I have never been short of words.
They're my best friend and my tools,
I use them well with wise men and better with fools.
It's a humbling admission; you might think me dumb:

When I need them most, the right words never come.

I walked through Russell Square again today,
Half hoping, not expecting, she'd be there.
She wasn't. A woman sat on our bench,
Lost in a book, oblivious of me.

Stripped trees and a dove-grey sky framed her
As I walked by. She looked up. I smiled.
She looked away.
I walked through Russell Square again today.

She has a chair, in pea-soup green, set beneath
The cracked, sunlit sash window in her kitchen.
Floorboards trodden smooth by all the feet
Of all the lives that passed through here since
This mansion block, in red brick, ribboned out
From Marylebone to Paddington and let
The bowler-hatted, pinafored middle classes
Live closer to their work and farther from
The coal-fired fug that blackened everything
It touched, save London's prideful heart,
Which grew in stature all down the days
As Britain's reputation faded. Now

It's in that chair I sit while autumn thunder
Rolls overhead and tube trains rock the walls,
And she, her head soft-resting on my shoulder,
Lies across me, curled up like a cat.

I want to dress you up and dress to match,
Two lovers to the nines in Seven Dials,
Mad gallivanting every Soho street,
Our secret safe until the clock strikes twelve.

What light-speed words arriving made you smile,
A private, gentle blush and look away
To some unseen, imagined, secret place,
And lit your face with something close to joy?
I, passing by at eighty miles an hour,
Fell in love with you for all of time,
Or till the next email and business call
Erase your lovely face for once and all.

It's a rainy night in London,
Belsize Park to be precise.
You're sleeping half a mile away,
Or maybe you're not. To my surprise

I miss you.

Like a hole in the head,
A sudden damp patch in my bed,
A crack in my heart,
Or the last part

Of a book
I didn't finish.

I watched a flock of blue-sky birds
Circling over Hampstead Heath the way they do,
Readying for leaving as days draw in.
I envied them their freedom.

I watched a star-small plane
Flying north over Emily's Highgate garden,
Wondering where it was headed.
I envied it its certainty.

I watched a broken heart fall into the gutter,
Reaching for solace, gasping for air,
Wondering why it was broken.
I envied it its pain.

I didn't see him fall, spread-eagled there
Like someone snoozing after boozing up
All afternoon and losing everything,
A knocked-out boxer vanquished in the ring.

The middle of the road's his resting place,
Though rest's the last thing on his mind right now.
Sleep forever, all around you noise
And taxi drivers swearing at the queue.

I passed by ten short feet from his clean shoes,
Admiring his immaculate attire,
The suit well pressed and lined in aqua silk,
His tie lay jaunty, prone, on his lapel.

The final sign he wasn't just asleep:
His lilac chequered shirt was open wide
From bullish neck to mammoth, though tanned, girth,
With pad electrodes sticking to his sides.

From far off his death had seemed quite clear,
Knocked-down pedestrian, a fatal turn,
Not beefy city gent struck down by a bolt
Of lightning through the heart while walking home.

Green-boiler-suited medics stood around,
Two coppers talked and carefully noted down
The time and date that death came into town
And chased this well-dressed man to Teheran.

There's no poetry in here
So I write a little something on the wall
Where three proud generations of Ford men
Have sat, shat and written in their scrawl.

There's no poetry for them
Who worked the days and nights on cars
They'd never own, or care
What happened to after
They'd passed their tiny job
And on through press and dip and paint,
Then trim and final fit and quality
Control, then out the gate to sit and wait

Unsold.

In hospital, us broken boys
With injuries from games
And cars and bikes
Swap stories of our journeys here.

Tied and splinted,
Roped and tractioned to our beds,
Sharing tales of blood and gore
And busted bones out loud.

Tony, with his yellow skin
And grey-ringed eyes, speaks last,
In soft and wounded Brummie.
Here's his parting shot.

Driving home post-party, pissed,
Through leafy suburbs, hit a tree,
Smashed himself to meaty pieces,
Though heart, lungs and liver lived.

Moved from there, he'd died five times in ICU,
Been brought right back
And slowly healed in tiny steps
While his mum and dad decayed before his eyes.

"I was wild before," he said,
"Not any more," as tears came.
"My mum and dad are fucked
Because of me.

And when I leave tomorrow
I'm gonna buy myself an axe
And I'm gonna go and fell
That fucking tree."

He's solid, Tony.
Never a Toby, always a mate,
Sometimes a golfer, occasionally good,
Eye-wateringly dry, always funny. So

Where does "solid" come from?
Roots first, in Kentish Town,
Mum, Dad, brothers, home,
And then there's Jane.

You can see her in his eyes
Every time he says her name.
Jane, home, family, all the same.
So if you ever see a photo in a frame

You'd say: solid.

Grandad said foul language is a sign of ignorance.
So what do you call a man who hits his daughter
With his belt and fists till all his rage is spent?
Mean old cad, or vicious cunt?

He drank. Whisky mostly. Anything, everything,
When whisky was gone. Every day. Every day
He wolfed it down, not noticing blend
Or taste. Escape was what he drank. Run

Away. Away from every feeling, pain,
The present, people, problems, all fall
Away, and as the day wore off he'd drink
More. I would watch and pray that today

Wouldn't be that day. Again. When all
Our plans would wash away like chalk in rain.
We three, powerless witnesses, two blind
To meaning, watching Dad "be weird", and Mum

Dreading the final act when, curtains closed,
He'd mark the day, or me, in his own way,
Then cry, remorseful, then forget. I'd pray
That this would be the last time he would spoil

The memory of every lovely day.
I'd pray to stop me hating him. Then
He'd buy flowers. It made me hate him more.
His legacy? He made me sad to see

Flowers.

Is there something in the fact that I,
When choosing how to travel, choose a train,
And every time I do, I can be found
Facing where I've been, not where I'm bound?

Looking back at where I've been means
I've got my back to journey's end.
It sets me, once again, against the fear
That maybe there's a deeper issue here.

I've had so many joyful days, and often
Find the time to go back to where
Everything was perfect in my life
And everyone I loved was still alive.

That doesn't mean I'm unhappy now.
There's so much love around me there's no void.
It's just that there's a sense of being exposed
When once upon a time I was enclosed

In someone else's arms, while all around
The wind and rain I heard but never felt,
And now I hear and see and feel it all
While someone else gets shelter. Someone small.

That's adulthood. That sense of being the windbreak,
Making calm for others to enjoy
While in my head the roaring of the wind
Brings back the dead.

Travelling backwards on the train
Is just a holiday from being a man,
A dad, a husband and a friend. From being me.
And if I'm lucky, someone comes along and brings me tea.

Under my four feet, the hard road. In my nose
Our green lane, whose hedges shape the endless fields.
Electricity runs through me for the hare.
In every twitching dream I go back there.

I chase the teasing hare, whose legs and spine,
Like mine, are built for speed. His quicksilver,
My lightning, cutting through the stubble.
Nothing else exists. Just life, and breath.

My feet, hare's feet, both hearts beating time.
I'm gaining ground, each bowstring bound. He flips
And sideways slips away. I look behind
And miss the thing that takes me to my end.

Old friend, so many years we chased those hares.
In every twitching dream I'll meet you there.

The tired trees who've seen two hundred years of days like these
Hold their boughs of pointless leaves,
Waiting to be told to die by degrees
By the autumn's first cold night.

That sharp first chill will leave them powerless
To resist this staged retreat to nakedness,
Stripped clean by easterlies surging pitiless
From the Steppes, a menace out of sight.

Not every tree's the same. The strong and limber will linger,
Their wooden hearts accepting they'll return a season stronger.
Some, solitary and ashamed, will die sometime between
The frost and spring.

And only when the warming sun returns in May
Will we know which it is that passed away,
And even then we'll watch them sway,
As if alive, until they fall.

Darkness in our sleeping house.
I'm last to bed again and do my rounds
Of bedrooms dimly lit, and shadowed beds,
Tiny dreams, soft breaths, and two blonde heads.

There's only two, my sleeping sons, to see.
Seven, two, and one who's gone for good.
A gentle darkening in the softest light
Comes with me as I turn in for the night.

I don't look back and agonise. What for?
The simplest fact won't change if I still grieve.
We held him for that blissful hour, no more,
Then left him in the room and closed the door.

Bureaucracy to legalise a life,
Our newborn son that didn't make it through.
I registered his birth at five past twelve,
Then his death at twenty-five past two.

That's two hours twenty minutes for the forms,
Four times as long as Joseph lived, just waiting,
Then fifteen minutes over to the morgue
To give the word to start our boy's cremation.

Paper, ink and effort, in what cause?
Our tiny tragedy is stored
In a blue-grey filing cabinet of forms
And in the dust that moved like mist inside the hall.

There is a way to cross the wildest plain,
Stalking stars at night,
Step after single, numberless step
Towards the light, uncalled,
Dawning, inevitable, from the hem of the sky.

Earth's circling dictates the pace,
Never changing, ever predictable.
We walk in darkness, uncertain,
Hopeful towards the dawn,

Aimless until our destination's known.
I think you might be mine.

I love fireworks. The expectation when the fuse is lit,
The celebration when the rocket soars or wheel spins,
Showering night with specks of light that trace their way,
Like arrows, gold, crimson, silver, all the rainbow, down

To earth, to land on sand and grass, earthly now, not ethereal,
To cool and fade, their life played out in seconds.
There is no us. Not yet. I'm a Roman candle waiting for the spark.
I think of you today and hope the fire works.

Say I'm fading, say I'm grey,
Say my best days went astray,
Say the years have had their way.
Sasha kissed me.

Tell me my youth is long departed,
Say I'm slow and leaden-hearted,
Half-forgotten, long slide started.
Sasha kissed me.

Write it down, say I'm broke,
Say she left me for a younger bloke,
Say I've days left till I croak.
Sasha kissed me.

Seven Dials, Soho, left cheek,
One small souvenir, so to speak,
Now there's nothing left to seek.
Sasha kissed me.

Put it in your journal, say I'm growing cold,
All my mercury turned to gold,
Then add this line before you're done:
Sasha kissed me, and I won.

She started as "Heaven" by Joan Armatrading,
She became all Flaming Lips, "Yoshimi",
And now I wish
She was every Michael Kiwanuka song ever written.

She is made of love, every molecule makes her whole.
I am made of broken bits of other people's souls.
She is as calm as a doldrum sea.
I am a wild day, as changeable as she
Is constant, like the tide's ebb and flow.

She bought me a card, my love. It said "Happy
Anniversary", which is weird because
We're not married, and though she'd redacted
The word anniversary and replaced

The schmaltz inside with filth that only she
Could think or write, I thought, here we go,
Our star-filled love affair has hit the skids,
She really wants a ring, a house and kids.

How wrong I was. As I explained why I
Had failed to buy a card, flowers or any
Thing at all that showed I cared one jot,
She cut the card she'd bought and wrote to bits,

Confetti that she tossed about my head,
And all my hopes for filth just wound up dead.

This poem is written to be burned after reading.
It is for you, today, and after that it has to die.
If it fails to leave the trace of how I feel
It didn't deserve to live. And if I

Could make these twelve lines self-destruct,
So mindful am I of the danger it creates,
And the meaning last forever,
I would ensure that once you'd read it once

It would ignite, with gentle flame, light your room
And warm your hands,
Then fade to nothing. Just a memory of warmth,
As we will become, somewhere in time.

Track the story of our love by footsteps
Left in snow, five winters' worth.
Inseparable at first, they separate,
Then join again, each meeting

Again, again, again, until
They pace their separate ways.
One leaves the woods, the other wanders on,
Then circles back as if to find

The love he lost, and finding she is gone,
He decides to stay in the woods.

I forgot them. I used to list all
The things I loved about the girl I loved.
When I was lost I lost the lists, and just
This minute, walking to the tube, I found

The lists again, and finding them explained
What I'd been like for months. I understood
At last all that she said. I lost the lists.
I lost the things of her I loved as I imploded.

It may be late, too late to save the love
Or have the girl love me like once she did,
But I've found the lists and write one more
To show that what is lost is never gone.

Her laugh
Her smile
Her stories
Her mind
Her love and pain
Her butt
Her shoulders
Her dirty mind
Her face
Her place
Her head
Her bed
Her hand in mine
Her arms wrapped round me as I slept
The first-date napkins on the wall, I wrote, and saw she'd kept.

She arrived in summer, June to September.
I'll remember her energy forever,
Never forget that she was soaring.
Me? Mostly falling.

Last night, in dreams, she came to me again,
As soft and full of hope as when we met.
Waking, I lost her, and my heart
Remembered what I'd missed before I slept.

It's winter time and in my greying head
I think, I need a hat, and I'm in Town,
And there's a place for every man who's searching.
I'm thinking trilby is the way to go.

I'll look like Cary Grant or Robert Mitchum,
I'll wear it well, and as I promenade
The dash I'll cut will make up for the seasons
Tick-tock tolling in my fifth decade.

But when I'm there and try them on, my dream
Of my behatted image takes a knock.
In each and every beret, tricorn or cloche
I don't look like I thought I might before.

No matter which, fedora, fez or gat,
The mirror, ever vengeful, just screams "twat".

In the 1950s there were cigarettes
Called Passing Clouds, on sale in pubs and shops,
Advertised, expensively, all over.
The brand fell out of favour, though the name

Stuck in my head. I love a cigarette.
I know they'll kill me, but if I'm to die
I'd rather pass on in passing clouds. Blue skies
Streaked in high heaven with wisps of papal smoke.

Not for me a funeral pyre of burning tyres,
Black. Not that, ever. I want a fragrance,
A lingering waft, one last puff,
And gone. On passing clouds.

If this shitty plane goes down and I'm incinerated
I'd be disappointed, not devastated,
Though my ageing bones would be blown,
Part roasted, to the ends of runway one.

And though my death would, for
Me, come too soon after my birth,
On balance I'd have to say I
Succeeded, living down to the expectations
Of my teachers' school reports, which said

"A lovely boy, talks too much and lazy"
Or "If he doesn't end in prison it would amaze me."
Well, "it" ended, evidently, in a field in Slough,
Just short of Terminal 2.
Not in jail.

But if I did go down in flames and up in smoke
I'd be sad because, mediocre though I was,
There was so much more I was going to do.
A list of things I'd started, unfinished, unchecked.

Only the stoniest of hearts would fail to find regret.
And there's a woman I've barely got to know. Yet.