How strong am I today!

Says the wind in the chimney

Thrashing and trashing your trees

Whirling up leaves and buffeting

Birds like they’re being chucked away

By an unseen hand. Listen to the rain!

Listen to the rain drumming on your tiles

Causing you damage householder

Says the wind in the chimney.

You can’t stop me now!

Sings the wind in the chimney...

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The deceased’s last meal,

(Said the man with antiseptic hands

And water drumming in his metal sinks)

Was a cheese and tomato omelette

Cheap Red Leicester, mass-grown tomato,

But the eggs, they may have been free-range,

In keeping with his professed principles.

The deceased’s last words, we’d like to think,

Were something stirring for the Empire, but,

An...

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My entry for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Competition, 2012

http://tinyurl.com/5ttsyy2

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Who has the occult knack of materialising

When we need him most; like a wizard,

A pirate, or the fairy king in a pantomime.

Grinning, and with that twinkle in his eye,

He appears in doorways, denying his years,

laden with jars of pickles, home-made;

Tomatoes, rhubarb, pippins from his trees, in carriers, and

Balancing an improbable Geranium, in a pot.

...

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With anthracite, you need to get your airs just right

I muse to myself, digging the shovel in the bright

Copper scuttle of flaky black diamonds, and a flick of the hand

Hefts them right to the back of the grate; satisfied,

Happy that orange flames will lick, I spin the regulator,

Close the front, and leave the stove.

And go around the house, shutting the doors,

...

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I have noticed John, my neighbour’s apples

Bobbing on the branches in the wind; grown suddenly heavy

And tinted rouge, in a green vista down his orchard,

Across the garden, outside my window.

Their leaves, these apple-trees,

Now crisping sere with morning frost,

Conspired all summer; transformed showers to juice

Pips, stalks and sucrose, and there they are, now...

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We had no words for “metaphor” or “simile”

That night in the hall; the fire’s smoke

And crackle blazed colour into our faces,

The Skald sang ‘Edwr ran after the hart,

As swift as the river runs’, and that was that.

We feasted on its muscles, lights and guts

Ate ourselves full to stupor, then we drank,

Drenching our lips with honey of the kill;

Drew Edwr on the wa...

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The Haserot Angel

A paradox: the bronze eyes, blank of all compassion

Yet still weep, or seem to weep –

It all comes down to if you think

That everything you see, is all there is.

Explained away, it’s molecules reacting –

The stain of rain, just acid on metal,

Through a hundred smogs, etched supposed pain

For all those downturned torches, like the one

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DREWTON TUNNELS

Fourteen was a magical summer, sun hotter than

Any summer since, grass more green and more intense,

Green in the nose, as well as in the eyes,

And the chalk brighter and more white, even, than the fluffy clouds

Piled like confectionery on the horizon,

The sky bluer, and your adolescent girlfriend

More achingly beautiful every day,

Breasts bu...

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My old missus is a scary lady

She’s like Myra Hindley crossed with Ian Brady

Sits all night and channel-hops

Oxfam and Ebay are her favourite shops

Eats piccallilli, straight from the jar

Fell asleep and crashed the car

She knows where the wild things are

Her eyes are nothing like the sun

She never baked one single bun

Hardly ever ironed a shirt

Once sewe...

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An English Hairbag Foresees His Death

I feel completely crap today -

There’s nothing more to say:

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere upon the plate below

Face-down among the sprouts; a heart

attack’s the current way to go.

In twenty-seventeen, the pump

Of muscle underneath my ribs

Will have a sudden dicky-fit:

I’ve shook a seven...

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Scar Tissue

“Then shall he strip his sleeve, and show his scars” – Henry V

I might get this scar, pink, livid, from my operation,

tatooed, turned into an Aboriginal lizard, perhaps;

Or, maybe not: I’ve almost grown to love it for itself

And not disguised, its furled skin-worm

Bisecting my navel, complete with stitch holes

Maybe we should love oursel...

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