Can daily grief articulate
the count of love so ready meant,
then add the lines and calculate
the final sum of that which went?

As since there be no written mark
by which to gauge his handsome height,
the eye of love need not be clerk
to weigh a line that’s infinite.

And in this finite field of ours
there sure resides unbounded space,
the silent smile that age devours,
not hemmed by either hour or place.

Summer sea of old,
after work is done,
basking in the sun,
all its fish flesh sold.

Salt flat sea of gales
blows your voice away,
in the setting spray
fills your ancient sails.

Shitty sea today,
cited by these walls.
Hear the final calls.
They all drown by day.

Star black sea at night
etching out its mark,
shooting in the dark
cool deep waves of light.

When all the fanfare falters
and drum’s begun to slow,
the heady light keeps falling.
It dims and turns to go.

Forget about today’s tendrils
as you salute the sun.
Lift up your head. Throw back your hair.
Ignore the stuff undone.

The quality of life is such.
One day is but a mark
smudged out on every gate and tree
as light descends to dark.

Then run a tongue round word again.
Impress its pressing din.
Dip deep into the old worn world
its contents to take in.

And practice well the noise to bark
as time to voice it grows.
Raise up a song to utterance.
Why then you can let go.

This public house stands testament
to a sweet time ago
and it’s still close, a corner bar
to my old man and ghost.

My first love was a first love,
a one that does not die
but keeps on coming back to me
along, along the line.

Each street in town is friend of mine.
I’ve known them all this long.
And memory is buried deep
in bricks and walls and song.

Each and every Wednesday’s woesday.
It’s the same song all of the time.
That day? Which day? Blursday? Huh?
It passed just fine.

Unday, Bluesday, Moansday, more.
They all form an orderly queue.
Coming around, with every week,
to spend them again and anew.

How do you measure what you lost?
Not in days nor rhymes.
Why must you be quite so abrupt
when writing out these lines?

A plague of light injected as vaccine,
to resurrect the corpse of last year’s youth,
infects the flesh of artery and gene
to spread the word about life’s lived out truth.

The new borne tale, well told to old born ear,
discovers new instalments to the fable
are published by a fist of frond and fear
that stamps its mark wherever it is able.

Rose blooming jaws of cursing skin and breath
cough up the germs that bring a life to death.

Mad skin does not check what it tells the light
to mask it from the world beneath a hood
but twitches to the rhythm of some deep
and unfrequented parlour of the shoals.
Enticing us with presents we can’t keep,
it bursts and blushes out in feeling coals.

Not noticing how I perceive your bones.
These darkly hidden blues contain its tones.

Is it that slice that wakes at night
and wanders until dawn
or handsome chunk of mad cap life
that rants and raves with scorn?

That frame we hung about the world
that we might clearly see
how things are actually done,
not as they claim to be?

In tears that fall from time to time
as do befall us all?
In each of those fine words you chose
still echoing down halls?

Defiance of a world unjust
in ways that show our care?
Do I myself wear gleeful grin
because you stitched it there?

This rule does not only apply
to me but all you too.
To everyone that sparkles still
with light that’s due to you.

So is it true? You have not gone?
Who do I find with me?
When walking round this city’s streets
in me some of you be.