What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools, And you…

Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) – Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP. Up to then there’d only…

Giant whispering and coughing from Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum, ‘The Queen’, and huge resettling. Then begins A snivelling of the violins: I…

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand, As epitaph: He chucked up everything And just cleared off, And always the voice will sound Certain you approve This audacious, purifying, Elemental move. And they…

On the day of the explosion Shadows pointed towards the pithead: In the sun the slagheap slept. Down the lane came men in pitboots Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke, Shouldering…

She kept her songs, they kept so little space, The covers pleased her: One bleached from lying in a sunny place, One marked in circles by a vase of water,…

About twenty years ago Two girls came in where I worked – A bosomy English rose And her friend in specs I could talk to. Faces in those days sparked…

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass. I had seen it before, and even fed…

Coming up England by a different line For once, early in the cold new year, We stopped, and, watching men with number-plates Sprint down the platform to familiar gates, ‘Why,…

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.       They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had       And add some extra, just for…

My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps You’d care to join us? In a pig’s arse, friend. Day…

“This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He stayed The whole time he was at the Bodies, till They moved him.” Flowered curtains, thin and frayed, Fall to within five inches of…