It’s children who spot puddles,

Pavement cracks and kerbs,

cement between bricks

And brand new verbs.

It’s children who spot Granddad

Picking at his nose,

The stubble on his chin,

The smell on his clothes.

It’s children who spot shadows

Disguised as monsters

And brown knotty sticks

To chuck at the conkers.

It’s children who spot scruffy dogs

And skinny cats,

And bird nests in the tweed

of an old flat cap.

It’s children who spot broken-legged blackbirds

And the biggest caterpillar,

The one with the fangs

That had to be a killer.

Writer’s Blockocks

Writer’s Blockocks

Instead of rolling my tongue around a juicy adjective

While finding myself an abstract objective

To metaphorically master through a perfect perspective

And economically edit to its utmost connective,

I find myself lost in a cell full of words.

I know what I want to do but I can’t find the verbs.

Rhymes are on the run through the keyhole and under the door,

Saying I am going to die a death if you use me any more.

But a padded cell is not enough, it’s another cliché.

Another padded-out and poached piece of poetry today.

My illness is spreading, pathetic as the odd sock,

Or the fact that gets me to the rhyme – I’ve got writer’s block.

Grief wells, haunting my paper with cunning and clarity,

To see this block, the big full stop, the end to my literacy.

Suicide seems to be the only recurring choice

For on top of all this, I’m an oral poet and I think I’m losing my voice!

The Black Moon

The Black Moon

Some would say there was no moon

If it was black, because it can’t be seen

With the naked eye,

Like there is a naked eye

Unattached to a brain.

I would say take a closer look.

Here, use this telescope,

Point it towards that star.

Yes, the white and bright one.

Can you relate to that? Right,

Now move it to the left . . . up a little.

An outline, a circular shape.

That’s the one, yeah! Yes, that’s the black moon.

A circular magnificence reveals and breathes

Itself into another mind, free again.

The music of knowing.

Taking his eye away,

Quizzically, mockingly, he said,

‘Yeah, but what do I want to know that for?’

All that investigation

All that proof –

For what?

Think I’ll use my energy showing

A black man a black moon.

Brinkley Park

Brinkley Park

In the interval of each footstep

A distant drunken couple laugh.

Like a lioness chewing gravel,

Her feet crunched the speckled path.

Thinking of every memory-hugging

Short cut she knew so well,

She waited as walking for the

Timely chime of the 3 a.m. church bell.

As she recalled the warmth

Of pillow and sheet,

She slowly bent under the shadow of the willow

To rub awake her sleeping feet,

And it was cold, wet