On leaving you.

Poetry, along with beauty, can be found in anything if you know how to look at things (and people) the right way!




Twelve years ago, or thereabouts 
walking in Highgate with the woman 
the woman I loved more than any other at that time


Oh Judy...


we passed a skip and in that skip was a chair
a kitchen chair, a cheap kitchen chair; tatty but serviceable
I wrenched the thing out from its resting place
and Judy said:
throw it back, it is horrible
I refused and continued on our way
'you are not putting it in my house' she said.


Once home and Judy gone to fill her day with what she did
I stood the chair in my room
eyed it critically
It occurred to me that it was only a chair when sat upon
otherwise it was clutter.


I found paint and brush, sanded down the wood
then painted it turquoise
I upholstered the seat in faux leopard skin


on strips of paper I wrote out lines from a poem I had written as a youth
gauche lines written about leaving a girl
the girl I loved more than anyone at that time


Oh Sarah...


The poem went:


On leaving you
This morning, although there was no sun
A shadow fell across me
And pools of dew formed
in the impressions left by your fingertips.


I pasted the strips of poem to the slats and spindles of the chair
then stood back
It was no longer just a chair
when sat upon indeed it was a chair
but when standing unsatupon
it became a poem
no longer wasting space.



the next time Judy visited


Oh Judy...


she saw the chair and asked about it
I told her that it was now a poem
I showed her how to read it


She read:


On leaving you
This morning although there was no sun
A shadow fell across me
and pools of dew formed
In the impressions left by your fingertips.


she naturally assumed the poem was for her
We all make that kind of mistake
at one time or another in our lives.


She said: 
Please may I have it in my house.


That tatty old chair from the skip.

Urinal song. Work in progress

I love the sound of piss on zinc

Donna's sleepy tales

of rain on Trinidad tin roofs

that she told me as we lay

in a Gloucester park how

she reeked of passion

and coconut oil

The downpour

on the corrugated school bike shed

where Mandy and I

traded tobacco smoke laden kisses

and held our own geography lessons
discovering America

The rusty dutch barn

in which we made hay

and then hasty crop circles

in that hay

and planned al fresco escapades

in the ripening wheat

Come the sun

Of the beach girl

dancing naked

save a transparent plastic mac

the deluge

drumming on the upturned boats

as I drowned in her exclusive proximity

Before realisation that

it was the breaking of our 'summer'

30 years have leached out all but

the salty memory of those monsoon kisses

that creeps up my spine

At the sound of piss on zinc.