My suit hangs in the wardrobe. It glares at me through the partially open door. The spectre at the feast, waiting patiently for the next one to fall. The finest tailor, the sweatshop in Asia, first Lieutenant to King Death either way. “A splendid send off” “Didn’t he look smart” “The old boy would have…

My words are neither in the past or in the moment of just now Not distant recollections or the contemporary holy cow Genius premonitions are not my stock and trade The words that leave my mouth find your ears another day Janet wrote that tenses were like chalk writing on water,  every year that passes…

I sit in a push chair. The world towers above. Batons and shields , Policemen and barriers, Robert Muldoon and a rugby regime , Home before the whistle blows and any action is seen. A momentous revolution, Our side has won , A landslide result and Muldoon is done, Defeat from the jaws of victory,…

When I was young and sprightly an old man lived up on the hill above me. He would labour half way up the ascent and rest on a ledge of ancient concrete. His tales were of our literary giants , fallen heroes of our national identity. His own part a footnote to history , no…

I meet each dawn with my grandfather’s teapot , old and blue and stained with the scars of several thousand days I live in the lee of the hill he lived on for 40 years, I start each day with a tea ritual banishing sleep away, and I think of him I think of his…

Dead dads don’t listen , even if they did when they drew air We keep on having the conversations even though they are not here Dead dads don’t forgive , even if they did when they still lived We keep asking for forgiveness , even though they have nothing to give Dead dads don’t have…

I sit in my garden , my feet are bare, the dog luxuriates in autumn beams, my shoulder is burnt, my spirit is sagging, both will heal with time The house forms a wall , a deep rampart A division from the outer world , my phone is a port hole, a temptation to ignore…

I live on the edge of a transit , a great migration of steel, and of dairy and of grain. Of richly scented stock and indecipherable machinery , of loaves of bread and of trunks of pine. Sometimes it rumbles and sometimes it roars, occasionally it slumbers or hides in the wind. The nation’s artery…

I believe in all the gods and none of them ,I say to the holy man between sips of beer. He smiles back , part amused , part adversarial , part happy inebriated. If there are gods they are here , in this pub in a moment of happiness. I believe in all the gods…

Where I come from air smells of salt and seaweed, Of coconut tinged gorse and of harbour rich ozone Here the air smells of river and of leaf mold Of oily pine trees and of tangy stock trucks. Where I come from the air surges and rages Its pauses for dramatic effect, grandiose and self…