Go for a barefoot wonder in the snow, The pain with dissipate before you know it, A brisling bears cave half way up a mountain Bet you’re not so brave to walk half way in. Today has no feel, It’s as blank as a page, While people build effigies The salt dissolves what remains Cold from the snow storm So I came to your waters, To clean my feet and dry my hair Ice filled salt water with the absence of crooning Live lives on assuming a warm touch is hovering A beautiful sunrise benevolent but indifferent. Turning the wheel all year, a golden trumpet. Today has no feel, It’s as blank as a page, While people build effigies The salt dissolves what remains Cold from the snow storm So I came to your waters, To clean my feet and dry my hair Ham-handed hiemal rests lightly, as heavy as a stone, Tipsy on oblivion making hard water, a chill in the air and in the bones. The closeness of a morning helps the bells ring clearer as if lifted from cotton wool, The biting of the burgeoning discomfort comes a little, comes a lot, comes in full. Cold from the snow storm So I came to your waters, To clean my feet and dry my hair.

In a fog At a jog 8 MPH felt like a slog Platitude worn on my brow Ablaze now Dare 2 B Would you believe The exultant screech of a red kite broke about me Like to agree I reel as I go Frost hollow Crow below Coo above Collared dove Brittle grass Swards of glass Ebbing gloss Shadows pass Puddle ice It’s either the pitchfork or paradise Sugar mice or plague rats Without cats There’s no need 2 B bloodthirsty Slake or shake that Dracula from your jugular Until hell thaws Ugolino gnaws Frost on fire Breath of wire Silver lea Gilding green Hastening stride Cadence spurred A letter, a number, a word: Dare 2 B Wild and free

I’m beginning to feel every thorn in this bed of roses, I toss and turn. A moment of truth and I run like it’s Duck, duck, goose, in circles, hearing drum fills. Cos’ a corpse is a little empty box of magic! Put it in your back pocket, I don’t care, Put it in your mouth and chew, Cos when you’re dead I’ll be right there dead with you. I fall short and get taken away By the patterns in the carpet and the light display, Roast potatoes and gravy And I’m reborn, from saccharin to savoury. I’m beginning to feel every thorn in this bed of roses. I’ve enjoyed the smell of green leaf volatile and petrichor, they’ve brought me out to the lawn. I’ll choose my next words slow, like Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, they could be my last And reverberate through infinity as an eco, eco! Put it in your back pocket, I don’t care, Put it in your mouth and chew, Cos when you’re dead I’ll be right there dead with you. I fall short and get taken away By the patterns in the carpet and the light display, Roast potatoes and gravy And I’m reborn, from the saccharin to the savoury I’m beginning to feel every thorn in this bed of roses.

Sweet Williams white about a white bled pink Vaudevillian they wink Puckered up, sucking water up, party poppers, let ‘er rip Think man, think Gladioli glad my Ynysybwl eye Garibaldi bone dry Decaffinated tea, alcohol-free beer, bed at nine and up early And that suits me I have all I want from life A home and a wife A clean bill of health And books on the shelf A clean bill of health Uh-oh Splash! George front crawled across the Hellespont Leander’s wet wont Derring-do, shivering ague, atchoo, bless you What’s my point? What are words worth? What are Wordsworth’s words worth? A king’s ransom Dicky tum, grain of opium, awake to interruption The rest is gone

Humble, wouldn’t hurt a fly, An original psychedelic mind, Tested and got two stripes, Let’s get sick and write. Do, Do, Do you wonder? Are you going to recover? silence the shivering, We’re now only just beginning. It’s hard to find somebody who some body at all, It’s hard to find somebody who some body at all, It’s hard to find somebody who some body at all, It’s hard to find somebody at all. - It’s hard to find somebody who some body at all, It’s hard to find somebody who some body at all, It’s hard to find somebody who some body at all, It’s hard to find somebody at all.

See my winter garden The quantum wren in the rhododendron The hawthorn wears the scaling skeleton Of an ivy that once denied it sun Crucified on trellis clematis A suffocating vinegar-quenched Jesus St John’s wort beatific with berries The birdbath blotted by bibulous leaves The rose has gone to hip and shows its thorn Lawn strafed with jay and squirrel caches The unidentified bush all insects love Now a feast for the blackbirds and the thrush Meadow flower seed pods fat the field mouse The munching muntjac with half an ear bitten off The bludgeoned woodpecker needles an ant’s nest A mixed flock of tits mob the hazel The charcoal crow caws at the red kite The honeysuckle overshoots the fence Greyscale pigeon neckerchief iridescent Bruised breast, crucible beak and urine eye The perennial hellebore defiantly green A pollarded ash is the Venus de Milo Feral parakeets a long way from home Crocosmia kneels at Winter’s throne

Sweet Swan of the Void, Atop your spring, Your body feels numb, But don’t take wing, no, no. Sweet, Sweet song of the void, Can you hear aeolian harps play? Being bowed, being moulded, being sown, Sweetly resonating with imperfect tones. Cradle the night, It’s all done here by candle light, The lacuna between thought. Cold then warm, Once somewhere unknown, Alone, then home. Beware the sound of nylon strings, They will liven flamenco in the veins. Stay still and become hollow, Be the quiver not the fellow. Go slow, no-one told the pure white snow how to thaw. We are nothing but the creak in the beak of the mute swan All our hope, all our love is the whistle in the wind We deteriorate, regenerate And never knowing where we're going we arrive Matter animate Sweet Swan of the Void, Atop your spring, Your body feels numb, But don’t take wing, no, no.

Singing Queen On a trampoline In the zone Alone Mamma had an audience Of Youth Club kids By the Bismillahs They’d let me go You have to find a way to value yourself We are miracles of the universe The stuff of stars Never to be repeated Don’t be defeated Soon our stories Are scattered to the wind What souvenir? Perhaps a lock of hair from your fair head Who would hasten hard won wisdom? Summon moans of grief to come? Outstare the Gorgon Ossify the stone A brief season weathered alone

A healing kiss on the back bone and on the top lip, So you can call this your home. Practicing on plants for so long, Come on out and count your teeth with your tongue, Staying centred in the chest is an art, The brain is only a computer for the heart. Staying centred in the chest is an art, The brain is only a computer for the heart. Totally divorced from the all developing a pristine sharp bone jaw. Guided by a mirrored soft soul, Come in from the warm and we’ll keep you from the cold. Staying centred in the chest is an art, The brain is only a computer for the heart. Staying centred in the chest is an art, The brain is only a computer for the heart. Staying centred in the chest is an art, The brain is only a computer for the heart. Staying centred in the chest is an art, The brain is only a computer for the heart.

Whoso wakes winter dares to disturb A fellow at a song A borzoi at a bone A whistling whittler at a spoon Soon the moon Catches creation in a frozen swoon Landscape returned to canvas Brushstrokes unpainted blankness Unblinking milk eye Guessing at where the path is Where in a wilderness of boundless white Bridal unblushing shyness Paling to wan bloodlessness Shoveling quicklime Cascading colourlessness Shushes to sibilance the white noise night As quiet as kissed hair Swan settling Over cygnets underwing A house of cards tumbling Symmetry coalescing descending Solemn moon Laying lilies at creation’s tomb Blare of the bindweed trumpet Vanishing little egret Bleaching the bedclothes Footprints have sunken secrets Ghost steps colliding in a soundless night

Traipsing in the morning on cold and tired feet, The avifauna has yet to wake from what they are while they sleep. ersatz light paints a picture that’s gemütlich and warm, It was almost disappointing once the sun finally shone, It was almost disappointing once the sun finally shone. Already the day is asunder as it reaches it’s crest, While docile trees waved by the breeze are ready to confess. Perhaps a siesta or a walk to quench this thirst, As the bookcase bows under the weight of so many unread words, As the bookcase bows under the weight of so many unread words. A tsunami of dark is rolling this way Eating up all the zaffre blue that tomorrow will again betray The night’s fixed like a tent peg and entertainment is key, Miracles become boring so quickly, Miracles become boring so quickly.

Devil’s toenails in the riverbed Terrified alone at the manse Glistening on the mud flats a big lump of lead We should’ve called the bomb squad A farmer gave me a meteorite I rue the day I gave it in trade For a piece of Blue John I know you’re going to laugh But I’ve been here before Now I’m here again The same man I’ve boiled bones to make gelatin Delivered milk in the driving snow Spent some time down a dirty coal mine I’ll scrub your back, you scrub mine Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band Live at the Lacano, swinging Bristol Hold on, I’m coming I’ve dug foundations and I’ve built walls Raised roofs and everything in between Carried sheet glass home on the bus Needs must When the doctor ordered bed rest I demolished a house Which I wheelbarrowed across the road Where the rubble remains I drove the van for the band A handful of shows on the mainland A hole in the exhaust they just couldn’t repair It sounded like a Spitfire You all got wiped out by a terrible bout Gastroenteritis, it was a mess Still we didn’t miss a gig Charity shop suit in the show home A miscellany of books from the tip Spending my weekends recalling old friends What the moving finger has written The family silverware is for tiddlywinks Father and son both won Douglas in Bloom It’s pewter I think Yes I laugh I don’t know if you’ve been here before And maybe i’ll be here again The same man