Helm wind You are a wicked, spiteful gust coming here throwing bin lids about. You clatter and rattle, bruising paint and denting, flattening crop heads and shaking branches bare. Dislodging my peace and flipping hair in my face, Why can’t you let me have this calm day? Grit in my eyes, icy fingers down my […]
Down paw – 100 words
Down paw Where I live it doesn’t rain instead, a large damp dog arrives drenched, drooling and dirty Its arse – grey-brown and stinking – descends growling low, lowering, filling the blue and crushing. Tail flicks the branches wet pelt obscures skylark skies, joy and our optimistic horizons everything blurs and our ears are full […]
99 words
Sometimes a scrap of knowledge gets caught in my brain and I can’t stop worrying at it. Today I learned that William Wordsworth and mutinous Fletcher Christian were at school together. Not in the same class, plotting separate extraordinary careers, of course, but in the same building for a while. Christian, six years older, ignored […]
Poem: I come from …
I come from the north, From grey harling, drizzled crags and scree. Dandelion and burdock. Engage low gear now. Bacon for breakfast. Breaking in your boots. Passing places and bloody tourists. The library’s parquet gleam. Peewits and feral cats. Toasted arse against the Aga. Wellies and broken veins. Creosote on the fence. Shirt […]
Dreaming of blue mud
When I think about mud, I know that it is the inevitable consequence of the nourishing rain meeting hospitable soil. I think about mud quite a lot… being here. I don’t blame the rain. Not at all. Its occasional parade pandemonium comes with a silver lining: snazzy raincoats, lush landscapes and that smell. But the […]