Come To Sunny Prestatyn Laughed the girl on the poster, Kneeling up on the sand In tautened white satin. Behind her, a hunk of coast, a Hotel with palms Seemed…

When I drop four cubes of ice Chimingly in a glass, and add Three goes of gin, a lemon slice, And let a ten-ounce tonic void In foaming gulps until…

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off? Six days of the week it…

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really…

At last you yielded up the album, which Once open, sent me distracted. All your ages Matt and glossy on the thick black pages! Too much confectionery, too rich: I…

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…