Council Houses
Our council houses
Are made palaces by some
Middens by others
Morning Mist
Morning mist.
Murky, moody, mysterious,
Magical.
All destinations are unknown,
All origins hidden.
There is no before
Or after. There is only
Here.
And where is here?
Where are we now?
Surrounded by cloud,
the fog of life,
we can see nothing,
hear nothing,
feel nothing but cold
reality.
Out beyond the magic,
beyond the mist, something
exists, but what?
What can we really know
Of what we cannot sense?
Girl On The Bus
In the middle of a shabby
council estate, a girl gets on the bus.
She is wrong.
Something about her is wrong.
She is in the wrong place. She is in the wrong
time. She wears clothes from the forties,
fifties maybe.
She is impeccable.
This is a word I never use but
it suits her, it fits her
as well as her clothes. She wears big, round
spectacles, just the right size for her roseapple
face. Blonde hair curls out from beneath a
hat, I don’t know the style name, it is plain,
like something a flapper would wear. Her jacket,
lincoln green, is cut just right, flared, resting on
her hips. Her skirt, a plaid material, faint check,
moulds to her figure. Incongruous, she wears
beatbox headphones, clamped over the hat.
She mounts the bus from a shitty street,
where I have seen shitty people do
shitty things to other people.
How did she make herself this way,
here, in this place?
She sits behind me and I
can’t look. Thinking about her, I drift off
and almost miss her when she gets up
and leaves the bus a few stops later.
I know I will never
see her again. I will never be able
to say to her,
“You are magnificent.”
Games With Friends
Playing games with friends.
It’s not about the winning,
It’s about playing.
You And You
In the darkness
In the night time
You can see yourself,
Alone, without the filter
Of other feelings and opinions
To colour you or taint you
Or paint you in a way
You would not recognise.
You can see yourself
In the dark.
There is only
You and you
And you cannot hide
From yourself.
What you know of you
Nobody else
Can ever know.
All of the bad things
The sins
Everything you’ve done wrong
Are known only to you.
Forget them.
Let them go.
They are done.
You can be a better you
From here on.
You have been
Better than you know.
Only you and you
Can change you.
Only I and I
Know how.
The Warmth Of Love
On a cold dark night
This is the heat that I need
The warmth of your love
New Liars
British elections
The same sad old set of lies
Told by new liars
I Was Wrong
Yes, I was quite wrong
Which politician says this?
They would get my vote
Not My People
Cold-hearted people
Those who think first of themselves
Are not my people
Physical Graffiti
The art of the street
Uncommonly good painting
For the common good
Do Unto Others
Do unto others
But just to be safe make sure
That you do it first
The Daily News
On television
In our warm, dry homes we see
Refugees drowning
Stark White Light
A stark white street light
Bright wet slick, a coal dark night
Dogs bark, out of sight
The Tracks We Take
The tracks that we take
Lead us to we know not what
But still we take them
Lost Days
Days spent not writing
Spent on the dutiful things
Are days lost to me
Save Yourselves
Mizzle drizzles down
The kind that soaks you right through
We must save ourselves.
Gloomy Grey Day
Another grey day
Gloomy, dark and wet again
No sign of sunshine
Morning Ritual
It takes ten minutes
From the waking morning kiss
To the slamming door
Ironed Curtain
Kitchen cafe net
Contained behind cotton wire
An ironed curtain
Autumn Dreams
Trees in the autumn time
Seem like black skeletal dreams
Of the summer time
