Nos Liberavit

Bell-like, round and clear Hopeful and transparent as a copper bauble, it lifts the congregation. From the sanctuary the maiden’s voice soars and plunges as she elongates the siren call.   — I am not a groupie. I’d rather spend my days in a hermit’s hut on a mountainside with books, green tea and yoga

What is a letter?

A letter is…

Today

Today was the Friday I ate only toast. 7 slices. 4 with honey; 3 with peanut butter a few broccoli florets raw and an anchovy from the tin. I drank green tea, black tea and one cup of coffee poured from the cafetiere. I set out to typeset a book – and now it’s worse

London’s Molten Hour

Bye, bye, people. I’ll call you later. Are you going home now? To all the dusty rented rooms, nasty pine furniture with walls on other people’s flushing toilets, Skype calls and rhythmic thuds they try to obscure with loud beats of an album on repeat. Another aeroplane. A train. We reside near transport under a

Would you ever live in Heather Green?

Would you ever live in Heather Green with a lamp missing a tassle from its shade? Lit tealights in the glass holders on the rented windowsill occasionally Assam from loose leaves in a pot. Would that be a life to live? Where there’s no need to mow lawns on a Saturday because you own no

Let them eat

The ordinary class does not object to plastic chairs or utilitarian rooms used for multiple utilitarian purposes: pre-school, ballet lessons, Sunday School, prayer groups, a soup kitchen, evening workshops in crafts. The ordinary class bends over catered tray-lasagne seeping into paper plates balanced on knees and an insulation of paper serviettes. The ordinary class is

Another drop in this week before Christmas

Something for you – reads these cards. They’re blue this year for the seasonal drop. This something can be an item Special Delivery, Tracked, Recorded Signed For, An International Item. That one excites people. Or the item could be a letter, a packet, a catalogue, a number of items or, though never in my time,

What we were all thinking

We hammered it in the sforzando bits, chiselled it to master tempi, phrased it gently where the lilt shone through. While counting down the repeats we tried to love the symphony seldom played. It was our oboist who noted during the tea and smoke break: the favourites remain the favourites for a reason — In

Things of the Heart, Told in Quiet #1

A letter is time past scrawled on a tree written in blue with quiet tea and buttoned as a coat holding inside its red carnation. 2012 — Another poem earmarked for my forthcoming second volume, provisionally titled “Under a Blue Dome.” The volume will also include the poems from the set “Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys,” some