Tuesday, 3 January 2017

Monday, 2 January 2017

driving

Hours ahead of me. Hours behind me. I grip the wheel tightly as if it was the only thing pulling me forward. I think about letting go and letting my car pull away. But there is nothing metaphysical in the steel and glass that wraps me within. If I let go I will just kill myself. The miles count down in decimals on a device that tracks my exact position in this world. Ironically even though I know where I am, I don't know where I am. Roads narrow and widen. Traffic roars into emptiness and then I am stillness. I am within a journey. My track may be linear but the pace is governed by a dice roll, weather and idiots with poor spatial awareness. My day ends long after the sun sets and my day often begins before the sun rises. I am momentum. I am a point between the distance between two points. I am nowhere. I am somewhere.

Tuesday, 13 December 2016

stone and steel

my flesh is my prison
my bones
are my bars
my regret
the prison cell
and my sins
are my jailers
no keys turn here
there is no escape
life is my sentence
and my years
are now merely a credit
to stone and steel


Thursday, 14 July 2016

waxy thoughts

five red candles
dimly lit the paper
as I wrote to you
my tears
their waxy rivulets
melted together
the dying thoughts
as we slowly burnt down
to our beginnings
eventually
finally
both went out
only to be read
by the darkness
that swallowed them





(started on the 4th June 1993 - when I used to write by candlelight)

ask them to leave

loneliness and sadness
have to be called out
and cursed
not diluted
or ignored
not mistaken for something else
or imagined away
as you cannot ask them to leave
unless you know their names

another's warmth

when I close my eyes
when a face becomes
just flesh
that is when
I replace the silence
with your voice
nakedness is my need
but your voice
is my lover
this human hunger
that leads me to these arms
never fills me
and never touches
what I once found in you
only in the mornings
in the uncomfortable silence
of a cold dying heart
do I face my self-loathing
for betraying your love
and as I close these doors
I realise that leaving you
will be all I will ever know



Friday, 1 July 2016

the time traveller

he wanders back
to the moment he fell
and observes the man he knew
his mind recalls the act
but his eyes see the crime
fresh and undisturbed by time

he unwinds the hours back further
and steps in to confront himself
but he does not know this man
and this man will not listen

as he walks away from himself
he suddenly recalls the stranger he once met
the one with his father's face
and with the eyes hollowed out by pain



Tuesday, 15 March 2016

for my grandfather

may we both
stand together
silent on memory's shore
admiring the images
and precious things
that will not die
nor fade away




(For my grandfather - Albert Wileman)

Monday, 14 March 2016

a poem in progress

erase that
write it neatly
less hurried
that doesn't work
more emphasis on
no less
I need a ending
not that
too bleak
way too bleak
oh I like that
read it again
just to be sure
ok
are you ready?
you sure?
ok
now let it go

Tuesday, 8 March 2016

the rose eater

she prefers the reds
they are sweeter than the whites
and silkier than the yellow
sometimes you can see the pulp
washing around her mouth
a whirlpool of crimson
thorns stabbing upwards like shark fins
circling within her thin lips
waiting for the petals
to be shovelled to their deaths