Often it disappears – from hotels, harbours, airport carousels… but always it comes back to him. Trusting in the umbilical dance of instrument and player he stays calm in its absence. Amongst the cosmic flotsam orbiting Earth this minute There! Tauseef’s harmonium. On the sea bed, flexing its gills for ghazal-hungry shoals
The year after my brother died, I was out on my threadbare Vespa in countryside south of Bradford. The day was warm and blue; I let myself get lost, turn by turn, until I rode solo along the lanes. Low, overhead of me, a plane flew with a single propeller, its undercarriage painted cloud-like: its
Our metaphor container ship is dry-docked in Bratislava and our simile warehouse in Wuppertal has had to close its doors. We apologise. Some figments, we believe, may still be in transit, but there are supply chain fractures due to disputes over paperwork. We’re so sorry that we couldn’t get the parts but the
She said she dreamed that young once more she walked a road that led from nowhere into nowhere, and, stopping, placed her name-tagged suitcase down. The question asked inside her head was this: ‘Shall I go on, walk on. Or turn and stay a while?’ She turned, and left the suitcase standing
The windows of the tight old houses bulge Across the fishhead cobble, a rope that moors The sea to a church with its back to the quay. The sky is stuck fast in the tower tabs. See now the worried wives, thronging and blocking, Peering and peering through swollen glass To watch the catch of
Inevitable autumn after the excesses of summer: the year has simply nothing more to do. But look: the falling of each single leaf is slow and indecisive, hesitant as if (like floating voters) they are not convinced this is a good way to go; the necessary ending of their short aerial adventure – even as
A squeeze-box performs outside: The tinny air is pumpingw Through its half-forgotten song Like a failing heart. The sacred relic’s displayed In its dull crystal and gold For visitors to inspect As they shuffle by. The priests sit behind it, bored. They are no more concerned than Customs officials might be,
Thinking on it now, it was like living at sea beneath the whaleback hills, in those blue acres of lavender. Our house was a barge, its chimneys sharing our dreams with the sky. The barns were islands we would swim to through the fields, beyond the shoreline of the lane. Here, we would laze and
Whit Sunday, blustery heat, and you in three-piece suit to read the Second Lesson. The day before, I’d excavated Arctic Rolls from ice-shelves in the local store’s deep freeze. We ate them reverently, like miracles we didn’t quite believe in. I threw up first and stayed in bed. You soldiered on through
One day, my fellow occupant of our cell, you’ll cease to follow in my steps, to tell me, looking through our single window, about whatever view you’ve chosen for the day. Somehow, absurdly, I’d foreseen collapse, my deserted body, our almost rhyming corpse, and that you might walk away jauntily singing to
One summer I’d a plague of them – they looked so pretty in their red and black I didn’t mind them fluttering round but then I’d find one on my pillow or leaving smears across the panes. The boldest liked to totter on my finger then take me under her wing – it was lined
I don’t like trains – People get on who never get off again They have given me flowerless distances and windows smashed with rain Offered me stations as big as cathedrals where no one spoke And no one sang Yet when I was a child I loved the engines for their smoke. Once they
Yes but, no but, the paintbrush seems to mutter As I swish it back and forth across the weatherboard, Going with the grain then working against it, The faded charcoal turning onyx, the wood made rich again, Less true to itself the blacker it gets But beautiful, the knots like stubborn hearts, Which
I thought about going to a support group. I looked into it in the yellow pages and other outmoded data sets. I came upon a strange group of surly Sues and churlish Chads. We sat around and made high-pitched whines for about an hour. It was a pre-verbal kind of vibe. Some of us barked.
Just poster paint on coarse paper, pinned up with all the rest by the entrance to the school hall. Miss Stephenson stopped me and told me she liked it. Or was she married by then? The class gave her a soft toy at the end of term for her baby-to-be. In Autumn we
Without friends in low-doored cottages Beside the lichened walls of churches, Or wild associates in country piles With rotting sash windows, A sitting room just for the cats And drifts of broken-hearted furniture, Or cousins who throw chaotic parties In that fine old barn beside the lake Where random guests rampage all summer
Money is coarse. Her subjects take the taint. The humble glow. They smile their Sunday best. And everywhere she goes the Queen smells paint. She’s there for them that is and them that ain’t. Toffs drop their aitches in the jabber-fest. Money is coarse. Her subjects take the taint. Some pilgrims sell their
Where did they flee to? Who wrote off their debts when, scuttled back into a gas mantled past, they left just this pair of foxed silhouettes inlaid to the depths of the shadows they cast? Their off-cuts, spiralled and coiled to the floor, were the shirts off their backs they left behind for the brilliantined
Death dropped its guillotine on my sister. She wouldn’t have seen it coming – she’s blind. Was blind: I haven’t got used to the tense. I confuse those still living with those past. What gets me through the evenings is drink. Ironic, that, since drink is what killed her. I’m guessing it’s unlikely you
They need to start believing in themselves. Like the cartoon character who runs off a cliff before the animator has drawn solid earth below they expected more certainty than this. Already out of their depth they hesitate at the edge of the sea and wonder how it feels to dive into the waves. They gaze