The familiar parlour smell
Of dining table oak
Reads like a collection
Of days, crumbs of
Conversations, aromatic
Smoke and laughter,
Tears of life and death.

Grandfather clock chimes
Recall Sunday lunch at two.
Pops, pipe-to-lips one end
Dad the other. I spectate
Their centre court tennis
With gramaphone applause.

Kitchen chatter wafts closer.
Mum serves heaven-scented
lamb. Nan, ciggie-rich, kisses
My cheek and we begin.

Her passing called time
For this table, this rooom.
House clearance men outside.
No turning back now.

First published in Optimum Poetry Zine, June 2017

I’m most grateful to Mark Cobley, editor of The Red Ceilings Press, for publishing three of my poems, ‘Minds Under Arrest’, ‘On Nights’ and ‘Memory Thief’.

darkness draws curtains
in bible black ink   bat clouds
suffocate corners of sky

as another canvas dies
moon magnets drag corneas
of shuttered eyes towards sleep

where memory knits
rows of experience
that scarf into morning.

First published by The Red Ceilings, June 2017

they chart choreography
and mechanism of moves
then thunder down doors
at the dark side of dawn
with barking mouths and feet

it’s in their dna
to remove fibres of yours
distilling essence for clues
from every nook and cranny

scour your sink for germs
from scrubbed hard drives
of mind    words and images
lurking deep behind eyes

strip search sheets for signs
of wrong dreams   examine
soiled linen of thought   take
some away for questioning

First published by The Red Ceilings, June 2017

the past slips in and out from
cubby-holes of consciousness
keeping the known
from the knowing
dropping clues
onto tips of tongues
agonisingly close to recall
details shredded by thieving
magpies of memory, now
abandoned like party guests
waiting to be introduced.

First published by The Red Ceilings, June 2017

I am delighted that my poem ‘A Tale of Two Sandals’ features in the June issue of Reach Poetry magazine. There is more good news because a total of six of my other poems have been accepted for future publication by Eunoia Review, Amaryllis, The Northampton Poetry Review and The Red Ceilings.

Grandparents see future kings in small boys,
promise trips to boating lake and forest
worlds away from the flat above shops

Away from bone-dry August air
heavy with discordant dog barking, raised voices,
kids’ screams and throaty open-back buses

Like the one to Ilford Market which passed
by broken teeth of war-bombed buildings.
Nan bought sandals from a man wearing a turban.

It was oven-hot. Streetwise kids poked sticks
into treacle tarmac. A boy laughed at my accent,
smudged tar on one of my sandals.

Later, on a window ledge facing a brick red sunset
brown-black from coats of grandad’s shoe polish
lay the sandals I wished would disappear.

 First published in Reach Poetry Magazine, June 2017

drifting past unnoticed
my heart beats a path
in silent steps, following

hanging around your space
this place and that, slipping
in and out of view, waiting

sideways, casual glances
give no clue of my intention
to inhabit you, inside where
your energy burns

I’m going nowhere
nowhere without you
in my sights, I’m waiting
preparing for something

just when you think you know yourself
life can creep up on you, the unwary,
to reveal a new persona that stares back
from the mirror at your disbelief, now

that you’re normal, a mere mortal, no
longer edgy, racy or extreme, eyes
lacking twinkle and sparkle now
average has been bestowed on you

your confusion will wonder where
you were when the change occured
and why the ordinary had selected
you for a makeover of the mediocre

that will see you spend typical days
doing regular things in a routine
way, hugging the middle of the road
and embracing the run of the mill

finding adequate more-or-less acceptable
and predictability par for the course as
you calmly assume the reasonable role
of master of the mundane

meaning everything about the everyday
is suddenly alright and you’re always
feeling OK, fair to middling, nondescript,
but not so bad, just a so-so, so and so.

your will of course would
eventually do the work
driving a wedge between us
edging deeper into the

splintering cracks, slowly
revealing the tumour
that digested the bark
of our rotting timber

and sensing the end, an
accumulated intent added
weight to your will with
exaggerated swings

and staccatoed slashes
of blades that finally did
the felling, as silence found us
on this killing floor