to reach his waiting lips,
the airport buzz cocooning them
in sound

On tippy-toes, just like a ballerina
a ten year old girl in pink,
blonde hair tied back,
dancing
All grown up now

See how she falls away,
the gate controllers calling,
they might as well be calling
her name

She almost seems too eager
to be leaving, though she knows,
she must pretend. Her sadness is
obligatory

Her tears are well practised,
as she waves. Like those dance moves
long ago. He is an audience
of one.

A Car Crash, Near The Mount of Olives, Jerusalem

To John Singer Sargent's painting I will add
a road, black tarmac slicing
through smoothly weathered stone.
A rental car, driver's side door
smashed in. The cool shadows
doused in red siren light
as they pull my father free.
Those silent houses that crest the hill
are now a mass of cautious spectators,
windows filled with staring eyes.
The silence that hangs there,
heavy on every brush stroke,
has become a din of shouting voices,
paramedics and ambulance noises.
Over it all, my sisters cries
echo back to me, through the canvas.
Her prayers flung so far from the holy land.

A Necklace of Teeth

She wears a necklace of teeth
and pretends to be your prey
Watch closely now,
her hands (lips) are like lightning
Don't blink
or you'll miss
the switch

She wears a necklace of teeth
from the children she has tamed
She dances slow,
and as you come close
she pulls her red hood back for you

She wears a necklace of teeth
to place around your neck
It marks you as her own
and you, not knowing the smell of wolves
have become her snow,
her white

Now that she has tasted your blood
she will not let go

The Rock Needle and Porte d'Aval Etretat

I am standing where the water
meets the sky
Breathing in the waves
The smell of storms and drownings
The Rock and Porte...
The rock needle... curves
like a rudder
to guide the waves
that hammer down the cliff
into a forest
The ocean melts into fog,
becomes a lake
Two little boys, with no buckets or spades
make sandcastles by the shore
and I realise that all things come back to this

Grafitti

He draws in charcoal
on the whitewashed walls
of a ristorante,
down by the docks.
His face is weathered like the stone
worn down to the bone
by the sun and sea air.
His hair is whiter than the wall
that is his canvas.
If this was Britain, he would be
the oldest vandal
ever to be served with a court order.
His drawings are terrible,
and beautiful.
The hand is shaky, the pencil skipping,
the faces are misshapen, like his own.
Tracing the form of a plane
with my finger,
it is the drawing of a child,
not yet ready to grow old.

Drifting off to The Sound of Japanese Television

This is where the world caves in
upon itself
The gentle cascade
of voices, sounds,
breaking like surf on the terrible silence
of 3am.

This bed is a beach tonight
an island lost to sea,
under an empty sky.
These words are a million grains of sand
running through my fingers.
As hard as I try, I cannot hold them
for more than an instant.

This is where the world ends,
and time comes crashing down
breaking the silence with everything,
anything, nothing.
This is a stopped clock,
and the sound of the waves
rolling in.

Stolen Words

It's funny how words can shift
and change
How no-one has to tell you
that Lunedi means Monday
not when you take the time
to follow the trail in your mind
from Lunar
Moon
Moon-Day

We're a nation of thieves
with every word we pass between our lips
we're just incriminating ourselves
This epistomological detective work
is just tracing the roots of our stolen words

It's funny how words can change
how we say “Expresso”
not “Espresso”
how we Anglicise,
and ostracise
How we sanitise our import culture
To sprinkle on our Tesco branded
Italian pizza
Trading “Coca-Cola” for “Tagliatella”

It's funny how words can shift
and change
How “Trattoria” over ever grill house
by some trick of the light
always seems to read “Traitor” in my mind

Kissing in Airports

There will always be a couple kissing
at the airport

It's the way with airports,
they are always exactly as we imagine them
Everything in it's supposed place

I sometimes think they must pay them,
those kissing couples,
even the train stations have them now,
or had them first,
I tend to forget which is which.

All places of departing,
and parting is, we know,
such sweet sorrow.
Like the candles in a restaurant,
there must be the right ambiance.

I'd like to know who pays them,
who's running the whole show.
Who signs the checks,
and works out the angles.
I'd like to visit their office,
and pick up an application form.

Blue Hawk Lake

I.

It's cold enough to kill
out here on the frozen waters,
where the frost creeps in
to everything,
where the winter wind
will break you.
Bent double under it's weight
Naked, stripped of life,
on this cataract of ice,
this fog on the eye
under the frozen sky.
It cuts to the heart,
icicle daggers in our hands
or crushed in our mouths.
Their bones turning to powder,
the powder to cool water.
The blizzards cry, a howl,
to wake us from death.
Death is what we are.
Trapped in creeping veins
of cold wonder.
Time gets lost underneath
the snow laden boughs
of the evergreen trees.
This wasteland of white
paper, a reflected sky.
The clouds above us piled high.
We wait for the thunderous fall.
A tidal wave of white
descends to drown us all.

II.

Summer with my second cousin,
catching fish off the docks,
stickleback and perch,
their spines drawing blood,
all strung out on a chain held between us.

In winter we struck out on snow shoes
Trekked up the mouth of a frozen stream
to find a beaver dam,
wolf tracks in the snow
and a half frozen waterfall,
The whole world held
in that captive moment
a filigree of frost on every twig and reed.

Freeze dried dinners,
cooked over a Calor gas stove
on a tiny island, lost
in the middle of
some nameless lake,
which we shared with the birds and the sky.

We battered our frozen hands raw
running a toboggan down the hillside
and shooting out across the frozen lake,
screaming with excitement
until our momentum
could take us no further.

III.

He should have been Ahab,
that storm washed captain
born to the sea, he was
some mad gunner, screaming
“FIRE ONE!”
as we loaded hairspray charges,
and our soft fruit shells
rained down on the tree line
Plastic drainpipe, aerosol,
a match, and a potato
in his hands became a cannon

We were soldiers in thrall
to his battle cries
Nemo, riding the waters,
his Nautilus an old tool shed
on runners, dragged across
the frozen lake

His wooden house lost
in the wild North lands,
we could only go deeper,
find him, like Kurtz,
at the end of the river

He taught me to kill,
to tear life from the waters
The darkness was learning
how a deer is dismembered
How meat peels from bone
and fish eyes burst like grapes
between our fingers

He will always be magnificent
The city will not claim him
He will sink into the earth,
into tree sap syrup, and worms
to dangle on my fishing hook

A Satchel Full of Ammo

He never seems to talk about it,
not really
Not the stories that I want to hear,
the ones I've seen on the Cineworld screen.
Not the real stories.
He tells about the time he cut a dozen lines
for the morse code machines, by accident,
and how all the squaddies used to call him
'Taf' (seeing as how he was a Welshman).
He tells me how he could have had
a genuine samurai sword
if not for being sent home early,
(sick with some disease or other)
two weeks before it was all over.
But he never really talks about Burma,
about the jungles and mosquito heat,
sweat streaming into your shirt and the fear
of every sound in the jungle
That I can only imagine, and wonder
how much I've invented.
Sometimes on the BBC, they'll show
'Bridge Over The River Kwy”
and I'll watch him remember,
in silence, and still I'll think about,
the one fragment he let slip,
enemies approaching, all the men armed,
a machine gun thrust into his hands and,
over his shoulder, a satchel full of ammo.