Alongside my commissioned long-form work, I also write for myself.
Here are a few poems from over the years.
Pullman
The train was always going somewhere.
Eventually, so were we.
Management started talking
about potential, private salary.
Nice - but not for me.
I met two others - same itch,
same recklessness.
We left the comfort,
the pension plans.
Feet first - no plan B.
We built something in a kitchen.
Ran it from a bedroom.
Slept in a mate's basement.
She held the fort at a London architects,
I scratched by - invoice discounting,
overdraft extensions.
She never complained,
steel for both of us.
I pretended not to see
my selfish focus,
the assumption it was all about me.
Cashflow was a bastard.
One credit card bled into the next.
A last ditch loan kept the doors open,
a chance to bank a contract.
We grew. Europe. Aus. Across the pond.
Blood up in every muscle and vein.
The team was everything.
Tough to replicate that again.
Then they started calling,
strategic partners, private equity.
"You ever thought of selling?"
Big numbers.
Bigger than I thought meant me.
Then it happened.
The big fuck off payday.
The kind that gives you vertigo.
We sat in the kitchen again.
Not the same one.
I said, "We did it."
She said, "You did."
Ambition blinds everything.
You think: that's it.
But it's not.
The train doesn't stop,
just slows for the view.
Picks up a few,
while others fall.
You don’t notice,
keep going.
The Girl Who Walked By
She didn't see me at first.
I saw her though.
The swing, the hair,
the look that said:
you’re not even there.
She’d seen a thousand of me before.
Kept walking.
I smiled whenever I saw her,
always hoping,
but she was Premier League,
I was Sunday morning.
'You're punching,' mates said.
But there was something.
A reflection.
So imagine my surprise
a while later
when she said she remembered.
That rookie look,
lad-mag charm,
and just thought:
not yet - he’s work in progress.
Must’ve been my face-plant entrance,
through the door of a pub
in Scarborough.
Made her laugh if nothing else.
And that something?
Was her, standing at the station.
Her train, due too.
We ran, breathless,
for the same connection.
Now, she calls down
for another coffee.
I go.
No hesitation.
Pavlov’s dog and Perdita.
Conversation
Mind if I pull up a chair? he said.
friendly enough but, oh no, not tonight.
My head was elsewhere, pointing in,
closed down to the shallow draft of bar talk.
Sure, I lied, courteous, but not too inviting.
Still, I knew where this was heading:
fall in, soldier - or walk.
You know what, he said,
The Giants not been the same
since some guy left town.
I tried a blank, unknowing Brit look,
he got the point but just switched line.
Been warm today, but rain’s on the way.
Christ, not the weather, I groaned,
but I nodded, kept up the mime.
As I'd walked in I'd figured
the SP on my new best buddy:
bushed out beard, baseball cap,
bathed in stale sweat, aired by the breeze.
Turns out I got it wrong.
More down than out would be right.
He wasn't holding the hat -
just fancied a chat.
First sights deceive.
How long you here for? his next shot.
Couple of years, I said, cautious but clear.
Been in town about six months now, he said,
from Colorado, needed a change.
The mountains, yeah, I replied,
was in Denver on business last year.
Well, didn't do no business,
fished though, he said.
With that we got to some common ground,
Brook trout landed, Rainbows and Browns,
reel-tearing Bones on Florida Flats.
Next up, doubly shifting gear, he asked
know much about Baroque music and stuff?
Turns out he busked sidewalks in the past
and was headlining there again.
I shot him a glance - reflex, patronising.
Though to be fair, you've got to admit
it's not your usual pavement refrain.
So, more beers, on my tab,
and we're covering ground fast:
Life in the Rockies, great Blues guitar,
art fine and modern, Village boho.
B.B. King to Lloyd Wright
Mapplethorpe to Basquiat.
So how come? I asked,
unable to resist.
Conscious choice? Bad break?
Oh, just happened I suppose, he said,
never saw no harm in a life of distraction.
Now though, I kinda wish I'd bothered,
but hey what the hell, another beer'd be nice.
And that was us, set for the night.
I paid but didn't much care.
Maybe I had figured him wrong:
the hat, the chat, or both.
Still, glad he'd asked
to pull up a chair.
The Cost of Leaving
The post’s redirected,
the bins put out one last time.
She says it’s not ours anymore.
Even the dog’s picked up the melancholy scent,
half-heartedly poking
in corners not sniffed before.
The van’s outside.
Hired man.
We’re packed up,
labelled, sorted
in wardrobe boxes,
and some the guy calls coffins.
Kitchen - plates / mugs / memories.
Done the admin.,
cancelled the Sky,
read the gas - for the first time.
Leaving, the down to earth kind.
Moving to keep going,
not get ahead.
Rates up, hours cut, resized,
We figured every angle, tried.
But the maths never worked out right
unless we moved.
Us,
out of here.
The laddered lines on the doorframe stay.
I said I wouldn’t look,
but I did.
Our daughter’s bedroom, a drawing of a house
with windows touching the sides.
Our son’s, the tidiest it’s ever been.
A birthday card under the boiler.
Neighbours waved this morning.
The ones we never really knew.
The jasmine scent as you passed their door,
we’ll miss that.
Asked if they’d be able to find us.
I said yes,
but knew they wouldn’t.
The agent talks about square footage.
The bank about repayments.
But we lived here,
in the creak of that stair,
the dent in the hallway
where the pushchair hit,
every single time.
It’s our dust in the corners,
settled, as we breathe out.
Some poets might dress it better.
Larkin might have left a comma
and walked out.
We just sold.
We leave the keys in an envelope,
push it through with a note
“sorry about the garden”.
The front door shuts with that second pull -
maybe they’ll fix it.
I was always going to.
The Lost Word Shop
I had to pop to the lost word shop
the other day. “Won’t be long, love -
just off to pick up some words for you,
noticed you were running low.”
There was a queue - always is these days,
people stocking up, just in case.
There should be more of them around,
a roaring trade in every town.
Knocking on, we all misplace a few:
to finish a thought,
pick up a line,
without losing the thread,
or being misread.
My name went missing last week
when I brought your morning coffee,
for a moment, you thought I was your dad.
But that was fifty years ago.
Third Cock
As rites of passage go,
this wasn’t the usual.
The flick of piss that hit my leg
was more a dog marking ritual.
Wary at my new school,
I’d quickly worked out
the pecking order:
Haggis cock, Knock second,
and I had to be sorted,
threat assessed, ranked,
hence the piss and the stare,
me stood there, shit scared,
waiting for a crack.
But it didn’t come,
and I couldn’t figure why,
until it dawned on me
when Knock pissed on me,
I’d flicked some straight back.
So instead of the smack
and the no-threat ranking,
my reflex
stunned Knock to inaction.
Honorary third cock then
and no one took the piss again.
What Should I Tell My Son
Tell him the world is iron, but he must stay gentle.
Strength is found in peace that lasts.
The heart’s not a riddle.
It’s you.
Full stop.
That respect is not submission.
It's how you listen,
why you stay,
when you leave.
Tell him hubris wears a threadbare mask.
Those who call others weak
sleep with the lights on.
Swagger limps on broken legs.
Men who big-dog alpha
build nothing in the name of man.
Tell him his body belongs to him
but never as weapon.
Desire runs like tide.
Learn to swim it.
That want is human.
Hurt is choice.
Don't choose it.
Men once wore silence like skin.
Some of that still clings, has a place,
just not as fear in dress-up clothing.
Tell him he's more than follows, likes, or side-swipes.
Kindness, truth, showing up - that's weight.
Speaking well of others makes you taller.
Tell him
be unafraid of love,
of confronting expectation,
of the hypocrisy of mirrors,
and first sight reflections.
Tell him
Speak soft.
Stand firm.
Leave no one smaller for having met you.