By the Sound of a Voice After a long silence that seemed An eternity, There came a turbulent noise, A spirited noise. No, it was a...

There were two of us this morning   And there are two of us this evening,  And we go on because love is two,   Two people, the two of us...

God, DNA, Bone     Our DNA a polymer implant from our worldly creator,   Backbone sidechain nitrogen phosphate  And an oesophagus for...

A Dark Illumination     Once again, we are here, as we are   on this day every year,   two hearts lit up with pain.   And as day falls...

Cometh the Lion    Cometh the Lion, cometh the hour.   On his head is my name; on his back is my power.   The time is narrow, and the world is wide   And the Lion comes now with a spear in his side.     Look how he bleeds; his flesh is a prize   For the cross-hearted hunter with blood in his eyes   (Brimming red in the heat of the noon)   And vowing to return by the light of the moon.     ‘Come follow me,’ the Lion commands,   ‘Or the hunter will come and hack off your hands.

A man carrying a voice recorder pauses at the door, enters.   He looks a lot like Kafka but has the eyes of Tennyson.   He possesses a...

Father O'Sinner   Father O’Sinner is not his name (not quite),   Though it should be and not O’Connor,   Which was the name bestowed...

On foot from Edinburgh to Canterbury for a once-in-a-decade conference on ‘What It Means to Be a High-Functioning Humanzee in a Mythological World’, we are discussing the cultural fallout of ‘phase three scholasticism’, which has rocked the academic world and the Catholic Church in Ireland, and is responsible for the suicide of at least five university deans and three bishops, as well as the war between the Irish and the Brits. The discussion is heated and many of us are on t

‘Moses approached the thick darkness where God was’  — (Exodus 20:21)  God is a chasm deep & wide at the   Heart of light, thick cloud   ...

I came, through sea waves, misty-brained,  My love songs crumbling to shadows,  And I was halved to something  Less than human. How could...

Aither / R-O-R' Light realm of air, from which heaven came:  Neither hot nor cold, neither wet nor dry.  Quintessentially, it was either...

A Dark Thought in a Green Shade Somewhere in the newly planted earth, a god sits at his bench, creating and curating each little...

Shut up Here in This Caved Trunk of a Room, On the  Massachusetts Side of a Loose-Fish Land We Call America — and Feeling All at Sea In a World That Is Mad and Wet All Over  I Write down   This,  My Heathen Language. Making waves. Much   INK OIL WAX SPERM BLOOD  Spilled to find the White Whale — Whose mighty tail-flukes billow the sea’s shroud; whose peck-slaps flap and flood six hundred pages of Great American Prosody; whose massive genitalia remind us of Fallen Nature; who

Relics Yesterday, before the snow, three old horses munched wet grass as I walked through the relics of an abandoned colliery, which on reflection, were beautiful objects of time and rust.

A Skein of Black Water The moon appeared to float on a skein of black water and a wind sang a high pitch B, 246.94 Hertz. And something else – a distant police car? Or a muffled bell tolling the lost river Dene?

To live this hour beneath a cold Pennines sun requires the dead hills to flow behind us. To see the mighty crow and not look back means...

The North Is Rain strikes terraces stacked in brown brick   And wind blows through the underpass.     Two fat-breasted pigeons   Fly...

So, descend the steep hill   Slowly, go on   Go past the lunch cart   — Scolding tea, coffee   Hotdogs, burgers   Fried...

Over Lytham St Annes, Liverpool and Leeds, Manchester too, there's a full moon in white light suspended and all tonight’s stars ...

Lancaster bleached by rain – a wet wind blows through a line of washing. Fog frost, petrol odour, urban towertops vanish in the aerial grey