For Blood and For Bones
With apologies to Edward Lear for appropriating the rythmic pattern of his famous refrain.

Can you hear light and what does life look like?
This is the sound of a man circling as he comes in to land on the legend of Orpheus’ descent into the Underworld.

The Death of Orpheus.
And this is the sound of a man landing.

Untitled.
I like this poem. I tried to fit it into a story once but I couldn’t decide if it was objectively any good or whether I just thought it was clever.

No, My Love Is Not For Roses
Again, this is a poem that refused to fit into a story.

Spear Of Destiny
The playground rhymes in this tend to throw people but they were based on real chants. The idea of a boy with a javelin in his chest goes back to a legendarily bad sports teacher I had who would trot out these hoary urban myths that illustrated the dangers inherent in each new piece of sporting equipment like Victorian morality tales.

Please Turn Over
This won a University of Sussex prize back in 1999 or thereabouts. I missed the award ceremony because I was homeless at the time and they couldn’t find me.

Curse
I’ve been kicking something like this around in my head for years and I’ll probably never get it straight.

Something to hold on to
Inspired by visits to friends in unkind hospitals.

X
X for toxicity. This is a new poem with a deathwish for poisoning as a dreamy method of murder. See Charles Makay and his Slow Poisons: "Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable."