poems

Poetry collections

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In the years since publishing Fragments and Reflections, I have self-published two further collections of poetry: Nooks and Dark Corners and Sunsets and Long Shadows. Find them on Amazon or – if you want to support independent writing and publishing – Lulu.

Sea Mist

This mist makes ghosts of the drifting days,
Shrouding hill and cliff and cove with pale indifference;
On the shoreline, faint shadows gather in small worlds,
Framed by blank horizons and a white line of surf,
Just apparent in this strange eradication.
Somewhere, above and beyond the levelling murk,
A vain sun blazes at the creaking sea,
Taunting it with windborne lies of endless sunshine.

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Newly published: Fragments and Reflections – an anthology of poetry 1990-2015

product_thumbnailI am very excited to be able to say that I have finally published my collected poems in a single volume. Like my blog, it is also called ‘Fragments and Reflections’ and is available in hard copy, under my Lone Crow Publications label, direct from Lulu and also from Amazon. For those of you who prefer an eBook, you can buy Fragments and Reflections from Amazon, Barnes & Noble (nook), iBooks and Kobo. You can download the free sampler here.

What kind of poetry is it? I would describe it as a collection of modern verse for every facet of life and for every emotion. There are poems born out of love, of dreams, of wandering in the countryside, of working in the city and of generally raging against the world. Nature, the city, love, lust, betrayal, war, death, homelessness, spaniels… You will find them all inside.

If you take a peek inside, I hope you find something that speaks to you.

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New words poem: Love Vax In A Hexacopter

I always find myself horrified and enthralled in equal measure when list of new words are approved for inclusion in the dictionary. Oxford Dictionaries, which is not the Oxford English Dictionary, has released the latest additions to the English language.

In twenty years I am sure we’ll be using many of them without even thinking. Now, though, most feel alien, intruders into a lexicon which is morphing and evolving faster and faster as technology drives wordplay and we require more and different ways to describe the things we do.

I decided to write a nonsense poem with some of the latest.

Love Vax In A Hexacopter

you are so very adorbs, the way you

humblebrag about the way we got hooked.

we were nailed on from the start, I reckon,

when you called me hench and I said ‘you’re cray!’

 

ICYMI we near screwed it up

when i said your selfies were just clickbait

and you got bare mad and called me neckbeard

and raised my mansplaining douchebaggery.

 

‘FML’ i said, ‘i’m not catfishing.’

you side-eyed me and called me a hot mess,

but we’re hyperconnected doncha know,

so my air punch made you smile despite you.

 

and now – SMH – we’re cotching through life:

love lived in silico, spoken into

hot mics, needing pharmacovigilance.

YOLO. WDYT? amazeballs, yeah?

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The Funeral

The Funeral

We drove through the grey mist, wordless and blank-eyed,
The windscreen cracked and split by endless rain,
Our meter the rumble of tyres on tarmac
And an occasional sad sigh of rubber on glass.

Our hours were silent hours, lost in half-memories,
Each of us reflecting on a common private guilt:
Our promises to see more of one another
So casually made and then forgotten.

Once there, in throngs of strangers, we saw at once
We could have known her better than we now pretend, 
And offered solemn nods and awkward sympathies
As we sought those few we recognised and loved.

We embraced them and wept, smiling through our sadness, 
The warm handshakes of old friendships  undiluted 
By the years between, though fewer we counted, quietly,
Some borne away on the rivers of our seasons.

Then, after we had gathered and sung our life-filled hymns,
And drank to past times of happier communion,
We renewed our promises with easy earnestness
And, lastly, bid each other fond farewell and left.

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Poem: Hangover After A Late Spring Evening Drinking With Friends

Hangover After A Late Spring Evening Drinking With Friends

Today, with heavy limbs and slamming head,
it is too much: too brash, too loud, too bright.
What seemed boundless and obtainable in
excited gabble, under canopies
with wine, the night refreshed by bursts of rain,
has fled with morning’s groan to higher ground.
Gone, the breathless swagger stalking our words,
banishing obstacle and barrier.
Gone, those gauche and brash pretensions, first born,
remember, when we hid far from the world;
years lived cloistered away from awkward truths,
homes made, briefly, in ivory towers
surrounded by moss-buttered quadrangles.
Now, in this yammering of city hours,
it seems unreal, a place that should not be,
where full breasts and naked legs are lit by
candlelight and fat lips drip Pinotage,
tempting the evening to finish in
rented rooms, making wild love to strangers.

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Poem: This Week’s Snow

This Week’s Snow

It buried all beneath a
blanket of little white lies,
each flake guilty of
momentarily erasing
all our broken truths – a
cracked road, a crumbled
wall, the spill of yesterday’s
life from an up-turned bin –
and in communion with
the great pretence of
all things clean and new.


And even as we danced like
mad and, with joy, like children,
made our own untruths – to
stay away and steal a day –
we knew our feet would scuff
and press and churn to ruin,
that brightest white would
turn to grey and, once more,
with sudden chill, we recalled
the lies we tell, how snow is
never liquid paper for the soul.

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Poem: A Drunk Lover Of Words

The Drunk Lover Of Words

 

I should write, in this fug of

alcohol and dreams and snow,

with words like ripe cherries

waiting to be plucked and eaten,

sweet and sour and stony-hearted.

 

This should be my Ulysses, my Emma,

my Don Quixote, my Scoop, my

Lolita, my Lucky Jim, my Austerlitz,

my Clarissa, my Catch-22, my Nausea, my

Jane Eyre, my Heart of Darkness.

 

I should write, in this haze of

bravura and need and dust,

with words like rare jewels

yearning to be shaped and polished,

bright and hard and beautiful.

 

This should be my Entirely, my Howl,

my Dover Beach, my V, my

Still I Rise, my Life Is Fine, my Brown Penny,

my America, my Dream Deferred, my Romance, my

Always, my Deaths and Entrances.

 

I will write, in this riot

of caffeine and lust and night,

with words like cut arrows

aching to be nocked and loosed,

straight and true and hitting home.

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Poem: A Commute Diverted

A Commute Diverted

We shoved and shuffled

in this brighter morning,

blue skies and sun

belying warmth,

cloudy breath and

huddled shiver an

overture to our opera

of epithets and sighs:

a tragi-comic Tannhäuser,

on West Ham’s platform stage.

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Poem: Old Pictures Prompted By A Morning’s Frost

Old Pictures Prompted By A Morning’s Frost

A sepia dawn reveals

a two-tone world,

surrendering colour to

frost’s brush,

reminding us of

long ago, of men in

hats with scythes

and Threshing Bees.


A cruel cold heralds

a quiet kill,

testifying intent with

frost’s knife,

reminding us of

long ago, of men in

helms with guns

and Yellow Legs.

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Poem: The Beggar Girl

I often wonder in more generous moments if the colossal indifference we, as a society, show the homeless – particularly those forced to scavenge an existence from the streets – is because of the fear we experience in recognising that there is the finest line between the life we live and the life we could live if just one or two things changed.

We often fail to see the human being, with hopes, dreams and aspirations that now ekes out an existence on our streets. Somehow he or she is less than human. And sometimes we see the most violent reaction to a person asking for coin to survive. There is an automatic assumption that they are a scrounger or criminal, that they want the money for drink or drugs (and if they do, that in and of itself is a reason not to give them money). We are more comfortable with attaching a label.

I have struggled to reconcile street living with the values of a civilised society.

I still can’t make it fit.

The Beggar Girl

She appals and disgusts,

this beggar girl,

croaking and coughing

down on the pavement,

thin fingers

groping from her

nicotine threads,

a skin-sack of bones,

heaped in her corner,

trolling our evenings for

pity and silver.


She angers and provokes,

this beggar girl,

shaking and stinking

down on the pavement,

sunken eyes

searching from her

spit-stained hood,

like piss holes in snow,

dead in her skull,

jabbing our consciences with

hunger and shivers.


She defies and disturbs,

this beggar girl,

whining and weeping

down on the pavement,

once alive –

dancing with her

sister and friends,

swimming in an ocean,

eating floss in the wind,

imagining her future of

chances and lovers.


She confronts and questions,

this beggar girl,

pleading and praying

down on the pavement,

now dying –

tiring from our

fearful silence,

forgiving embarrassment,

appealing for release,

grasping her moments of

softness and giving.