Listen

I’ve heard all the clichés before
like ‘you’ve one mouth and two ears’
‘children should be seen and not heard’
‘what’s the furthest sound you can hear?’

the loudest, the quietest,
the longest. the shortest,
the highest, the lowest,
the hardest, the soft one

because like rainfall hammering the ground,
a tiny drum-skin sitting by my brain
vibrates (as long as blood can pump around)
suggesting I’ve a fish upon a line.
It never stops - a shell held in my ear
aiming for a simple feeling near.

Trust

I jump on a train
but every seat’s full;
I buzz up and down
like an ant in an anthill

looking for my place;
trying, trusting god,
but every gaze avoids
my eyes, my eager face

and, deep inside, I pray,
pacing like a dad.
that I will find a friend
that, if I trust today,
a gap will open, smile;
my heart is thudding still.

What if God's a gas

Nod a bottle at a brittle glass
and fizzy lemonade arises,
toxicates a nostril,
titillates and fills:

more than ‘satisfactory’,
popping at their birth-point,
bubbles sharp and piquant
instigate a sneeze:

higher than high,
brighter than light,
way beyond planets,
ripple and lap
up to emotion,
quivering lips.

Everest

I
produce
hair on the
front of my eye-
brows I put there
for no reason I see
that it’s utterly futile
but still I sprout a small mane
maybe only because
I can when I choose
grow and inflate
yes create
my wee
star

Glimpse

We had a chat
about a rat;
yours a giant,
mine - a tyrant.

We made a jigsaw
like a sunset;
an orange (I saw)
you saw red

but only when my fruit
and your new fangled colour
merge do we, in truth,
create an apple’s figure

- and the rat, of course,
was a very helpful chap.

Sleep Tight

Today I walked past loads of doors
and, do you know, I had an urge
to reach and turn every handle;
see what lurks on the other side.

Something within us loves
hidden rooms, locked;
a key, a push, a creak,
a prisoner running free,

but tonight
when earth turns;

doors will bolt,
locked like clams,
holding tight
onto watery dreams.

Christened:

when they wet my head,
I never quite got over it;
water in my eyes, stinging,
and all that cooing, praying, singing

but (worse) the name they hung on me!
I’ve carried that old monica
from here to Timbuktu.

They didn’t even call me ‘Peggy Sue’,
‘Cecilia’ or ‘Suzanne’
like in all my favourite pop songs.

I wonder whether
(if they’d stuck me with a different handle)
my life would’ve had more scandal,
been suitably re-formed ---- or better?