Taking my first girlfriend
to the pub at seventeen
Crossing the cobbles
of a gunmetal grey 
northern market town
Mitten in glove
warm in our teenage
prototype version of love
A chatterbox pint for me
a tipsy glass of white for her
and we’d find a quiet corner

Invariably, some red-faced
shaven-headed native
furtively eyes my companion
“Where do you come from?”
they’d splutter in th...

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There you were again
last night
Always dressed so well
exactly the clothes I’d choose for you
precisely the right smile
My dreams aren’t long enough
the scene shoots by
too soon

You come, you go
I long for you to stay a while
but you’ll never stay for long
Your wild mind, your hungry heart
yawn and snarl
before you turn and go
leaving me alone

Back into the night
you shuffle of...

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Though we have explored
all there is to travel
I still turn to you in awe
Those wondrous eyes
still cause my blood to race
On cruel and foggy days
all jagged nerves
and withered spirit
you lose your gravity
drifting again
on days that have no anchor

And if I must, I’ll do it tenderly
hold you through the waves
of heaving sobs
clutch your trembling hand
and we’ll fathom
the house ...

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The children howl, the house is hell
you close your eyes to cast that spell

Rising high above the endless squabbles 
to meet me down upon those sodden cobbles

The rain and fog are gently taunting
your white shirt billows, opaque and haunting

On Henrietta Street…

Two hundred stairs, do I descend
with full-beam smile to my treasured friend

These precious moments, we get to steal
...

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This melancholy fug
burrows into my bones
After delving back again
into those memories recounted
with such forensic clarity
Comes a cold blue atmosphere
a fragrant longing
and precision-tooled regret

Those searingly stark lines
old faces, wild flames
lost friendships resurrected 
I’m dropped back into the thick of things
Drifting through teenage streets
old freedoms, vintage fantasi...

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Writing a character reference
for a friend
for someone I thought I knew
to mitigate their crimes
to ease them on their future journey
humbled, kneecapped and sore
Two thoughts spring to mind…

What good have they done
and how can it be expressed
Were they always the first to lend a hand
were they always there for those in need
Which of their actions
should I recall and paint in colour
...

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With the consistency of smoke
eventually, our ghostly hands
must let go of this life
We may be thinning and fading
or still strong but cut down
However it’s done
the knot must inevitably untie

The light travelled so far
to dance upon our faces
We're alive, as nature is alive
to be strange or just to be
All that energy must return
into the freezing depths of space

Every smile, ever...

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I kick away the leaves
uncover the carved stones
And reading your names again
I let those feelings flood in

The two of you rest together
laid deep beneath the earth
There’s a tree that grows above you
and here’s me, treading my own winter

Life was in wealth, awhile
but I’ve been chasing that warmth 
for three decades now
I’m tired and my body aches

There will be fireworks tonight
...

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Lit monochrome by the moon
we dance across silver sands
The waves scrawl
like these scribbled lines
written by my yearning hand
tonight

All this turbulent energy
flung into the swirling air
Conducted by my pulsing heart
This fool, who thinks he has control
of all you do to me

A wanton wind whips up the spray
and all I want to do
is turn the beat inside my chest into
sentences sho...

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Going out to meet a friend
to be the ear to their unspooling
coughing up confusions
unpacking problems
unhappy hour
at some pub table

I’m the calm eyes
the easy conversation
pliers to cut the wire
defuse that complicated 
emotional bomb
over a couple of drinks

There’ll be no judgement
only sympathy
a gentle steer
of thoughts towards solutions
or mostly
I’ll just listen

That...

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Out on the balcony, they stood together
wind wild and rummaging through the trees
She wore nothing but the moonlight
So many wishes she could have made that night
As he wondered how she’d like it here
sewn to the pages of this brittle story

A character in a poem
timeless in a way
with him when he reads
but gone
when he closes that book again

One last act before their stories parted
...

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There’s a café down the hill
where I do my wistful Sunday dreaming
Sitting in the front bay window
hypnotised by raindrops
as they whisper against thin panes
I watch the people out in the street
pull their coats over their heads
and dash from shop to shop

Eavesdropping on the other diners
and the occasional glance towards the crossword
I let my mind wander freely
and chat with the wee...

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Walking past The Boot tonight
a warm but sunless dusk
The door was open wide
drinkers shuffling and spilling out

I think of that favourite friend
who brought me here five years ago
We played some pool, supped our beer
as he talked of his dilemma

His partner wanted children
but regrettably, he did not
she gave him ultimatums
and he wasn’t sure what to do

When the world stopped for...

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I tried to bury the fountain
along with a rainbow
but I found you in my bed again
scribbling with crayons
I tried to cover up my tattoo
all these years of printing hearts
upon my sleeve
always yearning to improve

I tried to marry another way
pass the time with some other face
put my tools back in the drawer
and step away from what’s been said
I tried to give you up
as if there were ...

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The lowest point found me
shivering in a filthy kitchen
The second day of January

I'd walked away from my old life
a lover, a home, a decade of meaning
all stripped and left upstream

The blue mind and splintered heart
of a thousand Christmas drinks
conspired behind my leaky eyes

No friends around, no work in front of me
The year loomed huge and empty
a vast and frozen lake of days

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They chatter life and love by the water’s edge
then dive into the shimmering blue
With thoughts of painting ice cream clouds
or bottling the phosphorus moon
Daylight is for dreaming 
or cooking up a stew
The waking hours are for birthing art
or making love in the hot afternoon

Tonight, there’ll be a gathering at the Dolphin café
with wine and smiles in generous measures
mosquito nets b...

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Memory is elastic
and I can’t help but stretch it
thinking back to chasing sunsets
Atop my motorbike in Thailand
enthralled and awed
complete abandon
I never believed 
that moment could be bettered
I never thought
life could be more generous

The air is hot today
frogs skitter on the pond
flowers all in bloom
A cat curled on the deck
the outstretched arms of summertime
Gentle, ease...

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These curtains don’t fit
Daybreak come too early
The drink’s still in my skin
and on that bed of marble white
I lost you from my life

The signals all conspired
the well of guilt refilled
Reality cracked wide open
spilt down the corridors of misadventure
I lost you to the dawn

Tangled in a sheet of white lies
the enemy of love
raises his black hood
smiling at the keenness of his bl...

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Erecting her easel
at the foot of the boardwalk
she mixes the paint
a hell-fire pink and crimson
and dips her brush to begin…

She paints
the end of all things
a voice lost to the fractured mind
the final moments of a life
a hand slipping away

She paints
farewell hospital conversations
her father’s beard as a cloud
she thins the blue paint with her tears
She colours in his eyes
L...

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Grief casts complex shadows
over the wilting body
You feel the fingers grasping
as sirens rise again
This fatalistic ritual
an energy made negative
and stomach knotted up
by such unhelpful thoughts

Pain rips at your sails
thunderous and wild
is it the body breaking down
a message poorly translated
The shrieking of absence
cuts deep into the gut
those hands twist and grip
the cycle...

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These paths we walk
grounded by responsibility
well-worn routine
practiced intimacy
I could only smile
when you whispered in my ear
‘Take me away from this
take me anywhere but here’

Living in the moment
it’s all we know to do
as you pepper my shoulder with kisses
my fingers explore every inch of you
You said ‘the world is a minibar
cold and empty
but now we’re blessed by this heat
...

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This love, our love
so understated
but all consuming

A stick of rock
it's written right through me
and always has been
Reaching out a hand
to feel
your hand waiting

A tide
I’ll always return
A well
I’ll always refill
your bucket
with love

All my wants, all my needs
melt into a single thought
All my hopes and dreams
collide inside the fact
you exist

I reach out my hand
...

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Some nights, I can't sleep
so, I go out walking
following the river
in my discomfort and anxiety
All too aware 
of where we're heading
winding towards that war
no one can win

I pass bonfires of guitars
funeral pyres of pianos
strings all snapped
Art must be rationed out, now
There's a faded memory of a song
from long ago
that hopeless refrain, lilts
'these are our final days'

T...

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Singing my lungs out, singing loudly
The music so carefully 
chosen for the journey
when there’s no one in the car with me

Screaming at the dashboard
wailing for the headlight beam
Wait, did I just hit that note
we’ll never know… it’s miles behind me now 

Caught in traffic 
other drivers smiling at me
if only 
they could sing the harmony

Songs of unions, songs of absence
songs o...

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As young men, we ran through this town
chasing the madness
at the bottom of every bottle
and the warmth of teenage smiles
honeyed with the promise
of new experience

Spinning from bar to bar, pushing the limits
of our bodies capacity for self-destruction
and regeneration
snow melting from our clothes
as we sat and drank and laughed
in the Christmas evening air

Tonight, we’re trying ...

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Furtively, you smile
as I dive
into your petrol green eyes
we’ve run out of words tonight

My unspeaking lips
form the shape of a silent promise
to burn
my house to the ground

For there is only 
you and me now…

And I hear the screams 
of my old way of life
And the swirl of ashes 
of somebody’s broken heart 

And a twinge of shame 
so swiftly erased 
in the rising dance 
of f...

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