Making soup again

These days I refuse to sigh for cooked up futures. Potatoes from a friend and a bag of mixed root veg for £1 assure companionship. This bounty grated, cooked with stock and bay leaves, will be ladled out for half-a-dozen bowls dressed up with haricot beans. The appraising birds perch in the top bare branches,

Just at till

a documentary poem based on true texts Leaving now 15min Here I’m across the road Just at till In café Will wait. No stress That was Thursday’s shopping trip — I love text poems – or SMS poems as I called them in a 2007 incarnation. On a short cob-house building trip to the Eastern

We stayed up late and waved our sticks about

I love hearing about the antics of raucous older people – those humans who have made it to their eighties, nineties and beyond. I met Klara last year in a queue at the Cadogan Hall when we were both waiting to buy £5 day tickets for a Proms chamber concert. This was her story.

The Old Cock and the Younger Hens

You’re all my favourite readers, but… I have a particularly ideal reader. She is well read and articulate and to her wise critique I have entrusted a few unpolished drafts. Her first response to this poem was a giggling, “Hehehe, you put ‘cock’ in the title.” Well, dear other favourite readers, the two of us

On the occasion of a dinner party in Kennington

I know I said I’d bring a poem but then I half forgot – I’d agreed to go to Ladies’ Pond to meet a friend and swim, Down the road and to the right. Oh dear, there’s something left behind; Pavement Walker Jacob’s Dream Huckleberry Thing and Pizza, Thwack! keywords from Ninja turtles strike supreme

Near Liverpool Street under scaffolding

What do you believe? I believe to see truth lived quietly and consistently is powerful. My father died like that. In trees we find tall truths deeper rooted than human folly. I believe in stakes that make us choose a path right, or left or denial. Denial comes back to haunt us in choice, again.

Summermelon

In which the superhero of pre-used words makes a re-appearance The superhero of pre-used words met watermelon boy. It was summer. They had pips to spit But also fruit to eat and The superhero of pre-used words and watermelon boy arrived at the driveway, 3 quite sharp. Between them half a shell of watery sweet