The poems and images on this page are my original work. Please respect my intellectual property. I’m happy to allow people to quote and share my work so long as you give me credit as the author and so long as you are not using it for commercial purposes. If you want to use it commercially contact me for permission.
Older Work
Woman on the Museum steps
Her brightness caught and held my eye
the sudden stab of colour pierced
the drabness of the day.
The way her careful, slow descent
made a line of red and orange through
horizontals of grey stone
I watched, thinking of the painting
I might make, ‘Woman on museum steps’,
until she passed me and was gone.
Later I realised the woman and the steps
were incidental. What I needed to paint
was movement, change and flow.
The unity of form and light, every line
unfolding into the next, fragments
of colour cumulating one by one.
All you do, all you ever can do, is catch
the winking of time’s eye, set it down
and ask “is this enough?”
Walking Home
It’s three a.m. My footsteps echo
off blank brick walls.
I am not entirely sober.
I take a drag on my roll up
and settle into the journey.
There’s something splendid about
walking the city at night
when the cloak of busyness is thrown off
and the streets stretch out naked,
inviting exploration.
From Stratford to Maryland and on
past the real Albert Square,
tatty and nondescript and slumbering.
Forest Lane unrolls under my feet
straight as the proverbial arrow
towards Forest Gate. No forest; no gate;
just a grid of solid, Edwardian terraces
split in half by the Woodgrange Road
No traffic. Nothing except the on
off pulse of the crossing light.
Now I am almost there, counting off turnings,
Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer. Do people
know they live in dead archbishops?
Last few paces. I turn the key in the lock
enter my own illusion of security.
Published in Poetry Kit magazine
Seasons.
Summer has turned to autumn on the flick
of a swallow’s wing. The season darkens
and draws in. Fiery eyed jack o’ lanterns
dance a foolish future, no treat; just trick.
We rake up the fallen truths of summer
pile them into heaps; make bonfires of them.
Then stand silent and watch as flames consume
things once loved. Winter brings cold, dark slumber.
But while we sleep the ashes swirl and rise
recollect their purpose; wind blown, take wing
and like flocks of storm tossed birds ride the skies
above the hard and frozen ground. Searching
until they find the cracks between the lies
settle, nourish thought seeds, and wait for spring.
(First published in the Yaffle press anthology: Whirlagust II 2020)
Mornings East London
We slipped over an invisible line
some where, some time;
skin to skin, electron trading
is that how it is done?
Intended or not;
we are held in this covalent
bonding.
Early morning walking across Wanstead Flats
to the French Café for croissants and coffee
nothing special;
that’s what stops you in your tracks
the sheer ordinary, bloody, beauty of it all
no words for it – just
a handclasp and a quickening step
(First published in RoundyHouse 2010)
Vagrant 