In order of composition, newest at the top.
Photographs from Ashurst, New Forest unless indicated otherwise.

Clearly
I shouldn't have taken this photo.
But, having got away with it,
My reason to want it has faded right away.
(London Original Print Fair, Somerset House)

Do you do coffee with milk?
Do you
serve humans?
Do you
get fed up with questions like those
and this?
(Black Sheep Coffee, London)

Rain was due
Now it’s fallen
and isn’t dew,
though it does have the glisten.
A year
of flag-supported war
is not enough
yet far too much.
When a drink
is drowning
who can
tell what used to be
from the
cause of its demise?
(Peckham, London)
I assume these are
adverts
for an exhibition of abstract paintings
imitating torn-off posters -
which, one might argue, aren't abstract at all.
(Southampton)
The flagrant
mismanagement and their now-redundant staff
do thank you -
but it's only fair for them to point out
that you should have bought more, you bastards!
(Oxford)

I can’t complain
I was warned that I wouldn’t be warned
and now no bike is there.
Lucky I don’t have one.
(Oxford)
Water is straightforward
but how do tarmac rivers work?
are tributaries joining at the major
crack,
or is the main line splitting into
two?
Religion
is high,
but secular is higher -
or closer...
(Kensington, London)

How brazen
to dump such an enormous cup -
even while exhorting us
to dispose more thoughtfully of our humbler sizes...
(Aldgate, London)

Which way to go
in yellow land?
Towards the gold, the
sun, the heavens?
Or just the humdrum train?
(Southampton Railway Station)
Just as I suspected
There will be no change
other than as caused by how, in its absence,
everything will go down the pan.
(Kings Cross Underground Station, London)
No sign of trains
despite the lack of adverse weather,
engineering works or strikes.
Perhaps I'll have to fly.
(Bournemouth Railway Station)

The art of fencing
nothing off
or, rather, of fencing off nothing
has been perfected here –
but why?
If you’ve had your
fill of daffs
you may have had your fill of life,
be what the Welsh call ‘daffod ill’.
I still love them with a will.
Would it be better to
be a tree
Your wrinkle-equivalents on the inside
so no-one can guess your age
until you’re dead?
Out of the way!
My check-in closes at X o'clock
and it looks as if
it may be that already!
(Schipol Airport, Amsterdam)

The Dutch
are the tallest
nationality in the world
but even they can stretch to the max along this bench in full reclining comfort.
(Amsterdam)
This is the last
letter
I expected to find
in 'A for Amsterdam'.
But who wantz all their expectationz met?
(Amsterdam)

We are not paving stones
we are mere props in the service of notices
for roadworks far more important than roads –
let alone pavements.
(Amsterdam)

I can understand
why no-one has eaten this portion of chips yet
and though I'm keen on bucking trends,
this may be where the buck has to
stop.
(Amsterdam)
This pony is stupid
leaving lush growth to wither away
while its focus stays determinedly
down
among the weedier nibbles of the
pavement.
(Maastricht)

Why are they complaining?
I was firmly on the stairs
and braced, come to that, against the
bannister
as I shouted for my mates to hurry
down.
(Hotel Continental, Amsterdam)
Some boring items
Complete a sort of circling round
and back to oddball interest
Underground car parks don't.
(Amsterdam)
I am a post, not a shadow
My physical manifestation
is entirely contingent,
reversing - and yet reinforcing - Plato.
(Amsterdam. The post would appear to refer on the
one hand to the parable of the cave, in which the shadows are taken to be
evidence of a different reality, and on the other hand to the doctrine of ideal
forms, taking itself to be the ideal form of the physical post.)
Here are the layers
Window; the rain on it; reflection
of me;
a light that believes it’s a moon;
the rush of the fleeting without.
(Train Amsterdam – Maastricht)
As you can tell from this photograph
Dutch pigeons
are nothing like their British
cousins.
It’s probably the pot.
(Amsterdam)

Van isn't van
and
hare isn't hair, I don't suppose,
but it
makes me think that ‘The Well Groomed Hare’
would
make a name and logo for a barber.
(Amsterdam - in fact, 'van' id 'by' and 'hare' is 'hers' )

It goes without
saying –
why have I said it? –
that the obvious should not be stated,
least of all in a poem.
(Maastricht)

We're rubbish at clearance
I can't think why anyone uses us.
Phone box ads
can't have persuaded many.
(Hackney, London)
Shall we set out to
sea
or should we wait
until the wind is steadier
and the tide is on the turn?
(Eling)
One becomes four
albeit the additions
will be keyhole-sized
and harder to show off than their plasters.
After the laparoscopy
my
bladder’s full
but I
can't pee the way I must
before
they'll tell me to piss off
(Southampton General Hospital)

Would you be the green
disrupting
the blue
or even
the yellow,
making a
point of your absence?
(Mayfair,
London)

Consider
what the iron can do
and ask yourself:
what role remains for the cane?
(King’s Cross, London)

I'm in Euston
obviously
and
pretty square in most respects.
Do I get
a discount?
(Euston, London)
The differences
between catkins and worms
lie in colour, biology, season,
activity, substance and reproductive methods.
Perhaps I should have started with the similarities.
It seems the last leaves on this tree
are kept in place by their branch having broken.
I’m tempted to read this metaphorically
but can’t quite work out how.
(Totton. The reason for this phenomenon, incidentally, lies in the
fact that leaves don’t simply fall off or get blown away from deciduous trees,
they are actively thrown off by the tree. Shorter, colder days trigger the hormone
abscisic acid, which sends a chemical message to every leaf causing ‘abscission’
cells to appear – a thin line of bumpy cells that push the leaf, bit by bit,
away from the stem. Any breeze is just accelerating the task. But if a branch
is broken, there’s no connectivity of vascular tissue, no hormones, no cell
growth, no leaf fall)
Surely we’re too cute
to be chomped up for chocolate?
The wrapping would be plainer were we going to be
Ouch! Those were my ears!
To make a solid cup of coffee
keep a quarter tin
of Azera instant Americano
for two years past its use-by date.
The empathy of
objects
is a lesson to us all:
see how one wall protects another
that’s fallen on hard times.
(Totton )
They’re laying down
the line
in a most assertive yellow.
If only the line were
‘TRAINS MUST RUN ON TIME!’
(Southampton Railway Station)
What doesn’t this
place promise?
Only, it seems,
the food and drink
it actually provides…
(Fitzrovia, London)

The bag of bags
holds bags of bags,
of course it does, and bagging rights
over plastic, hand and carrier alike.

I understand
how you
leave an umbrella,
forget a
phone or let a glove fall.
But how
do you drop a sock?
(Mayfair, London)

When the countryside comes to London
I tend to
take notice –
even
while suspecting
it’s just
a horticultural simulacrum.
(Piccadilly, London)
Say what you will
about the railways
they do excel in one regard:
finding ways to waste our money
on anything other than running the trains.
(Southampton Railway Station)

I was, of course, hoping
to get a duck in this shot,
posed near enough to be reading the
sign.
But not even a seagull substitute flew
in.
(Hampden Park, Eastbourne)
Raising the questions
Do they bake swans?
Do swans do the baking?
What is the setup if neither of those?
(Swan Bakery, St Leonards on
Sea)
Five hours later
no-one had arrived.
I was rather cold but not surprised.
Did they mean five months?
(St Leonards on
Sea)
Just how
did the Buenos Aires Guesthouse land in Bexhill?
Did the owners suppose that guests wouldn't mind
the 6,885 miles of inconvenience?
(Buenos Aires Guesthouse, Bexhill on Sea – I guess its name may be intended to evoke fair winds
and good air in the locality, rather than make any Argentinian reference)

Not all plants
are born equal,
so why should every human be?
Then again, why not?
(St Leonards on
Sea)
Now that beauty
is just another product
can we get away
from linking it to virtue, or to truth?
(Beauty Factory, Eastbourne)
What’s the point
of this root
free
of soil as it loops the loop?
I suppose its aim must be
to make us wonder what its aim is.
(Lyndhurst)
By 8 a.m.
some
subtlety's apparent in the frost...
I can’t say
the same for the creeping thistle’s
sharp-cut
crenellations.
An abstract mouse
is still a mouse.
You can't remove its mousiness
by making it hard to see.
I skip to
the shops
past a scatter of scooters
that I’m tempted to take as proof
that skipping is best.
(Southampton)
Grow where it will
the crocus is my redemption plant.
All I need to work out now
is how to be redeemed.
But what can you fix
by
screwing it up?
Other
than a sheet of A4 paper
that
wants to be a Martin Creed sculpture?
(Southampton: refers to Martin Creed’s notorious ‘Work No. 88 -
A sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball’, 1995)
I like a good
tangle
Especially with my wife…
And brambles are exemplary,
whether they’re embracing or
fighting each other off.
(Bournemouth)

The teasing prickle of teasel heads
makes for a justified test:
to sleep
in a museum
you
really have to need the rest.
(Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth)
This is a pipe
to nowhere.
I suppose Magritte would say
‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’.
(René Magritte’s ‘The
Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe)’, 1929 depicts a pipe but plays
through the inscription ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ on the fact that it is a
painting, not a pipe. Might complete dysfunctionality have a similar
category-shifting effect?)
My name is Stuart
Dapple
though I’ve taken off my scarcely-dappled skin.
My friends, who are admittedly bananas, call me Stu.
Shall I bowl round super-naked with my cloves?
(stewed apple)
... because it looks so very closed
and I'm
not sure I want to know
why what arrives
is not
the pizza / pasta that I ordered.
(Deptford, London)

Here’s a tasty scene
The zing
of lime
blended
with
the subtler
tang of orange.
(Camden, London)

Were I to return to table tennis
it could
be with a frog on board
to leap
around distractingly
and give
my shots the unexpected.
(from Cinzia Ruggeri's show at Goldsmiths CCA, London)

Step to it!
But not
in shoes
at least a
size too big -
as did
the last six steppers.
(from Cinzia Ruggeri's show at Goldsmiths CCA, London)
How soon is soon?
Unless
we're talking geological time
I don't
believe this restaurant-as-was
is soon to
be a restaurant-as-is.
(Lancaster Gate, London)

Maximum
fluffage
in the matter of grass
puts me in mind
of tickle-wiping my arse...
(Hyde Park, London)
I see now
what I
hadn’t thought through:
that when a
willow weeps
it's more a
matter of twigs than of leaves.
(Hyde Park, London)
These four distributions
foreground
natural equalities
of a sort
we humans can’t achieve
even when
we’re trying.
(Being the ungoverned spill / spread of leaves, lichen, pebbles and petals)
This gap in the fence
comes complete with the proof -
or does it? -
that there was once a fence where the gap now is.
(Totton)
In the land of long
shadows
a ball cannot compete
with a tree,
or even with me.
(Awbridge, Hampshire)
How much astronomy
do trees comprehend
when they reach for the moon?
Do they expect to touch it?
(Awbridge, Hampshire)
What is it that’s fragile here?
Surely it can’t be the tape
proclaiming itself so vulnerable
it really shouldn’t have been exposed like this?
(Southampton)
Some like it fresh
Some like it older.
Some like it ancient.
Some don’t like it at all.
(New Forest pony poo)
Big orange meets
little orange
but I’m well aware that the seniority
could be reversed
if I only took a different perspective.
(Brussels)

You might get away
with a redundant second chain if
(a) you didn't tangle them; and
(b) you didn't demonstrate so close-by that one is quite enough.
(Brussels)

Even at Christmas
the Belgians prefer an anorexic tree
to a one with enough burgeon
to cope with decorations.
(Brussels)

What kind of pet
is a pigeon?
I wouldn't want one
and this chap seems to have four.
(Brussels)

They could fit
the full ‘Copenhagen’ here
with room to spare.
It’s the frontage that needs to be abbreviated.
(Brussels)

Losing an eye was
traumatic
of course, but to be
fucked up the arse by a post
until someone takes pity...
(Brussels)

The illusion being
that a giant blackboard scraper
has combed the mud
into some semblance of a hairstyle.
(Brussels)

Yuri Geller
bent his spoons with no purpose
beyond deception.
Here is how to fold them into function.
(Hotel Amigo, Brussels - I admit the function is rather spurious)

A chambermaid knocked
to offer me a ‘turn down service’.
‘Can we fuck?’, I asked. She turned me down.
‘Thanks’, I said, ‘I guess you can go’.
(Hotel Amigo, Brussels, 20.00. Apparently a luxury hotel’s‘turn down service’ involves preparing one’s
bed for sleep and tidying the room and bathroom. I turned it down. The
conversation above is somewhat imaginary)

Life Lesson 277
Even something
as simple as a pavement
can intersect with complexity.
(Aldgate, London)
If you’ve had a bad
break up
I sympathise. The more so
if you are a road
and cannot – as your users will – move on.
Last night was cold
I fear for the deciduous
when even the evergreens
have wrapped themselves in scarves.
Conversation between
logs
‘Length is the thing.’ ‘What about girth?’
‘Plainness is the thing.’ ‘Or lichen décor.’
‘Smoothness is the thing.’ ‘I like myself rough’.
Inverting the dance
between
shadow and substance
the
shadow is the frost
and what
isn’t shadow has no substance.
They walked past
in the muddy past.
I walk
past in the muddy present
which has
now passed.
(Flattened box in Chapel Market, Islington)

The post-Christmas
caterpillar
is as hairily unlikely
as a hippy who thinks he's an angel
come down from rather higher than a tree.
(Kensington, London)

Is a handle on its own still a
handle?
Does it hold onto to
its former life
or pass
right out of being
with no body left to be lifted?
(Mayfair, London)

It seems you can park here...
Well,
somebody has…
But I
guess one car is not allowed
to park
on top of another.
(Mayfair, London)

The bodily side
of bricks is revealed:
they do have flesh,
although I’ve never seen them bleed.
It turns out that a wall can bleed
but I didn’t expect that the blood would be red -
given the yellow of sea cucumbers, the green of leaches,
the blue of snails, or mortar's greyish white.
(Shoreditch, London)

Bad news
I suppose
if you like pasta
for how you've enjoy ed it to date.
(Kensington, London)
You have
to hand it
to tropical
palms
carrying
on, calm as ice,
fingering the frosty air.

Down by the tracks
the sleepers rest.
I guess the trains might wake them
but it hasn't happened yet.
Life should be embraced
in all its ups and downs.
Here's a good place
for a slip.

The shadow world
is not my world, though it may well be yours:
I prefer to focus
on the fire of its cause.

Pointless enquiry No. 638
Why does frost
disappear faster
from some sections of tarmac than others?

How should I use the mystery tube
in light
of my fear –
even with
breathing arrangements in place –
of live
burial?
What happens
if I like
a photo
but
cannot think of anything to say?
It's
quite a conundrum.
(Warren Street, London)

If you plan to eat
a rock with a spoon,
you’re going to need
a little bit more water.
(St Stephen's Canonbury churchyard, London)
I'm not surprised
they're talking to each other -
probably, like all of us today,
about the serial failings of the
railways.
(Winchester Railway Station)
Think you know Disney?
If so
you may not have caught up with the
news
that its HQ is now in Halifax.
(Southampton)

We have not yet
arrived
at the point at which the world –
or even binmens’ livelihoods –
is threatened by lack of waste.
(Islington, London)
Is this a wasted
opportunity to deal with waste?
Or an invitation –
I’m not inclined to take it –
to post it to uncertain effect?
(Canonbury & Barnsbury station, London)
Even signs
needs to lie down from time to time
for a proper rest -
assuming that this isn’t a strike.
(Bethnal Green, London - rail, bus, health, civil service, university and teacher strikes were ongoing in January 2023)