Partly underground We were going to live partly underground. So much shot over powder: don’t say ‘cast me a steady toplit mountain’, causing a volcano to erupt in Iceland and ground all flights out of and into the UK. Manifesto follows manifesto into a multi-hued muddle. Patrons of desperate causes have already thrown out the…

TV Dinner Back from a walk to the shops that nearly did you in you pull a pack of Bakewell fingers from a blue plastic bag, eat two, make me tea then eat chocolate because the pulse says you haven’t got long. Meanwhile, the crackpot chef serves a Regency dinner: cocks’ testicles like like glace…

Flashback/hop forward This day, 21 years’ ago: Hillsborough; The Sun blaming the fans for crushing each other because, you know, we humans are bastards like that. We’re nearly mid-way and the scripts unchanged. All day, the heartbeat’s at fault. It’s ebbing like a draining sea; it’s flash- floods in neurological byways. If I touch your…

The local heron reflects on the times Some say they see my shadow underneath me; that it travels ahead of me even but the truth lies somewhere between what the unknowing believe and what the unbelieving know; take fish, reputedly, by me, speared, ingested, carp, ghost coy, booty when they’re grown for the raiders in…

Sunday, not in Egypt I would have stayed at home as lights went dancing in a distant body, a thinking thing, a tall weak hot-house pulse, I mean, kindly, plated in gold and understandably architect of some negativity; the day, dull and silent as dullness even the grey uneventful power ; the mountain ocean, speed…

Re-enchantment? After disenchantment re-enchantment in the moments before the shots the actual deaths of innocent journalists in Iraq, before hard-assed Americans take fire and blame children for being in the way. Did I say re-; maybe its only dis- on this April model of a day just for being in casting the illusion of love…

Faith I hadn’t been back in twenty years and found her sitting by the window in the Queen’s Hotel cracking peanuts with her teeth, then emptying them onto the front page of the Sporting Blue. A clack of dominoes from the other side of the black curtain; the smell of mushrooms being fried; breakfast for…

The Beginning of the World (after Brancusi) Man Ray advised but only he would photograph his own sculptures: sunshine on the golden bird almost made it explode, scratches and stains, there you are. In space, the marble egg, light and shade set at odds and there’s a ball of sun of course behind and we…

Illusionist 1. Night. No moon.  An empty theatre. You.  The stage. To begin again with what you know.  The sleight of hand, the lifted spoon which stroked, will bend and melt. Before the crowd arrives you’ll read the mind of every single person: shoe-sizes; dates-of-birth; their secret dreams. This stage: a box for doves, silk-scarves,…