Brixton’s Orpheus shushing me asleep all night long

Pour into infinity the ashes of me

            when this work finally sets me free

Eating sausage rolls on the train

Writing to see how naughty Nigel will get

            and whether he put on his leather skirt again

Frosted breath blows sodium gold frustration

Some day you’ll be kings and queens not beggars

Dancing o...

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In the toxic basement locked a querulous dog

tethered to a bench speaks out

Grumbling robots put washing up

liquid in Grandpa’s pipe as the

trains come & the trains go

The space between the stars

I failed my Latin exam in the high dusty hall

the guy next to me kept asking

How soon is now? and What difference does it make?

I watched the trains come, I wat...

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A stupefied, fuzzy silence in the garden

deployed carrier bags, even grimness dreams

Endure the pain and something may betide

A hidden gem that we may never see.

He was in love with his own reflection

Till he had a face of purple cheese.

A quiet rage of a youth misspent

Where small children play complicated games

He was in love with somebody else’s

...

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Bed-blocking King Duncan’s lifeless form

Kisses his lips sweaty T-shirts

Like a dandy rabbit this man once more.

What chance have we under the Dunelm Duvet

Goyt and Tame together plan the hit

on Lady of the North with a poker and coal scuttle

To remove the thorn from the flesh

of the knuckled finger-splitting hand

In a white blank room the die hard

poets r...

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Battery-operated soliloquy bequeaths

            lessons in bumptious authority

Shouted from the mouths of battery-operated politicians

Manderian king floats by, as some strange man

            photographs poets and disappears into the wall.

Vinyl grooves. Miles moves like an engorged Goyt

            but asks “Where are my socks?”

Ai is eating itself, while we all ...

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If God is real he has blue blood and wears a tin star
Miles and miles of special polish slips between glory and modesty

Blue is hot and hot is cool
Not precluding the toy tin star.
Titillation...or just tits? Best not to ask...

I went to the Rio Grande a King, came back a cowhand,
         best not to know.
Crafted chords stretch for miles. Make love to my soul.
         Best not to as...

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What happens if Terry the giant does

not touch wood what would Sally say…

but still he drinks his ever so nice tea.

What would happen if Father Christmas didn’t

stop drinking Jack Daniels throughout the rest

of the year?

Drunken Santa is crashing through the snow

You’re all on the naughty list

Pensioners too cold to take a stand

munch a million bags of Mo...

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Landing craft, full of movement and sound

under the just-boiled moon

We walk the walk and the guardian angel

will always be there.

The crazy people had a lifestyle to change

by choosing a good wash.

Taxi! Follow that moon!

I’m sorry my lights aren’t working.

Fear not my friend is here The Angler Fish

He lives in a hovel surrounded by woodland

Vote for ...

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Intense embarrassment, gutted love

The fatal attraction of King George’s ruby letters

proved all too much

The accordion follows the footsteps

of the footnotes of history

up the stairs to the heavy door

Evidence washed ashore, dissonance not delight

and whisperings of the dead

estuary water floods over the road – wet feet walk

I Beech tree is a pedant...

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Proud cufflinks punch drunken bees

fires of furniture at number 92

a sword of death a copper kettle

tick tock tick tock and the

glory of untamed flowers

who love to dance.

United in flames, the music bringing you

together, footnotes in history

Winnie the Pooh is still dancing

motes of morning light on the edge

of a life show doilies and discounted cake...

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Santa’s zombies get the message

going in the other direction

writing new lines in a taxi

hiding all the mince pies from the Art Guild

And this isn’t really a poem but it is something

I had to write

Only the dead eat off the page

zombie kids rule INNIT

Grim becomes miserable

Judge the poets in the cardboard box

Santa banned from Stockport for eating

...

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Waltmarie
The fallen unpeopled hallways of life

Do you like marmite?

where did all the grim go? 
Something new to fear beneath the four poster bed
Daughters of despair wait for the hirsute man with the large teeth 
and a penchant for Moonlight Sonata.

Do you like Marmite?

The jukebox unplugged but Beatle songs 
still  haunt the tired rooms.

counting yesterdays over the shadows 
...

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A trawl of brawling sailors drown

            The captain’s thundercloud

A writer’s hat that lights

            Up in the dark

The flash of a photographer’s eyes

The eternal exhibition of white walls

Lines of lamplights on the edge of a field

            Stand vigil for sodden sheep

Seven seconds after hours

            Too many ghost faces

Prayers in eternity ...

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Wash my hands, you bad friend

A doctor remedies the ills of Google

In the Arcade of lust and art, he was

lost, and blinded once outside by the

shadows in the Stockport sun.

With pulsating memories of a shadow in the sun

arcade ecstasy leads to arcade fire

there’s a retro revolution in the suburbs

Gary built a huge bird’s nest and

waited for the feathe...

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Restless spirit casts off his friar’s robe

And steps into the fatal arms of love

Let the wound bleed out all the bad blood

From the shadow monk

Lost hippy dancer takes a drug

To take her back but she is now 73

And no one looks anymore

Monks are too Friary

Mary Hopkins put her slippers on and

Whispered to Mao Zedong – put your

Hand in here and start a re...

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Café conflict, Halloween Haikus

From Dracula’s steps

I am on the 4th bench on the right

I am talking to you, to the love

And to the new face

And to my own death

A bat out of hell flew over

The 100 steps.

A fairy tale, but fairy tales

Are grim

Coldness begins to bite by

Witches Delight

The moon is desserted

White horse gallops into infinit...

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Eat or heat my stiffening bones

Like demons in the night on paid vacation

Aesop dons his tanning lotion

Admires his Trumpian colour and prays

For constancy with his New Look.

Golden girls, clicking high heels, sweeping, swaying hair

An oasis of ambiguity in the desert, for the parched

And for us all.

Unsure how we feel in response to a death

And twelve lo...

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Time to slake our thirst for words

A cerebral circle of wordsmithery

Burying two dozen rats

In your neighbour’s garden

Under their prized rose patch

Whom you’d never liked one night

There’s a rat in the allotment –

What am I going to do?

Don’t worry – every little thing’s all right

So the broken beasts of shadows that speak

A bird, drawn in sand,...

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The gods of war take their last biscuit

In darkness, there was a sharp white light

The flush of life, now intense, remembered.

Forgotten rooms of MySpace

Ghosts of lost connections

Livecake holograms line the empty

Windowless green walls. A Tower

PC waited for something to press his

‘ON” button.

LONG LIVE ANGER UNLIMITED!

Summertime should never die

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Strange handshake, borrower

Plugs into deep sea darkness

John the Baptist turns

On the aluminium kitchen taps

The River Jordan has turned radioactive

Vultures in the gym flex and strain

Through cluttered concrete layers

Vultures pounding dents from floor removed

No electricity in the gym

Nigel talking about milkshakes

The monsters under the bed

...

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Wallowing in darkness like warthogs in a pool

Horrendous December in the Gym

Under my duvet a donut prods my lust.

Outside the ambulance carries the lost prophet Susan

Through the slashing rain.

Channelling memories that everybody liked

More than joy, joyriding with sweaty socks leaving

A pile of charcoaled grief.

Grim and grimmer walked away 

Without a gl...

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Old honest mirror of rage in hollow darkness

Echoes, echoes of truth vibrating in unison,

Safe soft echoes

Ben Hur burst through the door

Of the high class restaurant in his

Chariot of obscurity

Covered in dust, some of the books died

In the silence during lockdown

The great book escape

Observe her hardened humanity.

Taxman swimming through the forgotte...

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Magpie flaps to the tune of Nature’s injustice

The poet strives for another success another year

Sunday wakens, bedraggled and woebegone

Coronation Street anthem drawls its falsehoods

Upbeat parental ending yields to great grimness

Wild West Yorkshire runs with bullet blood

Words find new hope in an army of perplexing forms

Goddess pours like erotic iron on the breathless...

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Lonely windows for the imaginary friend

The unicorn lost his way with the geography teacher

One mind with but two disparate thoughts.

Imaginary friends have feelings too.

I only exist when you think about me

What was it the geography teacher did?

A true friend knows life returns

Am I real or a figment of my imagination?

Ming vase found the small way...

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Aches like an August sky with a lipstick smile
Tangled at sunset in crimson skies
Despicable creatures run and hide in shadows

Drowned rats find worry in their shadows
Running across drenched summits
Footsteps lined up in haiku beats

The crystal glass of the past life
A wedding present in the charity shop
I see the other me, before she turns the corner.

It wasn't me!

Sacred threa...

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If you don't know you won't know
and if you don't know that, then what do you know apart from that
according to you I am not me

An eightball car without wheels but with music
In the shadows of the city, the philosopher killed his bride
I knew the bride before she got wed he shrieked
and she smashed the DJ over the head with a bottle of 16th century single malt whiskey
Mr Motorist in red a...

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Change rooms, change behaviour, change times.
Change partners, change parents, change poetic style.

The diary under my bed reveals truth but I still ebb away before your eyes
From the shadows she whispered,
Power proliferates, changing buses, changing lives,
Running away from somebody else’s husband

Profiteroles? I love profiteroles said Chaucer but I can't spell it.

Asking myself wha...

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Trusting the metaphor of parental alienation
Drunk on the Tropic of Cancer before the hangover of reality
He left her for a bar stool

Four legs seemed more reliable than two
John and the Geisha girls are riffing rhythmic haikus on the railroad
Oh dear, don’t be late with a suggestive gift.

Little people appear everywhere.
A moment of sunlight between suicide and sex

And whatever lay ...

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You need to play blue guitar at this interview Miss.

while sitting back to the sea

Put on your red shoes and dance to Nigel’s blue guitar

strangers humming the songs of tomorrow's vocals

Shadows of sinners dancing across the years

as Nigel's guitar gently weeps

the boom and the base of neighbours shouting from next door to turn the noise down

You won't believe what just h...

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a foxglove lives forever down roman way
watching videos been recorded on Zoom in confusion
Warm southerly poem in the latest style
she's running scared
in the video matrix, seven poems for seven times, 
lockdown in a woke world, as nights are sooner 
and the transient have the final word  
behold, spake the King - my streets 
made of marble my canal’s water turned to wine
a chicken nugget...

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Spinning out of control history going mad

Gunpoetry Plotters spinning music by the River of Time

drunker and drunker with each nearer step he took on the road to Manchester

A susurration of stanzas and verses skim across the rooftops of Stockport.

relentless ripples of summer clouds

Grim it up, brother

Grim it up, sister,

graduate from sad.

a driver pausing in the...

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A heart that sleeps has a silent love that is never heard
Nicola, 
Paul 
and Vincent paint their house yellow
The below is smaller, the walk is stronger.

The journey to social disorder is closer than you realise
without any drugs.

There's more, you thief of night
with butter dripping from my brush
something stolen from the edge of midnight
unsocial distancing while on free government...

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Nigel was right of course
straight out of the other side 
walking across the zebra lane
on that promenade 
the treachery of Facebook.

The Green Man is sleeping until winter 
but spring rain will awaken him next year,
haunted by the repetition

it was a day like this 
when she was a tree 
and he wore her like a cloak
When she was smoke 
clinging to a death bed, 
no wasted anger arra...

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Wake up to the glory of a legendary Nigel we do not know
Nigel was gone when we rioted that night time 
Nigel was gone when we ran out of chicken pie
It was the day they told us to learn again in insanity 
Nigel was first of course
Taking to unplug with Nigel
We are taunted or haunted by memories of the future
The inkwell was full of pulsating excitement 
hitting the right notes in music a...

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He's gone

gone

gone

I’m dreaming I’m Bohemian

Last time we met, gyroscopic diner punches back, back, back

punching mp3s isn't the same as punching records

This lockdown is never ending - send me more Vodka

The wrong place, at the wrong time, Icarus falls into the English Channel,

to be washed up on the white cliffs, and the Queen is left immortal,

as the freedom monarch

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Overtaken by cyclists heading into sunrise in your dreams  

Broke grains on Monday, counting red angels

Drunk on darkness smiling on the shadows

A phone call only a shadow away from your fingertips

We are the survivors stunned, in Stockport

Digging deeper, reflective

Talking to the walls

Church bells toll for every day without a death

We are the poets leaving our words open...

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Dreading the task of a thousand spots
Lost worlds now more than just regrets or soiled paths not taken
Walking through life with coke, crack, and endless possibilities.

In the amber of panic a book of hauntology is born
The biggest April fools prank ever

Miniature portraits of a poetic diaspora under curfew still deliver haunting lines

Gaining a better view at the edge of the world
Ta...

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Righteous and correct, the clown wilts

Rumour has it I saw someone in costume

From a magazine advertising hard goods.

It’s left my heads in bolts and screwed up.

Unlock my imagination.

No you can’t have a pancake: it’s Saturday!

Run your fingers through the rubble

At the altar of vengeance

Rumour has it, God is forgotten and pancakes need Nutella.

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There’s a rumour going round that street

Pushing past their little destinies

Caught short Shakespear relieved himself against the corn sheaves

The fox startled bit the leg of the harvest jigger

The painting has little time to dry, as poets' pens begin.

To take down a street of music, blended to new worlds of rhyme.

Underneath the moon

The rabbit did not sto...

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In the new dawn of dreams

Adolf sits on his final throne of dirt dug deep,

Wondering if the English Bard would have loved him so,

Don’t go down that street!

We are wild-walking beings with a side of dark heart.

Sheep have beautiful contours and very furry

Hurry up Steinbeck, you’re rambling

Sitting on tailored lawns through polished glass

Not as cool in old b...

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At least 80

If I see tomorrow

I shall see the sunrise

The settlements were fragile,

Yet at the same time, strong

A descent into madness –

Resurfacing at Thursday Club

I’m always happy to stop for a hitchhiker

Over the years I’ve had

Elvis Presley and Lord Lucan as passengers

But everyone thinks I’m lying

Slender Man, Enderman, carrying things,

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Don’t pick up hitch-hikers

Whether at high noon

Or covered in red petals and blood

Dreaming of American skies

Trusted positions to make you relax

Be careful not to mention the Karma Sutra

Or a mobile phone will ring

Or a bluebird sing

Basildon bonds & lined paper

Snowflakes fall between the lines, melting

Oh Walter, dear husband of mine

Stiff as...

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Boris lurks in clever Grecian lines

Pernod! Demos, oher!

I met her on Tinder, Medusa, she said she was Greek

Now I am stood here with a statue of Apollo

Bandaged babies, lepers and bikes

Refrain, refrain, rain

Boris Johnson is trashing

Davey’s wine bar,

Demis Roussos is singing ‘Do you

Think I’m sexy?’ to Angie and Dave

See the sea, let the wi...

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Man Ray’s aggravated coffee sneaked

A glance at the new frontier

Thumbs up, India’s best lemonade,

Top of the pops!

An organised death takes Aunt beyond black

Rehydrate the astronaut. The sun approaches.

Whilst cleaning, it’s important to scrub

Behind the fridge.

Catacombs holding rooms in mind of carefully

Packed past chapters.

A bank, some bleach, a b...

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Silence, echoes, look at the colours

And Distant Distractions

Minks and stoles all of this reminds me of you

Silver hunter's knife

Overseer left mute

Soiled aliens desperate in Heaton Moor

Park stumble on a Mel

Brooks look-a-like

Inside the man bag, inside the wardrobe

Inside the mind, a voice, a naked voice

Lost in the wardrobe, he looked for 

Dead bodie...

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Helix barriers all over the world

Riddles flow through digital death traps

What is a man now with no cheap cigars

A mad dead love of afterthoughts gone

Mad Tony's hologram cycles around the

Lanes of South Wales as Alexa 

Shouts "Give us 20 pence!"

Ooh! I can see Winnie the Pooh

In The wardrobe!

The candle, the book, and the wardrobe;

Wet washing and dag...

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Fire burning over memories of Christmas

Santa is riding high into the silk sky

But he cannot come here with Brexit a tie

Donna chewed on Santa’s long toenails

As he snoozed on Blitzen’s fat belly

Where streaks of Pollock green ache

Like August clouds

In love with feathers and glass

As the fires take it all away

Widened eyes of the dirtiest faces

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Cheshire housewife buys her Hereafter Insurance,

Works hard for nativity with port and gin

Our truth is, success means excess.

Then lies were common in family life

Waiting, hiding, broken, when when true

As your eyes sparkle through Mona Lisa smiles

And lies of untruth spoken words

Housewife with her gin

And tonic gives Santa a good

Time!

Heavy Mon...

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My lightened, chastened offspring

Return to me, unknowing

Pincher Martin feeds devious plots

Tick Tock

Am I living? Am I breathing?

Life created by a whimper

Hyenas rejected at a tender age

Babies burst from beautiful bodies

But human nature drives towards annihilation

Leeching veins cling for life through the zealous

Suffocation of being fed with ...

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Strange seasons clip and slash new life

The hot sand blows into my soldier’s rations

The robot newsreader sounds like comical Ali

Bacon butties served under sniper fire

World’s end to wellies, flip-flop relief for Achilles

Do I deserve to be loved?

Drowning in an eternal sea of despondency

I rise up and say no

The season changes the earth burns

Naked ...

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