Rumble, rumble, mile on mile of tarmac tyres,

click - clack indicators to somewhere, lane in, lane out and

wind whishing, swishing through mile over mile of traffic.

Traffic where cranes grow tall and cones flock on heavy hills and race-away flats,

until a gamer mis-dodges lanes and an HGV smacks its tonnage and corkscrews the car.

Behind we screech in, and a trailer splits, spilli...

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Hot heat cosmic dust hazes windshields on scorchio waydays to say

the journey fades with heat fatigue.

The quiet shaded burrow of tranquility beneath the berried hedgerow

beckons home.

Oh! To suck the oxygen off chlorophyll leaf, lick glassy dew from grassy tips,

hear birds quaver with quivering syrinx and feel my own feet upon the ground.

Memories rush in, vivid as holidays.

...

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Staggering beside the carts, like dull warhorses,

we stumble along endless tracks and mud-souped ditches,

always stooped, intent upon the next step.

Rattling behind, grisly chains of disarticulated bones,

tied by tendons and ligaments, trail beyond past horizons,

 a century of war.

Rainbows always cry.

The holly bears a bloody fruit.

All victors ethically vanquished.

But...

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I have a youtube rendition by Dave Nachmanoff who plays, sings and wrote the tune at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1biOUBhYm6Y

I wrote the poem and had the idea of the tune 33 years ago but never got round to the song due to not being musical. My daughter and her friend kindly acted the younger couple!

Loves Insane

Mondays are mundane

and I wouldn’t choose Tuesdays too,

Wednesdays...

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Come, light a match with

tingling fingers to ignition.

Flames kindle and prance in petalled shades of romance,

or burn like the sun.

Love is fire,

No fire is safe.

They burn like mischief and adventure,

like winter shoots trembling under Spring's dark crust,

bursting up with exuberance.

Love is like that too.

Love is gentle, love is kind

love is forceful, love is b...

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Prophets in disguise

Search the skies, oh so wise,

Tears, like atoms, don’t decay

Love, like photons, light the way.

A babe against a warmy chest

Dreamt of nets filled with fish

Whilst flight across sand and seas

Brought the donkey to his knees.

All mixed up in snow and ice,

Discarded plastics choke Christmas mice;

We, fat as turkeys, but leaflet thin,

Hear churche...

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How can love go so wrong?

We shone like the space station in the sky.

Her gentle eyes, hers soft sweet skin were like winning the lottery to me

Her rose bud lips, her leaf soft hair

We walked like deer across the hills

How can love go so wrong?

I had a wife but now she’s dead. She was like a fire for me,

 When she went, I felt the cold, the empty rooms all alone.

...

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Do you know it’s her birthday?

She might come out tonight, depends on the chemo,

treatment end is in sight.

My son has left for Uni,

he messaged today to say  he’s making lots of friends.

You’ll miss him being away.

And the wind blows softly

 and the rain falls lightly

 and we’ll never want for water on the moors

It’s not funny when you haven’t got a po...

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The sun is shinin' on the leaves,

The squirrel's chasin' through the trees

But I don’t need to get high cos I’m trippin on love.

He reads me like a kindle book

Powers me down and reboots me up

But I don’t need rechargin’ cos I’m trippin on love

Like eagles high across the sky

We soar together, with you I fly

No need to get high

Cos I’m trippin’ on love

No need to get ...

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Vote out with the cat she kills too many birds

Out with the dog, she's too many turds.

Vote out with cars with executive names and 

in,in, IN with more bicycle lanes.

Vote out with litter and in with bins,

Out with tyrants and in with love-ins.

Out with poor paths, wheelchairs have had enough

Out with hate and have I said? in, in, IN with love, love, love!

Out with money an...

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Smart slick sick phones

deliver explosive images and quavered words 

with personal ads to

war fatigued classes -

though not so fatigued as the dead.

And the pictures speak personally

to some ill insane

with ideas of reference

and persecution. 

Text - messaging

"Go, go, get them for me'

and the vulnerable ill

Go for the kill.

In the scrambled highway...

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Its Saturday night at the taxi rank

street angels are steering girls to the cabs;

legs over tits like a Picasso and

it’s wild, and it’s laughter, and songs are buzzin’.

So can you hear the people weeping?

can you see the children dying?

All you knew was love, Alan, all you knew was love

as you drove your taxi through this world.

And the laughter and the love in t...

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He stands like Atlas,

my world upon his shoulders,

observing distant nebulae.

Some say they see the creation of stars

But we see children of the greater helix.

Suns and moons pull the tides

 up and down the shores,

 Bringing time to our days and nights.

Some say there are multitudes of invisible galaxies

But we call it being on the same wavelength.

He is my ...

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The rushing student in rabbit hat just makes the train,

the door squeezes shut and we’re off!

Hissing past winter’s flooded farms;

though We glisten like jungle leaves in a hot house –

And the smell of packed animals – Oh, the smell!

Opposite a manager taps his keyboard in novelty tiger gloves

and, stroking his whiskers, looks up and

tenses; with fixed cat stare –

And ...

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It was Christmas Eve in the Abbey

And we sat on pilgrim pew

Tomb- hedged by The Oppressed

 Or History’s Victors blessed.

The candles were all flickering

On martyrs at their rest

And the politics of certainty

Cast shadows at my feet.

The heavy door gusted open

Like musket- hammered wood,

 I retraced intent to keep the warmth

But turned at frosted breath.

The...

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Here we go -

Dredging her room and netting the hairdryer, straightners, bulging cases of clothes and IT, dismantling the computer desk, loading buckets and bleach

To squeeze the car skyscraper high

And driving through screwdriver rain

The length of England.

Scrubbed and kitted

The past, present and future  knitted with cuddly toy and pillowed dreams,

The bed now empt...

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It was a hot slipstitch day,

The swallows ran invisible thread across the sky

And farmers unpicked lines of wheat

In woven fields that stretched to 

Plump cushioned trees -

Where we lay together against dew dangled threads,

Gazing at the eye of the needle -

So distant, so warm;

Whose gentle rays pulled the grass

Til it was hedgerow high.

Then we touched: ...

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Listen for the first foot-fall:

Sunken pads in the winter snow,

The patter of ducks to bread,

Silence

As Venus hauls the sun from her bed

To drip across the sky.

Waiting for the first footing,

Heavy on the ice,

And Giggling across the carpet,

Feet spread like paeonies,

Embracing arms,

She learns to fly.

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Yesterday I weeded the strawberry bed,   

And tugged a thousand dog violets from the ground;

Their lilac flowers played the rain and

Now the swollen seeds

Blow from sprinkler heads.

My  fingers pince the brown thin leaves from strawberry base,

Grip the soil in earthy solitude,

And turn the leaf to find:

No harvestmen scuttling ‘fraid from base to base...

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Train spotters love trains, tracks, stations, sidings,

Steep cuttings, mortar, stony spaces.

Straining to observe the woosh and swoosh,

Chatter and clatter of carriage and truck

And engine names.

Buddleias spring from bridge and brick,

Colouring impossible places,

Stattoes of the railway network:

“The nine-forty to Liverpool is late,

Leaves on the line....

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There are Improvised Explosive Devices

Stuffed with cocaine fuelled erections

Scattered across London’s skyscape.

Idealised landscapes of home flicker before sanded eyes

As the sun seared flesh of maimed soldiers

Lies a long way from home.

And young war veterans fly wheelchair bound

Back to Blighted - To the arms of their mothers,

And occasionally lovers,

...

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sorry to be so dark but.......

In the days before Christmas it was warm,

 Warm as blood.

 Red berries dulled, pine cones dropped,

 Houses adorned in red, green and gold.

Hope and peace carded the walls,

Turkey and creams stuffed the fridge,

 Canned laughter the T.V.

 And everywhere there were images of birth - and a baby.

It had rained for weeks, tirele...

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The steel riveted sky of our industrial town    

Hung beyond the chaotic bricks

Of the bangle warm shops,

 Glowing in their Christmas finery.

As I wandered past, bending into the sharp edged frost,

A stranger crossed my path.

 Tide-marked shoes, a desperate eye

Empty pockets, empty values, drugs?

I knew not- an open white palm,

“Have you a gift?” he whi...

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They come from the Himalayas,

From the Russian Steppes,

The Norwegian pine forests ……. running, running, running.

Faster than sound,

Colder than glass,

Harder than rock,

Over the pond

Onto the steps,

Up to the windows,

To bush, twig and grass.

The garden quivers,

Clamps the bud to bark,

The insect to leaf ….. leaf glues tight to leaf, to leaf, to ...

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There’s a tropical isle, Gran Canaria,

Famed for sun, sea and sand –

Mavis and Fred flew over,

To escape Lancashire’s cold winter land.

Mavis said, “Eee, ‘tis hot in these woolly tights,

Let’s find summer shorts that flatter me bum

Throw away beiges and blacks,

Colour up, like the sky and the sun!”

She returned like a red hibiscus

(And that were only her face...

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SOLAR ENERGY

Iced winter cuts the frosted day from his block

And inks the trees against the crow- quavered sky.

Beside the river, fog mists the snapshot fields -

The swirling ghosts of slaughtered sheep.

Night draws back her tent to aqueous cream;

The nose-numb walker squints at pink- ribboned dawn,

Knees grate on hoof- hard furrowed track.

A lemon disc rises gla...

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Now I know the happy teeth and smiling faces, The banana stained coat and tottering paces, The hand that grasps the latent breast, The head that snuggles upon my chest, The feet that curl around my waist, Her body softly leant against. Was there ever a child so good, I thank God for my motherhood.

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The Hung Parliament.  May2010

May’s long days light the leaves,

Unfurling from the woodland trees,

At roadside, garden, park and wood,

The lime, horse-chestnut, last the ash.

The buds relax and sepals fall,

 Discarded cradles drift on paths.

 The midges rise to meet the sap,

 High lies the nests, the drey, the starch.

Below slim saplings bend and ...

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 Note:  Around 1980 a  group of streets in Manchester were being pulled down. They were  named after the days of the week, the occupants rehoused in modern high rises. These were not  successful and have been superceded much more successfully by  town houses. This poem is written about their demolition.

Goodbye To Thursday Street.

Under the bulldozer the terraced streets rushed,

 A ...

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I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Parliamentarian: Election May 2010

with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan:"Pirates of Penzance" " I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major General"

 I am the very model of a modern parliamentarian,

I've information on Iraq and even on Afghanistan.

I've met the Queen of England and can quote our fights historical,

From Thatcher, Blair and Br...

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January 2010.I. Anybody.

In Africa the football hits the grass

Like a big, congealed blood clot

And bright young men fall over injured,

 Or blanch and die.

The African cup helicopters are in HD on my TV,

 But I am outside shovelling snow.

The airline bomber sets his underpants on fire

And a man is stabbed in a London street.

 Fanatics daily bomb Pakista...

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Kids In Buckets: The School Run.

Splutter, splatter drips the rain

Down the gutter and window pane –

The journey to school will be so slow,

The traffic will just grow and grow!

But Gran and I have hatched a plan

To speed to school

(She’s resourceful my Nan),

She pushes me off in a large plastic bucket,

Bobbing down the alley,

Sailing past traf...

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Waiting For Christmas.

(Note:  I advise explaining the meaning of the word “undulate”: to move like a wave, before reading to a child.)

The cool of winter blows past my window,

The trees stand like pillared shadows,

The sun sinks early after school,

Soon it will be Christmas.

My sister and I run to the frosted bus stop,

Where iced leaves glint bronze and silver,

Then onto the bus and to...

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The West Window:

A Saga Of York and Constantine

Background if interested: This is a poem about Constantine who was with his father, Constantius, Caesar of the Western Roman Empire, in York when he died in 306. Constantine was then proclaimed Augustus of the West by his troops and later, after defeating Maxentius (Roman Emperor at the time) in battle becomes the first Christian Roman Emperor, la...

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PRO-ARTICULATED LADDERS 

(for those who feel the shopping catalogues overstate their products.

Image: allthe sky.com)

Insomnia wakes the dreamer,

 Blinking through double-glazed eyes,

 Up from the warmy bed

She searches winter’s frosty skies.

Padding across carpeted floors,

 Past polished dresser

And out of the door,

 She carries her pro-articulated ladder.

Up against the eves the...

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Horse Power

Lines of seething traffic stop and sprawl

Behind the lamb lorry, overturned,

Frustration building behind the wheels

As lambs tumble into sunlight and space. 

Horses under the bonnet stamp their feet.

Blue flashing lights speed past,

To round up lambs for the slaughter,

White soap suds swirling on the road,

 An SOS of bleats and baas. 

Under the bonnet  horses prick  their...

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( this is not about my daughters, see comments below. Please read it as a romance...)

I don’t need a telescope to know you’re a star

I don’t need a microscope to see what you are

It’s clear to me

It’s clear as day

You’re perfect in every way.

I don’t need a bank to know what you’re worth

I don’t need an atlas to see you are my Earth

It’s clear to me

It’s clear as day

Yo...

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On Taking My Daughter to Uni.

  We whirly burly roar in stacked hairy chug -chug to

Teensy flat with drill and measure

For cheeslet space.

Oh, bright-jewelled daughter listen well and

Bury the lardy sofa and face-book mats for

Garanding booklet space with

Eyes that grip the spaceous green trails

Of dinting groveous thoughts!

 Beware the smootherous amorit

That hungles hearts in shiny bl...

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