Caerleon Campus Lime

Deciduous tree
Its subsiding leaf is gold
A riposte to Frost

No timeless beauty
In change, it aches the soul
Unconscious in state.

Trenchcoat noir

"The witness heard you shout "NIETZSCHE BITCHES!" when you walked away from the body?"

"Oh yeah!  We were having a few drinks and Bezzie was saying...there was this party, see...and..."

The murderer chuckled.

"You just had to BE there."

Leftovers and Sellotape

Christmas is sticky
Mincemeat, onion marmalade,
and past year's echoes.

Eyes half closed

Which squint sees it right -
two faces, or the candle?
Either way, it burns.

One line

Simple, the circle

Describes us but two concepts

Within and without

Lucy P

Lucy P - the graffiti says - is 2-faced

She emblazoned her name on the subway wall,

Bubblegum pink and rebellious as kittens

But then came the footnote,

A snide attack

A miserable scribble, daubed in black

No credit to the author.

Christmas Eve, 1995

The hillside was silver and cold.
Snow by starlight should be beautiful,
and it was;
but the bitterness of its beauty
recalled my chattering teeth,
so I looked down to the village instead.

That valley was too narrow for us both to be.
You could be; I could be.
But we could not.
So we huddle-froze up on the mountain, inseparable.
Damned the spying eyes
and held close.

From such a distance,
the golden-syrup streetlight glow
clung viscously around
the village houses and walls
every deep shadow a fleck in amber
Essentially unchanged
for a hundred years

We swore we'd not fossilise;
but love fiercely
and change,
and grow
and we did.
That's the pain of it.
We breathed our teen promises,
nose to nose,
watched them freeze into clouds;
hang, swirl and dissipate.