Strolling

I saw a car crash today.
It plunged bonnet first
into a traffic bollard like a blind
horse falling into bramble – flipped
on it’s side – face and snout
torn on the tarmac.

Time held me still:
the scabbed wheels
stared me out as they reeled
round the road-edge,
the windscreen was broken –
a burst knee-cap –
it’s contents on concrete, done in
and dredged out. A smell filled
the road, an odour of open
wounds, a bouquet of burnt
rind and rubber. A bloke
wearing blue overalls
and a scattered face rang
the police.

I walked on unfazed
by catastrophe. I thought how the warmth
of my hand, my wrist, was all blood
how breath clouds cold air
how the sky was cerise.

Orange

1.

I cut you into sections, eight
or twelve, depending how mean I feel. I dissect
you, skin on. Flesh off when I bite
into you like a sixteen-ounce steak.
The knife I use is wet. I tongue the flat edge.
Your juice stiffens on my skin, sticks
to my hands that are filth. I am young
again. I place your pieces
in a round against a white china plate,
a round like applause; like a stage.

2.

I saw my first play the day my uncle wore
your skin in his mouth as teeth. I remember
laughing at the sweet citrus taxidermy. I remember
being fed you as a child – holding you
like little spheres of happy fire.

The play was a pantomime, something about
ugly ducklings. I watched in awe and sipped your juice
from a cardboard carton. I remember seeing one of the ducks
outside afterwards, still feathered still
made-up, with a cigarette in hand. I remember
wanting a photo and I remember that he didn’t,
hunching his signet back

My life ain’t a play love. I screamed in the street.
I ate you in sections when I got home.

Woods

The woods are a good place for a child: hiding
among leaves like a soldier, mud make-up on cheeks making
war against the woodland warriors that are
by that tree no over there no now they’re there! There
with the monkey flinging itself between branches
below trees running among leaves with
Superman. There! With Superman
in his cape-coat that is hooded on his head
hanging flowing yellow and red, arm outstretched, to the rescue,
fighting tree trunks with their own branches to protect the best friend
the acorn, the crumpled leaf, that cool stone that the kid keeps
as a keepsake of his years of frolicking free before all he can do

is remember the romp of his boyhood whilst turning
that stone in his scraggy hands, sitting on the brown
settee still in his work clothes in his rented
stained-wall flat and remembering
that everything was his playmate in nature.

blog

So I’ve decided after so much uhm-ing and arr-ing to actually create a place to put what I create. A bit like a digital drawer. This will be a platform for me to publish some of the prose, some of the poetry and some of the stories I write as well as a place for me to publish some of the things I draw and paint that I am amiably happy with. Comments would be appreciated, both positive and negative. I hope you enjoy!