new year’s eve

   

   new year’s eve

        tomorrow 

will be the same as 

        yesterday

   we all know that

 despite all the hoots 

nothing is left behind

nothing  carried forward

 that will fulfil our hopes

  at the allotted chime

          nothing

           will stir the dying embers

                   as the cat sleeps on

    the jazz player lays the blues 

       that simply fall off the edge 

          of time

each of us alone 

at the edge of

the lonely void

for there is no time 

when time is alone 

so we stand senseless 

       in the cold

  listening for hope

insides turning aside

while all down the while

    the new year sleeps

in the cradle of the early days

at the razor edge of time

  at this once and only

     poignant point

         when

  new year’s eve

      becomes

    just another 

 new year’s day

  forgetting that 

on new years day 

the new year ends

the graves

the graves

the depth of the sky in a grave stone vase

  wilted of the days bereft and thorn,

grey days that hang decrepit on chains

  of thoughts that turn around forlorn.

through the long dead we pass this life,

  reading a name or two their dates.

following the woodpecker, the jay, the fox,

  out through the opening and closing of gates.

left behind, halted in mid stone breath,

they relay nothing to us of death.

  so why not stay longer next time and say

  sorry you had to go on your separate way.

  

or shift a sod and snuggle beneath,

and leave this awful life of grief,

  and watch the passers by each day,

  watch them go their separate way,

down through the sky in that grave stone vase,

  turn up in the sky in the clouds and blue.

when the beacon graves blaze ablaze,

  i will be the i am, the you beyond you.

the hospital

the hospital 

the fear inside 

there

outside in the night

looking back 

in your reflection 

looking out

that morning moment

that morning moment

there is that morning moment,

  between sleep and awake,

when joy just is.

  before the worries take hold, 

and we lament

that the day is forged for sorrow;

until that morning moment 

calls again tomorrow.

alien universes

alien universes

when the human race is long gone,

our poetry will be lost in laptops, or

under the rubble in boxes of books.

the aliens,

who, glad we're out of the way,

will come down

and gather all our poems and

take them to their planet

to tell their people

this was the best product 

of a dangerous species.

and they will use our poems

to recreate a neural network 

of the pure emotions, and

use them as their blue moons,

or the dark clouds across their suns;

they will dine over the music

of our travails, and lament 

a verse to the cliché

a verse to the cliché 

damn the cliché when i say that 

i lay my head in the fold of this book 

and how i look forward to the end of days

and the company of the poets down

all their wending ways 

and how i long to write the one poem 

that has teased me all these years

that i might use it as a pillow

and cobwebbed deep to sleep 

the sleep of the damned if i will 

the secondhand book

the secondhand book

butt end of this secondhand book

smelling like a stately home

somnambulant deep in dust 

behind the purple keep-back rope 

the pages turn the light minded

like the crystal chandelier 

but a guide book it is not

never will it sleep again

lost upon a shelf in time

for it is mine

the blood that tastes like ...

the blood that tastes like ...

... all the tears of childhood 

that were never kissed better

... the ejaculate of the forge

annealed in the cold sweat of death

... the bitterness of a cherry

picked before its time

swallowed whole

with its guilt

as once we did under a rancid moon

as once we did under a rancid moon

if a child wine did in winsome moons so slide

  the hard snow down the wide-eyed dusk 

to chill mine and theirs and more beside

  was this knot of boys shred of their husk

moon boys that sledged the flared 

  blue breath of secret nights

and in this their exhilaration shared 

  the rarest of rare just-mights

for when the hearth fades

  into the monochrome 

and when the gossamer threads

  are as thin as thin from home

the boys will be the boys of naughty 

  nights buttered under a rancid moon

and will toboggan from abandon’s haughty

  heights to crash out all but too soon

as the moon sets and slips these childhood

  tears frozen blue on stinging fingers

the boys grips fail and fall and no good

  night in this their old age lingers

the foundry men

the foundry men

the factory hooters lance the menthol of the night; the

phlegm of slag, shrouded in the smoke of hade’s cupola,

lit blue by will-o'-the-wisps across the black anvils of their night; 

hard run, vein knotted, the muscular sweat of the iron men, 

sinews gaunt as leather aprons, nicotine spittled, bared in the

insane leer of lucifer, drooling at the pitchers of sherbet slake.

faces a-flash, half red in the furnace burn, half pock-black

away in the sharp crack of the foundry-sanded dark, deep

in the moulding shop, that roars defiance at the fettlers’ drills

sprite in the bottom shop, amid their gantries and their shot.

men of an iron-mind in their expediency, the immediacy 

of fighting the molten lode, bead-eyed, waltzing with death

day and night in this taut cauldron of alpha males;

as hard as nails and as canny as their throw-away remarks

that nail the new boys to the spot. 

out! tap out the flow of metal, bright as the sun,

the crust as dark as congealed blood;

spear the bot! spear the bot!

and let it urge into the mould, dodging the sparks

scorched and buzzing; 

and far from the homely hearth

the moulders’ clogs rattle the stanchions of fear,

their knuckles white at the foundling of men from boys,

in the melding of metal and minds, of dust with rust,

of an age when the iron gates of the mandarin’s mausoleums 

sigh for the men who flocked from bucolic’s green fields

to harvest this lode of hell, a heavy metal cross;

damned by their thirty pieces of silver, long before 

they die smothered, for the wages of tin is death, 

you see these foundry men? as hard bitten as they are,

red hot in lust, this is their long-sought post-coital sleep, 

and deep in this, the final settlement, they must lay

as foundry dust upon dust upon dust. 

and the factory hooters?

they gently lift the caul of a brand new day.

i am ambidextrous am i ?

The black and forth fledgling

The black and forth fledgling 

Since birth, buried deep in the village, 

coffin cold, leaking little joy for this boy 

returning home to his coal fire night;

a room half searing, half freezing,

half fearing that worse is to come,

slammed inside every dour day,

that always wore the coldness of a sadness;

the lurking shadow of an inexplicable sadness.

Outside of the adult walls the pals

wove little comfort from kicking the 

dark around the corners of night, before

ricocheting from the implosion of daring do,

that sent them homeward flaring from

the sneer of night, its atavism in fright,

long shrouded hand upon their shoulders. 

Stranded on a blind dilemma; that

to leave the cold of the indoor outer-hearth, 

was to enter the cold-hearted night, that

bit blue every clinging finger, and bid

ne’er point to the dream of a destination, 

perchanced in this their destitution;

blanking out the hope for a brighter future.

Ne’er bid even the chink of a suggestion 

to dare be silvered around a feral cloud 

running the haunting moon.

All crescent moons bereft of my wish I wish havedropped behind the hill, dead above the docks;

and as the cinders fall in the grate, 

the kettle lisps goodnight 

up the stairway to heaven.

And the boy?

Well, he is away to his bed,

as weary as the day is long,

tomorrow forgone;

as far away now, let it be said,

each day is, has had ever been,

and never would be again.

Village childhood

Village childhood 

Terraced from infancy in a hand-stoned cottage,

warm-palmed, sash-windowed, green door

to the womb’s dark passage across 

the scrubbed step inside. There, the more 

he stares into the black-leaded grate,

the more the fire disabuses, and as

the blowing-down smoke genuflects,

it carries his dreams back up the chimney,

and his eyes close. Out on the chapel-pubbed street

the accepting night creeps the corners away.

The same dark that, as he gets older,

stumbles him unsure-footed across the slag-stone

back roads towards that which lurks around

every corner furthered farther with his pals

as they purport ‘it’s no big deal’. 

This blackmange of testosterone

on loan from time and again 

they push daring to the limits of

the village’s turned gaze. The dark 

that allows the flash of a chip shop,

an oasis of chrome and a sweet
‘tweet now?’

Rediscovered, it is an empty sarcophagus 

blown of tattered bandages and dried tears;

toasting-fork love in the indoors of days, 

and all the ways he meandered blasé,

to make his way out of the labyrinthine

kaleidoscope of villagers, and the wicked 

ways of boys running in their full sap. 

The dark lodestone from the cradle

of his awakening to the drooping of

his final eyes wandering back there in

thought as soft as the deft of sleep,

deep in the radiance of his last goodbye.

village of the damned boys

village of the damned boys

the village of dark corners, 

of boys around each other down

the back again ways, to and from and

down the wicked roads of every

naughtiness that dared be dared. 

the devil they took as they took each other 

further in their wide eyes tripping the tomorrow 

of nostradamus dimensions. we did

was their run-away motto, on the unsure-footed

slag stone roads, black as a man’s phlegm

in the metal works, or on the railway tracks

that the boys plundered, until they settled as

villagers themselves; in that cottaging of dark 

and slowly dying minds;

but tonight they are full in being 

where they should be not,

but bloody well are!

run boys

run ... run ...

the one and only

the one and only

just this far away 

just beyond 

the thought up ahead 

of the one just beyond that 

is the one poem

you know 

the ONE

just this far

away

on the 3A bus to town

on the 3A bus to town

on the 3A bus in the rain,

windows running with steam,

seems like the end of the universe,

in this grotty wet dream.

moan hot on us

this growling in sway,

three witch way women

on their vicissitudes inveigh.

white strip lights

pink bell poles

man in yellow plastic coat,

the driver wipes holes

in the concertina door

that water screen ran;

as a prattle empty can

rattled down upon the floor.

and the next stop is for no one,

for no one this day dares,

plod the flooding flood waters,

they’re all at home in their chairs.

piped rain rolls down

the vibrating windows,

soon to be in town

and shopping indoors. 

there’s a green light 

smearing at me,

it looks so happy,

so alright is he the

man (the only man)

in two seats ahead,

but he is nodding so stiffly

i think he might be dead.

through the hospital now,

pedestrian slow,

should we stop and

and ask if they know, if they know

if he’s dead? but no, better not

for the rain is dripping down

my trousers and coat;

let’s get on into town,

on this darkening of days

where a bus stop waiter, now listen, alright!

is flashing his iPhone it ever so bright;

please stop bus, stop bus, he prays;

and now a cough crawls on the bus,

giving every strain of virus to us.

but ding and

we are there, we are there at last,

so she announces, on her phone, ever so fast.

and so off i get

at the very edge of space,

the rain hasn’t stopped yet,

nor has the human race.

and i wrote this poem, all of the way 

on the 3A to prove it;

and if you can improve it 

then you’ll have to pay 

for a ticket to mark your favourite page,

for every bus in the world is a similar stage.