LOVE POEM

I love the cool simplicity of you

that you're not complicated,

that I know how to please you

and the shape of happiness today

will be the same in a year.

I love the way you wake and stretch

towards the promise of morning,

that neither unkindness nor injustice

have tainted or diminished you.

You are spring dawn perfume

the suggestion of distant c...

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MARKET DAY

Old rules drew lines in sand:

the pub, now half the terrace

is no-go land for smokers

lest lungs be compromised

yet hang the social distancing.

Strategies concocted overnight,

Larkin's pessimism eclipsed,

made almost safe and innocent

by this dictator virus dealing

dystopias of fashionable masks.

Amidst confusion, market folk

are milling, br...

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IN SEARCH OF A SUBJECT

Brought up on fish fingers

and church on Sunday.

A lawnmower land

of new beginnings.

Robin Hood and Batman

carried the day.

Not from here, nor there;

not middle-class or worker

and wrong accent

as my part-time pals

would remind me

and not much good at fighting

or football or maths.

Enamoured of the pen

from an early age,

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TIME TRAVEL

I'd love to travel back:

feel the sweet warmth of mints

inside my mouth in 1890,

lick Victorian ice-cream,

follow that monochrome lad

who just slipped round the corner

into the rest of his life.

Granddad when an urchin

stole rides, he said, just clinging

to a horse-drawn carriage

then after smashing windows

police rang the doorbell at night;

...

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PLAYING SOLDIERS

Our armies are lined up:

facing off across the carpet,

generals on fine horses

presiding from behind the ranks.

My uncle launches an attack:

sends his infantry forward

then scatters then dead

across no-man's land

for dramatic effect.

They die so easily, I think.

handfuls of cheap life

sacrificed in the war zone.

Later, watching TV

we get n...

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KEITH FORDYCE AND A PHOTO OF MY PARENTS

A first kiss on the battlements

with your daughter's friend

while everyone drank downstairs

and Harry Worth for company

as my father hopped around

taking snapshots of actors.

You interviewed celebrities,

hosted music shows and quizzes

but looked better on screen

than in the cold flesh of reality

pottering unshaven, hung-...

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LA CONCHA

The bank robber is a gentleman

raising a towel for his love to dress.

I wake some way down seashell beach

while Rick still snores behind me.

Bags rolled tight, we enter a bar,

slump on stools in a line, all four

staring at our reflections in the long

mirror behind the steel counter.

Jesus spreads arms wide over the bay

and we are down to out last p...

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STRAWBERRY TIME

I bought strawberries last June,

removed the stalks

and danced them in a colander

then that familiar smell

of when we worked the fields,

a radio providing sound

the hands and knees

that scraped the ground

and almost all of us on benefits

so we'd run and hide when

government spies arrived

and by five, clothes were stiff

with all that mud a...

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BEER AND ROSES

I bought two roses

and illegal lager in the park.

You donned your street persona,

told the dealer man

we didn't want them frozen,

then later, at the campsite

it all seemed a recipe for love:

the chalet with pastel walls,

a balcony rail over glittering sea.

But now you don't want roses,

the chalet's lost its charm,

that restaurant rice is...

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BARCELONA RAIN

Rain-aromas carry

memories of better days:

thieves melt into darkness,

the destitute disappear

to practise illicit trades

down narrow Gothic alleys

but we linger endlessly

in desecrated neighbourhoods

with the shallow optimism

of shining architecture.

At dawn we scan horizons,

shake droplets from hair

surrender our past,

dodge disco tou...

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