My hairpin gave and broke

A short poem from this time last year about trying to pick a lock with my hairpins the previous December. — T: @BeadedQuill Facebook: BeadedQuill Books: In the Ocean: a year of poetry Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys Shining in Brightness: Selected Poems, 1999 – 2012

Exalted thus, we left

An old favourite revisited, because artists are allowed to have their obsessions. “Exalted thus, we left” is a reworking of a poem from 2011: I love the Dorothea Tanning painting that spurred the original “Jacob’s Dream for crinolined girls”. When I’m in Tate Modern, I’ll usually try to pop into the Surrealism gallery to gaze

Past Euston, 09:50

37 of us shuttled along as we sit or stand with our regular doors. They are the ones with which we enter Thursday morning in Zone 1. They are the ones where we could change here for Victoria Line. Too late to exit for Morden via Bank. Your regular doors can be dangerous. You could

Kindly exit

at the door or retire through the window. That will suffice. Better yet, via my ears make your retreat as swiftly and in neat compactness as a ready ball of orange wax or next time I spit, roll out over my tongue. Or next when through my eyeball I aim a withering look, consider that