2. Tin-can-man

You’ve flash-fried my clockwork mind

That ticks so regularly, ordinarily;

Seared the gears and sealed the links

Between my passion and my memory

Nobody believes a tin-can-man can feel;

That metal heart is flesh, and blood, and steel

Everybody knows a tin-can-man’s not real

Just an imprint of a ghost full of longing

2. Farewell to arms

She is weeping, silently

As I say ‘you’re free’

Never considered and always in haste

She is used to being caged

3. Cyrene

I still follow that ghost of a whisper, or a breath


Across continents, through yielded stone and death

Your will, still spans earth, and space, and time

Encased in gold and silver but precious by design -

Indeed, more precious for the absence of sense, and light,

And yet, you still remain that dark, fair mistress of my dreams

That blurred far-focused figure that never sleeps nor eats

All these long-weary years – my Cyrene

I’m still waiting to watch you eat

5. Beach site

Salt-swept depths of silence tinged with life


Of echoes and endless moments

Kept in caverns and pools of light

That age-old crack-worn span of rotten rocks and boards

Onrushing hints of slippery, greenery,

And each winter-mans fishing hoard

That which no eye has seen,

All have seen – by crab, or shellfish, or eel, or bream

Each shoal calls the shore its own

Each generation of mud-worm calls that sand his home