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      gratitude I if I had to tell you about my friend John he’s got a daughter, same age as mine he’s listening to GoGo Penguin in his favourite chair nothing else about his day is optimal but he’s leaning forward, head in prayer there’s a lot of...

      The Half-a-man The giant statue in the main square is weeping sky-blue and sun-yellow tears. Later, leaf-green, then blood-red…soon a technicolour dreamcoat’s worth of crying. Only, this is real. Overnight, the statue loses a leg, next, a finger,...

      I am Jealous of the Rain   smug smug rain has millennia to finish sculpting could take six lifetimes over the angle at the brink of a whorl smirking smug smug rain invites us to see its progress feels no need to grant us insight or god forbid ask...

      Carrie Silverwood They thought she looked familiar when she arrived at their door they’d met her before    somewhere she mentioned friends and places they knew she had fond memories    maybe they did too could she stay a week or two if they had...

      Wishes that Became Small in The Hospital   There are other mosques where the prayers are thrown louder and prostrations stranded without limit There was a subtle, almost imperceptible fear about the ego that is often exchanged as well as desires...

      Cleaning the cooker Dismantling the burners, part inside part. So many meals scorched onto them as dark fat, the week’s routine teatimes. Here someone’s spilt toffee sauce, now transformed to carbonised grit, here hard grains of uncooked rice from...

      The 7.14 The 7.14, the train I always take, it arrives empty from the depot so I always get a seat, the interiors are Christian Lacroix and lights ambient lavender blue, just right for the not- morning person who looks at suburbs that roll by...

      …walking on one of those sunny January afternoons before the light goes and warm – a warm breeze, can you believe it – and ploughed fields and sun on soil and you press play, the song you first heard and loved a few days before on a boxset, and...

      Sad Streets and Side Streets My dad is a sad man— I've said this in another poem only it wasn't me, it was Dad pretending to be me which is a thing he does. (that said I have thought it before, more than thought, I know he's a sad man)— but I...

      Matters Arising Did you know that if you don’t speak in the first ten minutes, you actually cease to exist? The fat of the universe will eat itself and you will be a breathless speck, rattling a pencil. So speak, repeat the bloodless phrase from...

      Nature Morte The funereal bouquet falls away from itself: sepals are the first to sag, then chrysanthemums drop to the floor like pom-poms. Petal tips and leatherleaf shrink, becoming brittle to the touch. Anthers fur into pollen grains speckling...

      Michael ‘A locked garden is my love.’ Song of Solomon When I think of Michael I think of ivory, of the epicene torso of a wounded Christ rising from a loosening loincloth with Pre-Raphaelite lilies; of how he made me stop so Allegri’s Miserere...

      Twilight in the Forestry Board Garden How easily a willow, loitering by the river, impersonates a figure turning, in the act of asking for directions, or simply wondering whether to step into the water. In twilight things grow fluid, lose their...

      The Earl of Charleville’s Forest The grounds of my local ascendancy castle, a favoured haunt for joggers. As I trot along the ancient path lined by centenarian oaks and beeches I imagine himself on his postprandial walk accompanied by his loyal...

      Is That Really How To Do It? A seat and shelter commemorating the Tolpuddle Martyrs was erected in 1934 by the wealthy London draper Sir Ernest Debenham. Transporting half a dozen Dorset men on trumped-up evidence: the gentry’s way of thwarting...

      Bee Dress After Girl with a Bee Dress image by Maggie Taylor For your sixteenth birthday, you got a dress made from a swarm of live bees, pulled in at the waist with a drawstring, which you were made to wear on special occasions. If you refused to...