Poetry anthology— The sparkle of the sea, feels different every time.

FRIDAY

Pale blue sky,
Clouds showing off pastels before
Evening settles down.
There will be stars, she thinks,
Walking into the pub.
Who knows if she’ll remember to look up.
The last of the small birds flit bush to bush,
The swallows tumble.
Children are gathered in.
Friday echoes past.

CORNWALL

Sailing boats,
Breezes,
Which release April blossom,
Spring cleaning the airwaves,
The restless waves lap at the shore.
Sail flapping in the wind,
Bow an arrow, pointing
Like a weather vane;
Storm brewing, in the striped mug
Cornishware. T-shirt billows
On the line.

WEST END

Lady
Waiting on the train.
Sound rattling, chasing ghosts from the tunnel.
Looks at a poster,
Retro style. She loves fashion,
The past fit like a snug pair of jeans.
Catching her reflection,
She’s earned the west end lines.
Map of the underground,
Rainy neon
The show never closes.

SEAGULL

Seagull hanging in the wind
Like a cloud,
As a plane makes its trail across the azure
Sky high.
At the gable end a gull watches,
Filled its belly already
So it’s just watching,
Almost human
Wings behind it, like the arms of an old man;
As pipe smoke disperses
Sweetly into nothingness.

SUN

The stars,
Fire flickers.
People once familiar
As cold and distant as the dark.
Not the stars, not the fire.
They burn for me,
And my embers are blown upon
By the night breath, whispering
The secrets that a dog or cat wont tell us,
About a planet that depended on trauma
And catastrophe.

PERFECT

The blue sky,
It wouldn’t be right if it was any other colour.
Sun crossed by clouds,
Then, Shadows moving across fields, of green.
Just the right shade; tall grass,
Lush waving.
Sea, sparkling.
Birds flit past when things seem static.
Cloud across the sun,
Key change in the soul.

PEACE
Peace spreads through the land
In a sunset,
A music festival is the celebration
Of many Merlins who have struck a chord.
Invisible powers, moon
Curling the lip of the waves,
Tides turn cartwheels
Wheels roll us to new sunsets,
Spirit likes us to fly gull like kites of its creation.

CHOCOLATE
Starlit nights,
Sunsets,
Black women with lion pride,
Asian saris, everyday weddings,
Exotic fruits,
Honeysuckle scents, with Thistledown
Passing by Govanhill.
Chocolate like Belgium, from Birmingham,
People who might smile at you
If you smile at them.
Old and young alive.

MUSIC
A face in the crowd,
Pearly gait, you walk towards.
People don’t believe in much these days
But if nature created woman,
Then man, maybe the music we pluck from the air
Has some celestial power.
The muse in music
A pearl in a shell, that appears just for you
Like a mermaid on a rock. Taking a chance.

SAVIOUR
Imaginary friend.
They all are,
Only you can see them, like only they
Can see you.
In the mind’s eye connected
To the feelings.
The more people in the room,
The more it’s diluted.
But the magic reconfigures, as time goes on.
A friend is a saviour,
So why not believe in a saviour?

FOOTBALLL CONGREGATION
Spot the ball,
Orange in the sleet.
Bovril and pie,
The linesman’s breath as he shouts
But it’s drowned out by the goal,
Crowd moving like a muscle,
While a murmuration flexes above,
Days before I was born,
But records began.
And the vinyl goes playing in its groove.

ROOMS
You’ve been in a lot of rooms.
Happy times at a long closed cinema,
Fruit gums in the shape of oranges and lemons.
Exit signs, and you left in the throng with
A feeling of a shared ending.
It’s easy to forget, sitting in the gloaming,
But the man walking his dog is today’s room.

AUTUMN
The wind shakes the bough,
Autumn is in the wings
Ready to join you on the stage.
It’ll walk with you a while, until the Xmas star
Is properly fixed in midwinter.
The amber light of a memory if you keep it
Close to you
Will heat you up.
It wasn’t all bad, that summer now gone.

WEB
Down main street
Past sleepy rooms
Too early to be shrouded in secrecy.
I walk into the newsagent,
Bell goes off,
Like a fly alerting a spider
As the web we’re all caught in
Flutters.
I consider how we try to make life
Bearable. Nature gave us smiles
And voices to thaw ice ages.

MUSIC 90s
York,
There was magic in there air.
But I couldn’t grasp it,
Got closer with music.
Maybe I needed the highs
As balance or ballast.
Russet apples on the tree near the walls
Sing It Back in the charts.
A mermaid singing, its spell doesn’t matter
Now that I can think clearly again.

CRAFT
There’s allotment,
Words drifting
Across the town.
Bonfires. Smoky mulch.
People. Leaves. And I miss
Listening to them.
Lighting fires. Embellishing.
The talk.
In the kiln I go mad again. Brain to clay.
Then wait for my cup to dry, then to fill up again.
I craft. A lot at steak.

BROWN EYED GIRL
The spirit of youth.
Brown eyed girl,
Dancing to the DJ.
The breeze, now
Sweeter than through a cherry blossom
Or warmer than fishes passing by
Your body subaqua holiday.
Its magic, on a walk down memory lanes
Depends on how much you believe
In the old footage of your life.

ASDA
5am
The 24 Hour ASDA.
It’s no an indie flick
For breakout stars,
Although the light at an industrial estate flickered
With no alarm.
The Halogen security guard is on.
Staff have private jokes,
Or speak in a tone that assembles
The seriousness of a day ahead.
The pallets stack up.

DAPPLEDOWN FARM
Back from a night out
She’s all forest pheromones
And tipsy breath.
Shoes left on the floor, as if they’re drunk too.
Flickering light of the TV,
While she sleeps. I never know what she’s dreaming.

WEIR’S WAY
Old breezy ’81 footage.
Bunting colourfully flicks like a cats tail.
Cars rove around a village
Like bees looking for nectar.
The lichen clings to a headstone
Of a family once in Ford Cortina wizardry.
But they live on
Petrichor hits, the smell of rain on old pavements,
Cat walks. Brings it back to life. Me.

NIGHT
Night patted on its bold horse’s neck
Sheen and shine,
Riding on a swathe of star lights;
Where the starlings go is a mystery.
The flat grave stones have been etched
By the wind and the rain,
Nothing can be made out
Except us & the
Broken green glass
Glinting in our suburban eyes.

PIGEONS
Two pigeons,
An unremarkable grey sky,
Day simmering.
One rests its head on the shoulder
Of the other.
They tarry for a while, looking across
Back gardens they see differently.
It’s a good feeling, the warmth
The oxytocin. But they can’t stay forever.
Fly off to forget it all.

FOX
Fox sees the car headlights
Beam. The moon shines fully
Rounded. The universe rounds it out,
For its own reasons.
The fox doesn’t stop to ponder,
Just knows it has its den,
A rustle in the undergrowth
The woods near the park.
Sniffs at a single cycle track.

FRESH
Bedroom, middle of the night,
Open the window a little
Taste the oxygen mixed with decay.
Feel it vital,
Know it’s doing good.
Fresh, like a tide breathing
On a bed of sand, kelp
And oyster catchers. Dandies
In Dunoon. Up before the Milk deliveries
And bread vans speeding past.

PUB
Low winter sun
Shines on the blue bag
Back from the local shop.
Asian shopkeeper let his beard grow.
Graffiti on the pub where the owner died
“Dogs welcome, Humans debatable.”
In chalk. In spray paint, on its side
Ruglen#1. Teens in weaponized
Childsplay, playing with territory. Potential. All.

GHOST TOWN
Ghost towns,
Someone sweeps up the leaves
Like memories. A cat with white socks
Trotting through suburbia
Like it doesn’t matter.
His garden, isn’t his garden.
An underpass has the ritual of warming
Tonic wine. Teens will make memories,
Daubing the walls to make love count 100.

URBAN REFUGEE
First snowfall
Of the year.
Bus stops have people bunched up
Together,
Like refugees.
Cars crawl slower as snow
Slides down their windscreens.
Night is creeping imperceptibly.
Caught in a conversation
Between two pensioners.
By the time the bus comes it’s dark.
Curtain came down.

LIME TREE
The walk
Meant autumn leaves scattered
On the ground.
Lime leaves, reddish
Leaving hearts on the path like confetti.
The trace of a daytime moon.
Sun’s golden glow, evanescent
Feelings. But those heart shaped leaves
Will fall again.

THE TREE
The tree
In the middle of nowhere
Bending branches breaking in the wind
We are in the grips of Autumn,
Like a gothic fever,
Turning in pain.
Clinging onto a summer, that was a Postcard.
The tree has a rookery
And the memories won’t lose their grip.
A silhouette of a nerve ending.

WOMAN SMOKING
Tree branches,
Sycamore reaching out
Like it’s pleading for alms.
Trembling leaves, chattering
Woman waiting below,
For a dog to plod back to her.
She tries to light a cigarette,
And feels lighter. The first draw
Always the best, burnt paper
More than nicotine.
Moon rises again.

BLAIR WITCH
Crows are dignified,
After the Blair Witch Project
Imagination in the early light
Sharpened their beaks.
But they never use them.
Murder of crows doesn’t fit.
They are in the guise of something dark
But fly off at a footstep, wisely
In the knowledge of the woods
And its secrets.

NIGHT CAFE
The night cafe.
Outside mist rolls around
Traffic lights.
A man sings songs his children don’t know.
I sit and watch the lights change.
Mist on the window
Like winter pressing its face against the glass.
Red and Brown sauce,
Classic coke bottles.
Winter hangs on a stranger’s coat.

4am
4am. The streets.
Occasional light on,
Someone up watching the television,
Or radio, buzzing,
Searching for light like a moth.
Taxis are in a different time zone
Listening to 80s tunes on Heart.
The sun sits hiding its light under a bushel.
A breath of wind, the glistening leaves.

BUS STATION
Bus station lights,
Like jewels, on a crown of solitude.
Buses don’t run for an hour.
Mist rolls in, fox sneaks under,
Meets your gaze. Knows
Something you can’t sense.
A ghost at the taxi rank.
A winking light. A building
Doesn’t remember MacBurger,
The faltering chains shaken.

CAWS
Caws a Crow
In the direction of the past
A time when the town wasn’t built.
A pigeon claps its wings on take off
Before an aeroplane crossed the sky
Vapour trails like a snail’s silvery track.
Time moving so slowly.
Robins have sang sweetly and fought
For territory all the while.

TREE
The tree on the way to school.
November.
Tall, bending
Housing crows.
Walk past the caws.
Was there ever magic like that?
It was there,
Less showy than the forest which revealed
Its birds, jumping out in the lightning storm.
Contained in memory,
But may never walk past it again.

LULLABY
A light.
Farmhouse isolated
From the driving rain.
Lady reads, curled up like an Autumn leaf.
A light in the eyes,
Of a duo walking back to happiness.
In the rain, grey is the colour of her eyes and the skies.
Car headlights,
Mother sings lullabies.
Moonlight on the Ally ally oh.

POSTCARD
Walk through remote suburbia,
A place nobody comes to visit,
Unless they live here. Or love.
But it has its beauty,
The same beauty where you live now.
The November leaves, chasing each other
In a mini whirlwind. Like when you were
A part of the rabble of noise in the playground.

HIGH
Walking up the hill
Lone star in the sky.
Silhouette of the steeple, in the early light.
It never gets old,
The feeling.
All the mystery of the universe,
Explains itself to only your solar plexus,
All language has built us up to this point.
Everyone is a star. Souls in excelsis.

GHOSTS
Don’t be scared of ghosts,
Or the dark.
Walk towards the light
The Chinese take away.
Feel the breath of the past
In the blast of air
Before the underground arrives.
The mist, seems like something out of a film
But this is your life.
Don’t be scared of ghosts,
You walk with them.

WISTFUL SQUARES
Looking across,
At the flats over the road.
Wistful squares,
People I’ll never know.
Celebrity squares of light,
The cat that appears every now and again.
The kitchen light that never switches off.
My blinds are neither up nor down.
Or sometimes up, and sometimes down.
No routine.

FLYING SAUCER
The wee girl
Says to her mum in the twilight
“A flying saucer
Is in the sky.”
The clouds wander
Across the moon
People cross their hearts,
The scent is smoky mulch.
In a flat, Christmas is wished upon
The stars are shards of glass
In the wake.

AMBER
I have my jewellery box,
Memories captured in amber.
I cherish them,
Because. They don’t have a value.
Same price as my soul.
I worry, that they are a figment of my imagination.
That the shared ending of a bad movie
Projected by a ghost in a damp bingo hall
Means more than my jewels.

AMUSE
The girl’s put
Her red dress over the lamp.
The room bathes; sunset
Was designed to see another chance
In another day.
The grey skies of yesterday,
Were electric grey,
Like her eyes she shines into yours.
Christmas is some way off,
The candle she lit sways
To the open window chill.

CHARLOTTE’S WEB
The clouds swirl,
On the planet earth,
Colour of coffee,
Sitting alone in a cafe,
Memory attaching itself to a passing memory;
Out in the street, mother and child.
Friday afternoons, Long Calderwood school,
Teacher reading Charlotte’s web
As we’d behaved.
Walk home comes alive.

XMAS TIME TRAVEL
TJ Hughes,
A time machine,
Shirts like pre reality television
Quiz contestants.
The C&A of 1981,
Xmas lights, so much craft
Everyone’s walk down Argyle street is bespoke.
Carried on a flight of fancy,
Snowman and his girlfriend hug,
And melt their hearts.
Puddle reflects on Xmas.

ANGEL
Under the Christmas lights
They spent time.
Her eyes shined better than
The angels above.
She was real, unlike the portrait
In the gallery. That one the experts fawned over.
They didn’t notice you standing right there,
Living, pulsing through the sleety city,
Towards the theatre.

BOXING DAY
In the play
Of a new day
Remade, belief. Whistling a tune
As you make the bed.
Trying not to lie in it.
Open the curtains,
& a parallel universe walks past
Sombre as a grey cloud.
Above, a sky of forgetful clouds,
Forgetting to count their blessings,
Of memories, likes daffodils.

29/12/2020
Open blinds,
Snow, shrouding us in peace,
Connecting us to the crisp 7am stars.
A morning walk, ghost steps
Of one man and his dog.
Sometimes words can’t do it all justice,
And we just have to let our heart flutter
Like the pied wagtail, a visitor
Who makes us feel at home.

GEORGE SQUARE
The musical statues of George square.
People said she was one of a kind,
Walkman on.
While sitting on a bench,
I realised everybody is one of a kind,
As iridescent as a pigeons neck,
Shining in the sun of just the right kind
Of love. A daytime moon improvised
A cloud dance for me.

TWILIGHT
Night falls,
Twilight shakes an owl awake.
The sleeping spell,
For robins,
Just as the switch is pressed on
The radio. Friday night tunes,
Cranked up, as the birds
Are under a charm.
In kitten heels, the girls share a drink
Before heading to a concrete palace,
Bus driver bemused.

8/1/2021
The laughter,
Echoing around the buildings,
Squeals, and the plastic sledges hitting
The carpark at the end of the cresta run.
And piping up, is the voice of someone’s gran
Taken out of herself. More fun than a gin
Is feeling the world change with a snowfall
As seagulls circle.

EASTER
She is risen
From sleep in her bed,
It isn’t for keeps, life
It’s an echo of all that has been said.
But the sparkle of the sea at lunchtime
Feels different every time,
People like gifts from above
That’s why people like chasing shadows
And the fate in seeking bounteous rhymes.

FRAGMENT
We walked under stars
In the snow,
You said your brother’s ears were glowing red. Motherly.
It was one of those windy nights,
When the moon shows just how quick the clouds are
Moving.
Like cattle, surprising us in the fields in a thunderstorm.
Not knowing which way to run. Storm settles down.

KLIMT
Under a blanket of stars
The town pulled up the covers,
Meteors like consciousness burned out, and midnight oil
Fuelled the weekend lovers.
The air was still
In the sycamore, now, not even a whisper,
Safe he was in sweet oblivion
Beside themselves, never aware that he missed her.

GYPSY
Fairground lights in the distance
Big dipper, a pattern in the sky.
It was all made for us
Feel low? Just ask yourself why.
Gypsy travellers not in Orion
But watching, the Ferris wheel go round.
Sometimes people are in orbit of history
Listen, don’t worry. It won’t make a sound.

GIRL IN A CAFE
Girl in a cafe
One glove off, to feel the heat in the cup,
Many patrons come and go
And she doesn’t often look up.
Lost in warm thoughts of rock pools
On a beach, with gulls high and a-flying,
The postcards, the nets…and the sail boats
Coming into the harbour, with waves sighing.

SLEEP
Put out the light
& light up the night
Outside your window moon’s
Pillow will guide you, away from your sight.
See in dreams,
Old times, moon beams
Earthbound,
Life is just what it seems.

JESUS
Looking out
I see seagulls fly
In time to the slow seaside music I play,
The sycamore buds have burst open
And will soon shield the church tower.
A trip on the train,
Vistas show that there are more churches
Than reason would allow for,
But maybe, there is something in it. Or someone.

ROXY
An old movie, black and white
The names are up in lights,
Moonlight and neon on car bonnets
It must have been quite a sight.
Lost brands of candy, words and tastes
Taken over with time,
Sweet shops closed forever
Soor plooms, and chocolate limes.

CHERRY
Stuck inside today, tomorrow
The sun might shine.
Wind turbines, spring breeze through waving fields
Cut down in time.
But tomorrow, cherry trees in their youth again
And the sun might shine.
Blossom in the pages
An encyclopedia dry
Better to be tumbling,
Sentiments gone awry.

ANDREW GOLD
The Golden Ghouls haunt
The old folks home,
Only Rose is left.
She blooms by the window, waiting
Every year tending the pale blossom, bereft.
They meet for cheesecake, at midnight
And then the candle is blown out,
Companionship in old age
Too tired to care, what it was all about.

CLEVER GRETHEL
At a garden party, cheap cider
Her floaty summer dress,
Crossed legs, a better smile than enigmatic,
Cares of the day seem so much less.
But the late wasp is getting restless
In a garden just the same.
To go back to the past isn’t possible
So let’s play a different game.

MISSED
Sleep hanging in the air
Like mist rolling across the rolling fields
Of your imagination.
The lifelines you’ve spun are hanging
Like water droplets on a telephone booth web
Somewhere, waiting for a call.
An apparition of the past takes shape,
But the car headlights shine through it.

CONTENT
Write yourself
Outta trouble
If you stay in bed the so called demons double up
And douse you in petrol
So emerge from the metaphorical flames
Of yesterday which take your everafter
And Lazarus like
Get to work on words and music.
Think yourself happy, when sad,
By thinking yourself happy
And soon content provides.

THE WOODS
Trees in the darkness of the forest
Unknown,
The smell of wet earth
And wild garlic
Makes memories of my walk
Into the valley of shadows.
A heavy waterfall,
A ruined castle,
Rhododendrons planted by a gardener long gone,
For a king who lost his austere looks,
A stately
Emptiness.

VINNY
Vinny, raspy voiced,
Declaiming the Evening Times
Under inky blue skies
With the smell of oil just off George Square.
An unsubmitted student newspaper article,
When evenings were all about Vinny,
And his voice, for commuters
Something visceral in a cerebral day.
This is the news.

KELVINGROVE
A winter picnic!
She said
Breathless enthusiasm
In Kelvingrove park
Her eyes shining at the squirrels,
Holding hands to the Sentry.
Kissing on the couch; swimming. I wish she was keeping me pure
Away from Saturday’s kissing competition; dad issues
I knew little about, while tending the bar.

INFINITE VARIETY
My Cleopatra’s eyelids,
Getting heavy
Like the water vapour
In the clouds.
Saharan skies desert dust
To help make rain.
Her brooding eye shadow’s
The intensity of her clouds
Of feeling,
Stirring up like cumulonimbus
On a fresh rainy spring day
Yet to be, and full of tempered joy.

NOUS
Rain hits the dry earth,
Breathe in a memory.
If I don’t remember it,
I wasn’t there.
But sometimes the diffuse feeling
Seems to be enough.
The feeling that you spent time together,
Looked in her eyes. Listened.
And it was enough. Rain will fall
Our generation will meet its summer.

RAIN
It’s rain
On my window pane.
I wonder, do you think of me
As I think of you?
As you’d like to be thought of.
But memories escape me.
I tend to remember people enthusing,
Eyes shining.
Your soul is something I can feel
And know its real, despite
Fading memories
Like t-shirts.

I BELIEVE IN REAL
Trying to join the dots
Of meaning
Based on a few fragments.
We were happy, watching Dolly Parton in Nairn
The National Lottery show.
Drunkenly reading Grimm’s Fairy tales,
Clever Gretel, intelligence an aphrodisiac,
As the clouds roll in
And our Brigadoon drifts away with the lost souls.

GRADUATION
Back of the car, back from her graduation.
Her & her little brother, sleeping.
Her father driving back home.
Now are they are all scattered in the wind?
Like a memory.
Or the ashes of the father.
But for minutes, there was peace
In the world, and contentment. A family
And me. Harmony.

FRIDAY NIGHT
In the kitchen
Boil two eggs to kill the silence,
Hear them rattling like the train
Which toots its horn in the night
Presumably to give ghosts in the tunnel a fright.
Hear a neighbour clunk with the plumbing.
Depths of despair
Are soon repaired with the bright moon saying hello!

LOCKDOWN
The Sportsman pub,
Walk past under pretty clouds,
Owner has the door open.
Welcoming musty smell in lockdown.
Walk round Shawfield stadium
Quick as a greyhound.
Back past the pub
Owner is weeding, with a pint of heavy
On the beer garden picnic table.
Windblown thoughts of regulars.

SUNDAY NIGHT MAY 10th 2020
Rain taps gently on the window
Like Kathy,
Less desperate. A friendly visitation
For the right suitor.
Flowers need a feed,
The earth was parched near the park
Cracks like an oil painting
In some art gallery
Where the image is a universal language.

SHINTO
Glide like moonlight
In ancient Japan,
Draw a wave
Waving like only the Japanese can.
Smile as your best defence in a crowd
Think of Zen
When life gets too loud.
Wander through a museum
Like a beautiful black haired couple,
Or wander through your mind
In times of trouble.

KELVINGROVE
At the museum,
The guide talked of sunlight reflecting on the water
And took us to a portrait of a muse.
I remembered trying to evade the security guard
On a primary school outing.
I imagined being with someone who filled the void,
The real sea a mystery solved
In decent company.

METRO
A cryptic crossword puzzle
Lines across, fishing for
One down looking friend,
Turn the page,
A join the dots
Where some dots are missing
& you see the wrong picture.
I don’t do Sudoku,
Numbers are beyond me,
Like the Stars.
I read the funnies, trapped in
A speech bubble.

CLOUDS
Thoughts condense on the page
Like water vapour
On a million specs of dust,
Bubbling up into cloudy rain,
Falling without a parachute,
Past seagulls
And drip, drip, dripping
From a mossy roof tile in ancient China.

STARS
Walking in the snow
A light at the television mast
And the stars
Sailing across the sky.
Neon less permanent
Than the eternal sparkle of your eyes
Which won’t sail elsewhere.
Star prow onward
While at the seaside promenade,
Godspeed to you.

OVERWHELMED
The forgotten fragments
A World Service radio broadcast
Signal like pin balls bouncing around
The globe. It overwhelms, the amount of
Stuff forgotten. Drowning in radio waves
Memories fading. A narrative seeping away
What was really happening in the sky?
Back to bed, overwhelmed.

CODA
Dusk
Will a dusky maiden
Tap me on the shoulder
And say, it’s complete. Relax.
Yes, she will
My muse has created a fun museum
A legacy to fill the void,
A challenge that I laid down to myself
And accepted, with a heavy heart.
But now it’s done
And outside, there will always be another sun. For me and others.

TRANSMISSION
Twinkling light atop
The radio mast,
All the alchemy of humanity
Blood iron to gold flowing,
Melding in an esoteric
Hum of colours, sounds.
Mobile phone masts
Sail us to new connections
In rooms. One leaves and feels
A new chemical reaction.
Light the touchpaper
At night time.

AUG 1st 2020
In the silence
Of the night,
The Saturday 7 bus drives into the quiet time
Engine hums, gears changing.
Don’t need to close my eyes
To see it. Blinds drawn.
Someone drunkenly sings to the open sky
Starlight like eyes of woodland creatures
Shining in the dark. Music of the spheres.

RAIN
It rains, smirry.
Drops drip down
Racing each other like to the conception. Birth
Of creation. A myth?
Stare out the window
I don’t close the blind, so
A small spider has hung its web in my insomnia.
Under a streetlight, a man smokes. A puffing pyrotechnic
As his dog shakes its fur.

I NEED BALANCE
The choppy grey seas of life
Everyone wants caught in a storm, sometimes;
Everyone wants to balance
Like a gull bobbing on the surface.
Tiring of the storms,
Would rather watch a projection of sun light
Rising. Bruises healing with each passing day
Until the end credits, and another day.

FILM
Film noir, got there so far.
Woman in heels, her cigarette glow
In the still of the night.
All her great dramas have played themselves out.
Moonlight and music and love and romance,
Are still there. A cab pulls up,
Like an alien space ship
And takes the world somewhere new.
Empathy with 40s winking stars.

SPRING

Spring’s waking
Up comes the snowdrop
Down comes the rain,
But it’s falling on a patch of warm earth.
The sun is climbing higher in the sky,
And the vista is a city thinking about magic
Hocus pocus, crocus
And daffodils, ice melting vibrancy,
Good smells and vibrations in the air.

8:12am

Sunrises, golden
Gilding the condensation.
An old film on the television
Gets less old.
Feel like a ghost, given another corporeal chance.
Walking in the kitchen,
With the radio as welcome as birdsong.
Spring, with new found motivation.
The meaning of life is to live it.

CHANCE IS A FINE THING

A woman looks in the mirror,
Moonlight in a land
Not there.
A new estate built on the ruins.
A grave in a cemetery tells no stories.
But she fretted on her appearance,
That was perfect for her.
She didn’t know of the gravity of the moon
But cosmic imperfection
Tilted us alive.

ROSE

Seagull,
Flying
Its shadow flits
Across the dirt sandstone.
River winding
Clean.
Rowers catch the sunshine
Derelict Victorian public school
Overlooks the river,
Once polluted,
Downward rain.
Today spring wires into
The earth.
A town grows a Church
With its crown
Of thorns. And no perfumed smell.

LOST BOYS AND GIRLS

In the land
Of the lost boys,
And girls
Keep your head to the sky
It doesn’t tell lies,
Its shape shifting won’t
Shroud secrets
And it saves those
Who feel the power of the sun,
Valley of the shadow
Generations to rise,
Keep your head to the sky.
No, I’m not sure why.

SPRING EDIT

Spring’s waking
Up comes the snowdrop
Down comes the rain,
But it’s falling on a patch of warm earth.
The sun is climbing higher in the sky,
And the vista is a city thinking about magic:
Hocus pocus, crocus
And daffodils, ice melting vibrancy,
Good smells drift like evening mist.

HEART BEAT

In the afternoon,
Light rain.
Squadron of starlings
Use the steeple as a playground.
You can tell their hearts beat faster,
Than the seagull.
Newsagent meets you eye,
Or you met his.
He’s grown a beard in lockdown.
Waiting for evening, all the lights on
With no one home. Yet.

TEA

Feeling slightly older,
Sitting here, at a loose end.
Frayed nerves,
Sun shining.
Will the day never end?

Look at the book shelf
Each page might just take you away…
Idly leaf through some pages,
Tea’s got slightly colder
Here comes the Spring evening, with all its subtle ways.

EDDYING BREEZE

Sunday night,
The Palladium is empty.
The television is on,
A young family
East to Europe,
Children eddying
Something like thistledown in a holding camp.
The mother laughs with her husband;
She lets her hair fall below hijab,
And he loves her easy going ways.

CAT

Past a church
With many crucifixes staked in the earth.
A strange sight.
Past the junior football team, that plays in
Black and white. The cat pads along
Twitching ear, someone whistling.
It hears me behind, and slips into a garden
But I know it watches me
Cast my evening shadow.

PUB

A pub room,
Space invaders,
A table for two.
Cider fizz bubbling up,
Like timeless clouds, above landscapes
Without miner’s songs.
Saharan sand on car windscreens.
The room in your mind, with exits
Leading to the next thought.
80s sitcom, fruit machine lights,
Lager and crisps.

BOOKIES

The bookies,
Between two pubs.
Closed, whitewashed.
When the fun stops, stop.
Closed shops, & the circus poster goes up.
Cursing the emptiness,
A man leaves his doubts on the pavement.
He misses the high, wired feeling.
On a roll with providence,
Luck shining above City Chambers.

HILLTOP

The moist leaves,
Of sycamore churn around in a grey
Windy day.
Like being caught in a quick rinse cycle,
The tree blossom smells as damp and fragrant
As an afternoon’s wash.
Three crows sit on a wire, high on a hill
Overlooking the town;
Pegging up its smalls,
And rainy overalls.

MORNING

The early morning sun,
Crisp. Rolls delivered left outside.
Yesterday’s papers get into a flap,
Floating in the air, then falling.
The steeple and the radiating sky
Weather seems better first thing.
A clearing in the mind after the dark.
Or the ghosts lie in wait,
Saying: Morning.

HOUSE CAT

The house cat
Sneaks under the blind.
Morning sun to heat.
Starling does a fly past
And it watches keenly.
Would a house cat chase a bird
If it was in the street?
The clouds move, the magician puts away
His light. How cat doesn’t knock over
The vase of morning flowers, a mystery.

COFFEE CUP

Coffee cup,
Swirling like a cauldron,
Strange elements, bean grown from wet earth.
Milk and and water;
Metal spoon dug out from a drawer,
Old flyers and receipts.
Proof that you were there, in the transitory flow
Radio on, look out of the window:
Clouds,
Washing lines bewitched.

DROWSY

Clock ticks,
A far off noise in your drowsy descent
Into Monday morning.
Didn’t bank on being up this late,
Body acclimatised to the chill of the night,
Hugging the flat like a wet towel.
Eyelids doing the heavy lifting,
Soul sinks to that place
Where you can only get up
For bed.

TWILIGHT

Old man sitting on a bench,
The clouds above are his muse.
He’s lived quite a life,
But it’s not one he would choose.

Twilight ghosts into a forgettable evening,
A Sodium light red, splutters.
An old woman passes him by,
He smiles, but didn’t hear what she muttered.

EAST KILBRIDE

A couple,
Moon sails by.
Reality reaches as far as a horizon.
Future looks like a glint in the eye,
Holidays are the warmth of a hand held.
The village church,
Bell sleeping.
Hoof beats, resounding.

A couple, walk past the cemetery
New town planning, underpasses
Graffiti and moss.

PLANET

There was nobody around
To record it.
The eruptions of anger,
Nature being its own worst enemy.
The ice ages.
But the ice cracked, the green
Trees swaying gently, in a dance with
Peace. The planet rounded itself out
Is seeking balance.
Just like the rest of us.
Green blue planets.

HOME

Walking home,
Friend told to go in, when the street lights come on.
No such advice for me,
So I wandered lonely.
Years later find myself there,
September living rooms,
Families,
Dinner smells mixing with the Scotch mist.
All is there, laid out on a plate,
And yet I can’t go back.

NO STORM

The sky
Charged with grey,
Wind unsettling,
Bird hanging into an underpass,
Clockwork heads, ticking for insects,
Under lights that have come on too early.
Seems like there is a storm coming.
Earlier, she wore a summer dress
For the first time in the year.
A thought passes me by.

YOU ARE HERE
We write ourselves
Out of the universe.
As if we are a separate thing.
The old black and white comedy,
A comical child in his mother’s slippers,
As many heartwarming cups of wonder
As there are stars.
In the cold dark of endless space,
Time was waiting all this time
For us. And here we are.