PAAAARRRTTTTYYYY!

“Ey up owd lad, tha does look glum!” Peter said one day, (he’d spent a while up north near Leeds, that’s why he spoke that way.)

“What’s to do?  Tha’s sittin there wi a face like milkman’s hoss. I’ve nivver seed thee look that way, whatever ails thee boss?” 

His boss looked up, all ashen faced, a pallor on his skin, and whispered “Pete, I’ve had enough, It’s time I jack...

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Beyond the Equinox

The land sleeps,

furrowed, cold and still.

Each field edge mourns

in widow’s weeds.

The flocks keep silence

on the hill,

while nature weeps

tomorrow’s seeds.

Penitent

in golden cloak,

the woodland

whispers overhead

and through the mist,

like incense smoke,

sheds slow confetti

for her dead.

...

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Edge

Gone is the mind where love and hope once played,
She feels the urge to paint a world with blood.
She watches moonlight dance along the blade.

She dreams a world of red in every shade,
Would banish all the rainbow if she could.
Gone is the mind where love and hope once played.

All trust now shredded, reason torn and frayed,
A hollow corpse where once a woman stood;
She watches moonlight dance along th...

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"John"

What worlds turn behind your almond eyes, that ready smile,

that childish innocence that lingers long when you are gone?

I feel your warmth through chubby hands and stubby fingers

of a child. You will not make old bones in this cold life

of sticks and stones and superstitious fears. Some careless god

cut short your years; played blackjack with your chromosomes

in a game that ...

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a curse - for the mildly irritating

For those who’ve meddled, ired or slighted,

For those who’ve peeved or pinched or blighted

Or fibbed or fooled or faked - or worse

Upon them ever be this curse:

May your earnest endeavours all end in farce.

May your nostrils migrate to just south of your a**e.

May all your teabags get stuck in the spout.

May your luck and your toilet roll always ru...

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undercurrents

I only glimpse it now, so far away, but bright and clear.

The rapture of  a fading world - another place, some other year.

Those nights of shattered moonlight strewn on marbled seas,

where frangipani whispers were caresses on the breeze.

From the shadow of the palms I watched you dance

the tideline, shed your silks, and with one glance

you robbed my soul and beckoned wit...

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In those final quickening hours

we sat, and weighed the snare-drum rhythm

of our failing hearts, sucking warmth from

close-pinched cigarettes and old memories.

Our sergeant paced, checked his watch for lies,

and ignored the muffled sobs disguised as coughs

-  his whistle hanging heavy as a prayer.

Seconds fell like dominoes, and in the dark,

kisses fell on photographs an...

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you won’t be good for me
but I don’t care.
I know the connotations
of the colour of your hair.
red screams danger,
warning, stay away.
maybe I should try
a little danger fix
today.

you won’t be nice to me
and I don’t mind.
nice girls normally don’t
I often find.
and who needs nice
in preference
to rollercoaster thrills?
when nice can suffocate
and boredom slowly kills.

you won’t be...

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a well-spent ninepence

was all it took

to leave a headscarfed mother

in some chattering queue

for luncheon meat

or lardy cake

and step inside the transport

taking us

to Planet Zog

Or Dead Man’s canyon

via Keystone or some cartoon city

where,

fortified with Mojos

and Mambo juice

in strange shaped cartons

we’d jostle for the back r...

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she sits

she knits

the needles click

as strand by strand

in cracked crabbed hands

each stitch

might haul them

back to land

her days, her nights are one, the same -

a gift of darkness borne by grief

to wounds already salted well.

lips taste each quarter

of the wind; she hears the tides

advance, retreat -

as if in echoes from

some  ancient stranded shell.

she feels t...

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Each Saturday the high street is a canyon of temptation

As the public stare at the proffered wares with awe and approbation.

You can bare your soles at the cobbler’s shop but the chemist’s best for rumours

And dozens queue for a loaf or two when they sniff the baker’s bloomers.

The fishmonger has mussels, the bookshop man’s quite...

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moving on

you wear your bones

on the outside now.

the smile that once danced

at all our parties,

now a recluse.

folded arms protect the place

where I once died

a past eternity of joys

you spit formalities begrudgingly,

take every chance to turn your face -

still managing to leave

a shadow of

contempt.

i knot my tongue,

stem the flow of words;

worthless now, disarmed

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Not much rain that month they say - May of nineteen-forty-six;

the ache of war, still in the bones, where Cregagh boys kicked tries

down at Malone and dodged the sixes from the next-door cricket pitch. 

Wednesday, the twenty-second, an ordinary Belfast day,

but some alignment of the spheres, some sorcery, conspiracy of Gods,

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surprisingly enough

each new day finds you

sandwiched here

between Burger king

and vacant lot -

thrice times woe man with

your brimstone smile.

slow dog-paddling

against the apathetic tide

that scours

these caves of Arndale.

your hand a flush

of trump card pamphlets,

useless

in this game

of patience;

black aces of repentance

neatly sidestepped

as the ...

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The Gift 

“You have his hands” they say.

Blunt, broad, and strong;

the rounded nails and heavy palms, his grip.

Some memory, stored within each line,

each fingertip, each scar, from half a life away.

Old-leather hard with work and age;

weather-carved and worn with every s...

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(I)

This morning Samantha is building a bonfire

Down on the waste ground in rubbish and weeds

Ferrying armloads of boxes and bin-bags

Burning a life that she no longer needs.

Out of the cardboard seep velvets and spangles,

Hairpieces, handcuffs, impractical shoes,

Skimpy silk underwear, ropes and brass bangles -

The tools of a trade that she’ll no longer use.

Crimson red li...

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Peacock Dreams

“Cashier to checkout seven please.”

She barely hears; behind her mask of Monday smile.

She steers each item past the barcode beep, and sleepworks

- finds that it’s the only way to make it through the disappointment, rude necessity

and shame of this small life, of “every day is like the last”

and tomorrow will be, predictably,

just the same.

Trapped on the conveyor ...

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Last stop before paradise.                                                                              

An April rain has streaked the windows, smudging the view of suburban streets.

The chill breeze bends the spring’s first flowers and the TV’s showing old repeats.

In the lounge of The Willows nursing home the care assistants are serving teas.

After the adverts comes the snooker and ever...

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in letters three feet high

across the bridge

they wrote

“KELLY MATTHEWS IS A WHORE”

and before

the paint was dry

Kelly carved

her sharp reply

in a deeper crimson shade

just two

short lines

as double edged

as Kelly’s blade

exposed the lie

that gave offence

- and their careless

use of tense.

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Annabel and Dave are sorted

toast the life they always courted

with Johnny Walker Black (imported)

by a geezer in Gibraltar.

Dave’s new boat’s a thirty footer

cowhide seats as soft as butter

room to practice with his putter

cruising down to Malta.

Made his pile in double glazing

take and margins just amazing

dreams of days of golf and lazing

on the Costa’s beac...

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Somewhere, nowhere, between the press of sheets and ventilator’s suck and hush, his hourglass drips. The moving mountains mark his time, his pulse, his pressure, as he slips and slides through crusts of consciousness. These walls can barely hold him now; what’s left could smudge and melt away through every crack, but for the weight of years ��" the slack tide of a fading past...

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It was a dirty old day, just a stop on the way

In the sleet and the fog and the rain,

Jams and diversions and unplanned excursions

And drivers with speed on the brain.

When well before noon in the old greasy spoon

Somewhere just off the M one,

(It had seen better days with a jukebox that plays

old ballads from artists long gone.)

In the corner sat Fred, with his cap...

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A hearty breakfast

We take our coffee black these days,
Saccharined and sugar free.
Our milk of human kindness soured
To curds and whey, to you and me.
And over silent breakfasts sit.
Where headline barricades rise up.
We shed no tears for what was spilled,
When lips once kissed our loving cup.
Our toast is dry and always burned,
The marmalade, now bitter peel
And all we’ve left is crusts and...

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Some poets dream of metre and scheme, of sonnets and couplets that scan,

But there’s one little word, though it seems quite absurd, that exposes the flaw in their plan.

There’s an amber skinned fruit that has been at the root of the nation’s poetic malaise,

This everyday citrus can find poets witless as they stare at a blank page for days.

If one pairs clementine with lemon and lime repetition...

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