In order of composition, newest at the top.
Photographs from Ashurst, New Forest unless indicated otherwise.
What kind of crazily
unequal world are we living in
when it's always cars and never trains
that have to wait at level crossings?
(Chichester)
Cacti may be hardier
orchids more beautiful
and parsley tastier,
but ornamental grasses have the funkiest haircuts.
(Bexhill-on-Sea / Eastbourne)
Excuse my French
as chère maman would put it,
but it I'm fed up with f******
asterisks
disrupting the flow of my Google Voice
Typing.
(Written after attempting
to quote from ‘The Thick of It’, the super-sweary political comedy starring
Peter Capaldi as Malcolm ‘The Fucker’ Tucker. The Google Voice Typing application
automatically censors some words. That’s a lot of asterisks in, for example, Tucker’s
‘I'm gonna have to mop up a fucking hurricane of piss here’, ‘I will perform a
fucking living fucking autopsy on you with a fucking rusty spade and I'll have
your kidneys for fucking cuff-links!’ or ‘Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck
off.’)
In ancient times the Grim Reaper came for your soul
later he was just a messenger.
Now no one believes in him at all,
but face to face I'm starting to
regress.
(Josh Smith: ‘Friend’, 2023, as shown in Frieze Sculpture Park, London)
Kissing
the ground
shows proper respect for our planet –
though I'm not so sure I’ll obey this sign
to engage with the Earth through the pavement.
(St Leonards-on-Sea)
This, on
automatic during a slide show
is what the camera believes Noelle to look like.
I would say it’s wrong,
but how objective is my perception?
(curator
Noelle Collins introduces the Turner prize exhibition at the Towner Gallery,
Eastbourne – 27 Sept 2023)
I'm sorry
if retrospect makes this unwelcome…
he asked me to give you a hug from him
but not to tell you who it was from
until after.
‘Constant’
is a tricky claim:
it sounds like ‘all the time’
but is it?
(St Leonards-on-Sea)
Forty-one streaks of muddy rain
have left their run-down marks on Polgate.
I didn’t check how many there were
at the other stations on the line.
(Polegate Railway Station)
The only
thing
they throw away here -
and surely it’s recyclable -
is wind.
(East Worthing railway station)
Why does Ford Station
have a level crossing and a bridge
but not a ford?
It would be fun to plough through the Arun.
(Ford, West Sussex – I’m not aware of any rail fords in the UK)
There are many ways
to track time
but why does it pass so differently
from one part of a structure to another?
(Southampton Railway Station)
It's touching how
close some berries can get
clustering into each other
as if they're not the result
but the putative means of reproduction.
(Totton)
I don't mean to
badger
but there's a typo in your road sign,
which - should it hepl -
I’d be pleased to poitn out.
(Totton)
There are
gardens
and there are gardens
and there's gravel.
Is that so confusing?
(Penge, London)
I dare say wrestling
is an art of sorts
but is it the sort
that ought to grace an Art Centre?
(Totton)
Where does the grammar
of landscape end?
Let’s agree to call
the pink punctuation
some type of full stop.
(Southampton)
Two months in
to my Diploma in Bricklaying
there was still some scope
to improve my skills.
(Southampton)
Today
I took a different way out
of my usual carpark
But it proved of minimal interest.
(Asda, Totton)
must be an act of charity:
they can't have made that much fruit
just for themselves.
(Minstead)
The blood on my hands
is blackberry blood.
I'm unharmed and innocent
of anything other than stealing wild fruit.
(Minstead)
How many druplets
does a blackberry hold?
I'd like to say it's a stupid question
but this one, picked apart, had 77.
(Minstead: the fruits
of blackberries are compound drupes, composed of many smaller drupelets (or
druplets), each of which contains a seed. Other drupes include raspberries
(also complex), plums and cherries)
The blackberry spider
lives in a world
which would still be blood-dark
even were blackberries part of its diet.
(Minstead)
Remember the time
when
we used to say
'the
weather is better today’,
meaning it was hotter?
I only observe
that
this has been here for 18 months.
Even
if storage is an emergency
how
long can that last?
High rise
meets
low…
This
sort of roof flower
is
surely restricted to bungalows.
You know the way a hen stares at nothing with one eye
then
picks it up?
This
pigeon looked full-on at a sandwich half its own size
then
went right into the tussle.
(St James’s, London: the
hen quotes Norman MacCaig’s poem ‘Summer Farm’, 1955)
Hatflies
prefer
their headwear headless -
ideally
a stetson, bowler or sombrero,
though
most are prepared to settle on a floppy or a cap.
(Penge, London)
What I like
is
how they wear their hair
as
a way of disguising their clothing.
Or
is it the way other round?
(Brighton / London)
The acorn rainbow
may not match the atmosphere’s for spectacle,
but isn't that a bit too showy
and lacking any subtlety of size?
Having seen
a dancing beagle.
rotation cannot alter
my perception.
(Floor of railway
bridge, Totton)
Before I launch
a new species claim,
I'll check if any pranksters
have been active in the area.
(Redbridge, Southampton)
I have the criteria
off pat: roundness is most of it,
I leave smell aside and give
density, texture and colour the rest of the points.
The years have passed
the bike has got sadder.
Does nobody want
to ride it away?
This equality
cannot last:
when lichen, leaf and moss are one
the question of primacy is bound to occur.
Not a landscape
painting
so much as paint fixed in a landscape -
a swatch having fallen
from a peeling wall nearby.
(Totton)
If you can’t run
I suppose you have to hide.
But is this really
the best you can do?
Quicker than my flash
I caught these slugs in motion-motion
speeding away from whatever their love-in
or slugfest might have been.
We have no truck
with difference:
variegation is our principle,
same as the pea shingle speckling the driveway.
(Incidentally, a pebble is a clast of rock with
a particle size of 4–64 mm based on
the Udden-Wentworth scale of sedimentology. Technically gravel and
shingle are sub-categories of pebble, but the term ‘pebble’ tended to be used more
commonly for the larger end of the range, so that the size sequence goes
something like granules – gravel / shingle - pebbles – cobbles)
The dead moth looks
at home on the carpet.
I’m reluctant to bin it,
or even to take it outside.
I hadn’t realised,
tbh
that Ronnie was inside,
that making bad paintings of bandmates
had been declared a crime.
(Ronnie Wood has a side-business painting pictures of the Rolling Stones)
What's up with that terrier in the window
the one that wants me on my way?
And how come it knows
I don't love dogs in any way?
(Totton)
I’m all for sensible
back-up precautions
but what made this man
go to the trouble
of bringing his own box?
(King's Cross, London)
I'm ready
to be grateful
but only pending further details...
into what, post-everything,
is the world set to turn?
(Stockwell,
London)
The art
of difference
suits me fine, and that’s enough:
it's axiomatic for difference-makers
not to care what others think.
(Paddington,
London)
My thanks
to the subtitles
for making it clear
that they will clarify
nothing here.
(Camden Art Centre screening of film on Martin Wong)
Given that
our industrial
revolution
isn't built on brick and iron,
how will the future see it on the streets?
(Pimlico, London)
There’s no time
like the present.
Apart from the past, which used to present.
And the future, which will be soon enough.
(Online image)
Amazing how still
an owl can keep
if there's a mouse
in prospect.
Could all those in
red please enter now
along with orange rucksack man.
That sees to the colour, now for the action:
try to look as if you have a train to catch.
(Waterloo Station, London: a tribute to John Smith’s film ‘A Girl
Chewing Gum’, 1976, in which a voice-over appears to direct a street scene)
Here's the bind - a
double
Not only are discarded packets
almost always disappointingly empty,
when they're not there’s something that puts me off.
(Deptford, London)
Might this be
what Beckett meant
by ‘failing better’ –
the failing on?
It's no good
Those red hoops
will not convince me
that they are matching socks.
(Deptford, London)
I guess I was assuming
barbers finish with the head.
What are they expecting
to move onto?
(Portslade, Sussex)
The local flag
flies, if you can call it that,
only on the pavement.
I rather like it.
(Hampden Park, Eastbourne)
It's sunny
but is it bright enough to justify Victoria
trivialising the royal brand
by wearing sunglasses while on duty?
(St Leonards-on-Sea)
Whenever
whatever
you want it fresh -
as long as it's not now.
(St Leonards-on-Sea)

There’s nothing fantastical
about the size of this snail
sliding along its step:
it is a concrete fact.
(Hastings)
This ghost could be
what Mondrian saw
before he deconstructed
his trees into grids.
It’s a little known fact
about bees
that every other fact about bees
is already well-known.
(Hastings)
Everyone is lucky
according to Blackbeard,
the question being
how soon?
(Hastings)
I'm not sure that this is true
The
rising of the moon
is
governed by the Earth and Sun and gravity
(St Leonards-on-Sea)
What an awkward
feeling
to realise, 31 characters in,
that there are eight to go
and only the room for four at half-size....
(St Leonards-on-Sea)
That was
a night and a half
on the tiles!
Some sort of incident
was bound to occur…
(St Leonards-on-Sea)
'I've not said nothing to no-one'
he says,
and I
like how sure I am
that he
means exactly the opposite.
(Mayfair, London)
‘It’s me!’
‘Perhaps,
but who am I?
And how
did you come
To choose
my bell?’
(Fitzrovia, London)
The fisherman says
he doesn’t mind
if he catches no fish:
he’s happy with his being.
Not all
that’s nature
is in flower
any more than
all that isn’t isn’t.
(Hastings)
Give us today
a slice of reality
but please don’t overwhelm us
with the whole fucking loaf.
(St Leonards-on-Sea)
Paving
stones
make serviceable plates
but can man live by rice alone
especially so few grains?
(Hastings)
Ah for
the days
when knowledge was visible,
if harder to access!
OK, maybe not.
(Camilla’s bookshop, Eastbourne)
Elvis Costello
as I recall it
didn't want to go to Chelsea.
But was he rejecting London, New York or Eastbourne?
(Eastbourne. Elvis
Costello and the Attractions released '(I don't want to go to) Chelsea' in
1977. Does any other song, incidentally, start its title with brackets?)
I like the name
But is this an ancient street sympathetic to new desires,
or a sad repository for long-extinguished hopes
too painful to revive?
(Eastbourne)
If you can't decide
which way round
to lay your bricks,
why should you?
(Eastbourne)
In between strike
days
I might try to claim
it's nice to return
to the usual reasons for delay...
Said Business School
isn't called Said
but Saïd
and I guess that's how it's saïd.
(Saïd Business School,
Oxford: actually, it turns out, phonetically, that both words are said ‘sed’)
I feel at a loss
when something’s invisible
and cannot be touched.
How am I meant to engage?
(Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)
‘Boo!’ she said
‘I'm Sassy -
I guess you're not
else you'd have seen that coming.’
(Woodstock, Oxfordshire)
Apparently
there are as many different ways of whitewashing windows
as there are atoms in the universe…
but that tend to be claimed of most choices.
(Oxford)
Insect life is full
of ease
Two-three-four in a flower.
No-one cares
apart from entomologists.
(Common red soldier beetles Rhagonycha fulva)
If prickles are no
defence against death
we might as well stay as smooth as the transition
we hope will take us
from this world to the next…
You might think
that only the very maddest bark
would choose to park here. I’m not so sure:
just what are the rules for natural objects?
Don't be confused
by mere details of timing:
here is my photo of a small tortoiseshell
about to take off.
Did you notice
that house prices –
and it, seems, their notices –
are starting to fall?
Why is black medick
yellow? Same reason, I suppose,
that yellow medick would be black
were such a plant to exist…
The common name of Medicago lupulina is thought to derive
from its seed, rather than flower, colour. There is no plant called 'yellow medick'.
The key, if you’re
skirting
the trouser trail,
is to keep to your senses
of humour, balance and scale.
I may not have the
social skills
to make me very popular,
but I maintain my inner self
ought to be better respected.
(Stinging nettles, Ashurst)
Would you look at
that road!
Not like that,
more subtly, more covertly,
as if you might be doing something wrong…
(Southampton)
Does it make any
sense
to frame something in itself?
Or is that as if
a map’s the same size as what it depicts?
It’s sad
to see a deadgehog.
How long will it be before evolution arrives
at spines that puncture tyres?
Is the point of green
berries
that birds won't see them
and shat out the seeds before they are ready
or have I just made that up?
I’d say that the
windows are bricks
but some of the windows are windows
and some of the bricks are just bricks -
so everything is everything, and maybe that’s the point.
(Southampton General Hospital)
The lodge sign
dislodged
suggests that you can’t lodge here anymore -
not even if you lie diagonally
across your bed and hope for an unlikely breakfast.
It’s one thing to
find out
who’s been punching holes in the bindweed
and maybe even how,
another to work out why…
(probably the work of a leaf beetle)
For almost two weeks
she's been lying here now, waiting for what?
Maybe for me. For almost two weeks
I've been walking past daily, headed for where?
Round about now
the sun’s at its strongest, appearing to circle –
though we know it doesn’t – over what’s ready to turn in
turn
in what would be a misinformed response.
Were I a plant
I wouldn’t live here
I’d want the fresh air and views
even if I couldn’t breathe or see…
Sixteen months in
both on the news and in gardens
the war in Ukraine
has been relegated to a backdrop.
We know the world
is cracking up
but now I find the epochal malaise
is spreading to its concrete.
When hoses are up for
the washing line high jump
the critical question’s bound to be
how much wrist-flick the rules allow.
I guess we'd be disqualified.
I was surprised
to find a unicorn in the park, having believed them
extinct. The question, I suppose,
is whether there are viable mating opportunities.
The toaster’s
effected a total pop
I suspect the holes in sourdough may have tipped the balance.
But is it over-performing to the point of a fault
or setting new standards for its class to be judged by?
The trefoiled cap
is bad of course
but its aesthetic’s
not that far from good.
(Bird's-foot Trefoil, Ashurst)
The feathers in the
ivy
are ready to be blown away
from the curious coincidence
of how they landed here.
a vulgar matter
in the land of blotch:
the more perfect it is, the worse.
Being unable
to wipe the light away
might have left this sponge feeling useless.
Thank heavens for refraction!
In common with the whole wide world
the tennis
ball is what it is –
for were
it not, we wouldn't know how to talk of it
without
it slipping out of its identity.
I get the first
bit
The island was knocked down
in just the direction its arrow instructed…
But does that explain the feet?
Borage
will not be barred!
OK then, it will be barred,
but it will not be stopped!
It's the old problem
of the same mistake twice,
albeit in different countries:
ordering a curry that proves to contain an egg.
(Maastricht and London. Somewhat eccentrically, I don’t eat eggs.)
Hedges
may not need much help
to fall from themselves,
but this one’s had some nevertheless.
The squirrel is so
hard to catch
I froze this one in time for you.
More than that: the squirrel is so hard to catch
I had to choose one that lives online.
All’s right
with this rose.
That only leaves
the rest of the world.
Nobody loves us
I guess that's the gig.
But we’re somewhat stung that no punk-arsey rockers
have yet thought to call themselves ‘The Nettles’.
(stinging nettle clearance, Minstead)
Maximum dapple
needs red at the end to lead the eye.
And there it is!
Unless, perhaps, you're looking at the photo.
I like the mimosa's
blazing defiance –
whether of gravity
or of photo-presentational convention.
(Bartley)
From my white
distance
I’d never noticed
the pink and yellow
in chestnut blossom.
I wasn't very jubilant
during the jubilee.
Why should I be coronal
for the coronation?
(Covent Garden, London)
Rumours of my death
Have been greatly exaggerated.
Give me a dousing
and I’ll be right as rain.
Is that the shadow
of George Parsons’ death
or the light of his life?
Nothing is likely of either sort.
(Old Cemetery, Southampton)
It's one thing
to fall into death
Another for the fact of it
to fall into a tree.
(Old Cemetery, Southampton)
When this is all my
memory amounts to
I guess I will be happy
if happiness is relevant
and I'm able to care.
(Old Cemetery, Southampton)
When I saw
that he’d had to split his in-tray
to avoid its collapse,
I understood why I’d received no reply.
(St James’s, London)
How much irregularity
is too little or too much?
Maybe oxeye daisies
have the answer.
At what point
do you stop
referring to peeling paint
and start
to say:
‘this
door used to be painted’?
(Totton)
If I'm to be transformed into a flower
I hope
it's not like this.
I'd
rather dwell in pink restraint
against a
field of grass.
(Balthazar, Covent Garden, London)
How many times
did that basketball
need to be hurled
before the right accident occurred?
(Marylebone, London)
I was going to say
‘the sun is having a ball today,
having come down to play on the lawn’
but that’s not sun, nor ball, nor grass.
(children’s playground, Marylebone, London)
I understand if forget-me-nots
can’t make up their colour-minds.
I suppose their mental faculties
are more attuned to memory.
Do cows love their
parsley?
I don't know.
I guess I would be wiser
if I were a cow.
(Anthriscus sylvestris, known as cow parsley, in Ashurst. I believe sheep, goats and cattle all relish it)
This is as far
as orange can go
before it starts the try-too-hard
Will gutter gardens
become a trend,
or is that taking the greening agenda
a little too far?
(Elephant & Castle, London)
Dandelions are
stalked by death
If I call the post-floral stage
a ‘residual receptacle’
they might as well be their own coffins.
By way of reminder:
If you have a glass head
you’d be advised
to wear a hat.
Will a woollen one suffice?
(Charlottenburg, Berlin)
These super-droopers
look like they've grown this way
to suck up the spillage
from careless drinkers.
(Charlottenburg, Berlin)
To say the sun
does not come out at night
would be ridiculous,
which is why I frame the thesis purely with denial.
(Berlin)
Yes we've had
dandelions
but these are German.
Think of the history
their soil has seen…
(Berlin)
How many definitions
of 'superfluity' do you require?
OK here's another:
seven chucked copies of the magazine 'Plus'.
(Kurfürstenstraße, Tiergarten, Berlin)
You dummy!
Even were she real, lust would be pointless.
Consider your scruffy appearance,
not to mention the glass.
Not much goes
on
at Hausvogteiplatz
on a Sunday morning.
But if anything does...
(Mitte, Berlin)
Of course, I have
questions
How many apes live around here?
Do they tend to be keen on tattoos?
Assuming some are, how do they pay?
(Charlottenburg, Berlin)
My kind of painting doesn’t need paint
My kind of novel doesn’t need a story.
My kind of journey need never arrive.
But I do like a fountain to have water.
(Brigitte &
Martin Matschinski-Denninghoff’s design ‘Column in the
midst of waves’,1975, at Adenauerplatz, Berlin takes the form of a fountain
spewing water, but currently has no actual water. It is meant to flow.)
The modern bluebell
is just as likely pink or white:
identity issues
may not be merely human.
(Totton)
In nature, at least
those white with age
don’t hang around in a home for old dandies.
One puff and they’re gone.
Would a roar of
dandelions
be the collective?
For sure they’re much louder
seen in a pride.
How bad can it be
to be left on the shellf
if it’s comfortably bespoke
and you get a view of gardens and the sea?
(View from the 2nd floor of the Grand Hotel and Spa, St Helier, Jersey, of just-washed shells drying in the sun collected for my grandchildren)
Between the headspace
and the poo-cast
the lug lies in its burrow -
living the beach life, true enough,
but eating what one might prefer to bask on.
(St Aubin's Bay, Jersey: to be precise there must be a blow lugworm, Arenicola marina, beneath. That makes irregularly disordered casts, as opposed to the neatly concentric coils of the black lugworm, Arenicola defodiens)
The hyacinth girl
is feeling off-colour.
That’s why she hasn’t been watering
what are now lowacinths.
(St Helier, Jersey - the hyacinth girl first appeared in TS Eliot's 'The Wasteland' in 1922)
This is the sort
of windy-wet weather
to make me grateful to have an umbrella
that’s already broken.
The odd shy house
does take the veil,
but I’ve noticed that they tend to lose their inhibitions
within a few months.
It's a difficult art
cutting a
tree
with a
spade.
I'm
tempted to watch.
(Fitzroy Square, Fitzrovia, London)
'I’m sorry, sir
but we
can’t clean that:
we had a
shirt in identical style
three weeks
ago.'
(Kensington, London)
Why don’t nature’s
yellows
conversing under the yellowing sun
turn the same shade
beneath the same rays?
The rain's running down
the garden wall -
which is only a surprise
because we're so far underground.
(Covent
Garden underground station, London)
Clearly
I shouldn't have taken this photo.
But, having got away with it,
my reason to want it has faded right away.
Do you do coffee with milk?
Do you
serve humans?
Do you
get fed up with questions like those
and this?
(Black Sheep Coffee, King's Cross, London)
There are so many
roadworks
they've taken the signs down in favour of one -
saying ‘NO ROADWORKS’ -
in the spot where that's true.
(Peckham, 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…
(The Huxley, 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.
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?
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?)
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.
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.
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.

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
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.
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)
The moon is bright
but blurry
tonight.
Perhaps
it's enveloped in a luminous mist
dispersing
around from the unseen side…
(through windscreen on M4, near Swindon. The car's movement may also explain the blur)
I could
have been a bricklayer
Not through any aptitude,
but judging by the standards
required around here.
You need a fair old press of leaves
to realise that they - that trees -
have veins flowing through them
in line with their role as the heart of the earth.
(Southampton)
I realise I should concentrate
but life is not so simple
as its homilies suggest.
What’s that over there?
(Sign in Southampton General Hospital car park)
I don't know the purpose
of its
level of protection
but the holly
by the hospital
is masked to the max.
(outside Southampton General Hospital)
It may
have seemed unlikely –
‘Classic flower in leaded glass
seeks post-modern body in gaffer tape’ –
but here it is.
(The Red Lion, St James's, London)
It's all very well
for a
sign to indicate
which way
it wants to get out and about
but has
it the means to follow its own directions?
(St James's, London)
The rumours
that this
road is going to be renamed
are almost
as groundless as the suggestion
that it
will then be Andrew Street instead.
(St James's, London - in honour of Prince Andrew, Duke of York,KG, GCVO, CD being stripped of royal duties and publicly funded protection)
The cypress
is a synecdoche:
the leaves contain the form of a tree
These are
not my holes
but I do feel
they’re just where I’d have drilled them
had they been.
(The
holes were probably made to allow herbicide, intended to kill the tree stump
and prevent any regrowth, to seep inside and be absorbed by the roots more
quickly)

Lichen snow
is here again
its mystery quickened
by how rarely I’ve seen it fall.
(Lyndhurst)
Three sentries guard the pavement
I don't know what against,
but I doubt that it’s me.
I shall approach.
(Southampton)
When the paradigmatically
flat and stable pavement
is all at sea
what are the chances for you and me?
(Southampton)
It looks as if
they ran right out
of wiggle room
in the company accounts.
(Southampton)
This isn't a stream
but a floodle.
The streams
are
currently rivers, the rivers lakes,
the lakes
on their way to seas.