perhaps

 perhaps 

a stream

a trickle of sunshine

white grass 

perhaps 

summery execution

 summery execution 

a blitz of mowers

won’t leave us a lawn

summertime 

and the mowers are crazy 

cats are dumping

and the rotten is high

don’t shit under the apple tree

with anyone having a pee

anyone having a pee

no no

bloody foxes

apposite

 apposite 

a poet should travel deep

within himself

within herself 

find things that are not there

and place them deep

within readers 

that may not be there

here it is

there it is

that’s where we are

‘a poem’ he said ‘is’

 ‘a poem’ he said ‘is’

a poem is a package of emotion 

no amount of describing the package will open it

for only when it is opened can the emotion be received 

and the package wondered at 

for although it was beautiful it was empty all along 

and you the reader were in it 

filled it 

enrapt it 

oh my word

 oh my word

the word wanted to be naked

but we gave it baggage

we gave it another word

and they got along just fine

like a house on fire in fact

our baggage left at home 

night freight

 night freight

and in the darkest night

we can see the things 

that light ignores as boring

shapes grow imaginations

we become our own ghosts

looming becomes distance closing

and every step is loathing

ladies

 ladies

in their pinnies 

they swept the pavements 

of whispers into the gullies

they black-leaded their grates

and polished the brass candle holders 

pegged their worldly cleanliness 

propped up and flagged on the lines

garnered across hard yards

where nothing grew

their stone houses grimed

by the time of factory chimneys

and coal-fired poking over the ashes

where teapots stewed their tears

their gritted howls in the windy updraft

of prayers so smokey that god coughed

and spit and polish shone their dreams

as they tightened their pinnies 

and bent to it