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Back Gold from the Stone Save as PDF
Chapters (148)
  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. Dedication
  4. Introduction
  5. From Perceptions of the Pen (1985)
  6. Well ‘I’
  7. Mother
  8. Ain’t No
  9. Scream
  10. So Near and yet So Near
  11. As Is Life
  12. From Tender Fingers in a Clenched Fist (1988)
  13. African Metaphor
  14. Listening
  15. Nursery Rhyme
  16. Some Quotes from Neatherton Man found in Deepest England Somewhere between 1974 and 1980
  17. Negotiations
  18. Englabetween
  19. What Have We Got
  20. Moods of Rain
  21. Wasita
  22. Sing a Song of Sick Penance
  23. The Black Writers’ Workshop
  24. Understanding Difference
  25. The Day Will Come
  26. The Invasion of the Mancunoids
  27. The Red Death of Edgar Allan Poe
  28. Trying Me
  29. Dead Wood Poetry
  30. Fell Off and Fell Out
  31. Bad Trip – L.S.D.
  32. Burn My Book (Burn In Illusion)
  33. Tense Tattered Tortured Tried Tested and Torn
  34. Mother Thatcher
  35. Today Will Pass
  36. Spell Bound
  37. Gold from the Stone
  38. Everything Is Rhythmical
  39. Sleep Is a Songbird
  40. Director’s Notes (For the Daily Shun and Daily Killer)
  41. She Read as She Cradled
  42. City Sigh
  43. Spell Me Freedom
  44. Interim and Cost
  45. Ace Under My Sleeve
  46. Traces
  47. The Show Goes On
  48. From Rebel without Applause (1992)
  49. Bearing Witness
  50. Remember How We Forgot
  51. Fingerprints
  52. Occupations
  53. Boiling Up
  54. Instant Consciousness
  55. Airmail to a Dictionary
  56. The Customs Men
  57. Mind-Walking
  58. For My Headstone
  59. Love Poem
  60. Flowers in the Kitchen
  61. Suitcases and Muddy Parks
  62. The Nest
  63. Pass It On
  64. Going Places
  65. Gil Scott-Heron
  66. Godsell
  67. Flushed
  68. I Hate You
  69. Professional Black
  70. Pretoria Pit
  71. Uncle Tom and the 1990s
  72. Clear as Day Storms
  73. My Brother
  74. Children and Company
  75. Writer’s Blockocks
  76. The Black Moon
  77. Brinkley Park
  78. Rage
  79. From Morning Breaks in the Elevator (1999)
  80. The Waitress and the Nights of the Round Table
  81. Colour Blind
  82. Charlie’s Playing Blackjack
  83. Invisible Kisses
  84. Slipping
  85. Murdering Bill
  86. Immigration R.S.V.P.
  87. Fair
  88. The Repossession: Lot 67
  89. Baptism in Mire
  90. Controlled Explosions
  91. Children’s Home
  92. Walking in Circles
  93. My Dad Is a Pilot
  94. Guilt
  95. Sandwich Love
  96. The Elevator
  97. A Flock of Sound
  98. The Graduate and Her Secret Thesis
  99. The Bruise
  100. Quiet Places
  101. Mourning Breaks
  102. From Listener (2008)
  103. Let There Be Peace
  104. Rain
  105. The Actor’s Voice
  106. Patterns
  107. Laying the Table
  108. Perfect
  109. Gambian Holiday Maker
  110. Listener
  111. Ricochet
  112. Email
  113. Elephant in the Room
  114. Architecture
  115. Moving Mountains
  116. Manchester Piccadilly
  117. Some Things I Like
  118. The Lost Key
  119. **** This
  120. Magpie
  121. Before We Get Into This
  122. Advice for the Living
  123. The Battle of Adwa, 1896
  124. The Gilt of Cain
  125. Applecart Art
  126. I Will Not Speak Ill of the Dead
  127. Transistor
  128. This Train (Sing Along)
  129. Spring: Mayday Mayday
  130. Barley Field
  131. The Boxer
  132. Torch
  133. New Poems
  134. What If
  135. Whale Translation
  136. The Spark Catchers
  137. Shipping Good
  138. Open Up
  139. Night Mails
  140. Lock and Quay
  141. Listening Post
  142. Fallen
  143. Belong
  144. Rest
  145. Adventure Flight
  146. Endnotes
  147. Index of Titles
  148. Index of First Lines

Fighting each other for air with swords.

And one day you may bring yourself to yourself

And fight yourself until your soul lies

Like dead roses.

One day you may kick the shit out of yourself,

To get out of the shit you’ve become.

One day you may face your mirror, falter in shock,

At what’s looking back at you,

’Cause that’s not you!

One day you may fall on the floor,

’Cause the shit you are in has grown claws

And is gripping your neck.

You’re a shipwrecked defect

Looking for a place to hide.

New Poems

NEW POEMS

What If

What If

A lost number in the equation,

A simple, understandable miscalculation.

And what if on the basis of that

The world as we know it changed its matter of fact.

Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?

What if we weakened ourselves getting strong?

What if we found in the ground a vial of proof?

What if the foundations missed a vital truth?

What if the industrial dream sold us out from within?

What if our impenetrable defence sealed us in?

What if our wanting more was making less?

And what if all of this . . . it wasn’t progress?

Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?

What if we weakened ourselves getting strong?

What if our wanting more was making less?

And what if all of this wasn’t progress?

What if the disappearing rivers of Eritrea,

Were the rising tide of encroaching fear?

What if the tear inside the protective skin

Of Earth was trying to tell us something?

Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?

What if we weakened ourselves getting strong?

What if the message carried in the wind

Was saying something?

From butterfly wings to the hurricane,

It’s the small things that make great change

In the question towards the end of the leases,

No longer the origin but the end of species.

Let me get it right. What if we got it wrong?

What if we weakened ourselves getting strong?

What if the message carried in the wind

Was saying something?

Whale Translation

Whale Translation

I speak to you on this memorable day

Through the translation services of a poet.

I must commend Captain Boomer and his dedicated crew

On the good ships Mercedes and Miss Daisy,

Who thrashed through my seas to try and dissuade me,

And whose shadows traced me down the Thames to my end.

They are good men, good women,

But I did not want to be saved.

Do not be distressed at the sight of me, I am not lost.

I am a Messenger sent by I-Pod, the Ruling Council of Whales

And the Ministry of Oceans and Seas to the people of landmass,

Of Greenwich of London of Britain.

We have been trying to communicate with you for so long . . .