time

all kinds of twilight

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A moment in the lit night
Appliances hold their breath
while order turns the house
inside out.

Dying, toes in heaven,
whispered conversation
trust eternal trust
and a fleeting goodbye.

Just-born tiny being
paused a long moment
silently sleeping –
were you even there? –
the ward’s time teetered.

6am on Christmas morning,
we played outside the door
to bliss, unheated in a cold
December grey.  You didn’t need
a jumper.

A glance and moment’s wonder
forty years light-sped
into a pause, fleeting,
richly full and awkward in
pregnant expectation.

Long silhouettes spear
dazzling sun.  Lunchtime
crowds turn mysterious
My city is haunted.

All kinds of twilight.

lost journal – the journal’s tale

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Only slowly does it dawn on me
that motion has ceased.
It is silent for the first time
in a long while.

I cannot make a sound
to attract attention.
I wait so still,
hoping.

It is warm between
the Financial Times
and Vogue.
But I shiver.

Swoop, arms gather the
newspaper and detritus
of flight BA0589
from Milan Linate.
I slide out under the
seat in front of you.

Will they come with vacuum
cleaners?
Not this time.  I hear the
hum of new arrivals.
Distant first,
then nearer.

Am I going back to Milan?
I recall cosy bedrooms,
grand galleries
and a few moments at a café,
when I was loved.

I miss the motion of her
pen, the flicking of my pages
and the close attention of her
eyes rereading and sometimes
looking away.

I miss the triumphant tick
in a small blue box
the sigh of satisfaction
and the sometime quick
snap-shut of a distraction.

What’s that?  Far from being
cornered by another
bag, I am being retrieved
by a total stranger.
I hold my covers tightly
shut through sheer willpower
to no avail.

Alien eyes peruse my pages.
I hope her writing turns
to scribble just in time.
My pages are flicked back and forward.
‘There’s no address’ I observe
unnoticed.  Only ‘private’ and
maybe hidden clues, who knows?

With relief, I remark
a kind of gentleness of touch.
Hope glimmers – perhaps I might
be restored to my owner?
I know she is looking for me
amongst the other
lost possessions, can hear her
hopeful tap-tapping of her plea
to find me.

I am being
slid in
to someone’s business bag.
I smell leather and Apple.
My pages snag on chargers.
For the first time, I am afraid of the dark.
I want to go home.

And I know I won’t.

found poem, London, winter 2014

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I like my town

Art is a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.

Back to basics.
Douceur d’enfance.

Today is a good day.
Live what you love.

She acts like summer
and walks like rain.

Art for all.
Discovery.

Let’s fill this town with artists.
Art is nothing without the gift

‘I love William Morris
as I love most artists who manage
to make their lives and work
completely part of each other.’

When William Morris lay dying in 1896,
one of his doctors diagnosed his fatal illness
as ‘simply being William Morris,
and having done more work than most ten men’.

Love is enough.

Own a masterpiece.

Welcome.

No peeking.

Skate.

He is like a tree planted beside the streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season,
whose leaves do not fade,
in all that he does he prospers.

‘Dying is as natural
as being born’.

The secret is out.

You are here.

Step into the adventure.

Thou God seest me.

A little patience won’t hurt you.

Notes on locations:  sign in Loft store, shirt in Loft, product in Loft, candle in Loft, art in Loft, art in Loft, Duke St Emporium, DSE, Landrover showroom, name of shop, sign in same shop, Anarchy and Beauty, National Portrait Gallery, cushion in NPG shop, sign in NPG, Jigsaw store window, Somerset House sign, engraving of Proverbs 1 in Somerset House monument, quotation attributed to Cecily Saunders, Kings College London, wording on a van, street map, advert on bus, wording above St Clements Danes church, sign on Tube.

[untitled]

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Our hearts are dying,
crushed under the
weight of all our
pain.

Buried
by a thousand
homicides.

Starved
by all our
compromise.

Crying frozen tears.

Forbidden to complain.

Forever claimed by clamour,
we are slowly
wasting
away
to
O

***

Our hearts are living.
Crushed, they
bear the weight of
all our pain.

Weeping
for a thousand
homicides.

Feeding
on all our
compromise.

Warming frozen tears.

Daring to complain.

Never claimed by clamour,
we are slowly
gathering an
everlasting
radiance.

Expecting

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I am pregnant
with my own younger self.
She is waiting to be born in me,
an adult, almost forty.

I see her playing in the past,
skipping, smelling flowers.
When will she turn around
and step into her future?

I move closer,
hold my breath,
and I can hear her singing
softly to herself.

She sings the music
of the trees, the words
of butterflies,
and hums along with bees.

Held by the moment,
attention ripples
from her skin, her eyes.
She is utterly alive.

I call her name.
She looks around perplexed,
cannot see me,
scans the sky.

I call again,
regret the urgent tone.
How did that
fear get there?

And so I spread a blanket,
set out cups of tea and cake.
I read my book and let my presence
gently draw her close.

Yes, I sit and wait.