The Prisoner

When the cell doors close, the hard man act falls away, first in the face that weeps tiredness and then in the body as it sags: the hard stomach bulges, the shoulders bend inwards and finally the fingers creak from a sleeping fist to a hand hungry for loving touches.

Check with the owner first

What made me spew my coffee wasn’t so much Mavis sitting down and whispering into my ear that she saw Angels. That I could live with. It was what a sixty year old woman way past her sell-by-date was doing with her right hand to my meat and two veg.

The first or last step in the novel

The boy stood at the Dancehall. It was in darkness, a sort of blessing as he was listening, not distracted by people.

In the dark the coyote howls. Yet with the wind it's like the dead wailing for a ghost highway.

He waits, the woman not he begins the adventure.

Hear the wind and taste the sky

I heard the lemon sunburst of Blackbirds singing.

I tasted the cream of winter sun so different from the coffee of summer.

I touched the coarse cotton of lamb cooking on a slow roast.

I smelt the butterscotch of her loving touch.

I saw thunder like a pebble in water.

The ruinous Railway

The speaker droned …‘the line will run through Box Hill by constructing the longest tunnel hitherto built in…’ but was interrupted when a tall bearded man stood up to shout, ‘poppycock sir, no man will endure the noise in the tunnel twice.’

Lord Young smiled, the canal claque was begun.

First love of 1970

Learning to lose at sweet sixteen
with “needs manual” on the money.
Oxford bags kill for disco queen:
green eyes and a laugh like honey.

Votes for teenagers lost in fog
of feelings grated as gunny.
Yes! She is my Love Story snog:
green eyes and a laugh like honey.

Naked flesh beyond book risqué
Which bit where? Why? Beyond funny.
Lost to rougher hands my chambray
green eyes and a laugh like honey.

Learning to lose at sweet sixteen
green eyes and a laugh like honey

Whose trick, whose treat?

 

Opening the door my hello is still born. Stunned my eyes follow the trail of shoes, bra’s, shirt, knickers through the hall to the living room where my son stands in that dress we got for his girlfriend.

Seeing my face, he laughs saying ‘chill out mum it’s for Halloween.‘