For Marguerite

All the places I travel to
Time is free at no cost
Ashton - from ashes to ashes
To the poet's wood (Audenshaw)
Where Auden talked with Bernard Shaw
Even the weavers wove their web
In Droylsden where waters ebb
Then flow into the miller's dough
of Milnrow
Thrashing at the fresh hay of Newhey
A deer stalker passed by the way of Derker
And a freeman took his land in Freehold
Who knows why you'd risk your success in Failsworth?
Newton Heath and Moston are the best towns to get lost in
In Monsall, they sell moon rock on a Sunday morning
In Crumpsall they can buy it back again out of season

Of course you can get your arrows fletched
And your bowstring stretched
in Bowker vale
And some pom-pom girls will make you bouquets
In Pomona
If you feel the need to rest a while
Drop anchor in Anchorage
Its a strong foothold for a gentleman suitor
On his way to Ladywell
Where the finest dames are known by name
To wash their hair
And chambermaids collect their buckets of water

Be careful of the Vikings who invaded long ago
We paid their levees like their toll
When we travelled on the Dane Road
And the wives of Stretford are hoiking up their britches
As they cross the waters
Tip-toeing to Timperley

The summer birds are nesting in the eves of Martinscroft
Because the green leaves grow in the withies of Wythenshaw

And everybody knows a rolling stone
Gathers no moss
It only feels its loss
When it stops
In the shade of shadow moss

strange days

Strange days

The window pane with sun rays

The nights are Stranger still

As winds and rain fall and fill

A stranger walks up a foreign hill

And love is strangest of all

Love is a stranger

You must kiss or kill

Choose one or the other

Both will settle the bill

Do you let a stranger pay

For your meal

Do you let another feel

What you feel?

And what when you're the stranger

Will you know how love feels

To be walking in a land

With a friend to lend a meal

Will you be let in the door

Of somebody's home

Or be left out in the field

To grow more hungry alone

roots

Roots of this city

This is the tree

The plants are the people

They settle they join 

Spread their fingers to the water

Feel the river

Some are born here by

Rights to die

Some have lived

Such separate lives

But their roots are set down

Like stones writ in blood

Deep in the heart of the ground

Where they tread

While acacia trees tower

Like the panel buildings above

And bees beside garden fences

Drone and buzz

My heart is in the river

The peace keeper of love

It sings all the sweeter 

For chestnut leaves above

That drop brown to the nutty ground

And crinkle when crushed

Like foot on a crown

wrought

Not everything we write is wrought
Not everything we find is sought
And not all that we buy is bought
Though the gold be sold for

And in Each one is side or slaught
The better which we might be taught
The sons or daughters of the naught
Who fossilize the cradle

Don't write me no more letters now
I have no eyes to read them
Don't send me flowers in a bough
I have no heart to feel them

And if my skin should fail me now
If my bones should break beneath
The onslaught of the waves of fate
I trust in you my teeth

panels impression

I wake up in the morning
Panel buildings in my head
Concrete cliffs surround me
Down the beach street
Where the bus sped

And this street is a river
The people like fish fled
Fleet finned like a sparrow
On each corner
An acacia tree bled
Like sea weed
Crying for Hungary
In the waves
The starved of starling streets
The pigeon happy
Pecking crumbs at your feet
The holding on to church
Of the bum
Asleep in the grave yard
With his trousers round his ankles

And the endless streets
Warmth of the bus
The friendly atmosphere
Of two woman chatting while
Looking down at her baby
In the pram
Eyes of love

Poem Hunter

I've been looking for a poem
I've been searching the sea
I've been dragging the river for days
But there just doesn't seem one there to be

Maybe next week
I'll stubble upon one
Hidden under a peeble
On the shore
Maybe it will round face me
Maybe I'll skim it and see

If it skips,
If it flies
And if that poems
A true one
The feelings will magnetize
The lyrics
Will roll like a coaster
Their pendulum rhythm
Hypnotize

Or else it will drop
Like a stone in the water
And sink into the sludge
To be buried in the silt

Of Lizards and Lights

I didn't follow you on that parade
The flight of the libertines
I must admit I was too afraid
Too afraid of what might have been

I was gone in all sorts of ways
Before you
Before you or I
Had stepped out the door

I was in light
I was in shade
And I didn't want
Those changes anymore

I'm like a chameleon
Who changes his skin
To fit into the environment
He is in
And the Autumn here is changing its hue
So I can turn too
Out of blue
Into a shade of orange

You in your groves
So Olive
You in the grooves
of your skin
You in the cracks in the pavement
In the paper bark that's wearing thin

Throw your clothes in the fire
Salamander be born again
My twin
We should have been brother and sister
But in the war
We know neither one of us can win

The oak grows bare on the hillside
The Cypress trees blow in the wind
The candles flicker on the window's ledge
As I pledge this poem
a Hymn