Lucky Turk
feel proud 
we share such history
Don’t forget how good
it is to be here and
to know your place
Its comforting 
Be a little grateful 
Feel free to roam our dumps
take all the broken things you need
We are not greedy
Be our guest
Recycle our radios
our white goods
sell them back to us
Don’t ask too much
and we won’t mind
Give us this day 
your wonderful flatbread
Repair our cars
Clean our homes
Open your restaurants
Feel free 
Lucky Turk
All we really ask
if you would be so kind
let us call you
by a name we choose
It isn’t much
It’s more than fair 
and anyway 
whats in a name?
What is there to lose?

Her nervous chatter
What if there’s a burglar?
Where shall I pee?
Will the dogs bark?
Unnerved by night sounds - 
somewhere a door slams,
a distant engine fires, our mad hen
stumbles round her run.
In time she sleeps, her breath 
draws deep and steady, and
listening contents me.
Past midnight in her sleep she 
says, as clear as day, 
‘I’m sorry, I will do better’
I drift in and out till morning
feeling the cold, how my bones
fit against the ground.
 

The shouts of pigs torn from sties
tied down at dawn by practised hands


by men who care with fallen fruit
and table scraps and know it is unwise to name. 


They know what these days need
to keep it clean and stand up straight.


Whisky for shame, the arc of the axe, 
quiet work with knives.

I don’t mind
if your bread has risen less 
than you had hoped.
You, who does not bake,
and never will, have
wrestled with strange dough, 
burned uncertain wrists,
looked both ways and
walked across the road
to bring me this.

It was only a matter of time.
After years of hoarding
the fourth drawer down
has finally gone off the rails.


A white ceramic drawer handle
an old penknife with black bone handle
jewellers pliers with striped handles
two rolls of masking tape
a roll of M3 garden tape
two sprung 5m metal tape measures
a flat head screwdriver
a cross head screwdriver
a light blue gas meter key, marked GAS
three brass radiator keys
assorted steel bolts, no nuts
three brass picture hangers
a coil of brass picture wire
a cheap Chinese tin half filled with eye screws
two flat brass plate fittings, use unknown
a white plastic plug safety cover
a glued up tube of Supaglu
a small white tube of Araldite
an almost empty yellow tube of UHU glue
a blue handled tile-scoring tool
a small grey ‘Buster 10’ stapler
a blue staplegun without staples
a plastic tub of pins with primary coloured heads
three pale yellow insect repelling tea lights
a blue plastic bag of white curtain hooks
a small silver novelty whisk
a faded off-white two-into-three adaptor plug
a broken black charger cable
two black padlocks, no keys 
small but powerful clip on bike lights
one yellow dayglo cycle clip
two puncture repair patches and
a Magnetic Poetry set


The Poetry Set was a surprise.
I never knew he had it in him.










 

new leaves
shake their thing
shimmying
in sunlight
tripping
the light fantastic
each emerald step
atomic footwork
danced for us
on air

These days we use knives,
slicing into gin or
carefully quartering
to stuff a hen or dress
a summer salad.


I remember it differently
as yellow electricity,
the sourest thing yet,
enough to make your 
toes curl


and how we used to dare
to see who could 
eat one whole.
Dare - first the flesh 
in segments.


Double dare - peeled, 
unseparated,
all down in one.
Triple dare - unpeeled,
leather, pith and flesh,
all down together.


You have to open 
your mouth
as wide as it will go
to get it in, bite hard,
chew fast and 
swallow.


It helps if you
take a deep breath
and close your eyes.

There is a photograph.


The grass, tough, long,
some kind of marram,


grew everywhere
on thin soil over sand


in the grounds of the 
abandoned monastery


where anyone could 
pull in and set up camp.


Each time I would 
dig a hole my height


find branches, overlay 
with smaller branches


then more, until I’d built 
a hideaway, a den with


secret hatches for 
entrance and escape.


The sand was easy, 
came out clean, scooped


with cupped hands and
it was cool in there, 


cool and quiet and 
slightly damp, breathing


in wet minerals and 
salt and roots


Days after I would 
find the taste of sand 


and sunlight deep
in the back of my throat.

We have been talking
the Wren and I, 
and have agreed
to divide the garden.


I think we have agreed
the hedge is his along
with it’s spiders 
and all invertebrates 


that live therein.
The compost heaps 
are his, and all the
cracks in all the trees.


I keep the shed and
it’s appurtenances
except the fork,
which we share week


about, for garden work, 
and as a platform 
for territorial singing.
I keep the washing line


which he disdains, 
the patio and chairs,
the water tank.
I keep the vegetables,


flowers and fruit, again
of no interest to him, 
although I notice
there are new clauses


about limited weeding,
rights of way and 
access-windows.
I have signed nothing yet.

Almost a year from
backache that wasn’t 
to a downstairs iron bed 
my mother chooses 


to see me, but not to speak,
within a week refuses to see,
disappearing into books
and crosswords


argues fiercely with my father,
holds tight to my sister
and is cared for with kindness
and tact by men and women


who tend to the most 
intimate of acts
Each time I come she turns aside
hiding in plain sight 


for reasons of her own
then dies one night without me
because I could not
and because I would not 


but does not die alone