Sunday 31 July 2011

Saturday 30 July 2011

Connections

It still fills me with delight to know
if I get up early enough
I can converse with Michael in Mexico,
Gita or Mike in Alabama
and receive photos from Kristine in New York

Friday 29 July 2011

July's missed and now remembered stones

12th:  Rare for me not to have that last-night-before-I-leave
final, cowardly thought that I don’t wish to go to sleep in an alien bed
and even though I fumbled with the airport tax machine,
anticipation that I will cope remained full strength

13th:  And fully justified because I wake up with a smile in Alabama
cocooned in warmly welcome and so easy to be here.

14th:  Both anticipation of the end of day, the smaller widened circle
tempered with regret that we must leave this place.

15th:  Waking in a bedroom with my daughter
last seen last month on a station in Berlin.

16th:  A second day of writers, more new faces to set beside their words,
reading, writing all together, eating too and then so very, very late to bed
and absolutely clueless as to what time I might  awake.

17th:  Knowledge that today I leave for home lies heavy,
staggered though the parting is.
A day begun with Highland Park and ending with a Maker’s Mark.

18th:  A day bereft that doesn’t really seem to properly exist
flying high and heading east across the Atlantic

Cross trainer diversion

Their first time at the gym, a couple
with a Fitness Trainer in attendance.
He moderately fit and keen to show his capability.
She sluggish, sulky, lumpy, clearly there on sufferance,
and suffering.

Thursday 28 July 2011

Without scale

Without scale, the desiccated, split and damaged fig tree leaf
becomes an aerial view of urban destruction,
a well-inked with burnt sienna collagraph plate.

Wednesday 27 July 2011

A fairness of rooks

One magpie, six rooks.
Five content to let the fight progress fairly,
one to one,
until he looks like losing.

Tuesday 26 July 2011

On my way to buy a morning paper #3

Large, empty plastic bottles
spill out of recycling bag.
Don’t they know how therapeutic
it is to stamp them flat?

Monday 25 July 2011

Under new management

Every day for a month now
the windows wide open
to let out the stink of the previous owners

Sunday 24 July 2011

Joust

A pagentry of or and argent
a mediaeval trumpet fanfare of murrey
brought to mind by honeysuckle flowers
and Boutell’s barely read and mis-remembered ‘Heraldry’

Saturday 23 July 2011

Night sweats

Even when I've access to the whole of the bed
the sheets lose their cool too quickly

Friday 22 July 2011

Ode to a solitary pansy

Pale face showing tracks of bloodstained tears
solitary and despondent gaze across the black expanse of tarmac
no longer unaware of your misbegotten seeding.

Thursday 21 July 2011

Seen from a balcony in North Carolina

Bracken ancient, arrowed tip resting on part circle drawn in concrete by the dripping from above.
Leaves blinking with a rain-hit tic, a cat's ear twitch at stimulus unknown.

Wednesday 20 July 2011

I don't mind solitude but ...

Having landed at Teesside on Monday night
I did not feel grounded
until he phoned me from Germany on Tuesday

Tuesday 19 July 2011

eight hours wait at Schipol

Startlingly seen from above on an escalator:
an apparently, abnormally short-faced man with protruding tongue
subsequently seen to be wearing his sunglasses on top of his hairless head

Monday 11 July 2011

Awaiting an opportunity to dance the polka

Silver, semi-spherical static raindrops on the windscreen
circles echoing and overlaid
by reflected rowan berry clusters,
green and orange.

Sunday 10 July 2011

Saturday 9 July 2011

Friday 8 July 2011

Heard from the garage below my room

Decreasing husky rasp of door support in metal runners
Sharp click as catch slides over aluminium lip
Burble from the radio becomes a sudden silence
He’s finished playing motorbikes for the day

Thursday 7 July 2011

Family history

If I prised up, intaglio-inked and subsequently printed
any one of the kitchen cork floor tiles,
would the resulting image tell the story
of the thirty years we’ve so far trod?

Wednesday 6 July 2011

On my way to buy a morning paper #2

A rough, tobacco-damaged, dirty chuckle
conjured up a much-loved and delinquent aunt
who took me apple-scrumping when I was eight

Tuesday 5 July 2011

Heard from the garden

Distorted megaphone voice
indecipherable china-sharded words
brief silence
then the grass-blown screams of children
         
            ... sports day at the local primary school

Monday 4 July 2011

On my way to buy a morning paper


Iridescent rainbow in the gutter
red orange yellow holographic shine
closer, blue green indigo bedazzles
courtesy of Benson Hedges

Sunday 3 July 2011

Saturday 2 July 2011

Seen in a new light

daily black dog walking man
discussed Caravaggio
in the restaurant last night

Friday 1 July 2011

Not a silver lining, but a red?



Last night’s spilled wine, imperfectly wiped,
a pattern of alarm on the carpet
and an illustrated tale