Some Regret

Time is moving, still
Around comfort and corners
The bloom of well kept flowers
Will come again, be patient
Buds in beds, moving soil
Close enough to buildings
Missing the sky

Through the brick, lives
Bare homes and neat toys
Stacked, waiting for play
A mother clutching book bags
Lunchboxes and small hands
Trying to slip away, a father
Left before the light

Weekend, duty arrives
The pleasantness of parks
Branded buggies and empty art
He cannot buy the sun but tries
A wave without a smile
Jealous blotches, a loving hate
A regretful son before his rise

Best Day

The day before May
Flowers are promised
Family ties tied
And the scream of youth

All that was never
Done the night before
A table joke, fizzy wine
And finger food

A bad disco and
The happiest couple
Dancing in cheap light
Tight white and Monday's suit

Misery with sparkling
Confetti hearts
A table from happy
Six seats from doubt

A click and tired smiles
Crying memories of when
An acknowledgement of who
I do

Sea Change

Waiting for the sea
To change itself
To sort the grains
To leave them bare
For another day
of feathered birds
and bare chests

Greeting

The evening station
A shining floor
Lights are branded
Christmas sparkle

A smart drunk
Stumbles through rush
Hour workers
Stepping sideways, home

Hidden misery
In their way
Forced wool, decoration
A glam tree

You leave late
Trains, part gloom
And gatherings
with gifts

Reunion, parts of
a greeting, then gone,
Your mind moving
Through the night

Whitby Man

The year has gone
Cold fronts and outsiders
Blown back with time
In the front bar
A man who went to sea
With dark mild and distain

Outside, an empty fullness
Buoys and breakwater
Ladders of wood below wood
Crab pots and cold, flashing light
Piled stones before sea
And a tide he watches in or out

Inside a view of abbey walls
No one has come to look
But he listens still
All beard and blood vessels
For the echoed, distant laughter
Of those who never see the sea

I Wait Here

I wait here, a place where hoods are up
On children, on ledges of former buildings
Where shouting starts and no one calls them down
Where food is delivered by unstable scooters
and they buy gold and sell beauty
From an upstairs salon of brutal concrete

The wet has filled last winter's potholes
Taking the dry of shirtless Sundays,
The dominant light of a meat emporium
What's bought is not owned, generations
Of choices, frozen food, turkey crowns on shelves
Donations paid for by the Kilogram sack

The dark of the sky is here, a dead cat
Doesn't feel the cold, of courting teenagers,
Swearing to each other, disappearing
Down the dirt filled ginnells of night
To enclosed brick capsules of life, shelters
From the distant presence of the unknown

Wyther Bench

On the long green before the mud
Where the path cracks and wears to nothing
Is a bench burnt in the middle
Frowning upon its neighbours
Who leave it amongst rubbish
Its names charred to black
"They never loved this place"

The Place from the Train

Somebody lives there, in the place you've never heard of.
With bridges across roads and train lines never meant to be.
The backs of pubs with half names hanging from walls,
unused fields, too expensive to farm, too cheap to sell
and warehouse buildings with nothing to house, nothing in store.
The tight terraces and empty shops, the parks with no horizon,

Somebody lives there with dreams that rise and join.
That together say something, to those who listen,
That those who have lost life or live beyond
Their better judgement with imigination still
Have dreams within which to live
In the place from the train