by Tom Harding
The frost is caught in cob webs
Clung along the hedgerows,
The year is strung between
Christmas and New year and
I'm lumbering back to work,
With a clog of dead leaves
Beneath my boots.
The horses stand upright in the mist
Soundlessly watching me pass,
Long heads reaching outwards
Like something lost at sea.
Somewhere someone is
Bui...
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Monday 29th August 2011 3:36 pm
by Tom Harding
The sweat is running
Down my arms
It is almost noon
And I have done nothing
But sit at this desk
I sit at everyday
And drink coffee
Wondering where the girl is
Who sits beside the vending machine
Perhaps she is sick
But I think maybe all
The beautiful people are
Elsewhere on a day like this.
Outside the trees are burning
And...
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Wednesday 24th August 2011 11:49 pm
by Tom Harding
what seems wrong about
this is all the reasoning.
sitting all day drinking coffee
watching replays of rioters
scattering like fire ants
while the news and voices
gasp for reason.
i sit at my desk
watching, wondering
what keeps them sane
the rest of the time?
there is little in life but luck
the cities cage people
and strip them of the...
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Monday 8th August 2011 10:29 pm
by Tom Harding
We’d go to the cinema in the afternoons
Then for coffee later.
She’d studied film for four years
And when discussing it afterward
She sounded like a police mortician
Diagnosing the cause of death,
The more lavish and Hollywood the affair
The more bloated the corpse,
“Exposition, complication, climax”
She'd say and draw a curved line on a napkin
Depi...
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Saturday 6th August 2011 8:30 pm
by Tom Harding
you are not bukowski
and neither am i
but it's understandable that you try,
understandable knowing what put you here
understandable as anything in this life.
understandable because our voices have been crippled
understandable because of what the world has done to us as men
because we lug the rotting carcass of masculinity
from one small room to the next
...
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Wednesday 3rd August 2011 10:39 pm
by Tom Harding
Spring comes.
With clothes of winter still
Wrapped round me, I walk to the bus,
Growing wiser everyday
To a world on it's hinges.
The wind frays the nerves
And scatters my every thought
Till I misunderstood the depth
Of the worlds conflict,
I only have to look at my winter jacket
and I became melancholy,
I only have to speak the word home
And I begin to weep.
Eac...
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Wednesday 3rd August 2011 6:56 pm
by Tom Harding
Too many mornings
dressing in darkness
the heart heals over,
growing cold and forgotten
like a tomb stone
in neglected woods.
The courtyard birds
leave their nests,
the winter world
driving its long shadows
across the tall grass,
looming like a stranger at the gate
then crossing the lawn,
climbing the step
and rapping the door.
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Tuesday 2nd August 2011 10:05 pm
by Tom Harding
Thursday 31st March 2011 9:52 pm
by Tom Harding
Thursday 24th March 2011 2:08 pm
by Tom Harding
Consumed with talk of floods
I sit watching the rain,
Dry as a bone. Outside
People are looking for places to hide.
My books all say
The human race is doomed,
The end is above us
Like clouds hanging over an afternoon.
The television oracles agree
The world will end soon.
There's footage of houses
Uprooted, floating like boats,
Graphs depicting tectonic pla...
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 10:50 pm
by Tom Harding
Poor clouds hanging down
Like damp clothes on a line.
Inside a grey hotel room
On Euston Road
Rereading a copy of Ovid
And trying to recollect
The year 1998 when we first met.
Outside the air is cold.
The sky is moving quickly,
The wind tugging
The last of the day along.
Nothing is defined.
We’re always becoming,
En route between two points
End...
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Wednesday 2nd February 2011 11:29 pm
by Tom Harding
Had to leave that afternoon
And walked through a part of the city I didn't know.
London seems to last forever
Unraveling it’s checkered belly
Of windows and streets
Like a snake in the sun.
Some time later
I walked into The Arnos Arms
Where men sat on stools
In dust creaking silence
Their dull faces death masks of disappointment.
It was ...
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Tuesday 1st February 2011 10:04 pm
by Tom Harding
That year she was reading Sartre,
We would sit in the cafe beside her university
And watch the waiters,
She’d make judgements on their core being
Saying their efficiency
Was an articulation of bad faith.
"Yes but the service is excellent." I’d say.
Outside even the tramps looked employed,
Stripping the bins and coin slots
With the swiftness of ...
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Monday 31st January 2011 11:54 pm
by Tom Harding
The decapitated mouse head
He left beneath your chair
Signalled the arrival of spring.
Each night he slips out
Into the balmy red air
Catching the scent of the day
In his skin.
We lay on top of sheets,
Expectant and listening
To the sound of new born lambs
Mewing distant in the night.
While the cat,
At the last of his nine lives,
Is loose in the neighbourhood,
Eager ...
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Wednesday 26th January 2011 10:21 pm
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