oh leviathan

dashed bereft under hanging skies
that mirror your sagging pall

I stand, Ishmael, to your bloody demise

amidst the niveous fulminating
and hovering nebs

where Neptune  saw fit to serve your hulkfor its absolute picking

by those which need and others that greed
with no affect to your fabled past

your jaw,mute in life,thunders now in death
of the...

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amidst this company of billowed ghosts

the echo bed of swollen heads belies

a gory hail of  rain chined inspiration

for my chiselled host and

hides cathedral vaulted cuts

of the deepest time

where darkness sparks

in resonant rhyme

and breath affords a gaudy boast

yet dies upon the budding lime

belly crawled while underneath

the aven’s insolent draught

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as the dew dropped tulip two-steps over my tongue

so a pubic slaughter of moonbeams and drag queens

leaves so little space in-between the longing

hung, low slung, below the eaves of this curious abode

where pregnant questions await the gaunt relief

of a crucified thief who has chosen his flavour

so sure the house has fallen on the queen of the east

love thy nei...

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what angels they?

they that always seem

to be looking

the other way

while in absentia

those robed in blight

and grey

of beak pick the bones of

our grief

genuflecting  promises

on the never-never

of a day

after tomorrow that none

will ever see

what angels they?

they that can no longer

play

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hear the sound of every rusted, blunted mace

as they greet and meet  through gravity’s lack of grace,

each at thirty two point two,

the fateful rate of this heaving season

where fruits misplace a summer’s trust to kiss the dirt

and, where they fall, corrode and stall the wheels of love

for those we find untouchable

while yet our hearts may still enmesh, b...

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that wise bard once quoth

“more things in heaven and earth”
never words truer

revealed

the merest seventeen percent
what terror lies hid in that
lost four score and three

regard

those tricks of the night
must need more fearful attention
with chances so high

recondite

inscrutable dark
hides nature in majority
one day ascendant

reflect

per...

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nobody nor nothing is real

absolute, yes,

for you are never truly gone

just no longer assembled

in the correct order of atoms

to make any further sense of

your ordeals

so they can’t be real

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if a tree falls and nobody is there should it make a recording

so that we all may hear it scream, tweet, so the birds that one day called it home

can carry word  of it’s strident surrender?

maybe this tree is happy to fall and rest in quiet reflection

of it’s once verdant splendour, at peace with its latest role

as the newest crossing over the forest stream and 

re...

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could  there  ever  have  been

aught  but  harm

from  such  shrew  whipped

an  abusive  storm

where  it  lead  through

the  corpse  grass

crumbed  trail

of  bloodied  path

stumbled  upon  weather  torn

enduring  pile 

chimney  stacked

nefarious  smile

that  leering  promontory

single  tooth

like  fabled  hag

who  feas...

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Sunday 

is  for  drowning 

a  morning's 

morphine  riddle  of

words  and  stolen

rhymes

unkempt  in 

dubious  time

and  exorcised

design

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now  the  crows  set 

comfortably

squat

upon  my  face

and  libido

oiled  laughter

serves  as  haven

there  for  them

to  procreate

now  becomes  assured

my  place

in  the  chain 

of  natural  fools

where  your

candied  floss  lies 

cast  aside

adorned  with  my

sour  dripped  jewels

now  this  ragged  dog

a...

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frozen

the  page  needed  turning

yet  my  hand  between  her  legs

scorned  a  classical  warning

for  that  girl  got  an  untamed 

grit  in  her  eye

the  unchained

proper  reflection

of  an  unalterable  sky

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your  body  could 

sing

like  fine  cut  crystal

as  smooth  osseous

orbits  roam  around  moistened

rim

ring

like  china  of  bone

finger  flicked 

with  a  sonorous

tone

played 

as  seraphim  armonica

such  dewy  friction

and  studied  devotion 

music  for 

the  soul  coaxed 

with  tactile  affection

from  goblet

dipp...

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(profanity alert)

do your dreams play better in colour?

you may never make it to Oz, be left

in the dirty sepia hollow of your streets that bled

their hue & rye into the gutter

when your ankles drowned in

silk and nylon and the alleys breathed your

living tears did you lose more than I ever found?

what do you think you shall leave?

the weight of your footfall...

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a night too quiet

yet, even in it’s silence,

not quite enough for me

now in my head those words were read

by Richard Burton

but then she came calling in the hours

when there aren’t yet enough digits on the clock

and I ignored the advice of William S Burroughs, or some other I forget,

and told her to fuck off, leave me to the monotone

test card transmission, t...

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the blocks of childhood

solid, set square in red brick,

yet from the start porous, lined

by a cancerous quick

so soon perished

barely noticed we chalk one up

then tally them daily

our stars of awe and wonder

in diligent swathes

until the toehold twists

and the road falls away

when the choked black

fear stacked Sunday Psalms

choose today

(a...

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today the feet inside my boots
all twenty-four inches
felt warm and liquid
floating so much I had to check
they weren’t leaking
tonight after badly juggling a
glass’s kitchen descent
the shards sang in G♯
and now they leaked

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one day I will be a collectors item,

copies rarer than rocking horse droppings,

but still changing hands for the merest pence

on stalls, in halls, at car boot sales,

maybe even as far afield as Stoke

or Wales

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staggered by a blow

six hundred million times more

fierce than the first time

man delivered a sun

to bloom and scorch upon her loam

untold shadows

no fire this time in shattering waves

though now, as then, so many souls

vanished from this tangent

and the swallowed star,

made on earth, extracts the same

deadly half-life toll

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August spawned a raging storm

four nights we watched our TV burn

we wrung our hands in shock and shame

then looked for someone else to blame

gazing over the fresh grown rubble,

the long term surplus of borrowed trouble

it begs a question with which we must wrestle.

if it’s only the threat of burning petrol

that makes the truth of now more palpable

...

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amidst dewy dawning

and distant lowing

scrambling over

tangled root stone bedding

beneath hillside glowing

from cloud stalked

cold shock

to sun burst warming

flows river umber

running iced  tea

tarnished and malty

to this tumble

comes happy dog

snout near rabbit deep

as spooked cottontails peep

from behind mossy log

...

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hewn in antiquity of fire and ice

rough fell born in flash and fury hurled

from the high ground fountainhead

set in motion artlessly impelled

downwards tumbling by such attraction

that demands all obey its draw

but my life’s course stretches far beyond

your mortal grasp and moves at a pace

measured in millennia as you count days

I may rest b...

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“eight Shippo’s a night youth

with a pack of No.6

loyal to the local economy

proud of where I lived,

never owned a Chopper though,

much to my chagrin,

every other Saturday

Trent End hooligan

serial movie matinees

at the ABC

a penny got the first one in

who let the others in for free

meet me at the Lions

don’t you know your left from right

...

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unbound sky wolves

slaver their granite miasma

then grizzle above and around.

Odin’s bane, biding

such furious a discharge

set amongst  heofon to scourge

a panic of flight

where the divided are devoured

in a geraz ecstasy

the four stags bellow

a chilling blast

of spittle drenched

breath

Yggdrasil’s children

tremble ...

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I am scared.

Eye sweating, lip stinging scared.

An irregular pulsar in the overstuffed confusion of my chest offers a less than precise signal, two-two time minus one, again and then again. All inside chooses to rise in unison and grip my desiccated throat. My fingers hover, but I dare not move. The continuation of this vessel in the balance and yet I still wrestle with pride and a fear...

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We grimaced, we laughed and then we cried.

The flame was lit and some would have we marched in step

But were we just postponing our miseries for two weeks

We will still be poor and we’ll still have our wars come Monday morn

So until then the world can get along without us just fine

We’ll pick up the cudgels once more on the 13th, let’s say, around 9?

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and now  the voices start

those grody sounds that stop your heart

beneath the floor, within the walls

the precedent for dull footfalls

calling to us one by one

with no clear sight of saint or villain

a spectral round of hide and seek

directed by a floorboards creak

each time we search there’s nothing there

but of this guest we’re so aw...

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amidst a sultry warmth

three boys answered

the call

of Devonian dawn

and with no words to warn

saw no cause

to fear the sirens luring call.

surf gently boiled trims the shore

with silver pearls,

then, with throaty holler

and backs arched

three boys

cast their bodies into the brisk and briney

blue who’s welcome embrace extorts

g...

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no more rush for the factory gates

or bleary welcomes after whistle led race

no longer the shouts of “what shift you on mate?”

and befuddled replies “earlies, no, lates!”

the comforting throng of familial mass

at the end of each day that held no disgrace

when a days hard work meant a days earned pay

something they somehow forgot to replace

as our livelihoods fled...

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eidolic dread horses

have scarred your slumber

and even your furniture

has silent, open mouthed, nightmares

over the too soon dead school friends

who never ended their crossings

where there she stoops in shroud

ghastly knelt as in prayer

and you can’t see through the tricks

of light that scream “she is there”

your crumpling chest  boiling

as the bones...

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Once I knew a spider

wore Doc Martens on his feet,

eight hole on eight hairy legs

he wasn’t too discrete.

He rode a lengthy shadow

while he stomped around the floor

this micro “muy macho”

unabashedly cocksure

I trapped him in a glass one night

And told him at the door

“My wife she doesn’t like you

don’t you come around no more”

B...

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It seems as though our visitors may have returned, or at least their feline portent


I saw a black cat
when a black cat
wasn’t ever there

I saw this black cat
who was comfortably sat
beneath my very chair

but that black cat
was not so sat,
because it wasn’t there

and I saw that cat
when it glared right back at
my own quizzical stare

though while I look...

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once I was chest high to the granite lipped
ornamental ocean but now the puddle barely scrapes my shins
and, while a brass band sounds and the fountain tries to drown
it’s leggy boatmen, Victoria frowns, like of old, at the memory
of extinct gilled gold replaced by layers of spectered petiole

“don’t stop me now” jogs the brass for the coital dragons who,
pollinating invisible wav...

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a single bright needle

picks apart the forget-me-not cloth

then stitches it back together

with a chalky yarn

so swiftly run that

the scream doesn’t come

until later

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the narrow stepped couched dunes,

doused in a chiffon mist that lies in wait

for the unwary winged hopper or crawling louse,

offer the way to our saline convention where

I wave at the sea

and count a full seven

before it greets me, reciprocally,

with zealous rips and a curling lip I haven’t seen before

on this blandest of the eastern boards

and it roars with ...

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