WOODEN ZOO

I recall when you arrived

six months old in your pram

and your parents so young,

says Dorothy at the gate.

A daughter lost to cancer,

the oldest son a heart attack

climbing up a mountain.

He came to play with us

just once, back then

and we sniggered at his

peculiar way of talking

and wouldn't let him touch

the wooden zoo I owned

that held m...

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ISOLATION

I dreamed they moved the forest

as I watched from a window

never suspecting such impermanence;

scenery rolled like a stage set,

replaced by things more essential.

No trees, and in their stead rose

abodes of relentless brick

and from inside came starry toddlers,

women who looked through me,

hooded men with meagre histories.

I was irrelevant to th...

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PEBBLE PATHS

I navigate the airport exit

in standard hiking gear,

progress to humble streets

that bear her daily print

no matter how often

she dreams of escape.

The narrow staircase tunnels

upwards like a mineshaft

through rough damp stone

to our tiny flat where

a chugging fridge of imports

tries to last the month

and after lockdown restriction

pleasure wa...

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LIMINAL

Flat in your bed

like a crushed soldier

when the old cause

has dissolved into defeat,

congealed to history.

In here the weather 

is uncertain - it's been

raining intermittently

for days; I mark

your little snores, try

to guess at the interior,

imagine a fiction

wherein I could conjure

peace, an alternative

reality where the soldier

...

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CANAL SONG

Today I saw mallards

fed crumbs by a local drunkard

stumbling from the Grapes

onto the murky cut.

He crooned a forgotten song

that floated on the wind

as narrow boats chugged past

a chalky towpath

old as ghosts of workers

mean-eyed, coal dust-coated

heaving sacks and urging horses

in days now deemed heroic.

It guided him home

under mossy humpbac...

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ME AND THE DEMONS

Seven years old

in Saint Cecilia's church,

murals of scorched monsters,

red obscenities

dragging souls to hell.

Nudged down the left aisle

to that marble altar

I kneel under huge pillars

distant from the priest

whose beatific radar doesn't track

my schoolboy error

and I eventually give up.

Denied the sacrament,

denied protection

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ENGINEER

She got an old Volksvagen

and at weekends

we'd drive to the country,

stop in some small market town

for fish and chips

or tea in a corner cafe.

We were young

so not thinking constantly

about corruption,

injustice or conspiracies.

Another time was passion

in a broom cupboard

at the university

until someone opened the door.

She had a serious...

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TINDERBOX

Firewalker faith must be required

to hop this white-hot sand

and now all zones are tinged with fear

of sunburn or combustion.

We stretch naked in the dunes

until guards arrive on decency patrol,

ice-cream hawkers melt away,

persistent surfers finally desist.

The sea's an aquarium of coke cans

anyway, and plastic in the throats of birds.

Interpid...

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THE TYRANT

As a child he kept amphibians

netted in the gentle stream,

fed maggots, worms and spiders;

enjoyed that savage ritual.

Along the seaside promenade

he'd pester grandma for another coin

to watch the clockwork execution:

a model man led out by guards

who dropped through a tiny trapdoor.

Later he amassed billions,

rose to power, eliminated rivals,

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DISTANT WORLD

Nocturnal soliloquies and wandering

are a far cry from childhood days

when we glimpsed the Southport sea

or a convent of cold war Ursulines

prayed mercy for evil Mr Khrushchev.

The fairground rollercoaster passage

of years before our family dwindled,

tea shops became an endangered species;

my uncle's crinkle-cut hair, ridiculous

as Kenneth More's ca...

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DOVES

The dove looks alarmed

as its mate goes flying

off the sideboard's edge

when you fling a door.

Forty years, same place,

you used to tell me

how instalments ensured

the pair were yours.

Now you sit in this pool

of senseless oblivion

and don't even shed a tear

as I brush up fragments,

dream miraculous repairs

like those lost vases

jig...

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IMMIGRANT GIRL

Sofa-surfing at loose-end parties

after tired feet touch tarmac

and poverty is a canvas of hazard.

A cousin in some pot-luck suburb

where cork sags under adverts.

At last a pokey crumbling room:

cabinet doors hang open in defiance,

insect agendas behind furniture

glued tight by the gunge of years.

New curtains and light bulbs

from alien sho...

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MARINE

Herded down to the beach at ten

on a winter's morning

in thin white gym shorts as if our volition

came from his barking.

He claimed to have been a marine

and we were terrified,

with anaesthetised flesh

on the oily beach

strewn with bladder wrack

like something coughed up foul and green

and a pill box

full of trash and graffiti;

concrete obstacles from ...

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FLANNEL WHITE

My father's journey through life

from school to war to office

was just a sequence of obedience

while others did the thinking.

No sooner home from work

than meal finished, off to play.

Sundays at the cricket crease

the only place he wished to be.

A catalogue of parks and pitches

we were driven to on sufferance,

mum to make tea and sandwiches

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SHADES OF SMYRNA

Athens

Past refugees

haunt the streets of this city.

Pavestones cover forgotten lives,

each district conceals

a trail of hardship and loss.

Their dreams are long eclipsed

but surface when the moon comes up

invoked by timeless music

from bouzoukis

as people dance in clubs

or couples chat

in sleepy kebab shops

over barrelled wine

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Beneath majestic heights

public footsteps

ring a tapestry of sound.

Time surrenders  here,

hushed voices

slice through space.

In ancient plans

the sky has been considered,

clouds float across

ascending lengths of glass

not stained but clear

while high in the dome's  recesses

portholes angle to paradise.

Thick with prayers

stone walls are candle-b...

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PET SHOP STORY

I should get up and sell mice

but I'll stay here instead

in the warm, embryonic bed,

and what is a mouse's life?

Getting your head crushed

for a bit of cheese,

or squirming like an addict

under the merciless paw.

I sink in dreams, a jaded skull

trailing hair all the way down

to the sad, depleted market

where I meet the others:

th...

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HOMUNCULUS

The clay head seems to scream

when I open the chest:

an unwanted gift

with secrets trapped in time.

Shaped by a mad sailor,

lost helmsman on dark seas,

chaos crew a sub-plot

to some misguided saga.

I caress its weight

of barren, merciless islands

cruel as shipwrecks

through heart and soul.

Each day a signal to me

it doesn't belong...

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LIVERPOOL 1946

The slick-haired sailor boy

is home for good in civvies.

He walks two miles each night

to hold your nervous hand

and takes you dancing Fridays,

a half of bitter in the Crown.

Twin sister reckons a catch

but Dad's on sentry at the door.

One day he introduces you

to his mother and the chaos

of that sprouting family;

he's bagged a job in ta...

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GRANDMA'S HOUSE

Defunct flies lay clenched

tight as fists, webs hung low

near holy statues positioned

to ensure she'd go to heaven.

I nosed my uncles' rooms

while they were out at work,

broke open dog-ends, tasted

gold strands, sweet at first

but bitter in the throat.

She sang rebellion as her sponge

slopped from bucket to floor,

argued in the bare-bricked ...

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She was an agile acrobat

on broken rooftops of escape,

jumping into arms euphoric

before pain had time to register.

Armies advance across steppes,

houses gutted for sustenance.

Machine guns and home-made

grenades zipping over walls.

He dreamed a nest of miracles

a golden goose in the attic;

sad executions on frozen earth

while skies remain indifferent.

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LOVE POEM

I love the cool simplicity of you

that you're not complicated,

that I know how to please you

and the shape of happiness today

will be the same in a year.

I love the way you wake and stretch

towards the promise of morning,

that neither unkindness nor injustice

have tainted or diminished you.

You are spring dawn perfume

the suggestion of distant c...

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MARKET DAY

Old rules drew lines in sand:

the pub, now half the terrace

is no-go land for smokers

lest lungs be compromised

yet hang the social distancing.

Strategies concocted overnight,

Larkin's pessimism eclipsed,

made almost safe and innocent

by this dictator virus dealing

dystopias of fashionable masks.

Amidst confusion, market folk

are milling, br...

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IN SEARCH OF A SUBJECT

Brought up on fish fingers

and church on Sunday.

A lawnmower land

of new beginnings.

Robin Hood and Batman

carried the day.

Not from here, nor there;

not middle-class or worker

and wrong accent

as my part-time pals

would remind me

and not much good at fighting

or football or maths.

Enamoured of the pen

from an early age,

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TIME TRAVEL

I'd love to travel back:

feel the sweet warmth of mints

inside my mouth in 1890,

lick Victorian ice-cream,

follow that monochrome lad

who just slipped round the corner

into the rest of his life.

Granddad when an urchin

stole rides, he said, just clinging

to a horse-drawn carriage

then after smashing windows

police rang the doorbell at night;

...

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PLAYING SOLDIERS

Our armies are lined up:

facing off across the carpet,

generals on fine horses

presiding from behind the ranks.

My uncle launches an attack:

sends his infantry forward

then scatters then dead

across no-man's land

for dramatic effect.

They die so easily, I think.

handfuls of cheap life

sacrificed in the war zone.

Later, watching TV

we get n...

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KEITH FORDYCE AND A PHOTO OF MY PARENTS

A first kiss on the battlements

with your daughter's friend

while everyone drank downstairs

and Harry Worth for company

as my father hopped around

taking snapshots of actors.

You interviewed celebrities,

hosted music shows and quizzes

but looked better on screen

than in the cold flesh of reality

pottering unshaven, hung-...

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LA CONCHA

The bank robber is a gentleman

raising a towel for his love to dress.

I wake some way down seashell beach

while Rick still snores behind me.

Bags rolled tight, we enter a bar,

slump on stools in a line, all four

staring at our reflections in the long

mirror behind the steel counter.

Jesus spreads arms wide over the bay

and we are down to out last p...

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STRAWBERRY TIME

I bought strawberries last June,

removed the stalks

and danced them in a colander

then that familiar smell

of when we worked the fields,

a radio providing sound

the hands and knees

that scraped the ground

and almost all of us on benefits

so we'd run and hide when

government spies arrived

and by five, clothes were stiff

with all that mud a...

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BEER AND ROSES

I bought two roses

and illegal lager in the park.

You donned your street persona,

told the dealer man

we didn't want them frozen,

then later, at the campsite

it all seemed a recipe for love:

the chalet with pastel walls,

a balcony rail over glittering sea.

But now you don't want roses,

the chalet's lost its charm,

that restaurant rice is...

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BARCELONA RAIN

Rain-aromas carry

memories of better days:

thieves melt into darkness,

the destitute disappear

to practise illicit trades

down narrow Gothic alleys

but we linger endlessly

in desecrated neighbourhoods

with the shallow optimism

of shining architecture.

At dawn we scan horizons,

shake droplets from hair

surrender our past,

dodge disco tou...

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THOSE GHOSTS

You can't seal up death

despite the rituals,

it abides in tobacco 

pouches and old armchairs

and abandoned shoes

worn once to tread

the winding alleys 

of this town.

In sleek black cars

and creaking wardrobes

with their mothball smells,

in distant excursions

recalled on paper scraps

that fall by chance

from picture frames.

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KAMCHATKA TRAILS

Sometimes I dream of Siberia

and reindeer herds invading wilderness

invisible on paper maps or Google.

From nowhere a tiny village:

a post office, gas station, two hotels

an outdoor pool for masochists;

mountains wear a cloak of ice

the Moscow cook's on strike again

as executioner climate change

advances drunk with forest songs

...

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THE SIN

Catalonia 2015

Poverty sent you far from home

and the sin accompanies us always.

Today we're down from hill forests,

shedding leaves on hotel carpets.

I sense the energy of coming rain.

In narrow streets the heavens open,

we dive inside a tiny seafood place

and later, tapping to a disco beat

chill out with studded girls in leather,

all party mode ...

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STONE BAGUETTE

Narbonne 1987

At eight in the morning, after coffee

we must leave the House of Friendship

to pass the freezing day the best we can.

The Mistral is relentless so wine is bought

from a supermarket. All of us adrift

in the pointless boat of this town's winter.

Watching the more fortunate as they pass,

we wrap up well and comment on life;

we ...

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ON A SICILIAN BEACH

A ladybird lands

on my foot in the sand

as I'm reading The Life of Pi.

A blue stretch of sea

carried me here

where an army of shiny black beetles

unbreakable as tanks

will persist in its trundling .

He was days on a boat

now I'm days in the sand

getting browner

eating pizza

reading this book

with no appetite to leave.

...

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INVOLVED IN SWITZERLAND

He said he was a poet

but his modest recognition

would dissolve in a bottomless sea,

that he wrote in the dead of night

then washed up on distant shores

where his shoes were seen walking alone.

That he could catch the words

that welled in his mouth

like vagabonds shuffling darkly

towards unbearable daylight.

He said he failed ...

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BEACHED

She left him like a boat

when the tide has gone out,

sandbank hours, drowned hope.

Stole his dreams to distant sea

and lost them in the depths

but up there in obsidian sky

the universe was concealed

behind a curtain of blindness,

silver stars he couldn't see.

He just couldn't see.

Trouvaille Review, February 2021

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SURVIVAL

His grandmother made us drink

before work began.

Sour wine and cough mixture

by the taste of things:

a poisonous warmth expanding

like a pack of nails inside.

It was seven o'clock

and cold fields had not woken

from their early dew.

The cat's called Socrates, she said,

because he ate the hemlock

in the garden, over there

past our broken tractor,

do...

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A DREAM OF MISFORTUNE

I remember your father as

a friendly man who ate his meals

in the living room

with the huge cream fridge

but what was he doing

in my dreams a lifetime later

in the back of your car?

Shall we drop him here,

he said, or just keep driving?

It seems banal to say -

you drove me into the night.

I woke and you were very close

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BACARDI TAIL LIGHTS MACHINE GUN FAREWELL

He tried to drown his dog

under the canal bridge

but it came back.

Rang the planning department

and warned them there'd be blood

if one more estate was built.

His dad abandoned,

hobbling to the pigeon loft.

Daniel is leaving tonight on a plane.

Local junkies got hold

of the bottles and the furniture

then ended up scr...

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QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

That flower right next to us,

its honey perfume coloured the sea

and all the air breathed after dark.

You told me how it grew back home

profusely in the villages, but that

you and your sisters would steal it

from a neighbour's garden just for fun

which made me smile at this illicit side

of tricks and secrets as a general rule.

Ye...

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DOBRO

That shiny steel guitar

he got eventually

was what he'd always wanted;

just to play the blues.

I killed so many people, he said,

was called up twice, unfairly

because of skill in martial arts

and when we took a town

would often be the first to enter

but the bullet-proof vests,

they never came.

I should be dead by now

along with all t...

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AQUARIUM

I dreamt of an aquarium

fixed into my back,

a miniature box

with tetras and an angel fish,

its glass sunk deep

instead of memories;

I had to ask each day

if they were still alive,

framed there

in that wall of flesh.

It was necessary

to watch out for these

delicate creatures, cradle

this transparent cube of life

while treading carefully

...

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DEATH OF A BAR

Barcelona 2012

The warmth has gone,

the boar's head taken down

all fireplace brick surrendered

to the sledgehammer,

that old woman who

punished fruit machines

denied her homebound pleasure,

the jaunty evening crowd

now scattered like funeral ash.

The barmaid with her optimistic hair

left stranded, the perrenial

inviting smil...

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NIGERIAN VILLAGES

Some writers marry other ones

it seems the natural course

but she has never read a book,

in fact she hardly learned to read.

In Nigerian villages, they say,

you have to pay to go to school.

Her father was a teacher too;

in time I've come to understand

that this is just an economic irony

of life down there, however,

she can handle a sewing mac...

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SALAMANDER

From dripping dawn to milk churn

to sheep and village fountain.

From orchard and empty

mountain road to gurgling cherry town

I carried a yellow-black fire symbol

through deserted evenings

in hidden streets where men put away

their tools with an apprehensive glance

until at last, we met and drove

the winding road to Olonzac,

and sat next day in the b...

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BOXES

It's time to face that room

and all its sundry clutter.

Old stuff he kept for years:

opera magazines, sports trophies,

brittle yellowed journals telling

of obscure endeavours long ago;

the passions and activities

that cause the junk of decades.

I open the door and greet

my own past too - I played here

in a cloud of fantasy and aspiration,

small k...

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ROSE

My love is like

a crimson rose

and no one knows

from whence it came

nor where it goes -

a rose in winter

solid as Frankenstein's

monster, a frozen thing

that spent

its lifetime hiding

like a garage spider.

I didn't chide her

the garage spider,

but now the rose has

said hooray - come out

to play, has seen

its own refle...

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THE DOGS OF ATHENS

More than a city

a cluster of cities stretch

onwards through space,

one sprawling into the next,

so many areas

I've never set foot in

and west of the electric line's

a foreign country;

you see the names of neighbourhoods

on yellow buses passing

this evening square

where, instead of Nokia,

the street dogs are connected

by a different...

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