HUM

Each morning at 6.56am I hear the distant, comforting hum of a passing, passenger train. It rumbles hypnotically through me for a few, brief seconds. On the occasions I don't hear this sound at 6.56am, I pretend to hear the distant, uncomfortable hum of a replacement bus service.

THOUGHTS ON MOISTURISING

I look down at the cracked & uneven pavement in our street. I count each crack that was wrought from repetitive walks. I stare where Time has stomped & tiptoed by. I think to myself that if Time reduces hardened stone to this then I might well have to start moisturising a bit.

REMEMBERING TO FORGET

Saturday at dawn displays the crude outlines of a day, as if the world has been drawn from a child's Etch-a-Sketch. I'm having to draw on memory to fill in the blanks. But I misplace a bush, then a tree. I'm forgetting what I'm remembering, so I wait for sunrise & remember again!

THE SAD, TINY HAIKU

My haiku was sad

It just sat there not growing,

Bonsai'ing away.

VARNISH

Overnight rain varnishes the pavements and a bright, cold start has set the sheen. An England flag hangs limply from a car. A lorry coughs its way over a speed bump. A jogger pounds the pavement so hard that I fear he might break through the varnish and jog right on to yesterday.

SIP SOFTLY

Powerful stuff, that first sup from a cup;

it's lives which have slipped by,

it's lives we have sipped by,

it's lives we get hit by.

Sip softly because you sip on my dreams.

THE INFINITE JIGSAW PUZZLE

Time is a jigsaw puzzle with an infinite number of pieces. Given just a few, precious pieces each, we spend a lifetime trying to fit them together. If we are lucky we'll find other pieces which fit with ours. We are all patterns in the puzzle, seeking the picture on the box.

THE BATTLE OF THE COMMUTE

The Whump! Whump! Whump! of car doors being slammed signals the opening salvos in the Battle of the Commute. Brake-lights slowly snake into town as a giant, homogeneous, metal monster is mobilised; feeding on irritation, apathy and rage, it searches for the souls of lost dreams.

WAITING FOR A MORNING RESCUE

Mist casts a dust sheet across an early morning. Outlines of chimney stacks are the only navigable points on the horizon. Distant lighthouses for eyes lost at sea, yet the safe harbour of familiarity feels an ocean away. I'm drifting on a dream, waiting for a morning rescue.

THEY ONCE TOLD ME

"Your dreams can come true" they once told me,

Which wasn't the filip they thought,

Who wants to be doing exams in the nude,

Or falling and never be caught?

"Your goals are in reach" they once told me,

"Be anything you want to be"

I never became The Fonz or Kung Fu,

But I'm still holding out for Bruce Lee.

LOST LANGUAGE

A tree; bent with age at the middle, doilies of green leaves fussing along its branches, home to strange hieroglyphs and lost language.

I stand; bent with age at the middle, listening to a conversation I know I can never understand.

It is enough that it makes me stop and smile.

BY THE WAR GRAVES

Atop our cemetery wall can be found stubs of uneven,blackened teeth.Fixed in Time's rictus grin,they are all that's left of iron railings,clipped for a wartime effort designed to bind closer our boundary of death. Harvests of hope. They sit with old company.