A Christmas Story 2020 It was Christmas morning a few years after The Beatles ceased to be. It was early, dark and crisp. Mr James…
Fathers Day 2020 – A Sad Admission
Fathers Day in the UK is rolling around again. Every year since my daughter Zuzu died in July 2005 in her room in my flat in Sydney I contend with this day. This year it’s hit me in a different way.
Who spends the summer
Who spends the summer laid out, eyes tight shut In the sun Catching the rays and making them stay Not being warmed, just making cold…
The Peace from her sleep
Beyond the peace that flowed from her sleep Was a dark room, a cold place. Deeply moved by kind wishes, We stood in the tidal…
The Swing of Things
The swing of things Around here Today Resulted in a contagion Like love on holiday (Remarking to you Around there that day That you…
Not Missing
You are missed You are not missing. You’re up on Cavendish Way Or School Street Or the council estate by the church. In your…
Lucky Boy
Lucky boy rescued Gave me this wonderful picture Of freedom At the start of that long Spring evening. Lovely rescued boy Cornered on a sixpence…
Come on! Before it’s too late!
It’s 1976, a boy has a smoke and meets a girl He sat in the churchyard, feeling the fag packet in his pocket. He didn’t…
On the Death of a Child & Trigger Warnings
For me, the problem with Trigger Warnings is that they often exacerbate the pain that they seek to protect us from. They also propose a world where healing from many different traumas is homogenised into a synthetic mass agreement as to what constitutes pain, damage, confrontation or peace. The synthesis is too simplistic and is in fact more demagogic than pedagogic: it speaks to a mass lie of consensus rather than enabling people to learn their way through their horrors.
Poem: A line in the leaves
Here’s to the summer and to love
A line at least is here at last
Along it came to make sense of the summer I see
You’re not there again