1 New Poem

Ghost Stations

All bright in stonework:
polished, immaculate and
winter soaked.

It comes on, rushing,
dreams in the windy room
made of open windows
and dying breaths.

With kingdom come and
the traffic flow,
glasses tinged modern
with sculptor’s care
in 1973.

Still and begin ahead, looping
music boxes to tune of
shuffled loafers with nothing
to prove in holding.

Sounds pass, no stopping,
against skin points in tight switch
harmony, rummaging around
in dust, Clark Bar wrappers
for lying proof across
walls in nameplate etching:

Something great, because useful,
here once stood.

2 New Poems

Separation Anxiety

Rum, ice, tea in glass,
they take together in
peculiar form, burnishing
off the white floor tiles
and helping with tremors.

Or, helping could be too strong,
there isn’t much beyond greenery
to share at, making sense
of if this fire or that was
set deliberate, merely down to
careless matches left amid
dry brush.

There isn’t much calling these days,
spirits won’t do for you when
tasks are as simple as eleven
numbers, dot-dashing through
bending horizons playing gold
against tin roof cats.

There is, though, an echoed clasp of
skin to memory, deliberating ‘round
an oaken cabinet table through
rapid descent to first principled
buttoning, shutting off, shutting down
those possible pasts I kept
mulling through damp screen light.

Components of a Tricolour

Your mouth makes shapes that
call to work, the kind most freely
taken in good spirit where sun
shines freely in heated miracle;

How much beloved to take it on,
the hearty pickaxe shade
it takes to shelter beneath.

Your eyes call forth ships to
battle brotherhood, that many-thrown
sacrifice to names that came
close before this crass age;

How much obliged to carry up
the dead-weighted pole of
rotten expectations, clichés on banners.

Your hair flip-flowers with ripples
of freedom, keys jangling long
into brackish swamp of
summer nights, touching door locks;

How much closer to signed, sealed,
stamped, delivered these visas to
real life seem in such moments.