Verse 2024

Waiting Room

Constant hiss
Underwrites
Muted conversation,
Distant laughter,
Inexplicable thuds.
As if worlds are colliding
In the next corridor.

Above all,
Stillness,
Anticipation.
A tension
Like a dull ache
In your back.
Waiting.

Afternoon

There is nothing quite like the stillness of an autumn afternoon.
Hopefully there will be sun on the hawthorn berries.
The alarm call of a blackbird.
A leaf falling through Zeno’s Paradox,
Unwilling to leave the tree
And settle into the earth.

Garden spiders have thrown their spirals.
Growing fat against the shrinking days,
On a good harvest of little flies.
The sun leans his shoulder on the gate,
Conceding the sky to the moon and stars.
In deference to his inevitable
Decline into oblivion.

In the cemetery,
Fox turns to contemplate us,
Before trotting away
Between the graves.

Light

What secret still resides within the light,
That nestles in the heart of leafy shadow.
A quiet beacon glowing in the night,
With promises of all that is to follow.
The silence and serenity of dark,
Sleeping forms of furniture and clutter,
That cluster round the lights as if to mark,
The whole room’s shy retreat from closing winter.

These tree lights speak to us a history,
Of countless promises of refuge.
Brief candles always flicker on the way.
The light is at the heart of every mystery,
A promise to escape the coming deluge,
A herald that foretells the dawn of day.

Megan

For palm to palm
Is holy Palmers Green.
Near darkness,
Cut through
By a blacker sabbath,
On wings of sativa.
Her white dress
Near transparent
In a certain light.

In the early morning
We walked.
The newsagents open
Just enough
To let out bad tidings.
Unknowing
We followed Pymmes Brook
Toward home.

Happy Families

Uncle Jim
Never learned to swim.
He once fell in the water
To be rescued by his daughter

Ex wife Pam
Specialised in jam
She met a man called Melluish
Who turned her on to relish

Cousin Mike
Went everywhere by bike
He didn’t like the bus
He felt it too much fuss

Granny Pugh
Had far too much to do
So she packed it all in
And lived in a rubbish bin

Sister Anne
Had a bright green van
She liked to kidnap people
And throw them of the steeple

My father, Jack
Always dressed in black
He’d pretend to be a vicar
If you slipped him 20 nicker

Dummies

just like the dummies
we’re leaning forward
trying to see
just where we are.

we’re sitting back
in slow slow motion
nodding sagely
in our crashing car

Lilo

Iolo bought a lilo
From old Spiro in Llandeilo,
He paid him with a giro
That he signed with a green biro.
As a sailor, he a tyro,
Had to learn the sea from zero;
First he practised on the lino,
Though it played hell
With his ego.
Then he set out on the waves, though
He was never seen again.

Gravity

At night
I recline on
A sphere.

Six
Sextillion
Tonnes
Suck me down.

Plastered to the bed,
I look up (or down)
With X-ray eyes,
At a million stars
Across
The Milky Way

Second Floor

Don’t go
To the second floor,
Its infinite corners
Will suck you in.

What is it
That haunts the bathroom?
Dripping with a menace
Crusted
In the cracked green tile.

Through dreams
I am drawn with trepidation,
Each derelict room
Shadows a new horror,
Hiding in frayed red curtains,
Lurking in a gaping wardrobe.

I cannot name this darkness
Its sombre mood,
More terrible than death,
Waiting
On the second floor.