On my way to buy a morning paper #80

Traffic louder than expected
Cropped council mower circles in the grass
Full moon growing slowly larger
as it declines.

On my way to buy a morning paper #79

Hydrangea bush

Over-crowded blooms

suffocating venous crimson  

crushed and crinkle-edged with gold

leaves poison gossip green.

Holding the potential drama

       of a Victorian drawing room,

On my way to buy a morning paper #78

Beneath a sorry-looking tree of unknown type

(dusty diseased leaves, green berry clusters)

a circle of crisp and huddled leaves;

colour chart for painting virgin nipples.

Apparently there's a heatwave further south

Sky the colour of unchanged bed-sheets
from which someone rose daily
returned to every night
for days enough to count as half a year.
Weekend lie-ins
occasional masturbation
merging with the slough of skin
and grubby rare-washed feet.

On my way to buy a morning paper #77

A short man (squat?)
black-clad
(impression of a cloak)
shiny black curls
clutching several bits of shopping
and singing, deep-voiced and loud
Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah'.

From my window

The vividness of a wet red car
against the new-soaked green of fresh-mowed lawn
and baby hawthorn leaves

On my way to buy a paper #76

Not a knocked-down crow
feathers riffing in the wind
but an abandoned black umbrella
discarded crumpled in the road.

Overstaying their welcome

October's crisp and golden leaves,
flown from the tree
landed, rain-soaked and impacted
on tarmac so hard
as to grow leopard spots,
are now merely ghosts of themselves

7.30 am

Sudden blast of early sun
illuminates the houses opposite
like Mother Nature's testing spotlights
before the morning rush.

On my way to buy a paper #75

Gulls greet rare pink clouds with a fat bottomed, triple chuckle from the roof ridge.