Poem About Society – Humming along with the air-con

poem about society

Humming along with the air-con is a poem about society and a reflection on how we define people by their problems instead of their beauty.

Humming along with the air-con – a poem about society

Do you sometimes wake up in the middle of the day and think that
you're nothing but a cause
a bark to muzzle, an outbreak of pimples and zits
a skin to larder yellow-pack cream ON
a mouth to throw money AT
if only you'd ever shut your gob?

Are you a child throwing yet another tantrum
spewing toys out of a three-wheeled pram
mother walking her sunglasses and heels
headlining the city crimson
lipgloss and blush never smudge on the farm
why don't you just die down?

Under the table
you wriggle out of the tapering straps
go draw a picture of Moses snug in his basket
floating down the river or go banging empty cans of beans
with the one straw you clutched at the drive-through
when your shirt was wet against the car seat

and all you could do was
hum along with the air-con
except you've never sat in a 4x4
but you know how to make and do
like turning phrases into flowers
or screening the perfume of a lilac bush

in May when the chicks dare plunge
and you know you're one of them.
No one ever bothers
checking the henhouse for golden eggs or
downing a head on a pillow
stuffed with your downs.

Human Family Poem – Far, Far Away

Human Family Poem - Far, Far Away

Far, Far Away is a human family poem, a reflection on the impact of COVID-19 on everyone across the world, an expression of gratitude for relationships and togetherness.

Far, Far Away – a Human Family Poem

We were not prepared: our home is a mansion one end
a shack on the far side, God help the poor idiots stuck there. Before 
Christmas, thieving through the cracks with no one but one gagged guy 
wiring, a swarm began scotching in between the roof tiles and
the guttering ivy scaling skin and bricks like a beaver, indiscriminate,

rulers and buffs fear on the news, this is foliage on marble and sand 
and on the glitter you find below a girl's hairline or between
my fingernails and the dough I prune when you're looking for
a passage through a night days into the dig. Overnight, she dressed
the walls in thick weeds choking rocks and making us shut

every door and every window, stuff cracks with make-shift mortar.
You’re right, this is serious and no, you don’t want ivy mushrooming 
you into a tiny space far, far away from the sway of the day not if your 
mother is rubbing shillings together or your father is skimming work or 
if you dwell where the paint is flaking or where the floors are bulging

and you can't remember the scent of fresh air. Leaning against the 
greening bay window you sleep, glass and leaves between our palms 
this is hard your skin is curling, at night your wrap your arms around 
your legs and knit a rug with each and every string you've ever spun 
and spend days laying where the shore kisses the lake.

Lockdown Poem – Warriors

Lockdown Poem

Warriors is a lockdown poem, a reflection on how for some, home can be difficult, especially if you aren’t allowed to spend time away from home.

Warriors – Lockdown Poem

Never once do you picture a warrior as a little bundle in a crib sobbing or hungry or afraid. In this army, every warrior has an arsenal.

Aged three and a half, I dug boulders into the ground to shoulder a fat wall. Around it, I ploughed a trench and filled a moat. I am a castle, a fort, a warrior with a shield the size of a mountain. His fists don’t scare me now and from the watchtower, purple skin looks like a butterfly tattoo. My sister and I taught each other morse-code and then I drilled Harry and she scribbled the instructions on a scrap of paper and briefed Chloe under the desk in maths. At night, we cable light signals from the dungeon we pitch tents in the crib we hurl mud and play warfare. Battleplans. At home, I wear shining armour, Monkey snug between my chest and the breastplate. My weapons; a sword in one hand, a bow in the other and arrows on my back. Hideouts; the bathroom, under my bed, the house when no one is there. Key manoeuvres; crawling into through the kitchen door and making it into the back garden without anyone seeing you. There’s long grass there. Longterm strategy; jumping the garden wall or better still, taking off in a fighter jet like the one I saw whizzing past during the air show that Sunday with Mum and my sister, the one that squiggled white smoke across the blue sky or the Red Arrow that dove down straight like a pole only to flip and rocket the last second. We punch the air. Phew!

If axed, this warrior seeks out the company of the wise and the kind and the funny. No one warrior is an army winning every war. Chiefly, this warrior is fierce.

Earth Poem – She’s Given to Circles

Earth Poem - She's Given to Circles

She’s Given to Circles is an earth poem, a celebration of her abundant love and care, an appreciation of what we take for granted.

She’s Given to Circles – Earth Poem

First, she fed my child a nut, and after that
she grew sprouts under her skin, of grain
and roses and earthworms. Circling, she blew
fire into our stoves, and on hot stones, she fried
green apples and sewed up lacerated skins.
Mother’s pliés and pirouettes scattered stars into place,
she weaved air and light into a feathery cloth
and lay it down
upon reedy swamps and moonlit highways.
On branches too and where the breeze draughts
the round room inside arms allongés. Allegretto.
And now an Adagio, she's wrestling us down,
she's swallowing us into her lap
where she can stroke our wiery heads mid-arabesque,
one by one. Naptime, she's making us sink, she's
slowing us to sleep in the deep of her cot,
she's giving us to her circles and lullabies.
Along the grooves of her fingerprints,
birdsong and light capering and in her dimples,
the scores of lento airs. Already,
the sky is strumming and the land gliding
its bow on our bedding veins. We drip
into the clinging ocean, one by one.

Migrant Poem – Litter Around a Rubbish Fire

Migrant Poem

Litter Around a Rubbish Fire is a migrant poem I wrote while thousands of people are stuck between Turkey and Greece and no one wants them.

Litter Around a Rubbish Fire – Migrant Poem

First, you take candle grease and old newspaper and then,
on the frayed inkless edge,
you etch a new you
basking in buckets of cash
stuffing some in an envelope
and bet Mother's eyes light up
she runs to the store and picks Chardonnay
for his dinner
and leans back on the settee, clear

why you're now here warming dirty hands on smouldering trash,
litter around a rubbish fire.
You hear pipes and trumpets,
bright tales of the unlived beyond the barbwire,
sons with prospects grandchildren barely born women more daughter 
than mother. And you do not know why the guards won't lee you 
passage, why your child gets tear-gased why no one will hand you a 
form. But you do.

Then, you loosen the soil and water the seeds and after that,
in the glaring blue above,
you rub out clouds
erasing tremors
oiling your skin
and hedge the kids lick icecream mid-glass-scaling square
for their breakfast
and hopscotch across the slabs, clear

why the stench of burning plastic is now choking the twigs inside,
a fence opposite a police cordon.
Sandwiched, we eat ballads and legends
cousin Ali is a bank manager and drives a Porsche,
decades ago, Grandfather's brother opened a food stall and
today, cousin Malala runs a chain of posh eateries. Yet the guy with
the puffer jacket says it doesn't matter if the wire cuts it,
first wage pack, he'll do better. Of course.

For weeks, the air thins and limbo narrows and on it goes
in the sunken cheeks of them and us,
you cast the last branch,
flesh gulping flames
whispers hatching,
and wager the family homes away happy to cook meat
for every meal
and twin stories from south to north, clear

why now we strip ourselves from the strip
the slither between one law and another.
From out of ashes, we run and squeeze between
spikes and wire thorns laced along the border
to keep us out, shots fired, mouthsful of gravel but
then, we slip through and run for the hills. True, the air is sweet
and the grass is long enough to bed us. Mother smiles and
Father sips what never skimmed his tongue before.

In the end, lesser beginnings and smaller balloons
above ground just,
you kick it when it begins sinking,
hatching, still hatching
hedging that one day very soon
and pledge one day we turn in
home with silver
and yield gold at the root of our tree.

Care Poem – This Is What We Do

Care Poem

This is What We Do is a care poem, a reflection on how people look after each other and a celebration of the fact that we can.

This Is What We Do – Care Poem

Your fingers are tugging the cobwebs from my eyelashes,
one by one, you herd them like mules. This is the third time in a week 
you'll have to wash the glue off your fingertips. Once more, my hands 
are sleeping on your thighs to the sound of your mouth moving and 
your vocal cords cracking. This is what we do. Sometimes, your head 
hangs low, as if the earth's asking to bed your face afresh, but your jaw 
coggles until the smoke turns steam. I can stand up and square the 
window now, I can make out the treetops through the frosted pane.
This is when you loop in to raise the heavy bottom sash. You fling your 
left leg and I sling my right leg over the sill. In winter, the legs dangling 
outside turn blue. In summer, the wind dries the leaves and reddens 
the skin. Inside, our feet meet the woollen rug and in the middle, a 
branch and twigs with finches and sparrows dropping by.

Beauty Poem – Our Terraced House

Beauty Poem - Our Terraced House

Our Terraced House is a beauty poem, a celebration of the imperfections surrounding us and a reflection on the stunning contradictions that exist between people.

Our Terraced House – Beauty Poem

Nature requires no facelift
Nor should you every sweep
the dusty road between
your house and the church or wipe
the sweat from your temples.
The wild, wild waves of the ocean
mirror her hands as her children board the school bus.
And the gagging, gagging gust
is as perfect as the lump in my throat
the day she passed. I’m still at the gable
hanging linen on the line on watch-out for that
one robin the next-door neighbour feeds
dinner scraps. Her husband is wheelchair-bound,
ornithology lifts,
lifts his face toward the treetops.
I hear her sing airs louder than
our quarrels, louder than gale-force
squalls. Behind the garden back wall,
a bunch of toddlers screech most days
and from the right, a waft of the old man’s
Virginia tobacco. Mother and I are quiet
like squirrels with a gob full of nuts. In our house,
Father is the talker, his chattering
a dripping, dripping tap in the rain,
the walls are leaf-thin,
I heard Mrs Kavanagh from number three
call her husband an idiot
the same day they were making out outside
where the ivy travels across the window pane.
And still, they mirror our songs and prongs,
like rock faces throw, back what we’ve said
between the howls and the twittering,
the humming and the hush of people
brushing inside, dewdrops merging
in the velvet folds of a rose.

Cow Poem – And Why Wouldn't I?

Cow Poem - And Why Wouldn't I

And Why Wouldn’t I? is a cow poem, a celebration of nature and a reflection on its beauty and peace, way, way beyond our comprehension.

And Why Wouldn’t I? – Cow Poem

Cows know better than
to rush around headless like us
killing each other and the planet
prancing as if we owned the place
as if our breath was more golden
than the trees’ breeze or the puff of a
starlet. Could we ever paint
restraint or birth mirth beyond
the tip of our tongues?
Last night, I had a calf delivered to
my door in a rusty trailer behind
a ditch-dented jeep. And why wouldn’t I
keep a brown-eyed, baby-fur cow
in the back garden of my
village terraced house to tilt
the keel
and for once have me feel
ok? Water and grass, a few yards for
hoofing around, I can do that and
we will take her cues
on chewing the curd,
her jaw rocking. Once,
I saw a farmer’s daughter
playing the accordion at the gate,
the whole herd came trotting over
jotting hoofs a couple of feet from
the metal, all-ears soft like petals.

Time Poem – This Second is an Orphan

Time Poem - This Second Is an Orphan

This Second is an Orphan is a time poem, a reflection on how moments are a patchwork of place, people, and grace.

This Second Is an Orphan – Time Poem

Let's laud the loud and quit the quiet
Let's whisper zilch and oar the roar
this second' is the crook

where red bulbs
char the shell.
Now,
a ball of fluff is fluttering.

When fledgeling us
we lumbered and fled
through the woods.
We were treading on moss,
like hens threading
a blanket of corn and chaff, the way


quills shed yellow down
when little chicks
try catching a breath.


Outside,
we flap.


You travel my skin, and I,
I trace your hands
as snowdrops cloud
the wintery fields,
our lips whistling


across the coop where
fat hens hem and then,
lend their wings
to the wind.