Biography

I write - perform occasionally - sometimes on a stage.

Had a few things published and commissioned but not taking writing too seriously until I turn into a full-blown cynic.

Samples

THROWING STONES FROM SILVERDALE


From a sitting position

he would often throw stones.

Not real stones,

just the type of stones

that you’re perhaps throwing now.

Stones that loop from one side of a mind

then land in the soft swaying grass of images.


Now the word ‘stones’ is getting on his tits,

yet, ‘getting on his tits’ doesn’t belong here.

Not here among a pattern of daisies

that remind him of that southern hemisphere

he once saw inside a well-thumbed glossy book

of stars and galaxies.



Not here, with the chin of a moon

swilling its hairless face inside the

stillness of a pond,

where sheep and cows lay upon shades of

blankets made from the girth of mighty

grimacing trees.

And ‘it's a frog - not a toad’

is sitting content beside the patient pole of

a fisherman;

willing a child to stroke the green marble

of ‘an amphibian’

as a plosive bubble now sits upon

knowledgeable lips .

　

Children staring back toward a father

for that reassuring dip of a head

before a gentle patting with a tremble in two

forefingers;

then huge wide-eyed smiles that he knew was a

simple realisation that frogs aren’t nearly as

bad as what a Nan had once said.



And through the fields filled with memories

and butterflies

he wanted to show them how it was?

How the evening would smell of eight thirty

five;

how an inch of cigarette

would stream its sweet smelling smoke along

his fingers;

How he stared at a profile of Louis

Armstrong’s lips,

singing on the grass from a shadow-puppet fist;

eating flies to the tune of

a wonderful world.



And, as the sun loses its way

leaving in its place just the inks of

yesterday;

He writes loops of unnecessary words

and wonders, if there will ever be enough.



And waits

as they take their turn to throw stones.

To throw stones.

To throw stones.



AT THE WATER'S EDGE WITH STELLA


In this light

the sea and its moon

are a huge domino, a double one.

A peninsula

the spine of a crouching black Panther.

A distant yacht

a wedge of Cheddar cheese.

My beer simply warm

like piss.




ARBEIT MACHT FREI

Underneath its once wasted sky

whispers between a breeze,

its years and every single ghost;


no bird chooses to breathe here

or unfurl its God given wings.


Staring at the emptiness of its trees

through tears falling onto history

and into its soil and its earth.



No bird will care to sing here

or unfurl its God given wings.


Inside ‘A Little Red House’

touching its years with a finger’s tip,

walking through rain's mirrors and their grief.



No bird will care to bathe here

or unfurl its God given wings.



Screams of every single innocence

tasting the sorrow on dry lips,

and all God's stars the other side of a ceiling

with their souls and the singing of birds.



STARING INTO THE SOUNDS OF A STRING QUINTET


It gets him every time.

Usually when he’s driving toward the darkest

cloud

painted into the ‘scape of winter by an angry

hand

or into the careless seam of crag and mountain

with their creases of shade and beauty that

turn a morning into a deep inhalation of

appreciation.

And then just as the sky is turning into a

heap of mood,

the first stroke of a viola string from a radio

alters the shape of his thought.


Now he sees the fantails of Victorian cloaks,

'Basil Rathbone' types dashing

over the gloss of cobbles in old London town,

the dancing of violins side by side,

the innocence of Stan and Ollie

bumbling through a fine mess of a day.

The heaving cello holding his thoughts together

as the violas and the violins take him beyond

a morning

and onto the decks of an unsinkable ship.

Gentlemen in dinner-jackets, ladies queuing

patiently

touching mittens with children who will never

grow old.


Franz seated inside candle-light.

A nib poised over an empty page.

Staring through diamond lead

toward a conclusion. A tempo. A melody.

"…and now - the news".





THE SPIRIT OF GRANDAD BILL

Thirty six years of a summer sun

has faded the gloss of fishing boats

but the sea grass still sways

just like he said it always would.


I see a mustard coloured cardigan

a straw hat and impeccable trousers

and the glint of three shiny mackerel

held aloft with the orange twine of fishermen

by a boy with dried sea spray on his one

and only chin.


Give us a wave Bill!

Then the whirl of an old fashioned camera

from a silhouette standing at the harbour

and a Grandfather and his boy waving into the

sunshine

with their hairless hands and beaming smiles

of relief.

I see the uneven steps leading from the water

worn by the feet of fathers and years of tide

and I see his toes through the brown open

sandals

and watch as he climbs into the shadow of

those sitting with their legs dangling

over the groans of swooping gulls.

I see the seats of scattered lobster baskets

and know that here is where he sat.

I see that sail of starched handkerchief

that he pulled from a pocket in the breeze

and I feel that same stroke of good fortune

as it gathered in the knees of the fisherman

now eating the end of an old clay pipe,

feeding three bending fish into the smile of a

seal

and memories into the mind of a child.














FISHING FOR CRABS IN PADSTOW

Eight years of concentration

are staring down a plumb line

cast from the bleach

of harbour stone wall.


Tiny nimble fingers

wait with little patience

for that crawling hand of crustacean

walking sideways along a silt of seabed.

Unaware that it is about

to live in a memory forever

of the child wearing blue canvas shoes

worn on the 'wrong' feet.

Empty pale at the ready.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.