Passing notes

A corrupt exchange
Furtively passed
Between spider crab fingers
Cold and chitinous.
A whispered accompaniment
Meetings arranged
Between pig hearts
Exposed on biology slabs.
You will, I will.
Yours, mine.
Windows mist
With teenage heat.

Chase and return

Passed the walls of lichened stone
And loose lattices of cobbed silk
Dipped with bulbs of dew
That my fingers trace a line between. 

These stones are home, eternal
These spiders' forebears
Spun when I was young.
I worried their webs
With a hockey stick
Always chasing balls down lanes
Some feral canine instinct
To chase and return.
And so I do.
Chasing dreams through hills and years
And always returning home.

Birmingham

Sitting on a window sill
16 floors up
Only a piece of glass
Between bed and jam.
Watching buses mill below
And a building site,
There always is.
No matter the city
You can guarantee the view
Although I can't actually tell
If this is construction
Or destruction.

A round poem

Cradled in light
The circle is born
Waving like a cobweb
Held in a storm
Locked in a maze of nets
Carved into a fisherman's head
Silent as silver deep underground
The coal within is yet to be found
Once birthed and twice dead
Known for what it forgets
Lamb-like and warm
Waning with the tide's ebb
From the earth it is torn
Smooth and bright.

Bankers to broad beans

The retirees are on the allotments
As Monday morning comes again
Pushing earth as they would push pens
Out in sun and snow and rain.
The lion with his six-clawed rake
The tiger with her spade
Digging like she dug accounts
And money that she made.
Though the plot is beautifully tilled
And filled with every seed they know
I've never seen those gardeners
Eat a single thing they grow.

Planes and Trains

The plane comes in low above us
Surely something so big cannot fly
Like a swan treading water
Impossible, but then away.
The horses in the field below
Don't even raise their weary heads
As all that metal rends the air
And bends the barley in its wake.

And yet to be inside those roaring hulks
I find that fear gives that wonder pause
My eyes tight closed and fingers gripped
Until we're high and flat and smooth
And all my senses fool my brain
To believing that I'm on a train.

The Valley

There is a certain valley
On the way from Haywards Heath
With a viaduct above
And pasture flowing beneath
Emerging from a closed wood
The bridge's gate posts beat
Out time and mark the space
Until nothing but that rhythmic
Void and views of fields and
Grazing beasts.
Long enough to gaze upon
Short enough to hold enrapt
Until by woods again you're trapped
And all those perfect views are gone.

Something in the air

There's something in the air she walks
A lightness almost fae,
Transparent bounce from heel to concept
Mind follows foot to anchored ground.
She's reading a book
Holding the spine and thumbing from leaf to leaf as she goes
Words in the air as footprints
Thoughts that fall and rise again.
Her musical hair accompanies
Each beat of body building higher
And clears the path of consciousness
That marks her daily grind.

Master of None

Blue suit and tie-less
He surveys the track
A miniature suitcase
To free up his back.
Pasty and coffee
Gripped in one hand
As into the other
He barks out his plans.
He's a leader of course,
Just look at his strut
Wide-legged and powerful
With turnings abrupt.
The ladies look on
With lust in their eyes
Or so he believes,
Though I'd be surprised.
He gazes at one
As he makes his next sale
Trips on the platform
And falls on the rails.

Shelling Peas

I remember my mother shelling peas
Pod deftly split
Each bright green globe
Gently prised like a babe from the teat.

I have a genetic memory of hundreds of mothers shelling peas
Those hard rounds tumbling into bowls
Husks piled on aprons
Pulled taut across their laps.

So why can't I shell peas?
Nature's joke
Too much force
Those daft marbles
Tumbling into the air and across the floor.
Any crack a pea-sized crack
Waiting to trap those devilish sprouts.
One in the bowl for every five without.

Pods and tempers snap.
A hundred mothers' laughter echoes
With every bounce on the hard floor.
Dead flowers and detritus
Bulk out the meagre reward
And I walk in shame to the freezer door.

Once and Future

The knight removed his winged helm
And gazed o'er the fray
Twenty thousand men had come
And few saw out the day.

He finally saw the standard raised
Above the gold-encircled head
Of his king and countryman
Bestride a hill of dead.

He was locked in furious combat
Against a black clad man
The king held firm and fought
With a stout spear in his hand.

The black-clad knight was known to him
His sister's craven mate
Known to his friends as Mordred
Though his friends were few of late.

...

The Flying Scot

Gold again for the flying Scot
It's always the Scots.
Do they have nothing better to do
Than sit on saddles
Dourly pushing pedals around?
Wasn't the pneumatic tyre invented by a Scot?
I guess the scenery's good for it.
Three mountains before porridge.
Bag a couple of Munros for lunch.
And his legs back it up,
Each one a caber
Being tossed to and fro
As he circuits the track.
By God it's impressive.

The Toad

There is a toad by the drain
Round-eyed like a fish
And darkly moist.
Both shocked by the other's appearance.
I back away as it stands its ground
A squat pulsating alien
Heavy like a meteorite or a cow pat
I run to tell the children
But when we return
It's gone.

Sunday Morning

I watch through the window pigeons pass
The ghost of a reflection fading fast
A tile slip in slow motion on Dianne's roof
The spider's spiralling search for truth
The strengthening sunlight warming the bed
The flop of the paperboy's heavy tread
Waking and falling
Rising and snoring
The nonchalant chaos
Of a Sunday morning.

Growing Garlic

And there it is
Three fat cloves pulled from the ground
Each the size of a normal bulb
With an immediate garlic blast on the air
Rubbed and tied to the washing line
A week for paper-white skins to form
For wet garlic to dry
Flavour and scents concentrated
And a smile of triumph.

The horizon

The magical horizon
Touched and broken
Blue as blood
Through cradled pain.
Eyes unfocused
Planes expand
An inward infinity
Forever out of reach.
Home is there
A firm island
An escape from it all.
At the end
At every end
Light overtakes dark
Punches through the horizon
Circles back again and again.

Murica

The Hair is there
Foot in mouth while tongue lolls free
Amid bone-white glints from tombstone plot.
Pointing into the crowd
"You, yes, you"
Approving nods and winks to nobody
The words don't matter
Performance is all
And those stabbing fingers
Could start and end
The next world war.

The leap of faith

Scrabbling like a burrowing dog
She attacks the air
With hand-formed claws.
This preparation sacrosanct,
Before the leap, the pause.
Then dips the head and long legs bend
Crouches tight and arms extend,
Then BANG,
With an explosion of nervous delight
She springs in momentary flight.
An unshaken belief in what's to come,
Caught by the waiting arms of mum.

The split

He pulled and she pulled
With a predictable split
Two forces acting as opposites
And neither one would quit.
When fighting over a spaghetti string
It's just a bit of fun
But when a child's the object
There is more damage done.

Ear of the year

I find it quite peculiar
How body parts are fetishised
No matter how the same we are
Our differences are amplified.
That lady's bottom
Is the best one on the planet,
While that man's trousers
Are the tightest ones in Thanet.
Maybe it is just because
My own body's not spectacular
Unless there's some reward
For having skin as white as Dracula.
But actually I think that there
Are more important things to recognise
Than inside leg and size of waist
And measurements around our thighs.

The pool

Calm is the water
A reflecting pool
Still and unbroken
Not even an insect
Skimming there.
Calm and blue
The colour of polar ice
With the slightest hint
Of a windward ripple.

Under Pressure

Doctor, Doctor
Can someone come quick
I drank something strange
And I feel a bit sick.
It might have been off,
I couldn't quite tell.
I can't say I noticed
A dangerous smell.
Oh Doctor, please,
I'm going to burst
My stomach is feeling
Considerably worse.
I should never have taken
That final slurp.
Excuse me  - oof
It was just a wee burp.

Leaving Lewes

There's little to be said
As the white Cliffe turns red
And the sun sets over the hill.
That glowing face of chalk
Over which we have walked
A hundred times and more still.
The calm of evening falls
On those proud Sussex walls
And the waves push back the Ouse.
The curtained castle stands
Sentinel o'er these lands
Every twitten, lane and mews.
It kept us in its care
But our path leads somewhere
There is a fortune to find.
We turn our heads away,
The close of our last day,
Leaving our Lewes behind.

The moment

Each muscle carefully locked
As bones are pushed beyond belief
One arm raised to signal
And the spring is released.
Everything united in movement
Toward one goal
One focus.

The painted morning

The morning sun glows through the red curtains
Like a torch held against fingers.
The same glow through my eyelids
As I hold them closed against the light.
Grudgingly I open them
To see the shifting rays carve you from the dark
A single line defines you like an artist's sketch.
How can you still sleep with that weight of light upon you?
I tickle you with my smile
Willing you to feel
But it's too early
This lady's not for waking.
Instead, I run my eyes around the room.
Exercising the lenses on every corner
Counting the digits cast on the ceiling
Until it's time to make the quiet climb
Trying to lighten heavy feet
And another world awakens.

Another morning

There's a rattle in the air
The white noise of 1,000 Lego bricks
Being pushed and tipped aside.
They're awake.
With the usual 'Mama' and 'Dada' dawn chorus
And time begins again
With eyes full of half-dreams.
'Where does the shield go?'
'The doctor will come and help them'
'Is there a battle?'
'The doggy's going shopping'
It's sometimes hard to grasp
The foggy tendrils of reality
When bathed in so much fantasy
Before the cock has crown.

Cats in the dark

We're like two cats
Rasping through the long grass
Stalking a tight circle
Eyes locked
Heckles high
With a low devil sound
Boiling in our throats

Pills

Take this pill.
A guaranteed dream
Of purple leaves falling
Like raindrops thrown from
Flying parmesan saucers.

Take this pill
To see the sound
Of snails laughing
At a thistle's wind.

Take this pill
To smell the thoughts
Of the cleverest people
And see if they are
Green, blue, or calendars.

Magnets

This invisible force
Pushing and pulling
Flowing through iron
Weak but strong.
I don't really understand
How those ions repel and attract
Keeping the balance.
Making energy seem so effortless,
Infinite.
I wonder at that,
The promise of perpetual motion,
Of solving the energy problems.
But then I remember
That all I have is a toy.

Eureka!

Struggling and getting nowhere.
It must be right.
It's not right.
Try again.
A different angle.
A scratch of the head.
A furrowed brow,
Frustration.

And then,
At the point of giving up,
The brain wanders
And WHAM!
That's it.
And it is.

Skin

The skin off his back
Peeled like cellophane
Or the page of a book
One thinly opaque layer.
It was heavy like rubber
Not quite organic enough
To be part of him.
The edges were tougher,
Wincing he pulled and tore
All along the curves
Of his shoulder blades.