His nine year old loved the nursery, and the tree climbing and her books. History and flowers and trains. And she loved her father. And he thought of …
On a Sunday, in the early evening –And I hear this couple,raging on, screaming their heads off. And I’m over six footAnd I’m looking through hedgerows,through blossoms –Purples …
He dressed eccentrically at the most – striped trousers and a top hat bowler. And a long coat and gaudy shirt. His eyeglasses would swing on a chain, …
Pastel shades, gold and scarlet, splendid in the evening light, the simplest shades. The room, largely decorative with plumes of grey and black and blue. They called it …
Taut line of thin manila, rope creaking, on dusty rafters swinging. In your shame. Forty years of dead weight, then like a pendulum still. It was three days …
Spring has sprung, and new blossoms burst. Hungered by the lack of fuel, the compost heap beckons from across the garden, angry steam rising from its core of …
They move and glide in droves outside the passage brothel, through the alleyway, to their mud nests. He watches her floral skirt for twenty minutes, how she lingers …
My fingers touch dry strokes from a brush on a canvas from last year. So delicately you worked that piece. The landscape – brilliant greens and soft browns; …
[For Kari Jeppesen] – Johnny Cash on the Jukebox – Walk the Line. In a truck stop with bloodshot eyes, and all-night drivers, and builders in blue jeans …
[For Richard Chisholm] – Stilettos and hard black shoes, clack-clack, they walk the Christmas pavement. City dwellers and workers rushing to the tube, or pubs for warmth and …
The pictures taught him respectability. One of a young Jewish girl, with tattered stripes and the yellow ‘Judenstern’. Another of broken bones and ash cloud plumes above chimney …
Amplified soundsfrom a short-circuiting buzzerecho through a quiet hallway; a salvoof bursts ringing outinto the lonely darkness.She’s on time –the primal craving of love and wantracing headlong towards …
In a dirty, dingy dive, in a dire haze of old memories, I sit with Uncle Patrick; dead quiet as always with a Campari and Soda to soothe …
[For Erin Alexander] – It’s not easy avoiding them. On a dark path, in the early morning. Try in vain, the lack of light, but it all ends …
Foot pedal and cymbals, the beat, the kettle drum, and the girl and the hi-hat solo. Good looking men watch her deliver from the shadows. Are you Jack? …
Finchley Central, my new neighbourhood and a legion of foreign importers remain open for business, a warm Sunday evening after a day in a Camden pub. Fruiterers, bakers, …
[For Kari Jeppesen] – I watched you die, little bird, how you squirmed, the crazy cat plucking you gracefully from your aborted flight, crimson spurting, eyes rolling loosely …
Clothes pegs: in a line, on a line. Little dancing people moving to and fro, backwards and forwards, this way and that. Elegant and charming, graceful in silk …