A Thousand Leagues Away

Why can I never find the words to say,
as you hold my dreams and them defend,
I feel you a thousand leagues away?

The thought of you is many-hued ray,
and your warmth floods my own dark blood.
Why can I never find the words to say?

I can find you in the green and grey
of moss and slate; I know my friend,
and I feel you a thousand leagues away.

That's where I left you anyway.
It broke my heart to tear these continents apart.
Why can I never find the words to say

that, though we frolicked in a meadow and were gay,
to build a castle, my left slipped your right hand,
and now I feel you a thousand leagues away?

I made the night time to separate the days,
and, seeing how I do not sleep, you somehow understand
why I can never find the words to say
that I feel you a thousand leagues away.

Water

You may think that water is just
the primary moving part
in the machine 
of the world.

But when it rains,
it calls out to us
from gutters, drainpipes, 
rivers and ditches.

And so it is a communicator
of the secret and forgotten passages
by which it passes through
the human layer.

And when it rains,
the roads and pavements shine
and street lights live again
in the darkness of puddles.

It is a renewer
more honest than snow,
and it gives second chances to those
who have burned theirs away.

Water does so many things
and does them so many times.
Perhaps its power of revival stems
from making each its first.

Untitled Poem

Is it

that all your thoughts
belong 
to one mind 

or 

that all your minds 
belong 
to one hand?

Half Man Feel Double

I came away from it all
Pulsing with seismic aftershocks

The feeling of having been open
Of having let my substance slip
From cracked hands

It left new marks, 
New scores and scuffs
On oak-hard skin
Added to a thousand,
No different to the casual observer
Than the last raindrop to smear the window,
But spelled out on me in pain
Like a word

I am scattered across oceans,
And the effort of holding myself together
Is so great
That the needle of time
Scratching out tunes on my surface
Pushes too hard, too deep
From the white and dead
Into the living tissue beneath

Playing With Food

I eat the doughnut.
I eat the doe nut.
I eat the do naught.
I eat the dew not.
I dew not eat the dough naught.
I do not eat the doughnut.

Eye-eat the doughnut.
Eye-heat the dow nut.
Elite the dow nought.
Isle eat the down ought.
Aisle leat the do nut.
I'll eat the doughnut.

I heath the doughnut.
I heed the doe not.
I head the doe knot.
I haute the do not.
I note the dune nut.
I do not have the doughnut.

A sequence of haikus inspired by a series of black outs

There are more shadows in an unlit home than in the whole sky at night.

There are more dark steps
between two familiar rooms
than in midnight's blaze.

The electric home
slings its rays all the way to
the shivering grass.

A home of black air
draws the glister of the stars
into its bosom.

And so we are taught;
what is concealed by the light
is revealed in darkness.

You Are What You Eat

You are what you eat:
a thing with nine feet
that lives in the garden
and calls itself Pete.

You are what you eat:
a green three-piece suite
that plays you at cards
and knows when you cheat.

You are what you eat:
an oily bed sheet
that's been in the army
and smells of minced meat.

You are what you eat:
a pile of concrete
that's covered in spiders
and lives on the street.

You are what you eat.
Yes, you, Marguerite.
I've seen you at midnight.
You're not so discreet.

You are what you eat.
I shall not repeat.
Go look in the mirror
and that's your receipt.

A Christmas Tree's Lament

Once upon a winter's eve,
They came in mobs, those deadly thieves!
We spread our roots, our breaths drew in,
And then we bellowed, I and kin:
“Leave here, desist, replant your roots!”
They came for us in shiny boots.
They placed their teeth upon a string,
and showed us to that wicked thing.
They wrapped it round, in their endeavour
to cut us from our roots, to sever
each of us from earthy sphere,
And as we crashed, they cried and cheered!

They stacked us up on deerless sleighs,

And formed with us a foul bouquet,

And as they stole us, engine booming,

I found I was no better than a human.

I was from deep black soil dissected.

Now humans' unearthed state reflected

in my own proud trunk made rootless,

subject now to journey fruitless.

As savaged flesh wept and swelt,

Each jolt and thud was sorely felt

Till we from oily trap alighted,

And heaps of dead and dying sighted.

We might have thought our number small

Until we saw that ghastly haul.

It might have been a minor feud,

an act of impulse, a nasty mood,

but in this vale of broken crowns,

on this necropolitic ground,

at this high reach of Death's grey tide,

was an act of genocide.

And even now, and even yet,

exhausted not was Man's dark threat.

They came in ones and fives and threes.

They drifted up upon the breeze.

But how they differed from rancid stink

was in what they carried: those shards of clink,

that lit their eyes and filled their grip,

and brimmed their dreams and curled their lips.

And of this coin, what was the aim?

Of which foul sport were we the game?

What was the scheme behind our murder?

All was revealed as they began to barter.

And what the price of one arboris,

apart, of course, from its biosis?

Thirty pieces was final toll

to him, the brand new owner of my soul.

With nothing more than mute egress,

my time with kindred deliquesced.

Aye, from my brethren I was split,

And carried then to odorous pit,

shakingly upon their shoulders,

just as the cousin growing colder.

Placed upright by mantelshelf,

in mockery of my rooted self,

now I their furrow did survey

in all its grim and dark decay.

Of all their squalor and unfitness,

was I to be the judge and witness.

And back they looked with eyes agleam,

dashing hopes to dwell unseen.

To me they brought their tawdry garnish,

and I did they begin to furnish,

and when at last they came away,

I stood replete in gaudy lingerie.

And though clothed like courtesan,

my torment only now began,

for now they gulped and gorged and pranced,

frolicked in a state of trance.

I, in the midst of wilding pack,

had turned to aphrodisiac.

Time’s suffrance is ineluctable

yet passage indestructible.

It crept as surely as decay,

until I found I had outstayed

my welcome in that wretched dwelling,

and now my final fate was swelling

in Man's dark heart as they denuded

me of frilly garment, excluded

then from frosty home to street,

my transformation near complete.

Whence had I been sequined guest,

now was forsaken, dispossessed.

And here I am, and here remain,

my human value all but drained.

I lie here butchered in the lane

with others of my green domain.

Who knows what fate may have in store?

And yet I sense there's little more.

My shadow's long; my noose at morning.

There's only time to share this warning.

Should you consort with humankind,

see us, and do not enter blind.

For Man's had many staunch allies

and led each one to her demise.

The Naming of Forgotten Colours

Turleen is the colour of a cooking pot illuminated by the light of another room.

Versotage is the colour you remember rock moss to be.

Hubrian is the colour of something that could equally be a shadow or a patch of moisture.

Bisper is the colour of the sky after shutting your eyes for a long time and then opening them.

Nuve is the colour of the page ends of an old paperback.

Tidderish is the colour of grass in morning sunlight when butterflies are near.

Gish is the rich, living green at the heart of an old onion.

Potlion is the not-quite-black colour of clock hands on a stopped clock.

Spube is the colour of the food stain that won't come out of an old shirt.

Fegette is the colour of the darkness between bright illuminations or many fireflies.

Batcherfan is the colour of concrete steps near the sea at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Glubon is the colour of a football field after torrential rain.

Spaffle is the colour of the feathers of the bird on the window ledge, neither grey nor brown.

On Being Drunk

Water has a million voices.

It splashes, pours, patters, flushes,

Babbles, roars, makes other noises.

Sometimes it gurgles; sometimes it rushes.

And sometimes water's in my glass,

And when I put it to my lip,

I can smell its ocean mass,

And if I'm feeling brave, I sip.

And then the water's moving through me,

Trickling, foaming, bubbling, sloshing,

I am become a river valley,

The water passes through me, frothing.

But soon the water will be gone,

And I'll be here, my valley dry.

All because I must cling on,

With water simply passing by.

But if I could just let go,

And travel down toward the sea,

And mingle there with melted snow,

And leave the solid body-me,

I'd soon rise up, evaporate,

And then I would become a cloud,

I'd thunder, drift and cumulate.

Oh, how I wish it were allowed!

'Cos if I could, I'd next be rain.

I'd slash and torrent, precipitate,

I could make buses aquaplane,

The floods and landslides I'd create!

But all too soon, I'd be scooped up,

And channelled fast to someone's tub,

And wash some hair or get brewed up,

Make up juice in someone's pub.

And in a chair, I'd find myself,

Really not the worse for wear,

For having touched an ocean shelf,

How nice, in fact, to be bodily there.

Yes, maybe life is not so dire,

My mind and body aren't so numb.

It's not to be water that I aspire,

It's just that aqueous momentum!