I am waiting for the day that you will show up at my door

With a flower for every birthday you missed.

Twenty-one flowers of vibrant colors—

Turquoise, violet, “tickled pink”—

They will spread their pedals in the warm spotlight

That will touch every inch of my cold, pale skin.

The features of my face will be illuminated.

I will no longer be the infant you left—

The life tha...

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Blue Smoke Ghost

A matchbox scratch

A flare of light

The smell of sulphur

A yellow patch

Above his chair

On the ceiling

A row of pipes

Hung in a rack

Saliva drips

The suck

And suck

And suck on shank

Red glow

In the dusk

On a back step

The aroma

Of spices

In the ready-rub

Scratching

Grey ash

From the c...

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Look over there,

Sat in that comfy reclining chair,

Is a man so wise and strong,

With so much knowledge which was seldom wrong.

The way his eyes would sparkle when he laughed,

And his cheesy smile on all his photographs.

His daytime nap making a little snore,

Is he really asleep? I think as I open the door.

He was such a good old joker,

Yet kept a face as straight a...

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This make-believe story I predicted in my head,

To pieces upon the ground does it fall.

A happiness once experienced -

A security long gone,

And a father I had imagined -

Now a memory in which I had created.

But, the hurt inside is real -

All torn up, how does my heart continue to beat?

A trauma of the past -

Why must I remember what I wish not to?

I created...

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The Bayonet In The Shed

He put it there in forty nine,

in a woodworm riddled drawer,

wrapped it in a greasy rag.

A remnant from the war.

On top of it he laid his medals,

nothing more was said

until the day my father

took the bayonet from the shed.

We had pestered many times

and he had said ‘perhaps’

when we asked him if he’d killed

any Krauts or any Ja...

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