This table
is the high seas
Open water, bread crumbs
We reach across
opposite shores
and let our glasses travel

I can immerse myself in stones

and pebbles here.
A gathering of tens of thousands
of boulders; rolling, rough but as
meaningful now as a human heart,
a similar size and as rich in history.

To my left a friend is
mapping out the coast;
rock-slides have left a minefield here,
deposits from another age –
but he’ll walk it.
I listen to nothing but the frish
and shush of wave-sets.
I look straight ahead and try
to see France.

o
Sparrow

o
Otter

o
Pig

o
Debbie McGee

o
Leopard

o
Bison

o
Elephant

o
Whale

o
God

I watched it so,
As to not be seen.
Cracks of chapped lips,
Received Vaseline.

Now on her face,
Encased in slime,
Two slugs do rest
But not entwined.

Walking past the surgery
A queue of ailments
Wish I knew what you all had

Again in this extended box,
that isolates any chance of my
escape plan mutating alongside
the others here,

whom I know search a similar plea
with empty hands, that struggle
to have their previous contents replaced.

We hold out our callous free palms,
hoping our life lines will be once again rubbed with gold, just enough
to keep any wolves at bay.

But for now, our fingers hover like dragon flies, over the keyboards that are now clogged with dead skin and visible traces of boredom, and the voices then start to pour down the lines with a vaccine-less venom.

And to release each one at will would be a far to easy escape; instead I allow that headset to
melt with my skull, and allow the first hour to take its toll, and lead me once more in this merry dance.

We’d gone to see it on our way home,
That place he’d held noisome fun before St Vincent ended the party.
Standing on the path, we looked past
His house, the thing we’d come to visit, and elsewhere,
Out onto that palely glowing surface.

When it happened,
When the white sun melted into a sheen and the waves broke
Far away, you took my wrist
And asked me if I felt it,
The soft, cold approach of night
That made our day curl backwards
In on itself. I did.

But that evening had been our friend,
So I kept quiet, not wanting to spoil what was coming,
To leap ahead to darkness and miss the twirl
Of thin, translucent, bright grey silent light.

The Lady of the Night had the darkness wrapped in a colossal handkerchief. She settled the cloth over the town of her creation – because not only was she the Lady of the Night but the lady of life. This was, if truth be told, a rather large hankie, but equally this was a rather large lady. As the fabric fell the light crept in and the sky without moon lay on its back across the ceiling of the town hour upon hour. Shortly before the sun stretched out, creaking its bones, and awaking the belly of fire, there shone a beaming voice shattering the town:

“Ellie breakfast is ready. Hurry up!!!”

Rumbling earth followed briskly beneath their feet. Houses tumbled and bounced and many a person was knocked along the ground. Time passed between the voice and the beginning of daytime, but daytime, they knew, would eventually shine. They were made in her image but on a much smaller scale; she brought so much feeling and hope to the people – the Lady is love!

When the darkness came they only ever assumed peace, quiet…darkness until the slow rising of the light much, much later. Water rushed and dragged homes with it – person after person lost in the swell. She with her mighty hands scooped the crushing, tumbling jar of light from its path of destruction, quashed the mighty waves and soaked up the town. She, the omnipotent – the gentle saviour.

Morning never came gradually, the time to adjust never factored in; it happened in a sudden sweep and those that have been around to testify say that you can see the darkness seep and drag across the blue sky like a magician’s table cloth tugging, pulling in it’s wake the sun from the ocean but leaving the sky un-harmed, leaving the stars and moon in place, hidden and outshone by the brighter. As we now know we have no organic order to control our cycle, there is only her, the Lady.

James Bond, Freddie Krueger, “Dirty” Harry Callahan, Amelie Poullain, Bobba Fett, Sugar Kane Kowalcyk, Dirk Diggler, Patrick Bateman, Jessica Rabbit, Roy Batty, Withnail, Nurse Ratched & R.P. McMurphy, “Cool Hand” Luke, George Bailey, Scarlett O’Hara, Keyser Soze, Atticus Finch, Will Hunting, Martin Riggs, Hannibal Lector & Clarice Starling, Brody & Quint, Harry Potter, Rocky Balboa, Maximus Decimus Meridius, Donnie Darko, Mary Poppins, Ellis “Red” Redding, Marv, Mr Blonde, Cobb, Simba, Oskar Schindler, Jack Carter, The Driver, Phil Connors & The Groundhog, Randy “The Ram” Robinson, Hal-9000, Woody & Buzz, William Wallace, Tony Stark, Blade, Anton Chigurh, Rick Blaine, Tommy Devito, Ace Ventura, Hans Solo & Darth Vader, Ivan Drago, Annie Hall, Johnny Hooker, Michael Corleone, Forrest Gump, Travis Bickle, John McClane & Hans Gruber, Lt Ellen Ripley, Randal Graves, Lisbeth Sander, Luke Skywalker & Princess Leia Organa, Vincenzo Coccotti, Wolverine, Norman Bates, Axel Foley, Marge Gunderson, Ed & Shaun, Jack Torrence, Snake Plissken, Clark Kent, Fast Eddie Felson, Jigsaw, Daniel Plainview, Peter Parker, Don Logan, White Goodman, Leon & Mathilda, The Bride, Frank Booth, Napolean Dynamite, E.T., Dracula, Dr Rumack, Charles Foster Kane, The Elephant Man, J.J.Mclure & Captain Chaos, Batman, Bullet Tooth Tony, Ted, Jason Bourne, Tequila, Edward Scissorhands, Alex Delarge, Peter Venkman, Juno MacGuff, Yoda, Tony Montana, Indiana Jones, Harry Burns & Sally Albright, Martin Q Blank, The Wicked Witch of the West, Neo & Agent Smith, Lt. Frank Drebin, Marty & Doctor Emmett Brown, Jack Carter, Arnie Grape, Tony Manero, The Joker, Susie Diamond, The Dude & Walter Sobchak, Gandalf & Gollum, Marsellus Wallace, Truman Burbank, Wayne & Garth, Holly Golightly, Jacques Mesrine, Harry Lime, Annie Wilkes, Mrs Robinson & Benjamin Braddock, Captain Jack Sparrow, Tyler Durden, Mark “Chopper” Read, Ferris Bueller, Wall-E, The Man With No Name, Ron Burgundy, The Terminator.

she taught me again today, the sea

(i returned like a reformed drunk

still ill with booze but ready for rebirth)

filled with the pomp of learning at

her altar yesterday, i stepped off the

shale ledge to commune with her, embalm.

The judder hyperventilation scramble footing

scraped furrows in clod thick feet

and soles communed with rapid death

to get out. YOU ARE NOT READY

the sun crackled salt skin like a piglet

on the spit, laid out on the trillion gems

that clickered millennia like rollers

casting factory carcasses off to cure. mim

Check you out with your bag for life oh!
What you got inside?
A summer fruit trifle.
Oh my word that sounds delightful, I must get me one of those bags for life oh.
Check you out with your brand new Kindle!
What you got inside?
A bit of Ruth Rendell.
Oh my word that sounds stupendful, I must get me one of those poxy plastic Kindles.
Check you out with your speedy boarding pass!
We’re getting on the same plane mate, we’ll get there just as fast.
You’ve gone from sitting down, to sitting on your arse!
Oh, how I wish I had a speedy boarding pass.

I sat in the pub drinking my beer
and looking at the TV screens
as New York got a hammering from the superstorm.

For all I knew New York could sink
but I would still be here
just me and my beer.

ou say either and I say either,
You say neither and I say neither,
Either, either, neither, neither,
You like potato and I like potato,
You like tomato and I like tomato,
Potato, potato, tomato, tomato!

Because our relationship only exists online.

Rain is sometimes morse,
repeating its message of the sea,

of secrets or recipes thought lost,
each drop preserving a story.

Cars scud – ore and oil wrought
by digits that grub in dirt.

Trains slide a line – bridge-high
metal worm muscling a bend.

Rain writes in long-hand –
letters that never arrive.