Doe-eyed woodland artistry glows O, how you hide your face away I give and give to you investment in a broken thing once-grateful hands crave more and more
There is a sickness of mind a blackness, a spoilt heart where blame is always searching and mirrors do not exist once-blooming thoughts crush more and more
Pushing on the pillars that held you up you’ve yanked too hard this final time the string of respect has frayed to nothing and now we’ve come to this closing door once-hopeful eyes fear more and more
One day, when all is settled, I hope you change let go of all the hate and grow in mind One day, when all is healed I wish you love and say ‘Destroy the hate destroying you and save yourself
Destroy the hate destroying you and save yourself…’
Click play or right-click and ‘save as’ to download the mp3.
You’ve been sitting there quietly Care to share your thoughts?
This infatuation has me I wore your scarf to keep me warm I could smell you there snaking all around me Feeling like a teenager in the grip of some sweet crush
I watched you observing me with such indecent eyes drawing me into your spell My scarf, which you so casually wrapped around you had me burning with jealousy
I’m uncomfortable seeing you sitting in front of me with your silk lips a drink in your hand and a sultry laugh filling the air
I’m so frustrated by the distance my fingers click, my toes make fists Whole body bends to inch closer The slang in your eyes speaks to the strength of my desire I’m so wired, in the heat of the night I want your fabric against mine
I was quietly thinking to myself the only remedy to all of this would be kissing your mouth, kissing your throat and a week in bed with you…
I was quietly thinking to myself you should race me home so our bodies can lock magnetically together for a week or three…
I think it’s time we called a cab and left…
[2021]
Thanks for reading.
This was a really fun collaboration with Bree from Secret Thoughts Within. I’d been really intrigued by the idea of working on a poem in tandem with someone else and how on earth you’d go about it. Bree very kindly offered to show me the way and this is what we came up with (alongside a lot of other ideas). It’s a fun process and I’d recommend it if you’ve not tried it before. Check out Bree’s fantastic writing and audio at https://secretthoughtswithin.com/
Click play to listen or right-click and ‘save as’ to download the MP3
The gulls above me, wild and free my song begins to echo theirs squawks of tuneless noise as I try to make some sense or to release something
Watching the breaking waves from a distance and then up close I’ve been nowhere but up and down the stairs of this hollow and lonely year
It’s hard to remember the good I do keeping other ships at safe distance as I patiently await the promised boat that will return me to the world and the smiling faces of my family
I fear I’m losing my peace of mind I sense the loosening pieces as my happiness erodes My song goes round and round as does the light I tend
Wild and free, used to be the way I chose to live Wild and free, an impulsive sea the way I chose to love
I wait so patiently on that coming boat that will return me to the world I used to love…
Did you heal that humbling heartbreak ringing as a bell through you Did you conquer the stifling loss bitterly coating all your notebooks
Did you find a stranger at your door clutching wine and headphones Did they listen with hungry ears to all the truths you had to share
Did they grab your wrists with passion dance you into the endless night Did they calm your fears with a simple gesture hold you the way you always wanted
Did they lead you astray, in that inspiring way did you laugh together in the face of darkness Did they mute the chill of rain upon your senses push the mundanities of living back into their places
O, how I wanted to be that person how I wanted to be the one standing there on some unexpected evening with that bottle and those tunes
I hope someone answered all the longing that came pouring from your pen I pray that you’re still singing but now the song is sweeter
I hope someone answered you the way I always wished to…
Let me fan the flames of your fandom tickling ‘like’ and painting praise watching out for typos You and I should duck out of here you and I should get a room
What would we do in there behind the locking door? Turn two armchairs facing inwards swap endless breathless monologues clinging on to voices hanging from each word at what point would we be satisfied at what point would we be done
Let’s assume there’s a bed in that room or an armchair or a shower at what point would we be satisfied at what point would we feel like one
Afterwards, the peace glide and searching open eyes scanning for silent truths for glimpses of emotion, for clues at what point would we be satisfied at what point would it feel enough
There’s an ocean of desire between your pen and my paper there’s an ocean of water between your hem and my wrist
You and I should duck right out of here you and I need to get a room…
In the caverns of a King’s Cross bar I quietly compose an opening six months now, since our last meeting I catch sight of my reflection twisting in the half-full glass upon the bar What am I doing here set up for a disappointing sequel It’ll never be like it was at the start it’ll never feel like it did before
Festive cheers fill the bar as my mind slips back one year when my world was folding inward intoxicated with the excitement of chances taken and how I quietly spoke of my growing love for you in the blurry Christmas air I made foolish gestures at what I wanted slid my heart across the table waited with baited breath for your reciprocation and headed home empty handed…
Tonight is such a bittersweet evening a reminder of how much I love your company it hits me squarely, and for the first time, fully how much I’ve missed you But you’ve changed, grown up, matured somehow wisdom where once there was only spiked humour oh, as a friend you’ll always remain a favourite held out of reach by our history
It’s so bittersweet, our meeting our reflections melt and merge in the glasses that we drain I’m still beguiled by your luminous beauty and vindicated to know what I thought I’d felt was honest not pure circumstance, greed or opportunity our briefest spark lit my world so brightly in way never bettered before or since It’ll never be like it was at the start it’ll never feel like it did before
Such a bittersweet evening lit in the primary colours of December you, grinning, purr ‘let’s do this again soon’ and of course I say ‘I hope we do’ When I cast my eyes across this year it’ll always be your face reflected back at me when I look back from some future distance your face will always be smiling back at me…
Squinting at the good old days through a low winter sun Dreaming of those times spent down there on the sand lost in the blue hour or scheming on a journey deep into the night We could have gone anywhere a can raised to the sky and on our faces only smiles for miles and miles and miles
So many friendships left behind at other stations back down the tracks My friendships all are fraying their ropes unwinding I can’t see anything but all of their waving They’re waving goodbye
O, we need to make new memories…
Alone on the stones eyes cast out across the water churning looking back towards the land I feel there’s so much possibility still coursing through these veins only halfway, I’m halfway only The world bends where the sky and water blend as day ends, I see their pretty faces as the ripples on the surface
Those old memories they’re thinning in the depths at the edges of my mind My old partners in crime keep waving they’re waving goodbye
O, we need to make new memories…
Come dance with me on the moonlit beach let’s make new memories come roll with me on the endless dunes let’s make new memories…
[2019]
Thank you for reading. This one feels even more apt these days…
How patiently, how perfectly with such finesse, you plan our passion in such exacting detail you’ve prepared our romance five years in advance
A spreadsheet for every kiss lingering looks added to your ‘to-do’ list flow-charts of clothes torn off a map showing where to lose ourselves in the moment
But it’s still love or a version of it… O, it’s still love or your version of it…
Did you make a plan for me to bend my knee to descend on bended knee Did you even know me then did you even know me when you made that plan
A clockwork heart ticks true a clockwork heart flicks through a catalogue of love experiences to tick, tick, tick off
Ah, but it’s still love… or a version of it… O, it’s still love or your version of it…
In the office of your heart plan us a love event in the office of your heart can you schedule us some love
I used to hate this part of town After London it felt like stepping back in time as if all our momentum to the capital had been lost these shops with their hand-painted signs I didn’t recognise the names they’re not triplicated on every high street
And now I sit in the Crooked Café the waitress always tries to remember my ‘usual’ but I love that she never quite gets it right gives us something to laugh about breaks the ice as I sit alone and eat drink my tea and sketch my little lines
The walls adorned with guitars and records someone really loves the eighties the food is good the best I’ve found ‘round here the perfect way to start a Saturday it’s always busy people drinking coffee and talking through their lives there’s material everywhere for a writer-thief like me
Afterwards I’ll drift down the lanes between the crooked dwellings past out-houses, slate roofs, shared yards neat boxes all pushed so close together clinging to the hills I’ve learned to love this feeling just absorb the history let the thinning shadow of industry that’s still cast across this city seep into me
But for now I sit by the window stare out into the old street feel the season a little more keenly so grateful to have found my peace here where I can stop and think and write my little lines…
You wrote two clumsy lines a platitude wrapped in cliché The Coldplay of love poetry clocked up two hundred likes and fourteen gushing comments
Then you wrote the same poem every day, in a slightly different way The adoration only spiralled collecting fans and affirmation how on earth do you do it?
A hyper-sensitivity of feeling your art connects across the senses The roughness of ancient bark beneath gentle fingertips A kiss from rock-pool water warm against bare ankles
A double exposure a murmuration it’s poetry, the sensuality the sheer never timid beauty lensed so gracefully with such assurance and dexterity
The texture, a waking daydream a cloak of fog, shaft of sunlight A cinematic freeze-frame marked by absence the distance or proximity of pain and recovery
Point and click, your dark-room trick it’s as if you have control over the mountains the birds, the tides or consummate authorship of the nuance you convey
A solo figure in vast expanse an aloneness I recognise searching but serene Lost in the careful creation of an endless mythology loudly reverberates in me
The slow creep of new tissue like quietly vanishing tattoos it’s at your back and haunches as your work builds and soars so far from that place expressive in its woozy warmth
I hear the touch, witness the aroma I exist in awe and quiet wonder A world scatters its knitted beauty a murmuration Little charcoal sketches across watercolour paper
The spine is a map a breadcrumb trail we trace with our fingers but we can’t go back ephemeral and observable only in reflection or a photograph
Dusk tides, an evening deer a crumbling barn, eiderdown snow A swimsuit girl, the Northern Lights a neon sign, a broken rainbow midnight phone booth, stitches in skin untethered and inspirationally free
Your photography is a place I love to visit when I can It’s pure poetry you pen with the light, with your lens A lasting comfort, you translate the message I can’t help but take;
It’s impossible impossible not to love the beauty of this world…
[2021]
Thanks for reading.
An ode to the exceptional work of one of my favourite photographers; Margaret Durow.
The sweetest memories hang like negatives in the dark room of my mind I develop them occasionally picturing again more exciting times
Yellows and browns begin to wash across the leaves outside my window I haven’t seen you in the flesh since those shoots were new it feels so long ago
We ran through those streets as if we owned them spinning endlessly from bar to bar from joke to joke in our abandon
Our last night in the city some nameless rooftop bar we watched the buildings making love to their reflections on the water A stranger took our photo sloshing glasses tucked behind our backs arms around each other’s shoulders smiles wider than the frame
I hope there will be other times another chance and soon to lose ourselves together in conversations deep in the bowels of dimly lit bars or the roof terraces decked with lanterns on endless summer evenings down bustling cobbled alleyways a community of revellers
O, these dusty memories bring me close to tears these dusty memories chase me round the house dreaming of a time when we can crawl out of our bunkers spend another night getting lost in the city finding each other…
Calling wisdom to see through all the horse shit of your flimsy words Those jelly-limbed actions flailing so selfishly and blindly out in front of me I’m calling wisdom…
Calling wisdom to untangle all the wires of your dangling contradictions Cut through the paper masks of all your posturing that you’re completely lost in I’m calling wisdom…
Calling wisdom to cast a dim light on your thinking What train of thought you caught to get to here These decided sidings of this line’s end I’m calling wisdom
Calling wisdom… to map a human sense of things the fucked foundation you’ve been building on is cratered and crumbling in upon us and burning bricks and buried bones are all that I can know now I’m calling wisdom…
Calling wisdom… to put in place a forest of words between us brush blooming plants to hide the muddy path that we spun down senseless and scared-shitless and because you never did I’m calling wisdom…
We circle as sharks on the Hyde Park winter rink our eyes like lasers I audibly bleep when they meet
We both go forwards not getting anywhere we pass with differing intervals I only breathe when we pass
Some laps are flawless some laps are clumsy some laps I nearly take some sucker down some laps I kiss the ice
I feel your eyes lift me to my feet I feel them brush the slush from my skate would I have fallen if you hadn’t been watching would I fall if we linked arms
You’ve got some new moves I see a graceful pirouette by the bandstand another pair of eyes hold you tight from the sidelines another pair of eyes brim with that familiar glow
Sometimes we have to let go sometimes we have to help someone up who’s gone down sometimes we just have to skate past sometimes we can’t risk looking back
We circle like sharks on the Christmas market ice rink then you take off your skates make for the big wheel you’ll be too high in the city to see my heart waving below…
Click ‘play’ to hear me read this poem – or right-click and choose ‘Save As’ to download the MP3.
Senses softened in the dark afternoon This year is charring in the fire grate So, I pour out into the haunted fields looking for loneliness, for lines, for clues to get a handle on all that’s happened to make predictions on where I am headed
All around my body, the world’s covered by a sheet life’s decorator is preparing to paint the new year This land spills on for snowy miles my past reels out somewhere behind me in those paths taken, in those choices made; there are glimpses of the shape of my future
The Grecian islands, the Cornish coast Those petty milestones, those brave goodbyes from swollen ankles, to exploded minds Portuguese walled-towns, to Derbyshire hills From a decade planted, then uprooted and moved the letting go, the keeping a hold Surprises; surprising, plans made and fulfilled much falls away, much more presents itself weddings, worries, work; with friends consciousness glides across the ghostly fields comes to rest behind my smiling eyes
So, now I have the things I’ve always wanted the peace I chased, the love I imagined the tools I’ll need are all within me and Kate is waiting, with her key, somewhere
By the gate, I pause, look up into the nothing time stands still, my eyes adjust… the pitch black night is full of stars (when did I last see those?) My gaze breaks, my footsteps in the powder flow time moves, I need for nothing else… I go back into the house
Toss my wondering on the fire pour a drink, talk to my family I’m satisfied and warm…
When the song is sung out of me all breath wheezes away When those closing eyes are mine and silence fills my mouth then I will give myself back
When the turning wheel is staid the longest road is walked When gravity is satisfied completely and all my poetry has been written then I will give myself back
I will give myself back to the ground to the soil I’ll lay myself down give myself back to the earth from where I came
When the flower’s head is closing for the night and the worms surface from below When the tune I’ve been humming is done and the daydream of all I’ve known is broken then I will give myself back
When the trivial moments are beyond mundane and the steady hand-hold no longer offered When the night is a bruised black and star-less and every wish is washed clean away then I will give myself back
And in giving back all I’ve ever had I’ll fuel another chance for life I will give myself back to the ground to the soil I’ll lay myself down give myself to the ground from where I came…
I lit a fire on the beach you were feeling beaten by the wind no, we can’t hear anything in this weather but the waves and the crackling wood you don’t speak anyway we have nothing we care to say
Our human silences amid nature’s screams fill me with a loss so unforgettable Our human silences amid nature’s screams fill me with a void so inescapable
The sky goes dark and the sea slides away time is huge and our movements tiny I wrote my address on the back of your hand but you reached into the water and it vanished I can’t imagine a life not anchored here as you turn slow to dive from me
The answers come only with soft punches a milked stone, I lie folded and bruised how could we ever know this lost romance your whirlpool eyes cry tears of understanding I dust the sand from my baked face and frown there’s no warning of love’s swift decay
Our human silences amid nature’s screams fill me with an ache so all consuming
Moon reveals the night’s black heart you say you love me, as you leave me you say you care for me, as you go down on him there’s no favour you can grant me anymore there’s no connection to the blood in my heart just open your palms, expose our withered bonds
The rain rages fast and hard across the sand we tussle as broken wings on some sick bird finality comes to me, its decision absolute your hand slips away and swings clear for all time I fall back into the water, exhaling slowly ‘Our home cannot be here…’
Out driving our first cars at night snaking the blackness of North East country roads I’d flick the headlights off hear the girls scream then back on and we’d crack up laughing
In our town, there wasn’t much to do but wander looping streets haunt the park outside of college blow house to house, see who was home or spend it lying in your bedroom laughing
When you and Chris split, he handled it okay drank too much a week or two and then got a little down but everything went on still way too soon for Mike to tell you so we all sat as friends and laughed
Back then, I couldn’t think of much else but Jenny but I loved the way you’d say my family name still hear it ringing from the depths of memory standing with you in some sticky bar and you collapsing into Mike laughing
They were gentle times, good times before we were scattered wide I don’t think I saw or thought of you that often twenty years just paced before our eyes how I hope you kept on laughing
With your man, your son your life carved out somewhere…
On a Brighton beach, one weekend this summer Mike was chatting, said ’the cancer took you’ and nothing more to add to that just taken – that’s all he knew there on the pebbles, I stood, winded and weeping
Just taken – nothing more to add to that
Jordan, it was laugher, laughter of you; that will always be my memory sweet laughter, laughter and the way you spoke my family name…
Spitting it out in the hope of releasing unlocking the cage stifling my growth burning it all selfishly brightly and the feeling is back again pounding my head again to just let go… just let go…
Spewing it up with the aim of escaping fleeing this habitual and too perfect a world shedding the handcuffs worn in contentment and the aching is back again haunting my thoughts again to just get out… just get out…
Dreaming it up in the hope of fulfilment melting again in the heat of the lime-light always around and forever predictable and the wanting is mine again consuming me whole again to just let go… just let go…
Welling them up in my shining eyes now both of them bursting in the wealth of emotion as red as your face when you listen to these words the Devil is my friend again scorching my faith again Screaming ‘just get out… just get out…’
My demons are strong again twisting my arms again almost convincing me to just let go… just let go…
