"...I am in blood
Stepp'd so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as to go o'er" (Macbeth III iv)


I remember them

Stefan and Sonny

Swinging at the back

Bitten nails, Inked fingers

Scabbed knuckles.

Year Nine, English,

Wednesday, Shakespeare

Equals shit.

But this was the bit

That hits;

The bit that fit.

They'd all said fuckit

Gone for the proverbial

Sheep as well as the lamb,

Had blood on their hands.

At fourteen found thinking tedious

And kept on wading.

They'd stepped knee deep

School a pool with

No seeming shore.

For that day the words worked -

A mad King and them.

They left the room dripping,

Returning.

All praise

The foolhardy cherry

Whose blossoms snow

As March turns the

Lamb into a lion.

All praise

The silly magnolia

Made giddy

By false spring;

Their candles guide

Us away from winter.

All praise

The snowdrop,

The crocus and

The daffodil

Those heady harbingers

Of hope against blight.

For at that moment

The barren is finally

Broken.

For that:

All praise!

I have this dream
and I'm always going home.


Back to the loveliest tree
in all of Hitchin.


It's January and lit like
a golden X-ray


at the peak of Windmill
Hill as it was at 17


and drunk I stopped for
the first time and realised



Beauty wasn't a girl
that I didn't know.


It was the world.

Self Portrait 1669.

No grand hat or flowing sleeves,

Just a black slash below the neck.

The skin is now slack

And the fat lacquered

Cheek is pitted and cracked.

I'm no longer the flaxen lad

But a familiar to the rack,

The scratch of the sackcloth

And the hacking taste of ash.

This is my final attack -

Death is not a vacuum,

More like a latch on a wrecked

Door into a packed room

And actually no paint is a match.

It's time I faced facts.