Waiting for the chess players ...

I wait for the chess players -

The board is set -

This is my special place - 

Here, I'm in Greeneland -

I watch the street - 

There's a different name in my passport - 

The saturnine owner makes furious expressos -

Old trunks are heaped up on the pavement -

I can hear music -

The light is strange - 

28 September 2022

The Crooked Book 

Boscombe 

Bournemouth 

I know these stairs ...

I'm waiting for the touch of the shining instruments -

I know these stairs -

The calming Rothko -

The surgery doors open -

Sharon stands before me -

She smiles her beautiful unsettling smile -

28 September 2022

740 Dental 

Bournemouth 

Triton ...

I felt the chill of his blind gaze -

This triton formed from salt rimed rope -

Cast up by the tide in a hidden pole -

Opening his tongueless mouth - 

A thing of dream - 

Waiting for the moon - 

18 September 2022

Boilerhouse Gallery

Corfe Castle

The loss of our summer kingdom ...

We lay for a few moments on the flawless sand -

My heart raced -

Soon we would swim in the autumn sea -

The leaves would fall - 

Trees become bone - 

The sea would console us for the loss of our summer kingdom -

25 September 2022

South Beach

Studland

Dorset 

Each chapter leading to this ...

This book will haunt me -

Its pages will fly above my head - 

When it's dark, I shall remember the darkness of the Farolito - 

The legless beggar, the glassy hateful eye - 

Bad place -

Muy malo -

This piece of hell will call out to me -

Each chapter leading to this - 

Past the garden barred to me - 

The insatiable ravine - 

One by one, taking me there - 

They diablos -

Dolente, Delore - 

25 November 2022

The Old School House

East Stoke 

Dorset 

Camden Murder ...

There are voices outside in the pinched street -

The curtains are drawn - 

My tongue is made of brass - 

I hang my head - 

The woman lies naked on the bed - 

My calloused fingers knew her skin - 

I cannot look at her -

The grey light from outside fills the room - 

I try to remember my name -

6 September 2022

Sickert Exhibition 

Tate Britain 

Booster ...

I'm shivering - 

My arm aches - 

That little scratch - 

I reach for a Graham Greene - 

September 22 2022

Dorset 

Prospero's island ...

We were beguiled - 

Marooned on Prospero's island - 

We saw wonders - 

A golden wand - 

Music floating upon the air - 

Dancers, strange and beautiful shapes -

Breathed out before us with every note - 

18 September 2022

The Boilerhouse Gallery 

Corfe Castle 

The welcome ...

The welcome is from the heart - 

Longed for under cold skies -

Gentle, true -

Soon a nimble boy will serve pide -

There will be laughter -

Water will splash in the fountain - 

There are stories still to tell -

The scent of pines on the mountain -

The white yacht on a turquoise sea - 

September 22 2022

Kizilyaka 

Turkey 

Someone is playing a cruel guitar ...

Each page is sadder and darker -

The sky glowers over the garden - 

I can see the volcano -

A ravine opens - 

A pelado smiles, his hands dabbled in blood - 

Someone is playing a cruel guitar - 

I'm not sure I can read anymore - 

Already I hear the hissing spiteful voice - 

You no wrider -

You are a jew chingao -

You are a spider - 

September 2022

On seeing Cove Cottage ...

I imagined writing mysterious verses -

The words falling from the sky - 

Apples on the salt rimed tree - 

I would burn driftwood from the cove -

My ink would be the colour of a dark sea -

13 September 2022

Lulworth Cove

Dorset 

Dreaming of Quauhnahuac ...

I dream of Quauhnahuac -

I'm wearing stained linen -

In the cantina, the boy crushes ice for the mescal -

He's barefoot -

He points to the scorpion on the wall -

It will soon be dawn - 

15 September 2022

The Old School House 

East Stoke

Dorset 

Haven of foxed volumes ...

I found the bookshop on its narrow street - 

Soft rain was falling on the small houses -

In The Star, ale was dark in the glass -

I wore my salty tweed -

I'd seen the wide Bay, the white horses -

The empty sands - 

Here was my haven of foxed volumes -

The memorabilia of forgotten ships -

My net of dreams - 

13 September 2022

Books Afloat

Weymouth 

Narcos ...

I'm watching Narcos -

Pablo gazes at the world with the jewelled eyes of a Jaguar -

Sicarios whoop in a murder car - 

12 September 2022

The Old School House 

East Stoke 

Dorset 

Summer reef of memory ...

The wide sands are empty -

The seafront hotels a reef of summer memory -

Palm trees are shaken by the wind -

The last guests draw back the curtains of their high windows - 

They brush past ghosts on their way downstairs -

13 September 2022

Weymouth 

She remembers the ocean she has crossed ...

The aviatrix walks through the pressmen -

She shakes her cropped blonde hair -

Her leather flying jacket is stained with oil -

She remembers the ocean she has crossed - 

The clouds, the headwinds -

The beauty and terror of the air -

September 2022

Smoking Craven As ...

They wait in the rain for the slender aviatrix -

The runway glistens under the dark sky -

Umbrellas drip -

Hat brims collect water - 

Jowly pressmen smoke Craven As -

6 Seotember 2022

Sickert Exhibition 

Tate Britain

Sowing salt ...

I heard their voices -

Their wild wounded music -

The tall women with the heads of leopards -

The men on horseback -

They sang of their terrible histories -

The salt sown in their beautiful gardens -

The thieves who had chained them, weeping, naked, neck to neck - 

The heated iron marking their flawless skin -

September 2022

Tate Britain 

Each day I met her was a Day of The Dead ...

I'm reading Under The Volcano -

I remember the first time I walked hand in hand with a wicked angel -

Her small brown hand held mine -

She blew her smoke into my mouth -

We walked past the cathedral - 

She knew these pages - 

I met her brilliant boy - 

We drank from cracked glasses listening to blues - 

Stars fell from the sky - 

Each day I met her was a Day of The Dead -

9 September 2022

The Old School House

East Stoke

Dorset 

1915

A row of half empty deckchairs faces the tawdry stage - 

Two artistes are dancing a cake walk - 

The louche hotels are silent -

The pierrots wait for their curtain call - 

The young men in khaki are swallowed by the sky - 

6 September 2022

Sickert Exhibition 

Tate Britain 

He still cast his spell ...

I felt the artist's gaze touch my secret heart -

He knew the dark streets, the dawn light falling on a wicked bed -

He'd known the faces of men in the tawdry seats -

The women singing for the boy in the gallery -

His half smile hid his knowledge - 

Each self portrait was of a shape shifter -

A magician changing his skin, but not his eye - 

He still cast his spell - 

Here, in this pristine space, he saw us for what we were -

6 September 2022

Sickert Exhibition 

Tate Britain

Summer crowns ...

There was music by the sea -

Young dancers remembered golden boys - 

They had worn their summer crowns -

Kings for a year in the bright wood -

Their voices were heard in song - 

Their short beauty held in a breath of air - 

4 September 2022

Dorset

An early autumn ...

Ripe apples hang from the tree -

Drowsy tipsy wasps linger near windfalls -

Anne eats a madeleine -

I wear a dark blue shirt -

Our skin is still salty from the sea -

I can smell an early autumn -

I remember a girl with long black hair -

Her name floats above my tongue -

A shining leaf of memory -

Her green dress -

The leaves falling, one by one -

3 September 2022

The garden

The Old School House 

East Stoke 

Dorset

Red Arrows ...

We looked up at the September sky -

Tangled contrails marked the passage of the furious jets -

The clouds still held the memory of Lancasters -

The air was dark with the flight of ghosts -

1 September 2022  

South Beach 

Studland 

Dorset