I awoke, on the beach
at Durdle Door
Pebbles jabbing their bony fingers
into the knuckles of my spine
Tear tracks make maps of cheeks
a brew of salt and sand
that cannot easily be brushed away

The alarm call of gulls above
they want my chips
But it’s 4am
and these hands are empty
with swollen palms
and throbbing skull
I have nothing to offer
them… or anyone

The busy sea endlessl...

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Floating on my back
weightless in the turquoise water
off the shores of Koh Phi Phi
Been living hard, too long
All these years without a break
Now, I watch the crust of duty
gently peeled from damp eyelashes
Invisible hands, unburdening me
O, never let me go…

The water’s warm against my wrists
joyous tears kissing the brine
caught upon the tide of living
gratefully tangled in this un...

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This city of rooftops
this tangle of streets
Houses perched 
upon hillsides
This fragmented view
a colour sample chart
of various greys
Choose any shade…

A ghoulish wind rattles 
shivering window panes
as remnants of noisy leaves 
shuffle down crooked lanes
Frozen snow 
blocking passageways
I wiggle my toes
to keep the blood flowing

Between five rivers
a hill I rise, or will s...

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In stop-motion, through a liminal space
a corridor of time without definition
Shuffling, herded by invisible hands
the creeping crawl across a blank ocean
from the mainland of experience
to the vagary of unknown islands

There’s no measure of the distance gone
or the length of journey still to travel
This formless, featureless landscape
drags and expands in all directions
The weak will ...

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The remnants of a myth
torn like sodden paper
A worker in the world of words
now where are your opus lines
where does your gilded poetry reside
A hooded figure
cloaked by Pessall Brook
looking for lighthouses
searching for the sea

O, how did you go
this far wrong?

Show me your pages
blackened with rhymes
your songs of tides
and ships to far away islands
Thunder clapping above
r...

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A midnight bar, chatting with friends
Between the architecture
and white-noise thump
of the background music
Between my lack of sleep
and the alcohol in my bloodstream
there’s a conspiracy at play
Suddenly, the camera
crash-zooms into me
as all of their voices
are sucked out through a trapdoor
and I hear nothing…

I smile, a strange sparrow smile
furtive and darting
patently pained ...

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Autumn nips at my door
another year begins to come undone
Somehow, the change of light 
sends my compass spinning
I question where I am
One anchor torn
while others persist
but where to next...

Autumn brings a tenderness
to the boundary of all I feel
Somehow, this drop in temperature 
sends me reeling
I trace the path of how I got here
Quietly lost and searching
in a moment of shif...

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I see us both, in time
Two candles burning 
behind the thin pane window
of a seaside hotel

Outside, wind and rain
rage hard against the faded awnings
and the flaking paint
of this inclement town

Our flames shiver
then bloom again
Such is life
and slow slipping wax

I’m consumed with all our years
and all the storms
and all the fuel
we burned in our love

I see us both, in tim...

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The smoothness of this train
as it slips the platform’s leash
The window scene begins to blur
viewed through tear-stained eyes
A myriad of questions swirl
they smudge my addled heart
Creeping high above all else
it’s that merciless, that jagged ‘what if’

What if this 
is the last great beauty
I will ever know

Eyes hungrily study details in the cover image
letting the pages fold the...

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We are the lovers
of this kaleidoscope
this ride we’re on
As we twist, we write
of the myriad colours
the fireworks dazzling our eyes
of tears, tantrums, seering sunsets
the veins in leaves
the storms between people
beautiful and terrifying
all at once

We are the lovers
of words on lips
their taste on tongues
and turns of phrase, delicious
The flick of nib on paper
the trail of i...

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That jangling tune 
told of sweet times ahead
Children playing with hosepipes 
on hot summer streets
and gleaming bikes ridden
across freshly swept pavements
How the ice cream van 
sparked joy and hope
O, the heady idyl 
of childhood…

Now the ice cream van 
toils a different purpose
macabre and tuneless
its contents chilling
The limbs of children
parts of mothers
Lifeless figures...

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While great troubles rumble on the horizon
here is calm and peaceful
There’s love on tap
which I love to give back

And when I checked the map
that was the most beautiful part of all
and the big red arrow said

You are here
you are here and allowed 
to enjoy this moment

As fragile as a bubble
floating on the summer breeze
The preciousness of this kindness
is not lost on me

And ...

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A cigarette glows
reflected in the truck windshield
careening through the city night
These headlight beams
fruitlessly searching
for something gone
The Grand Rapids highways
never take me where I want to be
not even close

I drink awhile at Anchor bar
a quarter spinning on the table
thoughts go round, keep coming back
'til my skull's swimming too
Two more beers
heads they’re mine
t...

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On the train this morning
I sat alone, by the window
Where normally there’d be coffee, warm
and all the world’s news in my ear

Instead, I chose dry silence
I chose the undulating wildness
strobing past my view way
I chose high green hills
and glinting mirrored rivers 
I chose lone trees, centuries old
strong against the elements
I chose lambs and sheep
moving in pairs or herds
I cho...

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The streets breathe 
slow and deep
tree branches sway
in the humming heat
A quiet Sunday
a balm for all our souls

Some toil in the garden
some wander up the hill
on the edge of town
the view from here
is a kiss from God
A quiet Sunday
a balm for all our souls...

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Dawn in my existence
swaddled by unconditional love
I point towards the ceiling
a laughing baby
and my first word comes
‘light, light’
And the smile on my mother’s face
first light…

Sun broke across the rooftops
seagulls chattering overhead
As a waking town began to stir
me in my best suit, you dressed in white
Finally, we’re here
dappled in dawn light, sweet light
and the smile on...

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Taking my first girlfriend
to the pub at seventeen
Crossing the cobbles
of a gunmetal grey 
northern market town
Mitten in glove
warm in our teenage
prototype version of love
A chatterbox pint for me
a tipsy glass of white for her
and we’d find a quiet corner

Invariably, some red-faced
shaven-headed native
furtively eyes my companion
“Where do you come from?”
they’d splutter in th...

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There you were again
last night
Always dressed so well
exactly the clothes I’d choose for you
precisely the right smile
My dreams aren’t long enough
the scene shoots by
too soon

You come, you go
I long for you to stay a while
but you’ll never stay for long
Your wild mind, your hungry heart
yawn and snarl
before you turn and go
leaving me alone

Back into the night
you shuffle of...

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Though we have explored
all there is to travel
I still turn to you in awe
Those wondrous eyes
still cause my blood to race
On cruel and foggy days
all jagged nerves
and withered spirit
you lose your gravity
drifting again
on days that have no anchor

And if I must, I’ll do it tenderly
hold you through the waves
of heaving sobs
clutch your trembling hand
and we’ll fathom
the house ...

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The children howl, the house is hell
you close your eyes to cast that spell

Rising high above the endless squabbles 
to meet me down upon those sodden cobbles

The rain and fog are gently taunting
your white shirt billows, opaque and haunting

On Henrietta Street…

Two hundred stairs, do I descend
with full-beam smile to my treasured friend

These precious moments, we get to steal
...

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This melancholy fug
burrows into my bones
After delving back again
into those memories recounted
with such forensic clarity
Comes a cold blue atmosphere
a fragrant longing
and precision-tooled regret

Those searingly stark lines
old faces, wild flames
lost friendships resurrected 
I’m dropped back into the thick of things
Drifting through teenage streets
old freedoms, vintage fantasi...

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Writing a character reference
for a friend
for someone I thought I knew
to mitigate their crimes
to ease them on their future journey
humbled, kneecapped and sore
Two thoughts spring to mind…

What good have they done
and how can it be expressed
Were they always the first to lend a hand
were they always there for those in need
Which of their actions
should I recall and paint in colour
...

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With the consistency of smoke
eventually, our ghostly hands
must let go of this life
We may be thinning and fading
or still strong but cut down
However it’s done
the knot must inevitably untie

The light travelled so far
to dance upon our faces
We're alive, as nature is alive
to be strange or just to be
All that energy must return
into the freezing depths of space

Every smile, ever...

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I kick away the leaves
uncover the carved stones
And reading your names again
I let those feelings flood in

The two of you rest together
laid deep beneath the earth
There’s a tree that grows above you
and here’s me, treading my own winter

Life was in wealth, awhile
but I’ve been chasing that warmth 
for three decades now
I’m tired and my body aches

There will be fireworks tonight
...

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Lit monochrome by the moon
we dance across silver sands
The waves scrawl
like these scribbled lines
written by my yearning hand
tonight

All this turbulent energy
flung into the swirling air
Conducted by my pulsing heart
This fool, who thinks he has control
of all you do to me

A wanton wind whips up the spray
and all I want to do
is turn the beat inside my chest into
sentences sho...

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Going out to meet a friend
to be the ear to their unspooling
coughing up confusions
unpacking problems
unhappy hour
at some pub table

I’m the calm eyes
the easy conversation
pliers to cut the wire
defuse that complicated 
emotional bomb
over a couple of drinks

There’ll be no judgement
only sympathy
a gentle steer
of thoughts towards solutions
or mostly
I’ll just listen

That...

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Out on the balcony, they stood together
wind wild and rummaging through the trees
She wore nothing but the moonlight
So many wishes she could have made that night
As he wondered how she’d like it here
sewn to the pages of this brittle story

A character in a poem
timeless in a way
with him when he reads
but gone
when he closes that book again

One last act before their stories parted
...

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There’s a café down the hill
where I do my wistful Sunday dreaming
Sitting in the front bay window
hypnotised by raindrops
as they whisper against thin panes
I watch the people out in the street
pull their coats over their heads
and dash from shop to shop

Eavesdropping on the other diners
and the occasional glance towards the crossword
I let my mind wander freely
and chat with the wee...

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Walking past The Boot tonight
a warm but sunless dusk
The door was open wide
drinkers shuffling and spilling out

I think of that favourite friend
who brought me here five years ago
We played some pool, supped our beer
as he talked of his dilemma

His partner wanted children
but regrettably, he did not
she gave him ultimatums
and he wasn’t sure what to do

When the world stopped for...

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I tried to bury the fountain
along with a rainbow
but I found you in my bed again
scribbling with crayons
I tried to cover up my tattoo
all these years of printing hearts
upon my sleeve
always yearning to improve

I tried to marry another way
pass the time with some other face
put my tools back in the drawer
and step away from what’s been said
I tried to give you up
as if there were ...

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The lowest point found me
shivering in a filthy kitchen
The second day of January

I'd walked away from my old life
a lover, a home, a decade of meaning
all stripped and left upstream

The blue mind and splintered heart
of a thousand Christmas drinks
conspired behind my leaky eyes

No friends around, no work in front of me
The year loomed huge and empty
a vast and frozen lake of days

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They chatter life and love by the water’s edge
then dive into the shimmering blue
With thoughts of painting ice cream clouds
or bottling the phosphorus moon
Daylight is for dreaming 
or cooking up a stew
The waking hours are for birthing art
or making love in the hot afternoon

Tonight, there’ll be a gathering at the Dolphin café
with wine and smiles in generous measures
mosquito nets b...

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Memory is elastic
and I can’t help but stretch it
thinking back to chasing sunsets
Atop my motorbike in Thailand
enthralled and awed
complete abandon
I never believed 
that moment could be bettered
I never thought
life could be more generous

The air is hot today
frogs skitter on the pond
flowers all in bloom
A cat curled on the deck
the outstretched arms of summertime
Gentle, ease...

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These curtains don’t fit
Daybreak come too early
The drink’s still in my skin
and on that bed of marble white
I lost you from my life

The signals all conspired
the well of guilt refilled
Reality cracked wide open
spilt down the corridors of misadventure
I lost you to the dawn

Tangled in a sheet of white lies
the enemy of love
raises his black hood
smiling at the keenness of his bl...

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Erecting her easel
at the foot of the boardwalk
she mixes the paint
a hell-fire pink and crimson
and dips her brush to begin…

She paints
the end of all things
a voice lost to the fractured mind
the final moments of a life
a hand slipping away

She paints
farewell hospital conversations
her father’s beard as a cloud
she thins the blue paint with her tears
She colours in his eyes
L...

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Grief casts complex shadows
over the wilting body
You feel the fingers grasping
as sirens rise again
This fatalistic ritual
an energy made negative
and stomach knotted up
by such unhelpful thoughts

Pain rips at your sails
thunderous and wild
is it the body breaking down
a message poorly translated
The shrieking of absence
cuts deep into the gut
those hands twist and grip
the cycle...

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These paths we walk
grounded by responsibility
well-worn routine
practiced intimacy
I could only smile
when you whispered in my ear
‘Take me away from this
take me anywhere but here’

Living in the moment
it’s all we know to do
as you pepper my shoulder with kisses
my fingers explore every inch of you
You said ‘the world is a minibar
cold and empty
but now we’re blessed by this heat
...

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This love, our love
so understated
but all consuming

A stick of rock
it's written right through me
and always has been
Reaching out a hand
to feel
your hand waiting

A tide
I’ll always return
A well
I’ll always refill
your bucket
with love

All my wants, all my needs
melt into a single thought
All my hopes and dreams
collide inside the fact
you exist

I reach out my hand
...

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Some nights, I can't sleep
so, I go out walking
following the river
in my discomfort and anxiety
All too aware 
of where we're heading
winding towards that war
no one can win

I pass bonfires of guitars
funeral pyres of pianos
strings all snapped
Art must be rationed out, now
There's a faded memory of a song
from long ago
that hopeless refrain, lilts
'these are our final days'

T...

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Singing my lungs out, singing loudly
The music so carefully 
chosen for the journey
when there’s no one in the car with me

Screaming at the dashboard
wailing for the headlight beam
Wait, did I just hit that note
we’ll never know… it’s miles behind me now 

Caught in traffic 
other drivers smiling at me
if only 
they could sing the harmony

Songs of unions, songs of absence
songs o...

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As young men, we ran through this town
chasing the madness
at the bottom of every bottle
and the warmth of teenage smiles
honeyed with the promise
of new experience

Spinning from bar to bar, pushing the limits
of our bodies capacity for self-destruction
and regeneration
snow melting from our clothes
as we sat and drank and laughed
in the Christmas evening air

Tonight, we’re trying ...

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Furtively, you smile
as I dive
into your petrol green eyes
we’ve run out of words tonight

My unspeaking lips
form the shape of a silent promise
to burn
my house to the ground

For there is only 
you and me now…

And I hear the screams 
of my old way of life
And the swirl of ashes 
of somebody’s broken heart 

And a twinge of shame 
so swiftly erased 
in the rising dance 
of f...

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The neighbour's cat
brought a mouse into our garden
four limbs twitching
And from that jaw, those claws
I performed a rescue
but it was all for naught
and I tucked that little life
on the compost stack
hoping it found a comfy spot
to shuffle off

Out walking that same afternoon
on the pavement, on the path
a squirrel who'd tried to fly
but kissed the curb
such a sad sight
as I stro...

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You say the world is beautiful
you say the world is sad
And all I have to add
is that it can be 
so much more than that
but you must let it in…

You won’t walk on the beach
you say the sand will soil your soles
The lapping waves
like slathering tongues
will only taste you
and you won’t let it in…

O, won’t you come and see
the seasons with me
Won’t you come and see
this world of s...

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You’re a study to me
content in your calmness
not derailed by desire
nor rotten with bitterness

You cry when you need to
outspoken but reasonable
never screaming, no ill meaning
at your core, only gentleness

An easiness in each movement
you wave everyone in
make integrity and kindness
look utterly effortless

Disarming and charming
you got strong
from lifting others up
as if it...

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Through the bitterness of winter 
life crawls, so lingering and lonely
and hauling your battered heart into 
the shelter of some place holy
Your mind swims with the terrible things 
those hands have groped toward
The grit of guilt and shame conspire 
to serve as your reward

Such troubled thoughts reverberate
as they echo up into the arches
Gathering their mass and falling back 
they’v...

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From the depths of a damp October
you called me daily
The auburn street outside
so unfamiliar
That new city
didn't yet feel like home

"I just called to hear your voice
and ask when you’ll come to visit?"
Muted tears falling
on the university payphone
And the scratch of coins loading
asking if I missed you

And every day, I do
of course, I do
Every dusk into that winter
our daily ...

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Playing in the garden
watching films together
as you nestle into my arm
learning each other's language
You trusted me, eventually
became part of my family

I loved to watch you
explore the world we shared
sunbathing on the rug
or endless pats in the living room
Your fur and the quiet purr
of little teeth grinding

What I've been dreading
now, it's happening
You’re still you
but yo...

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All my life
I’ve been enthralled
by the magic 
and the mystique
of morning people

Morning people
with their exercise 
and croissant
with their coffee cups
and yoga

Morning people
with their dew-kissed lawns
mythic sunrises
and shop shutters still rattling open
as they arrive to get a paper

Morning people
who wake, rise and stretch
without the solar flare of daylight
smashin...

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Slipping between 
the scattered diamonds
as turquoise waters part
and gently lisp against my throat
The heat beats down and the sunlit ocean 
claims me as its own

Swimming in the shallows
fish and rocks, bend and merge
the lapping lens obscures them all
weightless in the womb of possibility
The purest pleasure
of the planet against my pores

The dipping sun, a molten iron ingot
a n...

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