There is a point, marked with a red snapped spade
(for we dug like demons)
a point where frivolous din ferments;
rendering silent the yapping kids
and laughing dogs,
a point where a seagull’s screech can deafen.

It’s beyond the lug-holed vestiges,
the seaweed-strewn remnants.
It’s beyond the Sally Mae;
the barnacled boat
come ship come stranded dream.

It’s in a place between life
and a tragic death you’d read
about in a local rag:

“Father and son drowned
whilst digging for China”

It’s a point of reluctant return.
From there, the factories are cloud makers,
the roof-tops; snowy mountain peaks.

It’s a place to revisit,
with a sturdier spade.

---

Listen

Of late, there have been rumours of fish,
of local evolution, of regeneration.
They say rusted cans have transformed;
grown fins, heroin holes for gills.

I’ve heard the pram, once prominent
as a fountain, is now spurting forth
at regular intervals, blowing its top
like a drunken whale, emerging at night

as the willows lean in to listen – such
learned trees. Murmurs of mattresses
shifting like sandbanks, carrying dead
dogs to the edge, clearing its depths.

All rumours of course; today strolling
past the bandstand with no band, I see
the willows idle, strumming the surface;
a lone fisherman with a net-full of beer.

---

Listen

I

it roars fierce yellow
through the cracks –

acts ruderal, its inner
bracts: erect, intact

till pollinated, then
dies the beautiful death;

the Dandy Lion.

II

copious on fields that are
crossed to find drugs and
sex, the buttercup:
hold it close beneath the chin
should you find yourself
in-shake and yellowing, a stuttered
lover, an afternoon gin.

III

spined-caged-headless trunks
are protected from themselves
should they take root and blossom,
then make love to the neighbourhood.

---

Listen

Tame-haired yet
Doc-Martened
you’ve an anarchic
footwear habit.

Suited yet booted
half-raging-half-tragic
your Exploited LPS
stacked neat in the attic.

I should like to abandon myself
upon a craggy rock. Turn down the
light, take stock.

Scan harsh seas, at breakfast, lunch
and tea, adjust my Sou’wester, yellow
in its circumstance, as yellow as can be.

I’d take quite seriously the lone man’s
approach to being. Perhaps keep a dog
to polish off corned beef hash, a parrot

To laugh with, or at. Perhaps I’d go mad
with the responsibility of mezzanine flooring,
of gearless pedestal turnings and of photo electric

cells sensing the daylight arriving, perhaps!
I’d leave just once that year, to collect fuel
from gnarled fingered fishermen, wise to

the capacity of break tanks and the like.
More to the point I’d maybe save some lives,
whilst reading endlessly.

---

Listen

The worst of man
is not the evil that he harbours,
nor the darkness
that moves beneath his skin.

It is the refusal
to acknowledge
that it lies within.

For what we will not recognise
does not simply disappear.
It settles in the shadows,
grows stronger in the silence,
and whispers what we fear.

We cast our darkness onto others,
condemn the sins we cannot own,
make enemies of strangers
for the things in us
we’ve never known.

The anger we deny
finds quieter ways to wound.
The greed we hide
becomes resentment,
bitter and entombed.

The cruelty we dare not name
puts righteousness upon its face,
and judges all the world
from some imagined
higher place.

And all the while
we tell ourselves
we’ve risen far above
the primitive, the savage,
the things we’re frightened of.

Yet every truth we bury
leaves us bound by what we’ve feared,
until we dance like puppets
for the very things
we thought had disappeared.

And here I sit, in ocular migraine’s grip,
as zigzags shimmer, colours flee,
while shadows through my vision slip,
masking what I need to see.

Imprisoned in this fractured light,
where hidden truths emerge in me,
I glimpse what hides in plainest sight –

and all I can do
is agree.

Clifftops. Bridges. Train platforms. Hotel balconies. Open windows on high floors. Ferry decks at night. The space between saying “I could” and “I will.”

I’ve visited them all.

Most offered a perfectly pleasant view – A few offered something more.

Nothing serious. Just a suggestion. A reminder that every boundary is, technically, crossable. That the body can be interrupted. That a life is held together by an astonishing number of decisions nobody notices making.

I suspect this is normal?

The thought arrives. You acknowledge it. It moves on:

Like hearing the phone ring at midnight and knowing your life may divide into a before and an after.
Like understanding that every city is full of people who once left somewhere else.
Like realizing you could tell the truth.
Like realizing you could lie.
Like wondering whether the person you’ve become was inevitable.
The thought that your entire life could have unfolded differently from a single conversation.

Like standing near an edge and learning, once again,
that you prefer the ground.

---

Listen

Some nights don’t end,
they just flatten—
like light stretched too thin
across fluorescence and glass.

Inside, a man in a suit
sips something lukewarm,
his posture squared
against thought.
Across from him, a woman
holds a cigarette
like the last flicker
of a conversation.

Nothing touches.

The counter curves
but offers no embrace;
the server watches the air
where someone once stood.

Outside: no doors, no way in.
On the street—an American werewolf
a silence
you can’t quite name.

And yet,
the light stays on.
Not warmly,
but insistently—
like someone still hoping
to be seen
through the glass

---

Listen