Sample poems

How I learned to sing

The day spins like a plate on a pole,

sunlight streaming down and around us,

carving shadows out of the beach.

A snag of mishaps has shaped mum’s face

into a taut parody of itself.

We are sent to find crabs, in pools

where we have not seen a crab for years.

The sea is a vein in the estuary,

the tide coming in a race memory,

and stranded pools dot the sand

with water still so cold it cramps

our calves before we can fight.

Then my sister is suddenly dancing,

splashing towards me with her discovery,

a small pink starfish she waves

in my dumbstruck face.

Though she is smaller, I can’t reach it,

she ducks and swerves away

like the memory of it now.

I can’t reach her, mum and dad

are too far back to help, but

I want that starfish, want to run

my fingers over its serrations,

pop it in my pocket to frighten

my mum with as we wipe sand

from between our toes later.

I start to scream at my sister,

first words and then just noises,

and the gulls turn from pencil flicks

to real birds with real blood

rushing beneath sharp feathers,

claws asking my shirt whether

it will rip or be carried off,

and now my voice has gone soft

and crying for what I can’t get

I feel my wings rise and set,

the gulls craws and my own throat

harmonise as I pale and float

up and over the docile waves,

not worrying, or wanting to be saved,

looking down on the strip of beach

at the family I could not reach,

and singing back back back.

Where Thinking Got Me

It was ideas cut my chest tight.

The dusk sang me ragged,

wrang me dry as salt.

Hollow backed with hunger

I held the face in the mirror

steady, simple as a toy box,

while I sweat myself some air.

Three deep sweet breaths

made my young neck flush

when some sudden consolation

wrapped me in papier maché,

delivered me into stereo,

then made me run everything

I’d ever done again, backwards,

all the way home.

The Horse Burning Park

It’s fun for all the family.

Real horses, real fat to fly

past your pink little ears.

Real aroma to tickle the hairs

of your ever so delicate noses.

Real flames to singe your trousers.

The incredible heritage of horse burning.

We’ll take you through the theory and the practice.

We’ll stroll through a living, breathing, burning museum:

horse burning through the ages.

Some of you might find the methods used barbaric.

Here at The Park, we think them quaint.

Simplicity in everything,

especially horse burning.

That was the motto of my forefathers.

My family have been burning horses for six generations.

The lengths I have to go to burn a horse nowadays.

My grandfather would have died laughing.

And they do say I’m to be the last allowed to burn horses.

What my son will do I don’t know.

Taking tours around a museum is no way to live.

But I digress.

Shall we start.

That one belonged to Boedicia.

It gazed upon her breasts, so was burnt.

Gazed, not grazed, madam.

The method is classically simple.

They simply shove the horse onto

the nearest bonfire and poke it

so that it stays in the flames.

Once the legs have gone,

you’re laughing.

They’re doing a good job, those men,

do try and appreciate it.

Craftsmen the like of which we don’t get today.

Yes, this particular method stems from a time

when horses were burnt to warm the house.

A little too utilitarian for my liking.

No art in it, just heating.

Of course, fireplaces were bigger then.

The children used to pick through the ashes

looking for teeth and play a game

rather similar to marbles with them.

Any questions so far?

There may be a little pain involved,

but not as we understand it.

Horses are beautiful animals, but unintelligent.

Yes, posters and t-shirts are available,

along with technical histories of the art

and novels and autobiographies of some

of its ‘characters’, such as Nathan Churles,

who personally rode every horse before burning it,

and thatched his cottage with their manes,

forcing his wife, Nellie, to comb it daily.

No, the horses were in actual fact

burnt indoors, in ‘burning sheds’.

The Park is an attempt to capture

the excitement without the grime.

Yes, I would rather be burning horses

than standing here talking to you.

Becoming short-sighted

The more I look out at the world

the harder it gets to see across the street.

The houses opposite fog over, that new couple

moving down a rickety ladder are lost to a blur

that dances around focus but decides on nothing.

We’ll not get to know them. I’d put money on it.

This lunchtime’s obsession is the fresh plans for schools:

Get rich quick or stay thick, the white paper’s called.

(They’ve stopped even pretending.) If there are angry crowds

gathering in the gloom only yards away I can’t see them.