Beneath stars by the bending bridge of Bow,

In the silver sheen of a phosphorous moon,

They practised Spark Catching.

‘The fist, the earth, the spark, its core

The fist, the body, the spark, its heart’

The Matchgirls march.

Lampades, the torch bearers,

The catchers of light.

Sparks fly. Matchgirls strike.

Shipping Good

Shipping Good

The clock clicks in a child’s hand

As she skips to the ticks and tocks.

Under the park tunnels run from the dark

While sun circles the clocks.

Flowers grow for those that know

To bloom is to know your roots,

To give the earth all it’s worth,

Tend to the new shoots.

And a horse on course its hooves

Drum beneath the earth

Where dreadnoughts’ sleeping seamen

Are weeping for the berth.

While the marshes sigh at night,

When sky dives into the Thames,

Greenwich and I will sleep again

And wake again as friends.

It is the thudding in my ear

Upon the pillow that sounds

As a black mare churning

Dreams from the ground.

As she charges towards

The Meridian Line,

Leaps Shepherd’s Gate,

And dives into time.

Where an ancient mariner

His guest no longer cross,

Sings songs of his wrongs

To a circling albatross.

A coffee cup lifts to the face,

In its reflection a woman sees the sea

Where a small girl in a boat smiles.

She whispers, ‘This must be me.’

And the girl cranes her neck,

She sails the swirls in the cup

And smiles for a minute and frowns

And holds the flowers up.

Here lies the beginning of time,

Where the river cradles the land,

Here lies the roundabout,

About the sun and the sand.

And the star rises on Observatory Hill

And watches them watching him,

And the water spills on a quiet wharf

Where the silver mermaids swim.

And a woman collects the crests

And takes them home to spin,

She makes sails for the high road

For our dreams to begin.

Open Up

Open Up

Where did all that cotton come from

That filled the employment factories the mills?

Why do you think Indians came here and Africans

With their calm and their sense and their skills?

Nobody owes anybody anything in this world,

But all this world is for all and every one.

And borders are bullies and boring,

So let’s have done with them. Let’s get them gone.

Let’s have no north and no south,

Only truth and lies.

And let’s see how we understand the world then,

Find out where lies the land and the land ties.

I’m from north western tribe.

We say good morning, we drink tea.

We walk to Rivington Pike each year,

From Atherton, Bolton, and Leigh.

But more than any other point

In its growth and self-improving,

I can tell the confidence of any street

When a stranger moves in.

The more closed we become,

The more foreign our spirits seem,

The more closed we become,