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Running on adrenalin, many miles from home.
Alone in her room with a fledgling young poem.
Craving to capture the stillness and calm,
felt as I lay by her side.

The morning arrived without saying too much,
in the silence we talk, bodies warm to the touch.
Delivered to here from the eye of the storm.
Contentedly hid from the rain.

A week now is past, many things to express
and I lie in the sun, now rewarded with rest.
I press on my pen and the paper receives.
We both hope that she feels the same.

The sky wept freely
As gravity ushered watery needles back to their source.

Two naked eyes looked on at nameless faces
Playing fleeting cameos amongst the cold concrete set.

I savour the sights, the sounds, the smells,
And the silences between my steps;
Each one, a step closer to my evening’s dream-soaked conclusion.

And down those stairs,
Behind those curtains,
And through that door
A hundred unimagined scenes unfold
With a nod, a stare, a shiver, and a glance;
Each moment a tapestry of gestures
For which my tired bones are grateful.

The Monday train offered a rare palette
to my listless locomotive eyes.

Despite a glorious sun
the hills issued a stubborn monochrome
to the blue expanse above
as Nature dutifully hid her innocence
beneath the weekend’s virgin snow.

Inside
God’s people bond
by electronic ritual;
outside
we overtake clouds,
perched in an urgent corporate cradle
nested between the skin and the sky.

The train speeds me south,
dizzy from an ever-changing aesthetic
which I struggle to comprehend.

Behind
I leave my father’s mother alone
with her sea view,
Carol Vorderman,
her stubborn old age,
and a failing body,
which no amount of Soya milk will solve.

{

The traffic below collides with Mendelssohn,
offering a soundtrack for our waking.

Out of the arms of sleep,
entwined in the arms of another,
I watch the morning peer through the blinds,
hinting at the day ahead.

The sudden electronic protest
cannot halt the march of time
and our moment is over
nearly as soon as it has begun.
I fear the stolen hours are bound to find me out
before the day is past.

The lift casually tosses me out into the street
where the icy grip
of Tuesday’s picture postcard scene
soon shakes me from my slumbers.

I walk home through the duck-littered park;
hands firmly entrenched in my winter coat,
alone
with the snow,
and some second-hand thoughts.

{

Wednesday, in a room full of bum bags,
challenged by lively combinations of colour and flesh

I sit,
waiting to be reunited
with the flighty gross machine
that will carry me
from this unpronounceable place.

Devoid of the urge to join the masses
in their motional quest to queue,
I muse on the lines of a face and frame
to which I will never have a name;

I wait,
ashamed by the naivety of my tongue
and the sudden shameful silence
of my sullen alien blood.

The twenty third transient hour
offers a few minutes of respite
for my frail jet-lagged ego.

My camera would love it here,
an infinity of rectangles
to find amongst the foreign.
But the brief snapshot barely develops,
before I close my eyes
and embrace a fleeting sleep.

The forgiveness of sin with just one impish grin
and it suddenly stopped raining in Leeds,
as I learn to forget a most beautiful debt,
in a pub, in Dublin, in spring.

The Sun slowly sinks as the populus drinks
My glass raised, I join in the throng.
With a smile on my face, I struggle to keep pace
in a pub, in Dublin, in spring.

A heart can forget the past’s weightier debt
with a few beers to show how its done.
I’ll return to the bus whilst still wishing I was
in a pub, in Dublin, in spring.

If memory serves, I awoke with the birds
and a head both dazed and confused.
My memory lost for a casual cost
in a pub, in Dublin, in spring.

A moment of stillness and calm,
so welcome a companion
sailing in on the last breathe of a warm August afternoon
through the half-open kitchen window.

Down below
the grass boasts green at an otherwise indifferent skyline,
celebrating recent rain with a symphony of drainpipes.

Daylight takes its final curtain call and heads west.

So the light left
and with it the evenings inspiration,
following my cathartic contentment out of the window,
down the garden path,
and into the shadowy streets below.

Just in time for darkness
my pen squeezed out one last poem,
devoid of structure or rhyme,
the contents sketchy at best.