If Only I Waited

If Only I Waited

Some things have to be done
slowly
Like watching the setting sun
lowly

It's the art
Of wanting something so much
You're willing to watch it
disappear

It's the art
Of wanting something so much
You'll wait to watch it
reappear

If you're not patient with a sunset

The vista will exhale simmering breaths
Waves of rising,throbbing heat swaying restlessly
Blurring
Everything along the outline of your skyline

And your heart will hunger for heat

The sun will sink beneath distant heaths
Under a blanket of mountains and hills, carefully
Colouring
A margarine afterglow along every silhouetted incline and decline

And you will not see beyond the despair you feel

Nature will paint a masterpiece
Of light and shadow
On an endless canvas of radiant space
Just for you, a beauty to know

And you will walk away before it is revealed.

If You Must Love

If You Must Love

I've had a thousand epiphanies about her

She loves me, she loves me not

She loves me but loves another too

She loves me but doesn't know it

She loves me but doesn't know how to say so...

Each wore the unmistakeable face of truth

In the moment of its finding

Until the finding of the next

Which proved the former face of truth a lie

If you must love, don’t be the first to do so.

About Living

About Living

I think I’m dying

Now that I’ve found the secret to living

The chiming reverberations

Of an old, black, dusty piano

Travel from trembling strings

Struck by hammers 

Struck by fingers 

Struck by a heart

Aching with joy or sadness

And moved to speak

Using notes sad and blue

Or peaceful and green

Or bright and yellow

Or raging and red

Because she wore a dress

Of blue, green, yellow and red

That day at the beach with white sand

And deckchairs, sunbathers with tanned skin and half-conquered sandcastles

Where she said she loved him – but not enough

Or he said he loved her – but not enough

And they should have been happy but weren’t

And each wondered why it was so hard to be happy

In a world so full of people wanting to be happy

The grainy feeling of hot sand between his toes

As they curled inward

Away from the anger and disappointment

On that windy evening when he was twelve

And got sand in his eyes while reading Romeo and Juliet

On a patio by a dusty Arabian street side 

Summer’s cool breath creeping up his skin

In a trail of goosebumps and erect hairs

When he decided that dying for love was beautiful

Or that there was no beauty in loving enough to die

And set his heart (which was later to ache)

Towards finding a love true enough to die for

Or a truth beyond love, worth living for

Ignorant to the fact that his heart commanded him and not he, his heart –

The evening he had haddock for dinner

It smelled fishy but he didn’t know what it was

How could he when he had only just learned to walk

He stared at it, trying to find the words

Which best described the stinging sensation at the ridge of his nose

Whenever he went near and inhaled deeply

But his vocabulary was as limited as his mobility

So, he stretched a fidgety finger

Attached to a fidgety forearm

And the fidgety frame

Of a fidgety infant

Scooped a dollop and put it in his mouth

And learned that he didn’t enjoy the taste of cat faeces

Not unlike the taste on his tongue

The first time he breathed – heard, saw, touched and smelled

Untainted by the membrane of his mother’s womb –

And cried because he felt everything at once and it was all too much

When all he ate or drank was the rich milk of his mother’s breast

Of which he never grew tired

Because he didn’t know there was anything else to savour

And came to it with fresh enthusiasm

Each time it was presented to him

As his sole reason for and means to living

Hearing, seeing, touching, smelling and tasting

All too great an adventure to decline

Nowadays, I kill my adventures before they’ve begun

For being too stupid, too dangerous or too childish

I find my living shrinking

To fewer and less momentous events

And my dying, swelling
With the emptiness of all the things I’ve learned not to do

Parisian Flower

Parisian Flower

The Arc de Triomphe
Is white with snow.
The labyrinthine streets stretch into the city
Carrying the footprints
Of lovers finding their way –
Like butterflies walking the long soft petals of a spider lily
Finding nectar

The steep steps rise
To the Sacre-Coeur and the knights at its walls.
The roads and their cobbled stones joined
Where hearts have been smitten
The roads and their cobbled stones cracked
Where hearts have been broken
The artists sweep their brushes –
Bleeding colours, shadows and blushing cheeks –
Across the canvas
The wind weeps
The singers sing
And the mimes mime silent tragedies –
Like the withering of a rose

(Somewhere in this city)
From the most saccharine nectar
And Music's most selfless abandon to melody
And Nature's most unrestrained display of beauty
Came you.

Sometimes, I Notice You're There All The Time

Sometimes, I Notice You're There All The Time


I think about how the gin
Has left me at the mercy of the night
Bus.

The kissing couples, crimping cuddles
Pout-faced selfies, trout-faced uglies
Garish giggles blunted
To wispy whispers.
Thank you, Gin.

I think about how the haze
Might make me forget all the things I should
Remember.

Someone giving me the eye
A beauty, up for
Killing free time.

Someone giving me the eye
A loony, up for
Skinning me live.

I drown in the fog
Lost in Lethe
Looking for questions like
"Who am I? Where am I? What happened to my shoes?"

I think about not thinking about her
Out of reach but everywhere –
Like the ubiquitous skies
Against which my world is set.

Something Missing

Something Missing


The sky is blue
But not blue enough
A faded
Washed out
Almost azure
Almost white
Half-colour.
The overeager sun burned too brightly
And bleached its soft hues
Harshly.

Overdriven London

(While Being Driven Through) Overdriven London

Neon burns white concrete blue
Without consuming
Glassy rising peaks racing towards
Sheets of violet sky
and sinking crescents hanging in the spaces
Between skyscrapers
Angles and curves
Singing to the eyes
Barren branches with pointed pincers
Sparse but standing
Between rushing street lights and magniloquent maisonettes
Starless but twinkling
Too modern for nature
Historical but futuristic
London sings to the eyes
And trickles into golf courses
Detached five bedroom houses and
Empty
50 centimetre pedestrian crossings.
Reading calling