PHANTOM HAT SYNDROME

It's the cooling down
Of red towers
Heatened by sun flare
In the image I took
With me across
Those Northern distances.

Hard to separate sometimes
The expression from the thought -
Like spearing sunlight on a sword,
A hammer flattening what you saw

...Into words all used up before

But if I cast my line
And accept it cannot catch water
Or if I remember that these words
Are a self-made mirror
Whose image I cannot control

For as I cast my line
So my line casts me

___________________________________
Oldbury,
6th June 2012, 12.45am

UNNAMED THOUGHT

Give me depth in music
Give me directness in words
Give me solidarity in friendships
And foundations for my home

________________________________


Oldbury,
9th June 2012

9 6 & 12

9, 6 and 12 are in my head
 A relationship caused
     But to what effect?
A distance long travelled
     But to what extent?

To go backwards
Jump forwards
To go backwards
Jump forwards
Without a sight of land

9, 6 and 12 spells a strange sort of N
A rigid kind of 2 or maybe sideways Z
It's all in angles of perspective
Of looking backwards at you own head

And to go backwards...

______________________________________
Oldbury,
9th June 2012, 1.15am

(UNTITLED)

Like...
Sailing
Over expressways
On mornings
Of sunlight
Through back-seat smoke
And distant gas towers.

I'm going home this morning.

Or...
Night-service
With its late-shift shadows.
The streetlamps that never sleep.

I'm going home to wake up
                                        in the morning

__________________________________

On a night-bus to Sutton Coldfield,
May 2012

AMONG FRIENDS

Among friends
Tho' we may feel safe
We may also lose our way -
Not noticing the bond
Become a chain
Feeling free to express
What was wiser contained

To grow our way/away?

__________________________


Oldbury,
April 2012

LOSS / FINDING

LOSS

Sudden and sad
The worth that the world
Had
Blown away from me:

Like a kite
     In an unkind breeze
          Like a flower
               On a storm-bound sea

                         All heading over the horizon

________________________________________

FINDING

                   Slowly but sure
          Like the waves that
     Find their way back to shore
And break upon our feet

________________________________________
________________________________________

Number 11 Bus,
Late one Saturday night, January 2012
                

THE MAYBE THAT MEANS NO

And don't try and bluff it,
'Cos everybody knows
Your words are only gestures
To a candle-lit prose
That blows away in the wind.

Who'm I trying to fight
Should anger burn its own worth?
A blackbird spooked
By the turn of the worm
That learned to fight for itself.

And don't put that on me
'Cos I've met this war before
Your sentence lip service
To the notice on the door
That wards away unwanted visitors.

Baby, we both know
Maybe means no.

_____________________________________


Oldbury,
26th February 2012