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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