• on Ukraine

    In a mere hundred yearsOne Saturday morningThe memorial to you will drip from night’s last icy showerPeople riding on the tramWill discuss their love prospectsWhat bargains they seek in January salesFootballOne, sitting in silenceMight catch a glimpse of a pigeon restingOn the head of the crossAnd wonder who carved the names into the stoneWhose names

  • on the train

    It makes me sad that we have to do thisPick up a trayTake off our coatsPlace them with our bagsWatch them being watchedAs they go through a scannerWe’re just catching the 10:10hAcross the plainThrough orange and olive grovesPassing lemon trees glintingIn the low winter sun breaking over the sierrasOnce the only barrier between Murcia and

  • on Ukraine

    adventurous youthtravel from South Africaconsumed by Grinder~n.b. Chinese and young men from South Korea, now South Africans chasing work, all have found themselves in dead end jobs somewhere in Ukraine. The old man in Moscow is no longer content with killing a million of his country’s own sons, but is still seeking fresh blood and

  • on his high horse

    Here’s a man high on a horseA horse on a hillA hill over an estuaryAn estuary to the North SeaThe North Sea stretching to BelgiumBelgium’s Flanders FieldsTo Flanders Fields he sent the finest young menThe finest young men of a generationA generation decimatedDecimated in a mechanical warA mechanical war overseen by a man high on

  • on time

    to thinkall we have talked of todayeverything we have shared this afternoonwill by tonight be gone for youperhaps you will retain the warmthof emotion stirred by my visitwithout the inconvenience of detailwhile I grieve at memoryof your loss~ CLP 28/10/2025

  • on Ukraine

    while shepherds watched their flocks by nightmothers slept by their childrenfathers fought out in the fields holding back the Orcsthe vile and cowardlylaunched missiles and dronesat slumbering urban homesdistractions abound broadbordering on the insanedistractiondisruptiondestructionmore sleeping children slain~ CLP 29/09/2025

  • on memory

    you can’t hold everything in your headbit by bit it fadesleaving flint-like fragmentssharp, shiny, hardwhich are sparked by placessongs, photographs, othersa cricket ground by a churcha roadsignthe name of a villagea street namea pub now turned to flatsa make of cara turn of phrasea nicknamea make of cheesea punk band formed by a pair of

  • on time

    we’re saying good-bye todaya friend made through cricketknown for how he bowledbent back, arm whipped roundlike a butterfly swimming strokethick mop of black hairswinging across his faceduring the unusual nature of his deliveryoff the wrong foot, it’s saidface looking down at the pitchas the ball left his handfrom his flurry of arms and legsall too

  • on Earth

    by force of armsthey rose above otherscleared the forestsdrained the fensenclosed the landtilled the soilharvested graintamed and propagated the freehunted down the wildroamed the planetcapitalised slaverywiped the surface for economyoceans became their sewerthe air filled with machineryevery inch of land fencedmarked out on mapsdefined their own legalityuntil their children turnedquestioned historywanted more than bread and

  • in Memphis (2022) / on Ukraine

    We’re at a bus stopOn Elvis Presley BoulevardWe’ve been to checkThe King’s still deadAnd waiting thereIn Tennessee’s afternoon heatWe talk of EuropeWhat we’ve shared of itThe moral question?For a young Polish man from EnglandOn holiday with his fatherThere is no doubtI’d be going home to fightWith no thought of checking outHeroic resistanceRemember The AlamoThe Red