Inside, in the half-light, the iron rot took hold.
Forgotten service–obsolete.
Salt-coin neglect.

The money flowed inland,
Moored on an hourglass choke.
No one told the sea.

Out of morning
a misted light,
glowing fire
in the air.

A very long time ago

Stephen Fry’s godfather, the
Justice, Sir Oliver Popplewell
Who chaired the inquiry
Into the Bradford City

Beneath my armpit lives a Sinbad the size of a thumb.
His imagination feeds through an umbilical cord tied to my womb.
Now and then, people hear him speaking through a giant microphone—
Singing,
Cracking jokes,

In the portacabin that morning, men smoked
and looked at last week’s paper again.
There was no water to fill the urn.
The first job – to get connected

A blustery day –
the wind too strong for kites
or for lifts to the sky.
“To a thoughtful spot,” it cites
and pins me to the earth.

except this burnt red vase.
Hand shaped in the muffled roar,
devouring flame in the furnace’s mouth.