Do not describe the sunset, regardless. Never
write about the buttery moonrise,
especially near the beginning: everyone
just switches off, and if they don’t
they should.

Do not mention war; any of the many.
Those possibilities are nothing to do with me.
They belong to others, to a family friend
who knows mountainsides blooming
great mushrooms of dust.

Everyone has had enough of trees...

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On the island’s south side

a solitary town fizzes

like overloaded circuitry

on dark, motherboard hills.

Across a sticky, smooth-tiled walkway

an amusement arcade spills

a test of sexiness based on how clammy your palm is

and the hitting game.

You spin in coins so they register

on sensors worn numb. 

A padded st...

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In cars, I'm him.
I make the shapes he makes –
one-handing the steering wheel
as if grasping some mane,
I cup the gear stick bulb
like it's a brandy bowl
and coast to junctions
clutch disengaged
scared as sharks to stop,
though on open road
I’ll box in better cars than mine,
a sudden stickler for the limit
I slap down and squeeze your knee
celebrating damming flow,
c...

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On the island’s south side

a solitary town fizzes

like overloaded circuitry

on dark, motherboard hills.

Across a sticky, smooth-tiled walkway

an amusement arcade spills

a test of sexiness based on how clammy your palm is

and the hitting game.

You spin in coins so they register

on sensors worn numb. 

A padded stump protuberates.

The s...

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It’s 1:30 am.

He takes me away from the others unpacking,

opens the front door to the first night

in our first home and squirts WD-40

over both hinges, explains

WD is water dispersal,

NASA concocted this stuff

to keep fields of rockets

from turning orange, then burnt umber.

He heard this on his pocket radio

cycling along blustery North London roads

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One time it was gourds

that surfaced like Montgolfier submarines

in her pea and spud patch.

Bright lumps and dumplings,

they were too-much as fondant, or nougat.

Too good to be true.

Hollow to knock on, as if containing corridors,

when they toughened

into chilly cocks and succulent truncheons

she cupped them in turn and twisted

each from...

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Thanks. I've got another poem from my collection, Welcome back to the Country, published by Seren.

This is about relationships, UFOs and comeuppance!

The (very) end

Now, if a fabulous UFO

broad as a postcode

dropped from the clouds and hovered

so tower block and office block aerials

tickled the anti-clockwise rotation of its gun-metal underside,

...

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I have a poem from my collection published by Seren on my site at www.grahamclifford.co.uk

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