Bali Like a talisman, Bali rests in my mind. Like a smooth semi-precious stone, a poet’s amethyst, Bali is there. I close my eyes, its Ubud at night.: gamelan trickling, lights in the trees. I undress and the wet morning heat breathes on my body. At work, I drink Bali from the ambient side of…

Alchemy Such good chat in the Soar Point The Pump and Tap me, people on the PG Cert people working at the same place having a drink great great chat I’ve always had this thing What? I don’t know But this is what I do can do Talk? help help mind Alchemy this is what…

Radiance This morning The Big Issue seller on New Walk tells me I’m looking as radiant as ever and that he bet everyone said that. No. It’s his line But a kind one, a compliment, given with charm, not sleaze. I try on that radiance, his gift then: 35 emails files of to dos not…

Ghosts   In the half light of the car park behind Burger-King, underneath the fire-escape which led to Shotokan, at the side of sleazy arches where no woman should ever venture, we were flickering in the dark like sea-green ghosts, flickering, nearly out, like guttering candles.   There were others like us: wavering, flame-like, collecting…

  Real   Don’t tell me the facts because I won’t be listening.   give me   the turquoise wave the orange blobs   that fall of water material hair to the left   which mean so much more than that frame you’ve carried here from over there.   Am I supposed to be impressed?…

Phosphorescence My recurring dreams of water: trapped on land that’s eaten by sea, or in a cave at high tide; looking down at a woman’s body in clear green water near a pier. Dreams of water, or dreams of fire, but not for ages until the other night when a flame leapt from the top…

white roses   on a wet sunday are sad haphazard not neat closed buds but falling open falling apart they have taken something of the complexion of their leaves petals like soft thin skin petals like skin on the inside of an arm   rose scent of rain   on a wet sunday roses turning…

Hologram He called me over, held it up to the light, tilted it against his mouse-mat, then, a city the colour of Lucozade, intricate, clear. You could carry this around forever, slip it into your pocket or bag: this teeming, sprawling beautiful illusion.

          The Garden     In the wide-awake hours of the morning                         a fox’s bark    cracked open the darkness,                        seemingly quite close but probably    miles beyond that room                        and immediately I was in a garden looking down   at myself watching under the…

Assemblage     And another thing I didn’t say that the downward spikes of the sun’s boxed rays will usually temporarily replace the climate of an average human being’s face so that if your arrival is precise and timely, your aspect fair, and you’ve surmised the first few rules of pitch and roll, you’ll navigate…