2025

Moving home
Test fears to limits,
And safety nets.
Late as usual,
Late even to reality.
Toothache.
Sugared syrup words two steps down.
From peace and quiet.
Back to being,
A pair, a sister, a daughter, alive.
Closed door and traded key.
To independence and doing your laundry again.

Morning Headlines
Rights to rivers and other things, treading water slowly.
Decorated satin. Sometime passes to excuse space for imperfection.
Obnoxious or with nothing good to say.
The true extent of privilege is to leave your head and end pain.
Absence of doubt,
To permit confusion,
Ashes left after flames.
Forgotten pens and waiting patiently for a cold to end.

The only notes on colour
A step away from missing trains.
Lightness in blue, problems fold.
Past a broken bedtime.
The many thoughts in imagination. Ombre skyline to hide grey days.
Eyes keep you company, just as hands do.
Clasp round an imaginary microphone. Centre stage to golden child.
Clenched fists, over promised peace broken.
A short commute at midnight.

On Being Young
Mindful words at three and who you are speaking to.
Beauty in rambling, clutched palms and someone to admire you.
From thigh height comes honest speaking.
Three years, subconscious reign over learnt etiquette.

Emergency Contact
Outrage to playing favourites.
Easy answers to comparison.
Threaded feelings, to weave complex answers through lines of guilt.
A room of dismissive talking - cut with laughs.
Chosen preference in its cruelty.
But how death all looks the same.

Over Candles
Two moments skipped across to peace - quiet,
settling on bad lighting.
A waiting game,
with self set limits.
What often feels too long.
Draw a line, firmly, across brick.
Settle for a lifetime.

A miss for better words.
Immunity, devotion to the rule of three.
How Summer came before Spring.
To leave on Monday,
Over lost time and travelled sleep.
A madness to forced love, sometimes necessary,
Eager rituals for this week.
Dissolution,
Let others make your life
or move away from fear.

In Bed with New Company
Buried in sleep,
Burnt or dreamless.
Difference in taste and in touch, absence of warmth even on a good week.
Nothing strange or startling,
Almost to monotony,
ankle deep and flattened voice.
A whisper coughed up, and held on red.

Truth Reserved for Strangers
Carried load of equal burden,
And the first to admit to unfair scrutiny.
Opinions of friends and facts to strangers.
Warning notes, on how to claim back sanity,
Rarely found.

Thoughts about Childhood
Whispered thought that seem to make up preferences.
Sour taste and pleading.
Road runner commute,
Sit on the cliff edge,
Dust clouds,
Trap door cartoons.
Square eyes edged on the arm of leather and ruining nice things.

Dying Passion for Difficulty
Hold a kiss,
Bitten between teeth.
Love at the head of a dinner table, with tears.
Gratitude extends beyond every ounce of being.
Foreign hugs become family and the solidification of unity.
Shared floorboards with ambition and best kept intentions.
Thankful for every day.
Most notably the hard ones.

A Sign to Warning
Staircase sounds above your head.
Echoed opposites, ignorance to portent.
Diversion routes from badly kept company.
Sleep on it.
Find a limit to never cross, see it land,
And hope that someone disagrees.

*adapted from Greenwich Mean Time

Synonym to Season
A break, a pause of change.
Of backwards steps and baby crawls.
Death.
A season to everything.

Anything Can Be
Anything can be a prayer,
Over cereal, over breakfast stools.
Promised heat with little arguing, dissolved solitude and the idea that peace should be found across a highway.
Back seat driving.
A jinxed sensitivity to shouting and realising that half-way to kindness is just trying.

A Thought on Sitting Still
At the cost of finding something to be pleased about.
A wish for this, constantly.
Nothing quite enough. Nothing thought of in quite the same idealisation.
Corridor scolding and bad behaviour.
Often time, one week out.
Sit with the pressure of self-inflicted nausea.
How to stop feeling bad, and if bad could feel less venomous when it must bleed.
A year to change your life or commit to one dream.
Never not busy.

Outcome of Wishful Thinking
Trying to be better.
Pocket corners of grief.
For things you spent a whole year complaining about.
Joy takes hold.
A delayed postal service.
Screensavers, in trade of sleep and a reason to be late.

Close
A night of dreams and sorry looks.
Midnight pass to summer.

After Work
Spent eyelashes to end war.
To chase people, swallow pride and sober days.
Delirium at five thirty.
A social hour.

Time Difference
A different type of lull that can’t find motivation.
Eleven hours’ time difference,
Fast forward with no spoilers for my morning yet.
What starts in doubt, nettled playgrounds,
Across four paths and fields of green.
On second thought, permission to share a few things.
A mention of midmorning rain, or if there is need to avoid traffic
And skipping ahead, tell me quietly, if it all worked out.
On second thought, maybe half a day isn’t long enough to know.

2024

Knowing better to behave the same
Old news to shadowed thought.
Something red hot, thrown between palms.
I cannot hold this thing, sitting, weighted.
To know you’re never wrong, will often get the best of you.
In glances and nudges and feeling to take the attention away.
Become real, become flawed, become terrified when that doesn’t ruin it.

Smoke BreakNever problems in front of power.
A very nice blue.
Arrest to thought
and what feels like poison in passing conversation.
Musings run to anxious hope - sold to fantasy and a half-eaten apple.
All in search of sun.

All KindnessAll kindness and no common sense.
The January before.
Break room interruption and love laced tongues.
Do you find this all-consuming, or is it the right amount of chaos?

Patience for EndStop by love in old moods and habits,
dying hard or with no end at all.
Moving.
Patience - ignoring texts.
Eight hours spent over self set limits.
Patience - next to satisfaction.
Let it catch up to you, whatever it is.
An antidote to cynicism might be close enough.

Reverse of Vanity
Misheard.
Bad luck, on the reverse of vanity.
Fever edge to moving parts with a cold winter of bad habits.
Catch them quick,
to not ruin a good thing.
The contradiction it can never really be.
Watch yourself in spaces,
through others.
With a hope their words are only laced with string.

Greenwich Mean Time
Unstitched white with a change of plan.
Time begins and ends in green.
Somewhere south of the river.
Staircase sounds above your head.
Echoed opposites.
Ignorance to portent.
Diversion routes from badly kept company.
Sleep on it.
Find a limit to never cross.
See it land, and hope someone disagrees.

Save the Days
A grace given to invent your life and own your death.
Free time spent reminding others of your name.
20 degree’s too hot with wasted daylight.
To save the days, at the expense of sunrise.
The seasonal aid of memory and how easy love can find you.

Chase Death
A trusted sigh,
to see the sun together.
All times passed and no weekends.
Desperate to die old,
to chase death - away like flies.
Unkept kindness,
satisfied.

Arguments on public transport and the week to follow
Defining thought a week on,
three days rest.
Calm a heart, avoid a crush.
Swallow worry with lemsip and hot ribena.
Circus week of living,
three day balance.
Until curtain call. Whichever feels less than just surviving.

A struggle to reach the future.
Amateur hour of arguments,
spell check on a notes page.
Sour moments on a spoilt weekend -
lasting five minutes with an effort to pull yourself out of it.
Peace offered, identical to lemon iced tea.
Silly things.

Beginning of Something, with revisions
A lull in love and meeting breaths.
Something unchanging,
resistance to kindness.
Blame passed baton.
Wounds on flesh and scars lay open.
Limits met on vocabulary.
Blocked, impulse,
adverse reaction.
Something close to healing.
Unkind - unapologetic.
Arguments out of pressure,
and pressure out of love.

Box Dye
Counting sheep to clock watching.
Lost eyes, lost minutes and a stomach ache.
A dread to Monday,
but save a kiss -
seeing friends.
Withdrawal symptoms only after a weekend.
Lost limbs, found duality.
Cinematic brunette or mousy brown.

Beginning of Something
Nothing more was ever said.
A lull in love and meeting breaths.
A quick goodbye to meaning things. Reading lines, over read.
A mental wall of boundaries.
Become more of this,
become something other than obsolete.
Race of cartoon.
Clouds out loud.
Speak quietly in months, of building love.

Third Time Lucky
After school steps
to something comfortable.
Nineteen minutes to catch light before sleep,
weeds and worry laced in words that pull.
Inaudibly behind you.
Overran with closed eyes,
three times moved dinner.
Something else to worry over,
or with an effort to inspire luck.
In beauty, in mayhem, how to be better.

October Clouds
No direction home,
but something with an early drive.
Worries unrelated,
misspelled stress.
Easy doesn’t mean absent of butterflies.
Of cold feet and mindless consumption,
stroppy Friday afternoons with an exchange of complaints.
Native to feeling and twisted tongues.

In Replace of Better Things
In replace of better things,
with a mind on morning steps.
Families, made up of strangers.
Dancing mirrors and petaled sunlight.
Half hearts and sorrowed whispering - dishonestly sits on phone lines.
Grout and hot feet.
Never time to do everything.

Day Job
Bad manners for a bad mood - others speaking on entitlement.
A shout to strangers, to ask after nothing.
Restraint follows dial tones, in efforts to keep hope controlled.
Bound cautiously to a phone, more ordinary to will something life changing.
Rarely are they, day-by-day.
But look what you get to do.
Is there always want with reason, arbitrary desire.
Alongside phantom wishes that come with closed eyes.

Inside Voice
Chance and places, continually missed calls.
Queues with forgotten incense sticks - waste of 3£ 50.
Notes on being,
on breathing,
on a forgotten thank you
missed manners
screaming, crying, barking and a shout for strangers.
Outside seesaw with gentle speaking.

Domesticated Thoughts
Comfort, joy and productivity.
Focus group, exclusive to a season with no time.
variegated, passing warmth.
Beauty pinned on freezer doors,
discounts and lunch.
Stuck between stripes.
Perched, stolen, built on top of moss.
Domesticated thoughts. Before morning air.
On keeping pigeons indoors and birds in general.

Easy Access to Joy
Easy access to joy, regardless of circumstance.
Make yourself up in the path.
Next door neighbours and invisible strings.
Beauty in kind faces and known.
Forgetting how to cry feels the same as close to tears.
All four meet in the same twelve hour day.
Fridays kiss to the weekend and worries put on pause.

Wait Time
A catch. Waiting on friends.
On life, on luck, on easy things that sit next to love.
In absence of everything and then an all consuming abundance.
Balanced collar with exposed toes.
A bus stop from green and other things that feel like home.
Next to cornered soulmates and double yellow lines.

I Had No Other Plans
Strong through time.
Second chances on doorstep reunions.
Half month consistency, for Gus.
With wishful thinking.
Gratitude to loud living.
Outstretch and overcome.
Bad day to bad week,
perspective on feeling.
Four laps, six compromised.
Death at thirty ten years ago.
When you have no plan to go anywhere.
When are you done thinking.
An unintentional wait for something. Words permitting.
Maybe just an idea.

Better Half of Two Minutes
Pair up, speak fondly, patchwork similarities next to space always half filled.

Playground Tales.

A primary crush, carried in gingham to learn what secrets are.
Betrayal to let it leave the tarmac.
Foreshadow on foundational heartache, but now nothing other than a forgotten name. With past, and melted chocolate in the laundry.

A resistant pair.

Go first,

in front of me,

please.

Playground Tales.

Of made-up stories, this time just as tarmac breaks. A lie about tadpoles, somewhere in the green.
Maybe frogs.
Embarrassment seems something as unforgivable as a spoilt crush.

A resistant pair.

Now somewhere after adolescence. On the edge of a table. Born familiarity sought. Safety, knowing, finds you. In halls, over dust, with your other half. October steals and splits.
Quietly, easily, unnoticed. Both are whole now. Maybe. More than before, presumably.
Past twenty-four more seasons.
One failed love. One fighting.

A resistant split.

Notice of reunion. Past distaste for partnership and a difficulty in duality. A harsh exchange of splits, wound round a staircase conversation. Quietly, easily, notably returning as two. Both whole.

An absence of resistance.
The better half of two minutes. Shadowed footsteps, half a size too big. With comfort to grow.

Wait first,

walk with me,

please.

Three Miles from Home
A skipped bus stop.
Picking scabs, spotlight lit under arches.
Shouting cabs - near misses.
All at shoulder height.
Midweek drunk, a short three miles till comfort.

Chest Pain on Heartache
Chest pain on heartache,
passing yawns between each-other.
On borrowed books and stolen time.
Something of a chance.
Repetition and bad feeling.
Lost feelings, forgotten hope.
Heavy Sunday angst sits on the chest of current affairs.

Valentines in July
Split walk - between pairs.
Extent of concrete importance.
Of bleeding luck,
through every window.
Nothing seems as soft,
with the beginning of beauty.
With open houses, arms, limbs
space for added distance and commute time.

Past This Feeling
Sanity sits together with disillusion, no talking. I have no words. They seem caught.
On wind, maybe, or something close to that.
Something that climbs you down off of this feeling. Between us.
Back to disillusion.
On split paths on this exact feeling, this exact knowing.
A horrible excitement.
Pain of trying to know where the longing comes from.

Hopeful Behaviour
Eyes pulled back on wooden days.
Outside decisions.
A cup of strawberries.
Absent of vowels that sound like remote thinking.
Inside voice for external judgement.
Hopefully removed from that.

Internal Dialogue
Droughts of sadness. Besides resistance to do anything.
Move your body, to move this feeling.
Not to shift it long enough, with any pause is welcome.
Long distance, five days.
An ache for patio warmth but too hot when it comes.
Indecision may be the new thief of joy.
Does your head have your voice, or does it sound like someone else?

Bedside
Pathway house to floating windows.
Indoors on sleeping glass, in all the effort to warm a nomad silence.
Reluctancy. Hit. Root. Come up against motion with no deadline.
With summer found then, lost now.
Weighted chest, quilted sheets and posted decisions.
With a hope of difference, butchered fear.
Three hours of peace and quiet, next to a glass of water.

Fingers Crossed for Autumn Heat
July, August
a promise to skip November.
Reluctant and unreliable.
Four missed calls.
Bedsheet, window frames, a sheet of daydreams almost close to true.
Gut feelings poorly managed end up half way in your throat.
To discuss over dinner.
The skies expression of interest welcomes an absent summer.
Stood on corner streets.
Writing on a similar delayed morning.
Potential for a warm autumn.

It’s Never About These Things
Tied shoelace thought
separate to you.
A taped to do list,
of past lives and familiar territory.
Caught eyes too disillusioned.
Watch luck catch up to you next to closing hours.
It’s never about these things.

Departure of Spring
A privilege of ageing, mid-years grace has fleeted.
Springs Departure.
Cruelty lies in summer.
The season of promise, mostly unkept.
Quietly, half asleep and intimate.
Blue month, past tidal waves.
Heavy hands and bare fingers.

Currency Exchange of Surnames
Outside of conversation, absent of anything else
background sky and desktop mouse.
Past lunch, skipped thoughts to dinner and logic.
Decades and sensibility choked for air.
Comfortably cyan, streaked pixels.
Half cut bleach.
Expelled from home,
to conversational blues, bumped heads and a disappointing kiss.
Pins, needles and shadowed palms.
The currency exchange of surnames,
over dusted chalk.
Friends of friends.

Nothing Other Than a Day
Weighted blanket with the world’s intention.
Be where your feet are.
If cruelty doesn’t catch you before kindness does.
It will be nothing other than a day.
Move this feeling off my chest, to seize bad things happening.

Not Death, Just Upset
In this, the consequence of neglect is not death.
To neglect a feeling.
To neglect one for a juncture - growing up.
It is not death mostly, just upset.

Feelings Over Love
A fancy or a feeling,
borrowed lines and balcony tears.
Today brings a hard week.
Too close, as often as it looks like the beginning.
Sit in overdraft, rewritten, reworked and mark yourself healed.

Screentime Reminder
Kissing plates to an unprepared summer.
Too close to seeing June,
cheat sleep to trade a lie.
Buy back days,
off digital minutes and a drift of waved thought.

All Just in Grass
Never in absence of love, even if, a lack of universal compassion.
With bugs and long grass and itchy legs.
Crossed knees, find peace amongst other things.
When barks come back, along with streaming eyes.
Summer brings a different type of noise. On pavement,
matched pace - down to still.
All just in grass.

To Do Things Alone
And frightened things turn out better.
The worst outcome is shaky hands.
Moments of heat on damp towelled concrete.
Stripes.

Behind a Day
All that you can be.
Lost thought, lost words - behind a day.
Delayed three years. A welcome break.
From rain,
and in that break the clouds sigh, far less weighted.
They are not so heavy and neither is the sky.
Finally,
it is just blue.

Off Growing Pains
Active rest, off growing pains.
With bruised ego, stood next to shouting.
Find momentum to gain momentum.
Street smiles come Tuesday as Wednesday holds no talking.
Lines to move around. Boardwalk. Halfway done.

Some Poetic License
Immobilised. Poetic license over love.
Found on a lunch break.
Too heavy to continue into May.
Drop off at a found doorstep you hadn’t known until Sunday.
Salt to follow tears,
to follow intoxication.
and avoiding doing everything when everything feels like just that.

and before

Repetitive Ending
Stuck in ego and six day weeks.
Wet fringes to replace cold feet.
Bleached soil to scolded palms.
Second meetings in the worst season.
And three goodbyes in Spring.

Love May be Terrifying
Clambered in towards your chest,
snatch the cover, of loving, from your lips.
Too deeply, too often, too much.
Dislike me so I can stay.
To sink your teeth in fear and ego,
for love is terrifying.

Out of Marmite
A break from sadness without betrayal.
A list of desired traits.
Distance between two,
that could never quite get to the phone on time.

Empty space between two bones,
the feeling they may choke you.
Betrayal in sleep.
With such inability to stay warm,
absence of a silver skeleton.
Light blue neglect - tiled floors with a draft. Out of marmite.

Lunch Break Pastime
Delayed seasons and skipping spring.
Each corner, around and around.
Between the hours of dawn and madness.
Heal the world in your half an hour down time.
To escape crying clouds,
behind purple that should be beige,
kiss the ground with each skip,
70mph pavements, spring.

Lists in Winter Months
January is three days from over,
and February looks the same.
14 hour days return, to greet a commute as solitude.
To sit in life for 27 days and feel each second for its strange paradox.
To bring heartache and euphoria,
as each share tears on lucid cheeks.