delivering

the balding, red man in the fleece knows not his significance,
ignorant heavy-rimmed glasses sliding down his nose
as he stoops to shovel paper adverts through my letter-box
nothing means nothing to him, nothing just is him
but he is not him to me, the brass clattering of his actions
is a synchronicity, a timing and a disturbance
and as i race to the window, we both feel a moment
of juncture and separation because our eyes meet
and we have been caught.

back to bed

a beginning, amongst twelves and ones
paracetamol hunger after noon,
i have got myself enraged,
forced to pay for bread with coppers
and sit in my sulking room
where, in a moment’s time,
i shall upset a mug of tea
into the table’s grain
at which point i shall question
the sort of day
it will turn out to be.

does god see his shadow?

fascination: questions that
do not require an answer,
not merely rhetorical though,
they do not contain one either.

the interest arises from what is evoked,
in the positioning it achieves
placing concepts side by side
god and mortal
mutual exclusivity

within a sentence they are bound.

lower case revolution?

vocation
we are the acoustic petite
sounding out the small things
while others bring home
a working day’s wage.

i go to therapy and say
it is the small things
like conversations
that really scare me.

tv drama
sad, moving television
your grandiosity is known
to be a hum of red green blue.

headline
death comes quick!
it says so here
in the guardian.

poetry petri
this non-entity
is devious, cemented,
clever, cultured, experimental
but a non-entity.

what an end!
foolish man with too much debt
ignores sensible precepts by
unfurling extension cable
turning on plug-socket
and getting into bath
while clutching toaster like baby.

occupied post

i have been coloring my lies with particular care recently.
i have been fully aware of the lines, and kept within them,
moving the pen in only two directions,
neatly overlapped parallels at a degree.

this is how i got this job.

idle chatter

- is there nothing left to say?
silence
- please?
silence
- i find talking helps. let’s open up a dialogue.
silence
- conversation breeds mutuality.
- what?
- nothing.

jazz mess

drinking bottles of
wine under a pagoda
last night and now i

turn in shower
and seek window
outlet, raising head

towards ache,
away from ache
without escape

my head
is larger on
the inside than

on the outside
it looks tiny
from a distance

i think my eyes
might fall out.

friend expenditure

paid out our furious evening duplicating ourselves
across town pulling transport and we, fleeting, making it
through doors and around tables donating the good words
and laughing just as loud as the rest,
they were quick to forget that we had arrived,
because we were just there.

the poetics of conversation held stunned in eager mouths,
while revolutions appear on stage, ever altering musicians
aligning upon a axis of longevity and tribute
raising glasses and tempos in the name
of the anniversary of a naming ceremony,
we two had something to celebrate that night
because we were just there.