Poetry

It all started when the Rockers broke up and Shawn Michaels flung Marty Jannetty through the Barber Shop window.

I was born with witch hands between zeros and ones a wide oak with full floral bloom iridescent spotlight on the crown in my cradle

Scorn is balled tight in my Liverpudlian mother. Her suspect eyes mistrust the colour of green tea leaving me exposed like I am seven years old with a tide mark on my neck.

He must be six then, maybe seven – still young enough for shorts, because that’s what they ought to wear at that age.

Light so bright it hurts the eye leaves a burn on the underside and in a film there would be a single note and no one is speaking.

For all the stars in the skies, You remain the sparkling bright— A hidden gem among pearls, dazzling for the watchful eye.

It began with the sun and TristanTzara  and your black hair and progressed to  garter-belts and pierced labia and an obsessive fascination with a mutual dream of perfection  or a clear glint of similar traumas to cling to  for safety.

Internal Combustion in Buckinghamshire The Cowper and Newton Museum is closed so I walk out (passing the Soul Garage) towards a country park where the flooded Ouse glares back and a tape tells me I’m forbidden. In the churchyard there is no reply from the slave-trader who is frowned on by a grim stone mask.…

Just days after placing the book on the shelf I run a finger across the cover and leave a faint wake of darkness.