On my second disposable cup of the morning.
Gave a homeless woman called Chanel a banana and an orange I’d bought for myself.
She accepted the orange, with the stunted gratitude of a prisoner.
Everyone is trying to get to work, few want to.
london
In search of lost time
I’m sitting on Bute street
In my head the French bookshop
And French bakery Bonne Bouche
Are still here, smelling of books and
Bread, livres et pain
I’m still sitting on Bute street
I open my eyes, I can smell Mama
Pho and it doesn’t go with my
£pp3.50 flat white
I’m looking at a shop called Blanc
With towels and a sign ‘Fashion doesnt
Have to Cost the Earth’ instead of
Books in French
Now I know how old women feel
The ones who talked about the
Old days as if they were better
Now they’re gone
I will not come here again to
Look for the past, I will not
Find it, I will go somewhere
Else to remember.
Postcard from Hoxton
These money people float
Their money makes them
So light
Their soles are not touching
Anything, they live like
Angels
No memories staring back
From the streets they pass,
The ex-
Council blocks they buy
When they come down from
Heaven.
But they never land, they
Glide an inch above real
Living
You can still hear the mortals
From time to time, they
Break out
With feet that know the old
Streets, feet that can’t float like
Angels.
(Written somewhere between Shoreditch and Hoxton)
Birthday Past
Dark cake and a pair of shoes
On the grave outskirts of Saint James’s Park, just outside the gates, in fact,
On a grey paving slab, quiet clean, but
For the crumbs and smear, like dog shit,
In its roadside homelessness, nowhere
The sweet kitchen that supported it, we presume, before it got led astray, wandered from the safety of the
Picnic blanket, perhaps taken by these shoes..
But they lost their way, neither shoe can tell tales to passing
Strangers now, both are mute.
Was she Happy when she left?
We can only guess and hope she got some new shoes
So little time
Can I make the space bigger,
between stops on the Tube,
for mind to breathe in
and out over the din
of the stomach and
thoughts and errands
and commitments and
distances between states
I could be or should be or
would be –
Wake up from the daily grind
Wheels on the bus
Go round and round, round and round.
Carry us.
Cleaners, brokers,
One ear off or, surround sound,
All yous, hark
The timetable
Perpetual, it turns found
Into lost.
Light pollution
Oh I wish they
Wouldn’t sing at
Night, the birds,
When my chest
Is tight and the
Road to Day is
Spiked with dreams
That cannot be
Seen in light of bird
Noise, rogue
Dawn speech strayed
Off the sun.
Please sit quiet
On your branch
And wait, if sleep
Is too heavy for the
Light state of a
January that knows
No snow but isn’t
Spring.
Blossom is already
Breaking the tired grey,
Confused from lack
Of sleep because
Autumn forgot to turn
All the lights off and
Let the heating run all
Night.
Saturday 3rd Septemeber 2011: Demonstrations in London.Late headline.
One week has passed
And not much has
Been said on the
BBC – as
Far as I know.
Saturday 3rd
The orange mosque,
Whitechapel – not
A word has passed
News Night’s tired lips;
Will The Week dig
Up what went on?
What’s clear is that
Certain breeds of
News aren’t welcome
Here, in Britain
The doors are barred
While truths queue up
Voices down, just
Protestors, no need
To make a song
And dance about,
The neighbours might
See, heaven forbid.
A house on a London terrace
The house was built in 1864 or thereabouts
With bricks and mortar
In the usual way,
Set down on the street
‘Tween two just the
Same.
No, I lie. Next
Door was a shop,
Greyed out now, modern
Style, frosted windows, the works.
Behind doors to the house of
A family, bent by
Chance into odd-
Shaped rooms, tombs
For the spirits of eras
Passed, mingling now and
Then with the plates on
The rack or a glass in the
Cupboard, no harm meant.
After twenty five years
No surprise at a flying saucepan.
A family lived in the house,
Part of it, kin to it,
Whatever its freight.
Besides, after twenty five years, they
Had their own ghosts as guests,
Those former selves in former
Times living on,
Resonating in overlapping lines.
The cello practice, the barking
Dog, the sleeping dog,
The trampoline, the one that
Broke, the roller blades,
The skipping rope.
The time when budgies tweeted
In the kitchen
And Ma cooked at 6 for me
And 8 for him, again.
The time when garden’s shade
Was less and next door neighbour
Had a cat called…called….
Times gone but still present
In the ether, round the stairs, up the blocked chimney,
Or the skylight, then
Down, over mossy steps
And at the back door, again,
With a ratataptap, like a
Ghost..
No, it must be Jack
The new next door neighbour’s
Cat.
Published in Balladof Magazine, October 2009
Waterloo at Sundown
Rolling down
Down hill, Life
Is easy like
Punch and the Sun,
Today, on the river,
Red and round
And full of warm
Deep ochre,
Along the river
It ran thick
And cooled quickly
Into twilight we could walk on,
Dry and clean, through
The drum-song of buskers
And the smoke of drinkers,
After work.
Who walked? I and
Passers by, passing by
The river, passing us.
Being Every Day 